People Watching on the Metro

Watching people has always been somewhat of a hobby of mine. I even like to invent imaginary lives for people based off of simple interactions and reactions as well as body language and dress. The first time I rode the subway in New York City, I was six years old, of coarse I was with my Aunt, but my Dad still didn’t want me taking the subway do to his first experience in New York city for the Worlds Fair of 1968. I was so excited about I told him about it first thing on the phone, he was not happy with my Aunt. My Grandfather had fallen victim to a pick pocket scheme the very first time they were trying to ride the subway, someone pushed his daughter, another Aunt of mine on to the subway right as it pulled away, this was a time before cell phones and before New York was as safe as it is today. The reason someone did this was as a distraction to get to his wallet. Thankfully, everyone was safe and these stories have never turned me away from public transportation. Having a lot of family in New York, we rode the subways many times after this and it has always been one of my favorite places to watch people, no where else do such vast groups of people gather together even if only for a moment before parting ways, most likely to never see each other again.

Given this fascination with people on the metro I have been observing in Paris with every train ride and how people intermingle in these spaces. The biggest determining factor for the environment on the metro is the time of day that you are traveling. When we leave our apartment at 9am to get to the 10am visits the trains are packed tightly with business men in suits and French women in the beautiful beige trench coats I have always admired but never dressed nice enough to actually buy one. No matter how many people keep squeezing in and out of the doors from stop to stop, this is the quietest the metro ever is, people flip through newspapers and books avoiding all contact with those around them. I try to guess the language of the spares mutterings of short conversation that only rises occasionally. Even though this is generally one of the more crowded times on the metro it is one of the quietest.

As the day goes on and the metro gets hotter and hotter, it gets louder as well. The traffic of people passing from train to train decrease somewhat until about 6 or 7pm when the commuters begin to make there way home. The heat is overwhelming at times as well as the masses of people who continually pack into the cramped cars. Clutching tightly to my bag I think to myself that there is no way any more people could possibly pile themselves on top of me, but they just keep coming on, packing so tight that I’m stuck in the armpit zone where it does not smell very good at all. Not that the New York subways smell better or anything, but there are times it has smelled so strongly of a sewer I almost felt sick, one day it smelled distinctly like olives oddly enough.

The craziest time that I have seen the subway though is always catching the last train. 12am on weekdays it is still livelier with conversation and activity than the crowded first train of my day, and the 2am train on the weekends even more so. I have seen everything from jeering and jabbering Algerians crazed over soccer, to drunk french women swinging around the poles singing and laughing. I've seen the heartbreaking couple, both with their guitar cases in hand and a tear falling from the woman’s eye. The other day I say a group of young girls all talking to each other and clutching their stomachs in defensive protection, they were definitely pregnant. The only one I was unsure about, mostly because of her startlingly young face came up and asked me for my seat motioning to her stomach as well. She was speaking French so I wasn’t sure exactly what she said but I got the idea and stood up for her. It’s been really hard for me to understand the language here with the one-month French course being my only knowledge but I’ve finally replaced my “sorry” with “desole” and “pardon” instead of excuse me. Being able to remember to say these things that so often come out of my mouth automatically is a great achievement for me in metro etiquette.