Things that Line 1 of the Paris Metro is Good for

Getting one from one end of Paris to the other. Like, say, from the 11th arrondissement, where Ashley and I live, to La Défense, at the western end of the line. It’s a trip that we took the first two Sundays in our new apartment, because La Défense is home to an American-like shopping mall with helpful stores for new-apartment dwellers like Castorama (kind of like Home Depot) and Darty (kind of like Best Buy). The line cuts through the middle of Paris, with major stops along the way like Bastille, the Louvre, Place de la Concorde, Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe.

Appreciating the superior train-engineering skills of the French. The French are proud of their extensive high-speed rail system, which can take you from Paris to Brussels or London in two hours or less or to Provence in three . But from the looks of Line 1, the French do Metros just as well. To a rider familiar with U.S. subway systems like New York, Philadelphia and Washington (some of whose cars, come to think of it, are built by Alstom, a French company), Line 1 offers several revelations, both figurative and literal:

• Trains needn’t generate eardrum-splitting screeches. Quite the contrary. Through a combination of train-tracks and noise-absorbing rubber wheels, they can be remarkably quiet.
• Trains shouldn’t have to wait for other trains, or for riders. Not once have any of the Line 1 trains that we’ve been on had to wait for a train ahead to clear out of the way. Nor have the doors ever re-opened to let on some straggler who had sprinted down the platform and wedged his foot in the door. When the tone sounds, the doors close and the train whooshes forward – simple as that. Égalité!
• Just because you’re underground doesn’t mean you have to feel like you’re underground. The cars are open at each end, so you can move freely among them. Or you can sit and look down the full length of the train as it twists through the tunnel. (Ashley is prone to motion-sickness, so she finds this feature far less compelling.) On both sides of Bastille station, the track curves in a series of esses. I presume that’s because there are things in the ground that didn’t permit the tunnels to be built straight. But I wonder if those curves aren’t there on purpose, to let the French show off to all the foreign visitors who ride Line 1 how quickly, quietly and easily their trains can negotiate them. The cars also have walls that are mostly made of glass. In between stations, you still pretty much feel like you’re underground. The only thing you really see are telecommunications cables tied together in neat bundles running along the walls. (However, that alone is a far cry from the dankness -- and the strewn garbage, and the mysterious puddles, and the scurrying rodents -- of U.S. subway tunnels.) But when you pull in to certain stations, you get a treat. At the Louvre, you see museum pieces in cutaways in the walls. And after your train flawlessly executes the curves that lead into Bastille, you see paintings on the walls that reenact la révolution and windows that look out on to the Canal St. Martin. Liberté!

Staying warm. Most Metro stops are heated! This probably goes along with the superior train-engineering skills of the French, but considering how unusually cold this winter has been in Paris, it’s deserving of special mention.

Learning proper French. As the train approaches a station, a recorded female voice gives the name. “Concorde,” par exemple. Then, just as it’s pulling in, the voice says it again, but less politely and more firmly, like a teacher correcting your pronunciation: “Concorde.” With practice, we will be able to say words from further back in our throats, which is where they must come from if we are to sound French. We may even have the same sing-song-y lilt in our voices as Madame Ordinateur. (Really, who needs Rosetta Stone?) But for now, we repeat each station stop silently to ourselves. (N.B. There's a stop named "Franklin D. Roosevelt," but madame omits the middle initial when she says the name. Is the State Department aware of this? "Charles de Gaulle" gets the full treatment two stops away. Why not our guy?)

Learning proper French-kissing technique. There is no shortage of what Americans would call “PDA” on Line 1. I doubt that there’s a French equivalent to that pejorative, because the practice of hugging your lover close, staring deeply into his or her eyes, kissing passionately and repeating as often as it takes to reach Reuilly-Diderot (our favorite-sounding station name), Tuileries, Darty or whatever else your destination may be, is commonplace. Fraternité!

-- MBB