Today, I dragged Emily to the Cité de l’Architecture plaza so I could get a picture of me and the Eiffel Tour for my father. It is the only thing he asked for from my trip, and after Emily graciously offered to come with me to take it, we set off. Except, fun fact, Line 6 has stops closed in that area and RER C is also closed. Fun fact #2, the Tour de France ended today at the Champs-Élysées. Meaning all of the metro stops we wanted to take were unavailable. After some hectic searching of a map, a helpful RATP worker pointed us to Line 13, and a connection to Line 9 that would take us where we wanted to go. Perfect!
We find the platform for Line 13 and wait patiently for the stream of people getting off. Always have to let people off in order to make room for those getting on, a common sense order of events. Except, for one woman, it was not.
A tall middle aged man is descending from the cart, it looks as though he’s one of the last people to get off. I glance to my side to be sure Emily was ready to push our way on. Only to be smacked in the side by an elbow and suddenly the tall man on the ground. A woman on his other side is gripping his arm, a foot inside the train. She pulled this poor man who just wanted to go about his day out of the cart, causing him to fall in a heap of limbs on the concrete. Yelling ensues. Then out of no where, the man full on bitch slaps this woman. Emily and I quickly hop onto the cart to avoid any cross fire as the woman fixes her Gucci bag and begins the hunt to assumidly skin this man alive. As the train departs, we see the beginnings of a full blown altercation on the platform. Our cart is buzzing with gossip.
The only thought to cross my mind was:
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
In the US, verbal and physical alterations are pretty common, unfortunately. Yet, seeing it here jarred me so much. This was the first true alteraction I had seen this entire trip, and it was wild. I’m so desensitized to it back home, I’ve seen worse for smaller, but it shook me to my core seeing it happen today. I just hope they are both alright, with just a but if soreness and bruised egos.
Anyways, we finally got to the plaza and I got a cool picture with the Predator.
The whole trip after that was wild, from the aimless walking around, to going through 5 different rail lines, to slapping, to Predator
I’ve never seen physical altercations in the US… Road rage, though, yes!