things I don't like in Paris

Le Metro

I stroke me when I was in Pittsburgh last February:
even though there are some weird people in the buses in Pittsburgh and even though those buses run on a weird schedule, I hate the Paris metro way more.
Why???Pourquoi??? one might ask...
Well, et bien, I would answer, for several reasons:

- Too many connections with too many steps going up and down (contributing to great legs on some french ladies I have to admit). At one point a connection is taking almost 10 minutes. And on the stairs slow people are always blocking the faster ones.

- Dirty dirty dirty dirty... it starts by the entrance. You'll notice it by the several yellow/brownish dots on the ground. Those are cigarette butts. People discard them as soon as they get in the staircase since it is forbidden to smoke inside. Inside, it smells like pee. Actually now that I think of it, the inside could be much worse. You often see crews of cleaning people in the evening.

- People. People. People are everywhere. I have to use a line that is always packed. You have to be pushed and crushed against other people. People are strategizing to get a seat. Once I was luckily seated for 1 second when an old man got in. I stood up to give him my seat but he didn't need it. When I tried to seat back a guy was using the seat. The scene took 5 seconds max.
People look so sad too, depressed, stressed, tired... If you smile they think you are mad. There are no impromptu conversations with a stranger here.

- The "sick person of the monday morning". Quite often, on monday mornings the system is stopped because of a mysterious "sick passenger" in a train ahead of us. I wonder what it is like to be the "sick passenger" ...

Is there something I like?
- I like to watch the guys who glue the big paper ads in the stations. They do that very quicly, with a lot of precision... it's very impressive to watch.

- I like taking the bus, but it taked forever to get somewhere.