Remember my troubles on the tram the first day I rode? My 20 euro fine? The tears? The confusion? The frustration? WELL, my friend Julicia summed up the experience just perfectly in her blog, so I thought (with her permission, of course) I'd share the exerpt with you all:
"In America, when you don’t pay the bus fare and you try to sneak in the side door, the bus driver yells at you. In France, they have the controllers. Suited men with hard faces and empty eyes, who ascend upon a bus or tram from random stops, and freeze the population within the bus. No one can get off, no one can get on. For 5, 10, 15 minutes, everyone is immobile. The controllers walk up and down every aisle, checking bus tickets, making sure passes aren’t expired, scrutinizing tram tickets. If you were an obedient citizen, the most you will feel is the chill when the controller grabs your card from your hand and intensely reads the timestamp. If not, you are humiliated in front of everyone for not having paid the 1€40 fare, led off the bus, and written up for a 25€ fine…or more, depending on the transgression. "
Thanks, Julicia!
When did you blog about the tram? I must have missed that entry!
ReplyDeleteI freak out while driving when I see a cop car, even when I'm going exactly the speed limit and am following all traffic laws. There's just something about knowing that they are more powerful than you that is intimidating for me.
Also, this description of controllers totally makes me think of dementors on the Hogwarts express looking for Sirius Black.
oh man, you're right! I can't believe I didn't blog about that! I was on the tram for the first time when i first got here and had no idea how to "validate" my ticket (you just insert it into this machine that sucks it in, stamps it with the date and time, and spits it back out...but I was afraid it'd get sucked in and never come back out, so i just held onto it and it didn't validate properly) and the tram controllers came on during the ride (which is a really infrequent occurrance and has never happened to me since!) and fined me 20 euros for not having a properly validated ticket. I teared up right there. It was so scary and 20 euros is about $30, so that's a LOT of money! Everyone on the train was watching me and it was just horrifying. Anyway, my friend Sylvette, who is the woman of the couple whose house I stayed at when I first got here, was really mad that I paid them at all and that they would take advantage of someone who obviously had NO idea what was happening. The controller KNEW that I had no idea how to validate my ticket, cuz I asked him, in my broken French, what I was supposed to have done with the ticket, and he showed me. Yet he STILL wrote me a ticket and made me pay on the spot. Sylvette took me to the tram office about two weeks later to get my money back, and the guy said he could do nothing about it because I had already paid. He said I shouldn't have paid. What?! Was I just supposed to refuse to pay? I was terrified and didn't know if I was being scammed, and even if I were being scammed while I was on the train, I would've given them the 20 euros anway, cuz I had just gotten into the country the day before, was all alone, and had absolutely no idea what was going on. It was a really yucky experience.
ReplyDeleteSo, THAT is what happened. And it was a really big deal for me, so I can't believe I didn't blog about it!