Chuyện của Xíu

I want to first start by saying that I love Paris and French culture. I also really enjoy riding the subway and it has always made me feel like a real Parisian. A tall order being that I’m from Texas. However, I recently had an awful experience on the metro. I was staying in Paris for about 10 days so I decided to purchase a multi-day pass. When I bought the pass, because my French language skills weren’t great, I had a friend help me and before I could really understand what was happening, the purchase was finalized and they told me I had to put my photo on the back of the card. The place on the card for my photo was extremely small but I thought it shouldn’t be too difficult to print a photo somewhere and stick it on the card. Well, as it turns out, it’s not so easy to find a place to print a photo and in addition, not easy to figure out how to resize an existing photo of myself to fit on a 1 inch X 1 inch spot on the card. So, I thought.. well, I have my receipt and I can just present that to the metro controllers if I run into problems. After a few days of riding the metro, the metro controllers were asking for proof of tickets at my stop and I gladly presented them my pass, my receipt, and explained the situation to them. After arguing with them for several minutes, I finally gave in and paid a fee of 35 euros. I was so angry about what had happened that it ruined my entire evening out with a friend. It’s not about the money but it felt like they were scamming me out of 35 euros because I didn’t put my picture on this card even though I had every other piece of proof of purchase including my card, my receipt, my license proving my name and photo, and the credit card with which I had bought the ticket. What do they expect.. that I packed my computer printer from home in my checked luggage just in case I might need to print a little photo of myself? Having ridden the subway many times in Paris, I have never tried to cheat the system by jumping over the turnstiles or anything like that. In addition, I’ve always made an effort to speak French as much as I could with and be nice to all of the staff and in general, they are all very receptive to that. However, that experience put an extremely bad taste in my mouth and felt like a big slap in the face to me regarding the metro and the controllers. They could have just as easily seen that I was confused and given me a strict warning and let me go. I will certainly think twice about riding the metro and about ever purchasing any kind of multi-day pass ever again.