Complaining- a Parisians favorite hobby!

The sun is shining, the cafées are filled with smiling, happy, coffee-drinking french people. You and your dream-lover are walking hand in hand on Champs-Élysées and in the distans the Eiffel-tower is glistening..

Right?

That is what romantic tourists think of France`s capital BEFORE they ever set foot in the city. What they think afterwords is many times quite different. Me being on of them..

Don`t get me wrong. I still think Paris is a beautiful amazing city. I am still a romantic. But I am not blind anymore.

Like every huge metropolis that contains millions of people (Paris metropolitan area has a population of 12.000.000 people) you find a lot of homeless people sleeping under bridges and in the metro. 

Traffic that makes you want to hang yourself as soon as you get home.. (Don`t though!) Sirens and noise everywhere. Tired eyes staring at nothing at all on the subway, nobody making any contact. Too many faces to have the energy to look at them.

But after having spent some time in this city, after having carved my way down to the layer under the glossy touristy stuff, I see something I find really depressing.

People in Paris absolutely LOVE to complain. About EVERYTHING!

They hate the tourists (and no, it`s not a myth, they ARE extremly arrogant). Luckily many tourists don`t understand what is being said behind their backs..

Parisians think the Eiffel-tower is an ugly stupid phallic symbol that only costs them a lot of tax-money. They diabolically laugh about us, that think it`s absolutely beautiful at night with all the lights…

They hate the taxes, and the goverment, and the president!

And the alternative to the president. Nicolas Sarkozy, Marine Le Pen or Francois Hollande.. it doesn`t matter. In a Parisians eyes it is all the same..

They complain that the metro doesn`t work (even though it moves 4,5 million people around every single day).

“The idiotic people always go on strike!” In the Parisians desire to complain about the strikes, they also seem to forget that the “people” are themselves, and they go on strike because they want a better life..?

There are, as I see it right now (and bare in mind I may be a little hurt, homesick and genuinely disappointed) only TWO things the true Parisians really like.

1. They LOVE the word putain! Meaning literally whore or slut. They say it in every sentence, all the time. They love it!

2. Smoking!!! Everybody smokes hand-rolled cigarettes (because the other ones are too expensive; Putain!!) leaving small pieces of tobacco everywhere.

And that`s that for the things they like. To complain is not really a thing they do because they feel so good doing it (like the smoking). I`d rather guess it`s the opposite. Complaining makes them feel depressed and blue, and that makes them complain even more. It is the snowball-effect set in motion.

(Try explaining the snowball-effect to a person who lived all his or her life, in a city that completely stops after 2 centimeters of snow! Very tricky and quite pointless.)

The complaining is their hobby. A habit. Something to do with friends and family. A routine that is not to be broken!

I am confused. I thought people would be happy in this city..

But out of all the places I have been (and I have been to pretty many by now) I find people in Paris the be the most miserable. Les Miserables! And it is apparently contagious, because here I am complaining about them complaining. I guess the joke is on me then?

I don`t think it is funny at all though. I had a vision about living in Paris, but in real life it wasn`t as pink and suger sweet as I thought. I understand now why people never look at eachother in the subway. They can`t! There are too many faces, if you look at them all you will get to many impressions. And you will at best get a headache, at worst loose your mind.

Couples argue on the metro and in the streets. Nobody cares.. People talk to themselves and curse out loud. Nobody even lifts an eyebrowe!

So what does a swedish girls do in Paris? She packs her things and goes home.

Angry about the defeat, yes. Sad about the dreamy lovestory that turned out to be “not so dreamy” after all. Yes, heartbroken and confused. And tired.

The city made me tired. Much more than any other place. Normally I am bursting with energy in big cities. I love it. But I caught the Paris-bug and got bitter, tired and depressed.

I wonder if this is like a gigantic flu sweeping throught the city? Everybody catches it sooner or later and just keeps passing it on… What if somebody one day would become resistant, wash his or her hands clean and say: Wow, I think my homecity Paris is gorgeous! And give the stranger on the metro a huge smile.. for no reason at all.

Would that start a new epedemic, a more positive one..? Probably not. In the end the shit always drags you down..

Life, bills, smoking… it will all kill us anyway..