p*ss us off, why don't you?

Just when I have been thinking that I can NOT take travelling with the great unwashed anymore and that no matter how environmentally friendly public transport may be, I simply have to get a scooter... forces conspire to show me that it really is worth the effort of travelling shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone and their germs... (NOT! NOT! NOT!)

Picture this: Italy 1956...
oh, sorry, got carried away there...

Picture this: Paris, Good Friday 2008.
The BF and I climb on a bus and the driver uses this opportunity to type an sms message. Just as I am forming the words to tell my partner that I have now seen it all, (drivers using cell phones while driving 60 people is de rigeur, but hey, why not type instead??) I see a coat on a heap on the floor at the exit. Then I identify a shoe sticking out from under the coat and then my unwilling eyes finally register the scene they do not want to see...
a young mother is crouching down, hanging her little girl's exposed bum over the edge of the bus to PEE AT THE BUS STOP, feet in the bus, ass to the world! The doors keep trying to close, but the driver looks up long enough from her smsing to hit the open button a few times. People are climbing off the bus around the 2 year old's buttocks. It is the most grotesque thing I have ever seen and clearly the toddler is too traumatised to wee so publicly, despite the encouraging whisteling sounds her idiotic mother is making. Eventually the mother gives up and pulls her kid's pants up again and we lurch to the next bus stop, where the procedure is repeated. For all we know, this could have been going on for the last 4 stops, but finally - I guess the child just could not handle her mother's rushing water sounds anymore - she pees over the edge, narrowly missing another passanger's shoe. Glory!

Whatever happened to getting off the bus when your child needs to wee?!?!

sideways eating

So... just when I decide I'm giving up chocolate until Easter (sounds like Lent to you? Well, no, I am totally irreligious, but if Peas can give up booze for 2 months - and look how well she's doing - then I would like to think I can stop scoffing chocolate for just a sec here)...anyway, just when I decide to see if I can pull it off to DO it, I get a sideways KitKat eater on the metro opposite me. Jeesh! What the hell are you doing, lady?! Stick that darn chocolate-covered wafer back in your chocolate-covered cake hole and keep it there!!
Pfffffffff - some people's children.

This young urban professional with black curly hair couldn't have brought a book on the train with her, could she now? Oh no. To unwind on her way home this yuppie eats have-a-break-have-a-KitKat. But with a difference. She eats it sideways and halfways!
1) the KitKat gets turned on its side
2) it gets rammed in the mouth, off to the right, where the right canine leads the other back teeth in splitting the raised triangular chocolate bit off the flat base wafer.
3) soggy, sideways chocolate-less KitKat wafer comes BACK OUT THE MOUTH - eeeeewwwwww.
And so it goes for 4 whole wafer fingers. I was appalled. I don't believe she had any idea how close she came to a good klap*.

* slap, Afrikaans-style

Pickpocket Penis

I would like to once again thrill you with tales of the greatest form of public transport ever invented.... where one and all rub shoulders, step on toes, smell from armpits and steal from one another. Or try to anyway.

Picture this: it’s Wednesday evening, around 9pm and I’m alone. I’m changing platforms at Sevres-Babylon, from line 12 to line 10. As I walk down a short flight of stairs to my new platform, I look left at a sign board and am aware of another body using the stairs behind me. I obviously don’t pay further attention, but when a few seconds later something brushes the inside of my left elbow (the arm clutching my bag), without thinking or having time to process anything I whip around yelling. My small makeup purse drops to the floor at my feet and rolls down a few stairs. The young man behind me points at it and says:

“Your bag fell.”

And I’m off, at the top of my voice I screech:

“Like hell it fell, you touched me, I felt it. What else do you have in your hands?! You had your hand in my bag!”

He denies it, but very weakly. I stomp off onto the platform and he climbs the stairs back up. As I had decided to use the button to call the station manager, I needed to get a better look at the guy’s clothing. I go down on my haunches to see him at the top of the stairs and memorize what he’s wearing. When he sees me, the bad-ass pickpocket punk throws me a

“QUOI?! QUOI?!”

and without further ado, pulls his jeans down to reveal his willy. It bounces out and dangles there for a moment, then he pulls his pants back up and turns away.

On what planet would such a small, sad little thing that bobs out of the top of someone's trousers frighten me? I described him to the station manager and took my onward train. I hope they chucked that sad-ass out of the station, although what difference would it make in his life, really? Next time, he should be more careful about elbows - then he won’t have to display pee-pees.

Pierre, my metro man!

Apparently I have the public-transport-driver-attraction gene. In what is becoming 'all in a day's work', I hitched a ride in the cockpit of metro line 6 early this morning. It was unintentional, I promise. See, I have a talking-point travel mug. Talking point because people always ask me where I got that practical, 17 ounce thermos mug . When I reply

"Etats-Unis (United States)"

I often get a raised eyebrow and wistful....

'Ah, quand même - they do have some good things over there."

So back to my morning. Seeing as I was catching the metro at 6h30 AM, I stood on the platform towards the head of the train, sipping my hibiscus tea from my quirky AMERICAN mug-job. Metro pulls in. Driver gives me a grin. I return the grin and think this must be about my mug. He pokes his head out the window and invites me into his booth. I wave 'no thanks' (was planning on napping in the metro!) and start to walk towards the first carriage. Metro driver opens the door to his booth and sticks his whole body out and says, in a Southern accent:

"Venez - come, you are charming!"

So I realise no nap is to be had on this ride and climb in the front with him. He asks me about the contents of my mug and we get chatting. I reveal the inside knowledge I have about the RATP and how everyone wants to drive the RER's, but has to spend a minimum of 8 years on the metro first and then there are still the waiting lists... he is most impressed that I know all this and confirms my info. Then I ask him if he is from Toulouse (given his accent) and this really impresses him, seeing as he couldn't place my accent. (Obviously, no-one ever expects South Africans).

Anyway, to cut a 22 minute conversation short, this time I got a first name and a phone number! And not because I asked for it either - it was offered to me and written on a scrap of paper in a station where the other poor-sod passengers couldn't figure out why we were stopped for so long!

I think I might just call that number... when I hear rumors of metro strikes.... (he, he, he)

from the mouth of babes...

On the metro today there were two little boys and a girl, travelling with a minder. One little boy was caucasian and one was mixed-race (multi-ethnic to you!) They were doing some kind of skin colour comparison or having a discussion about racial differences because they were inspecting each others knuckles and palms and I heard the mixed-race child say: “ ...(something I couldn’t hear)... usually mixed-race.”

A few of us were watching this mutual inspection with amusement, but what caused people to burst into broad smiles across the carriage was when the white child said to the mixed-race child, very loudly, in a sort of now-please-don’t-exaggerate tone of voice:

You are not black. You are CHESTNUT.