The advantage of being Australian...
I have at least one thing to thank the English for. Your carefully nurtured (and reciprocal) hatred of the French got me out trouble one night in Paris...

Making my way back home late at night from the Eiffel Tower, I decided to save myself some precious beer money by jumping the gate at the Metro station. I'd seen heaps of people doing it all over Paris, and figured it was one of those low-risk ventures that the locals do as a matter of habit.

Over the gate and halfway up the stairs I'm stopped by a portly Frenchman in an overcoat, who asks, in French, to see my ticket. Thinking quickly, I pull out a completely invalid ticket I'd used earlier. This fools him not at all, and he tells me as much, in French.

A few minutes later, having attempted to discuss this problem with the aid of my broken French and various hand gestures, PortlyMan and I come to an impasse: I'm just simply not going to pay the fine. I figure that I'm leaving Paris the next day, and so long as I can make it too much bother for him, he'll probably just let me go.

In the end I say to him (in French):
"What if I have no money [to pay the fine]?"
"I call the police"
"Ok, so call them!".

I'm feeling quite smug at this stage, since I'm almost positive that there's no chance some fat, ticket-checking oik is going to trouble the police to handle a fare-evader. Not to mention that if he heads off to call the cops, you better believe I'm not going to be there when he gets back.

To my dismay, PortlyMan simply turns around and gestures to a pair of men standing against a nearby wall, who I now notice are carrying guns. Bugger.

NastyCop sets in on me immediately. He unleashes a fairly comprehensive stream of abuse at me, in French, of which I get about 40%. We do a similar broken-French-and-hand-waving charade as before, except his concern seems to be more that I've committed an offence against France, rather than the Metro system.

Finally, he breaks into shouted English:

"When you see a door to a room, do you kick it in?!" (This is obviously rhetorical, so I don't reply)
"Do you think you can just go through your life without paying for anything?!" (Ditto)

"You fucking English bastards are all the same with your terrible manners!"

"Wait a minute mate, I'm not English, I'm Australian."

NastyCop stops mid-abuse.

"You are Australian?"

"Yeah mate, I'm an Aussie" (Laying the accent on nice and thick)

"And where do you think you are going tonight, Australian?"

I mention our destination, and NastyCop has a 15-second conversation PortlyMan in French of which I catch about 5%.

"Your last train has already left. You should go."

At which point I leg it. So thankyou England :)
(B1, Fri 9 Jan 2004, 10:33, Reply)