About a year ago, just a few days before visiting Prague, I learned about this condition called “Paris syndrome”:
“Paris syndrome (French: Syndrome de Paris, Japanese: パリ症候群, Pari shōkōgun) is a transient psychological disorder exhibited by some individuals when visiting or vacationing to Paris, as a result of extreme shock resulting from their finding out that Paris is not what they had expected it to be.”
Well, when picturing the world just by absorbing too much cultural products can lead to a so distorted image…
“(…) cette affection toucherait plus particulièrement les touristes japonais qui, désemparés par l’écart entre la réalité et leur vision idéalisée de la ville, comme le Montparnasse des Années folles ou le Paris d’Amélie Poulain, se retrouvent désillusionnés et déstabilisés par le fossé culturel entre la France réelle et l’image qu’on s’en fait au Japon.”
“You can’t understand a city without using its public transportation system” — Erol Ozan. In the following days, I was wandering in Prague and was riding public transportation a lot. But I won’t talk about Prague’s metro system. Of course, it’s smaller, newer, and less populated than Paris Metro, but the cleanliness of the metro here only reminds me of how abysmal the Paris Metro is.
If you don’t know about the term “Paris Syndrome” yet, look it up. Simply put, it can be thought of as an acute (and quite severe) form of culture shock. While there’s still doubt about if this condition is real, speculation has it that portraying Paris as the ultimate symbol of style, taste, and sophistication as in the media may create fairly unrealistic illusions.
And the Paris Metro… That’s where all the most basic standards for a public place fall apart, leaving only squalor and filth. Smells, beggars, litter, grime, and the graffiti (I fail to see graffiti as urban art), terrible connection and interchange navigation,… and worst of all, the urine smell in some corners! (yet may be still slightly better than Rome I guess).
The City of Lights, with its aura of romance, landmarks and haute cuisine, lures tens of millions of visitors a year. But for a small number of fragile travelers who romanticized the idea of Paris and find it failed to live up to the expectations, they find that it is in fact, The City of Frights.
Expect pretty, young women riding bike around the side streets, or strolling down Champs-Elysées, or gracefully nibbling a macaroon in a café parisien? Well, better be ready for messy streets, language barrier, beggars, thieves, crimes, rude locals as well. Together with travel fatigue, cultural differences, jet-lag, they can provoke that peculiar shocking condition for first-time visitors.
But that’s all right. Despite all that, it’s still the city of art and history, of culture and romance — it can be beautiful from many angles. The city I fear and love at the same time.
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