The International Engineer

As someone who rides the NYC subway and the NJ transit frequently, I thought the trams in Grenoble would be much the same. And in some ways, they were a familiar sight. Here too people look tired and drained, a type of monotony exemplified in the way that they sit back and scroll through their phones or watch the scenery out the windows. At the same time, there are sights more unfamiliar to me; things that are acceptable in France that may raise an eyebrow in the USA and vice versa. Today (February 1st, 2023), I boarded a tram and watched a nearly six foot tall man lose his balance and topple over onto another seated man. The seated man chuckled, and told the former that it was not a problem.

When I stepped on the foot of the girl next to me, I earned the same chuckle and smile as I began apologizing. Had I repeated the same stunt on the NYC subway, I would have earned multiple looks of disapproval and one very angry glare in my direction for the rest of the journey. So are the French just more accepting of clumsier moments? Less judgemental than the average American? Or do they simply not care? Seeing multiple crying toddlers and their parents do nothing to silence them made me think that perhaps the French didn’t care. In other words, their nonchalant approach was along the lines of ‘people fall, people cry, so what?’ But overtime, I came to realize that maybe it wasn’t as simple. 

Other times when boarding the tram, I experienced what is sometimes called ‘The French Stare.’ I notice that a passenger is scrutinizing me and wonder what they are looking at; is it my clothes, my skin color, my flowery Vera Bradley backpack that immediately signifies that I am a foreigner… about as distanced from French Haute-Couture as one could be. Whatever it is, they make no attempt to hide it. Having been here for about a month, I still find it a bit unsettling. The idea that just by looks alone I stand out —  I am different. It also makes me wonder whether my experience has anything to do with being an Indian-American. If I looked stereotypically American, or more specifically, white, would I be received with an altered version of the “French Stare?” 

There is one more phenomenon that I observed when riding the tram, one that was heightened with the strike. If there is room for half a person on the tram, it will be filled by an entire person! I boarded a tram on the day of the January 31st strike and could not breathe. I thought for sure that nobody else could fit on the tram and they would have to take the next one. But contrary to my expectation, at every single stop the tram’s doors opened and more people squeezed in. A man with a wheelchair had two backpacks in his face and five shoulders looming above his head. An older woman was pushed to the side by a man with a briefcase who seemed to be in a hurry to board. I could feel the breath of the girl standing next to me. At peak hours such as the post-workday 5pm, I’ve begun to see the same type of congestion in the trams where an individual’s personal bubble disintegrates to accommodate more people on the vehicle. So to my earlier point about whether the French were less judgemental, I came to realize that certain things were just more socially acceptable in France. Accidentally falling into someone did not warrant any hard feelings. Violating personal bubbles if it meant boarding the earlier tram was also acceptable. And by that same logic, staring was also perfectly okay. After seeing these trends merge, I came to the conclusion that there were some consistencies in the patterns that I had been observing in the last month. 

And yet, though it may be unfamiliar, it seems to be a good type of unfamiliar. Because just last week I nearly fell over on the tram and the same very elderly woman who had been staring at me for the past ten minutes got up and offered me her seat. She then moved to a single (more inconvenient) seat closer to the tram’s doors. As I thanked her once we reached our stop, she seemed genuinely surprised that I said thank you. “Mais, C’est normale!!” she exclaimed.