The Metro’s dirty dirty secrets

Les sales secrets du métro parisien

Other than some of the obvious gross and dirty things one finds in the Parisian metro, I was suprised to learn that some Parisians were totally unaware of one of dirtiest secrets of the Parisian metro. I’m talking about the dirty spots.

dirty spot n. (m.)¹ ['dɜrtispɒt]

area along the Parisian metro’s platform [usual painted white] which has become discolored as a result of passengers getting off and on at this location.

¹ if used as an anglicism in French, (or michèlisme) I am assigning it the ‘genre masculin’. [almost 90% of French nouns borrowed from English (aka anglicisms) are considered masculin]

Line up correctly au quai, OK

Nowadays on a few lines of the metro, the spots where the doors will open along the platform have been painted with indications so people know where to line up. Even though a lot of passengers still just try to get right in without letting people off first, these new painted lines will show you were to line up. If you are on a line that doesn’t have the painted indications, look for the dirty spots! They may be difficult to notice when you are right on top of one (as the entire things looks pretty dirty in general), but look down the quai “platform”, and you should be able to see them. I took a picture to help you out:

publicité non sollicitée

So, one of annoying things about living in an appartment in a city, is that you may receive junk advertisements in your mailbox. I came home tonight to find the entire wall of mailboxes jammed full of papers that had been haphazardly shoved partially in the slots. Obviously these companies didn’t pay postage to mail me this document, and they didn’t even address it to me. So I have come up with a plan to stop the absurd waste of paper of unsolicited advertisements. The installation of a stragetically placed sign reading: “Pas de publicité! Vous êtes filmé(e).©” If that doesn’t scare off these flyer-flingers, the next step would be to add another line of text to the sign claiming that violators will be found using their finger prints and tracked down…

Welcome in to my blog.

(One of my pet peeves… welcome in.)

After several years of trying to adapt the language, culture and civilisation of France, I have decided to share some of my experiences. These articles are from my point of view, “une Américaine à Paris”.

(Learn more about me and from where I’m coming)

So back to business… welcome in.

One of the most common mistakes that I encounter from Francophones using English is this misused expression; or more precisely preposition.

So French people, my advice is this :

• when you want to say bienvenue
• dit plutôt welcome to