Métro boulot, Métro dodo

This is a French idiomatic expression that one can translate as: Métro work, Métro sleep. Of course, to the average Parisian this encapsulates the banality of life. Five days a week they trudge out to their local stop in the morning, blearily ride the train (or series of trains) to work, push papers about in their cubicle (plus perhaps a few games of FreeCell), blearily take the train home, and then go to sleep. Repeat for about thirty years and then retire. I think Sartre had a word for this but I cannot recall it at the moment…

I, of course, after two weeks in Paris have come into a general routine. While not exactly Métro boulot, Métro dodo, it is not that much different. But, I shall try to provide an overview of the average day for me here, plus some running commentary. I can almost hear readers now clicking to more interesting web logs such as “commemorative spoon collecting” and “making the world’s largest lint ball: tricks and traps.”

While generally an early riser in the States I have yet to master that skill here. Perhaps one reason is that the sunrise is about an hour later than for me at home and a second reason is that when the sun rises there is a thick layer of clouds shielding it. As a result, even by eight a.m. my bedroom is fairly dark when I finally get up. Since I am in charge of my own breakfasts I have moved from the Puissant all-bread breakfast back to my traditional gruel and I am out the door by a little after eight thirty. My Métro stop is just a three-minute walk from home and I take the stairs down to the station.

The world’s tallest cliché, the Eiffel Tower, is the symbol that most people associate with Paris, but for some reason for me it has been the Métro. The Parisian city government created the Métro in the 1890s as a response to a near transit crisis in the city. Since the reign of Napoleon III, 1848-1870, Paris had seen a near-total remaking of the city (broadening of boulevards, water supplies, sewers, new parks) that made the city mostly what we recognize today. This rebuilding program was perhaps too successful in one way for Paris exploded in size (population and geographic) the last fifty years of that century, becoming a veritable “black hole” that sucked in people and resources from the entire nation. As Paris expanded in size the city needed to move the population quickly and efficiently to their places of work. The old transit systems of omnibuses and streetcars (and horses) simply could not handle the crush. At enormous expense the city began the construction of the Métro, partially inspired by the London Underground. Within a few years the first beautifully constructed Art Deco stations came into operation and, well, the rest you know is history…

I have always found the Métro to be easily accessible. The stations are usually close to the surface (unlike the Moscow subway system where one takes interminable escalators down to reach the trains) and save for the few large, multi-line stations, are small in size. They are quite safe and since my last trip here the city has spent a lot of money on cleaning them up (and since the London bombings of last summer there is a lot more security present). And, best of all, at least from my perspective the Métro is a good buy: I have a one-month pass that takes me anyplace and anywhere within Paris proper (and a small region outside the city, like Vincennes, where I live) for $51. Even in my car that is the cost of just two tanks of gas.

Moreover, I have the good fortune on living on the premier Métro line, the #1 (it goes along the Champs-Elysées, the Louvre, the Hotel de Ville, and a few blocks from Notre Dame). As a result, my trains are new and clean and also run quite often—usually at most I might have a three minute wait—which means not as much crowding. The new trains have no dividing doors between compartments so one can actually sit in the last train and seen eight to ten trains up to the front. At times it is almost a disconcerting sight as the trains snake through some twists and turns underground.

I board my train at Saint-Mandé and sit down. It is not a place to talk and meet people. Does one really want to tell a child some ten years later that “I met your mother on the subway”? It is also, thank goodness, not a place for cell phones and the most one hears is a few muted conversations. Most passengers take a defensive posture to ward off unwanted social contact. Everyone who rides the Métro wears some sort of mask. First, there’s the “reader,” who, now matter how much the train might lurch or if someone bumps into them will not move their book away from their face as their concentration is so intense. Second, there’s the “starer,” who stares at the map of the stops of the train and counts how many stops to go, even if the “starer” has taken the train for years and could ride the train, eyes closed, and know exactly the position and station. Third, there is the “defender” who sits with a bag or a sack or a purse enclosed by his or her crossed arms, legs tucked underneath the seat while wearing an airport scowl (thanks, Fred). The “defender” dares anyone and everyone to trespass upon his or her bubble. Last, there is the “continental.” The “continental” has done it all and seen it all and carries an air of world weariness. Paris! Bah! I would rather be in Gstaad now on the piste. The Métro is beneath him has he rides the train with a look of bored indifference. Yes, the Jag is in the shop and the wife is driving the Porsche today so I deign to take the train, the “continental” says. I choose the “continental” mask today (I did feel rather world-weary that day) and find my seat.

Porte de Vincennes, Nation, and Reuilly-Diderot all go by. Ten minutes after I first boarded I get off at the next stop, the Gare de Lyon. Besides fourteen Métro lines that cover Paris like a lattice, Paris also has five train lines (the RER) that run deeper and faster underneath the city and also run well outside the city limits above ground to the suburbs and banlieues that surround it. The Gare de Lyon is a multi-train station that not only is a junction of three different Métro lines but it also houses two RER lines, the A and the D. As a result, I have a long walk from my line to the next Métro, the 14. These multi-line stations see thousands of commuters, all briskly pacing to their next stop through which, to the outsider, may seem like a rabbit’s warren of tunnels and corridors. These large stations also house shops, boutiques, cafés, and shops. One shop is called “Presty Woman” and sells women’s accessories. I do not really know what “Presty” means—it is not a French word that I know of and I suspect that it was supposed to read “Pretty Woman” but someone did not bother to proofread when the proper time came. Today, I do not stop at Presty Woman but continue on to the 14.

This is the newest line on the Métro, and also the shortest, a mere eight stops, created as a line that would lead to the new Bibliothèque Nationale. As a result, the trains, like the #1 line are new. However, not only are they new but this line has no drivers as the trains are automated. Normally, this would not bother me one way or another this day we were nearly at the BN when my train lurched to a stop, and I mean lurched, as some people on the train actually lost their footing and fell. While not especially paranoid about subways I did wonder what was going on. No one else seemed bothered so I kept my “continental” mask on. A minute later and automated voice came on stating that there had been a “technical accident” and that we should “be patient” until it was resolved. Since I had no intention of getting out of the train (and we were actually directly under the Seine at this time) I decided patience was a virtue and thought about the Jag in the shop. After five minutes nothing happened and the automated voice repeated its warning. Still no other passengers seemed ill at ease though the “starers” on the train had little to do now as there was no train movement. The “defenders” all readjusted their positions and the “readers” pushed their noses more closely to their books. A minute later the train restarted and we reached the station. No explanation of what happened was given and as I have been riding the train a couple of weeks it has taken place one other time, though not with such a lurch and not with as long a wait so I write it off to some kinks in the automated system.

I get off the train at my station and do my five-minute walk to the library for my usual processing before I can reach the bowels of the building and the thrill of French advertising trade journals of the 1950s. I am well into a routine as I go to the desk in my reading room and present my card to a clerk who then scans the card and then retreats to a back room to find the boxes of journals that I had requested the previous day. I return with my card and my boxes and begin a day’s work. I have a lot of reading to do and even if I cannot speak French particularly well I can scan in French very fast and I go through an edition of a journal in about fifteen minutes looking for the things historians look for…

I have a laptop (thanks, Joe!) and take notes from smaller sections of journals but occasionally I come to articles that are just too juicy and long for me to try to type out completely due to time constraints so I take my journal to the photocopying room. There are only two photocopying rooms for some few hundred readers and I am quite lucky that most other researchers are not copying much. With only two rooms for photocopying one has to hope when one gets one’s reader’s desk assigned that one is close to the copy room for one might have to walk as far as seventy yards to reach it. While that may not sound like that far to walk (for a marathoner, no less) it is not that convenient when I have to copy things about twelve different times during the day. Once I reach the room I hand my photocopy card, loaded for copies at forty cents a page to the copy attendant. The BN does not allow researchers to do their own photocopying so as to protect the materials, and of course, this adds another barrier to even wanting to get photocopying done.

Another impediment is that some of the photocopy attendants do not want to do any photocopying at all. I seem to have about a twenty-five percent chance of getting an attendant who will look at my journal and say that it is “too delicate” to copy and hand it back to me and shrug their shoulders. One attendant frowned when she looked at my journal and starting shaking her head as she began to inspect that issue to see if it were “copy-worthy.” As she inspected she also proceeded to break the spine of the journal and nearly tore some pages out and she summarized the whole experience with an “It is too fragile to copy” reply. On the wall of the copy room is a list of documents that the BN will not photocopy but as I look at the list if one held to it to the letter one could not copy anything at all.

Later that morning I brought another article and the attendant (I have christened him “Grizzly Adams” as he looks like a younger version of the 80s television bear-man) also frowned and without even inspecting the journal he said, “Sorry, I cannot copy this.” This particular article was ten pages and I knew that it was impossible for me to type the whole thing out in anything less than two hours. I am more resourceful than that so I walked many, many yards to the other photocopy room to find another more pliant attendant. I was in luck as there was a young woman in this room (they seem to rotate the photocopiers every two hours to other parts of the BN in other service positions) and I ask her in my most obsequious French if she could photocopy this very rugged and tough French journal. Of course, she does not care at all about the condition of the journal (and to be fair, it is in very good condition as it has probably only been handled about five times) and copies the article for me with a smile. Cha-ching for the BN, as they just earned four dollars for the right to photocopy for me “Dissemblances et similitude de six publicitaires.”

And so goes my usual day at the BN: reading, scanning, typing, and then running the obstacle course of the photocopy rooms. Grizzly Adams has made reappearance three other times so I have to scoot down to the other room and hope for a winsome attendant. The basement research area also has an overpriced café (we are a pretty captive audience) where I take a break every two to three hours. While those in the manual professions certainly have a right to scoff at me, it is work of a sort and after about seven hours I am usually pretty much mentally spent and the words on the pages blend all into one. I return my items and head out to be reprocessed for my exit. As I walk to the station I plan my thrilling evening: I will take the Métro home and stop at a small supermarket for a few items for dinner, maybe a stop as well at the corner bakery and then up to my apartment to make a meal, do some reading, listen to the radio, and then “dodo.” As I head home to sit with the “readers,” the “starers,” the “defenders,” and the “continentals” I wonder on my walk to the station which mask I shall wear on the way home.