Elizabeth Brauders
Staff Writer
Essay season has fallen upon me and has therefore limited the time I have for a) writing articles and b) getting up to article-worthy antics in the first place. Being a bitter shell of my former self, I have decided to compile a list of the top five things that piss me off about this city, apart from aforementioned essays.
1. Traffic lights
For the average French motorist, these appear to be merely suggestions, and nothing to be taken too seriously. In many areas cars are not even given a red light when pedestrians are shown a green man, they merely have a flashing yellow light, as in “stop if you’re feeling generous, what are these walking bastards going to do about it? They’re on foot, the plebs!” On my way to college the other day, as I crossed a road, a woman screeched to a stop in front of the lights then sighed, rolled her eyes, and waved me across with a flick of her wrist. When I had barely cleared her car when she took off again at a hundred miles an hour. I had a green man.
2. Disregard for the elderly
Only young people have lives in Nice, it seems. I have now witnessed, on multiple occasions, young people physically pushing the elderly out of their way so they can get off at the correct bus stop. It is also worth noting that the bus seats reserved for the elderly or disabled are never willingly given up. 80-year-old women desperately try to keep their balance clinging to a bar, while youths unencumbered with shopping bags sit happily in their seats. When an elderly person dares to ask can they sit down, they are met with a sneer and a begrudgingly given seat. I started to explain the ticket validation machines to an old woman the other day and she first looked at me like a rabbit caught in headlights, before thanking me overly enthusiastically when she realised I wasn’t going to mug or insult her. The most common reaction to people who don’t understand the ticket machine is to sigh loudly, snatch their ticket from them, validate it for them, then hand it back without saying a word.
3. Men shouting at you in the street
If you are a woman who plans on ever visiting Nice, be warned, men will shout alarmingly explicit things at you in the street. It’s also quite common for cars to slow down or stop entirely while all male occupants size you up and give you a sleazy smile or wink. Do not be fooled: policeman and shop attendants are not exempt from this rule. On first arriving in Nice, every single woman I met advised me that I would need to buy pepper spray and a rape alarm, and then shared their own personal horror story. Luckily I have a very protective aunt who had equipped me with a personal alarm before I even left the country. (Thanks Sandra!) However, I have now accidentally set it off twice in public spaces while searching for my keys or documents. You do not fully understand the feeling of being under pressure until you try to explain that you’ve accidentally set off your rape alarm to an unamused French bureaucrat. Said explanation had to be shouted and was audible to the entire office over the deafening tones of the alarm while my roommate laughed so much he cried a little and refused to help in the slightest.
4. Sexualisation of everything…
The stereotype has not lied to you, sex is a key part of French life. There are condom-dispensing machines on every street corner, even in quietest suburbia nowhere near clubs or social hot-spots, and every single advertising campaign involves sex or the sexualisation of some innocent product. You can sexualise anything these days! Lingerie, I understand. Condoms, of course. Shoes, not so much… I do not want to watch people on TV achieving orgasm every time they put a sneaker on. Then we come to the baby food. It’s a bit hard to sexualise babies, right? You might think they wouldn’t go that far. They have. An extremely glamorous woman with come-hither eyes shielding her naked body with a baby is just fine. Recently, however, they went too far. Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve drawn the line. They’ve started sexualising yoghurt. The current ad for Activia shows a woman laughing sensuously at a pot of yoghurt while the tagline translates as “we’ve been having an affair for years. My husband knows all about it!” Um… what?! First off, it doesn’t even make sense. Secondly, nobody wants a lifelong affair with yoghurt intended to regularise your bowel movements. And, if for some bizarre reason you did, surely you would want to hide that as much as possible from someone you expect to have sex with you?
5. Bus system
You know there is something seriously wrong with a country where you may bring dogs and cats onto a bus without a second glance, but if you dare bring a suitcase on board, you will suffer filthy looks and a sarcastic comment from the driver (not that this happened to me or anything.) This is despite the fact that there are two direct airport buses where people, naturally, have a lot of suitcases, and not very much livestock.
*Bonus thing I hate about Nice*
While walking in the street the other day I ended up doing that path-dance with someone, where you both keep going left and then right and then left… until someone finally stops moving. I was doing this for almost a solid minute with another girl, and when we finally managed to get past each other, she didn’t do the smile and laugh thing, she simply walked on with a sigh and the look of someone dead inside.
