After spending a month stubbornly buying booklets of metro tickets, and killing a whole lotta rain forest, I finally decided it might be a good idea to get with the program and Al Gore by buying a Navigo pass. It's this plastic card that you buy and fill up every month, or every week, and ride unlimited. So, passport photo in hand (the French LOVE passport photos. They use them for everything. It's nuts.), I went to the Rue de Bac metro station after class and tried to buy a Navigo pass. But it didn't go so well.
Me: Hi, I need to buy a Navigo Pass! (Straightforward enough, I thought)
Metro Station Lady: Which one, dumb-ass*?
M: I beg your pardon?
MSL: There are 4 types, regular, student...yaddayaddayadda, whatdoyouwant?
M: Um, well, I'm a student, so that one I guess.
MSL: Shoves an student card application at me
End Scene
I read the application on the train home, and it was some sort of contract for 12 months, which wasn't what I was looking for. I figured I needed to buy a regular old Navigo pass.
So at the Victor Hugo station, I went to the booth and asked the gentleman there how I could purchase a monthly Navigo pass. He told me to go to the ticket machine to buy a voucher, and then bring it back to the booth. I went to the machine, and there was no option to buy any sort of Navigo voucher. I went back to the booth to ask about this, and he'd already locked up and left for the evening. Apparently actually helping me get what I needed was below him and his time.
Clearly the universe does not want me to save money or trees.
*ok, an embellishment. But it was implied!
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