After a day of brilliant seminar and some tough structure elucidation through software, I thought, why not blog today and complete the hatrick! In principle, the sequence would be good if I wrote about nostalgia again, but then I guess its time for a change!
When I was taking a holiday in Paris, even though I was stunned by the beauty of the city, I was nauseated with the attitude and behaviour of the public. After living and travelling in Germany for nearly two years and having travelled quite a bit to other European countries, by far, Paris has been the place of worst public attitude.
The first repulsive moment was when people understood English but refused to answer back in English! Fine, don’t tell me now that I am a tourist and it is an adventure to travel like this. Accepted. It is really adventurous to explore places, but when the entire world is striving to be cooperative, why can’t the younger generation speak English?! French may be like music even when spoken, but it can be really irritating when you have to catch a train on a day of train strike! We were really luck to find a young French girl (no eye brows going up please!) who could guide us using her broken English to the correct platform and even she was confused. Finally it was my ingenuity that lead us to take the correct train in spite of announcements happening in French!
Let me not press further with the language. I guess in a non English speaking country, it is always like this and no complaints. The above was just an experience ;-)
The metro trains were always crowded and people were standing jam packed even near the doors. Funny that the doors do no open automatically and even the people standing near the door will not open the doors unless it is their stop! Come on French people, can’t you open doors atleast?! They stand right in front of the door, sometimes with big bags on their backs, not even giving way to fellow Frenchmen, forget tourists! The very first time, we didn’t know the doors weren’t automatic and I was waiting for the doors to open. When they didn’t I fiddled with the knobs and still didn’t open. If such a situation was here in Germany, the person behind you will gladly help you with a smile. Here people were least bothered. I finally managed to kick the door open and then learnt that you had to turn the knobs! Crazy!!
Talk about French wine, French perfumes and French kiss! I guess some frustrated tourist got bheja fried in France and hence the name French fries!!
3 comments:
now i pray God. Bipasha basu doesn't read ur blog coz, yesterday in TOI, she has yelling about Paris.she sang , that'The best thing about men there is that they aren't afraid to express their love..I love my memories of Paris'. probably the people there know only to make love and nothing else .hehehe !!
Again its not something new da. it happens to larger extent in our own country. When i was in Bangalore, except the Bus Number everything else was in Kanada. Thank goodness, they dint invent kanada version for Numbers. and why go to bangalore, there was a guy in chennai, thirumavalavan(or some other idiot) who wanted to make eveyboard, hoarding, nameplate, announcements, pamphlets, etc in Tamil. and his reason was that its better for the Tourist to learn our beautiful language. has he gone insane? probably he cdoesnt know english.
BUT of course there is a vast difference in the case of Human Mentality here. They always help people out here even though you are on a sticky wicket. Ofcourse except Autorickshaw guys, who will really bleed the tourist to death. :D :D . Public Trasport is none the better. people in our place, stand in the way in a bus. primarily its jam-packed. Agreed!, the humanity-quotient is very high. thats one major difference between here and Paris you described. Infact after the bang trip, i decided never to look for help, and plan accordingly by reading as much as possible abuot the place(most negative reports!- so that you prepare for the worst :D ). Again, you get a better picture(opinion) of the place you visit, by the reponses from the people. But its better not to expect anything and look at the grand stuffs they built and also observe people from close quaters and learn about peoples cultures and their behavioral patterns. Not being helpful is not a crime machi!. its just another side of the coin. maybe we expect more since we are from the place of perfect humane-ness. Lets look at it objectively( i would like it to be "relatively") and just conclude that they have different view, opinions towards life which is different from others. maybe you must have observed a lot and you can get your things done more quickly next time you go there. but still that blog was not in your usual style machi why??? you were doing something side by side?? the sentence formations doesnt contain your usual flaour!!. nevertheless it was an good one.(must read for anyone planning a trip to Paris!! :D :D ).
that was a nice little blog as a comment da :-) . True, language fanatics are painful. they dont realise we have to move forward at all.. and reg the style, i donno da.. just wrote it.. change is the only factor that is constant :D
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