Life in Paris: The Things I HATE (watch before you come here)

Ok, let me start with this. Ok, I love the city. I think Paris is amazing. Otherwise, I wouldn't have moved

here

. Well, this city hasn't made me bitter yet. uh, not yet, just kidding, not really, I don't think so. I hope that's not the case and, generally speaking, I feel that I have contributed quite a bit to the romantic and dreamy aspect of Paris. T

here

is something about the city that has that effect on the people I constantly support, the French and I am always trying to get all my friends and family to

come

here to at least visit me or even move.

I think it is the most beautiful city in the world. Are we going to debate that no, I'm not? I don't know what you can do in the comments and look, I have a responsibility, right? I can't just talk about the positive

things

, can I? A lot of people

come

to Paris after

watch

ing my videos and I don't want to disappoint people, you should. I know you should know what you're getting into and if I'm going to criticize the United States I have to be equal to my criticism of Europe, so in this video, despite the love I have for this place, I'm going to rent these.

These are the

things

I

hate

about living here and I'm going to skip over some of the big ones I talked about before, like the bureaucracy, the complete lack of air conditioning, the constant construction work, and the cost of this place. Let's get more into the nitty-gritty here, okay, without further ado, let's dive into deliveries, guys, we're living in a pandemic at this point, we should all know how to deliver, we should have systems in place and those systems should be refined and even so. For some reason, ordering things for my apartment here to this day is one of the most stressful things.

First of all, if you receive a call from your delivery person, you have to answer, it's always like waiting, wait a second. If you don't respond, you won't receive the package, because you need two codes to even enter the building, and even though I've written it all down in the delivery instructions, no one reads it properly below because the French like to pretend. since we still live in the year 1300 you also have to specify which floor and where the door is located because my apartment doesn't have a number, it just doesn't, it would be much easier to just put a number on the door Okay, and then you just have a number that corresponds to each door and that makes everything easier, but no, instead we are like a digital code.

Now there is a partial solution for this, it is actually not a complete solution and you will see why. in a second here is that many buildings have a guardian, a guardian, that name always made me laugh. The custodian is someone who works in the building and can receive packages for you and help manage the building properly, except. This is also problematic because, for example, in my building my tutor retired months and months ago and the building is taking forever to find a solution, a replacement, but on top of that, even if you have a tutor, they come maybe a pair. of hours a day and therefore most of the time I can't even receive packages for you, this brings me to the next point: the French are allergic to work, okay, not really, but a little, you know, while that in the United States this really exists. dumb, unhealthy work culture of who can work the best is like, oh you work 80 hours a week, well I do a hundred, the French are pretty much the opposite, they're like no, you know, 40 hours a week is too much, so they passed a law in 2000 that basically made it illegal to work more than 35 hours a week and they took this very French thing and made it even more French by adding a million loopholes so that you can actually work more than that, but No, and look, that's how it is.

All right, all right, I'm all for the four-day work week or shorter work days or w

hate

ver. I'm not going to be toxic about this. All I ask is that you clearly communicate when you are working and when. but they don't, they don't do that, they don't do that, Google Maps will say a place is open, the website of the store itself will say it's open and you can still go and there's one in three. They may not be open. I came to pick up tiles for my apartment and right now they are closed. They're closed for another hour, so I'm going to wait here because I'm really out of town right now.

This is due to the fact that there is a two hour block right in the middle of the workday when everything closes for lunch and they seem unable to take turns or cover for each other, so everyone does this at the same time, which It means from noon to two. Don't even bother trying to buy anything you need, so as you can imagine, sometimes it gets hard to get things done, oh yeah, and while we're at it, vacation time is basically all the time. I'm exaggerating a little, but I'll do it. Let's say that I have already dedicated the month of August to doing absolutely nothing, nothing is open, everyone is free, but that is not even enough for the French.

A month's vacation is like the starter package, it's like for babies, okay, they really go. Let's leave all this and again, as if I understood it correctly. Work-

life

balance, that's great, but sometimes so many vacations can be problematic. I'll give you an example, okay, my banker during the time I was trying to get a bank. loan to buy my apartment here in Paris I went on vacation on three different occasions it's like, come on, how are we supposed to make this happen? cyclists vs cars biking here is crazy. Can I shoot material that isn't too bumpy?

No, not really, bro, come on. so fast that the mayor and hidalgo are making a big effort to make this city much more pedestrian and cyclist friendly which I think is great, I actually think there should be less cars in my opinion, it's crazy have a car and move around by car. in the city, so they're making these changes in the last few years, they've added bike lanes everywhere. The problem is that some of these bike lanes are very dangerous. This is because for some reason the bike lanes will come in. in the opposite direction while the cars look like what we have here, cars coming this way, bikes going this way and then of course there are a bunch of motorcycles here parked to make this even more chaotic for me, that's not It makes no sense, it's like a suicide mission, but this is just the beginning of my complaints regarding transportation here because then there's the subway.

Paris is a very walkable city, which is a big plus, okay, but sometimes you need to rely on the metro because you're trying to cross the city and it would take too long to walk. The subway system is really great, but it has some serious problems. The first problem is that the subway fills up in the summer and it is hot. You're cooking underground like some kind of brisket. which, by the way, is a tangent, the French have this kind of national obsession with food metaphors and that infects me with the second problem, weekly or monthly passes only start on the first day of the week or month, so that It doesn't make sense from a business perspective because you know that if you buy the pass mid-week or mid-month, you only have it until the end of the week or month and then it resets, so you're basically paying the same price for this which becomes less and less valuable over time discourages you from getting the pass like you don't want to get a weekly pass if it's already Thursday or Friday, right, if it resets on Monday, third major problem, the stairs, the stairs are in everywhere you can't avoid stairs everywhere and you know they're trying to make the city more pedestrian friendly by eliminating cars which is great but the only way to do that is if you make public transportation more accessible for people, and so because of the fact that stairs are absolutely unavoidable if you have some kind of physical disability or are trying to carry luggage, for example, because you are like me, you always go on a trip or come.

It really makes everything a lot harder before we continue with this video, I want to briefly talk about the sponsor of this video, who have supported my work for a long time and that is Skillshare. I am now a big believer in online learning most of the things I know how to do today have been through consuming information online. There is so much information available to all of us now in a way that didn't exist not long ago in human history and I feel like we can't take that sharing of skills for granted. offers a huge number of courses on a huge variety of different things, from film to photography, design to how to play the guitar, and I must say that witnessing the evolution of the website has been impressive, it just keeps getting better, there are so many top courses. quality classes there now, I have contributed to that myself, I felt like I wanted to do things there so I did three classes of my own, I have a class on how to find your voice as an artist online, a class on how to speak more comfortably in front of camera and a class on how to document your

life

, which I think is my favorite.

It was so much fun creating and sharing all that information. It's great because you know I can take my time to present whatever information I can. go over the course of an hour instead of feeling like I have to keep your attention on a youtube video and it's absolutely crazy to me that tens of thousands of people have taken these classes; the first 1000 people to use this link will get a one month free trial Skillshare consider checking them out, it actually helps me too thanks again Skillshare for your support and let's dive back into smoking. This is what happens with smoking.

I understand that it looks good, it's okay, and if you see someone smoking like that. Out there outside their window you could say "Oh great, that's kind of cinematic and you know everyone's happy, yeah, but smoking gets considerably worse the closer you get and unfortunately smoking is still huge here, a lot of people smoke here still and smoke." like in your face you know it's like or I mean they could do like oh but they're still blowing this cloud everywhere and they're smoking in your face I mean I first saw this when I was on exchange here in high school and there were breaks 15 minutes between classes and in those 15 minute breaks everyone went out as if there were a horde of people coming out and everyone lit a cigarette and clouds of smoke were created and We are talking about 14 and 15 year old kids, okay, which for It's incredibly depressing to me.

I have to say that this is a major point against French women for me because, again, okay, maybe it looks cool and French women have mastered that kind of disdain. I don't care, but making out with someone who smokes is just not fun, it's really not fun, I don't recommend it, it's not good, they say it's like licking an ashtray and that's it, yes, open green spaces are one of the most What's amazing about Paris is the density, I mean, there's an absolutely absurd amount of things to see, do and absorb here, which makes things really interesting, but there's a cost, well, there are some really beautiful parks here, okay , we have the monsoon. the luxembourg garden the city in general lacks large open green spaces there are a couple there is the void vonsen and the blood but they are like on the outside the periphery of the city and although they are not very far away it is a trip and basically what that means it's that unless you make a conscious effort to go out and be in nature and all that, Paris can become this oppressive city.

This is why so many Parisians go away on the weekends or when the weather is nice, it's crazy how much outdoor space is prized in the city to where we would walk into Nathaniel's courtyard and say oh wow this is beautiful green yeah it's slightly moldy concrete there's a plastic oh come on it's funny it makes people obsessed with the little green patches that are It's like you know you see a plant in a pot and you're like nature. Parisians are inaccessible. Here's the thing. Basically all my friends here after years of living here are foreigners who have moved here or French people who have lived abroad and look.

I am not someone who struggles to assimilate to different places. I mean, I love camouflage. You know, I speak French fluently. I have no problem with that and I still found that it is very difficult to connect with Parisians and it's funny. In fact, I have found that Parisians and the French in general are quite friendly, okay, I am not saying that they are bad, that is not the criticism I am making here, rather I am saying that Parisians are not open, it is that they are closed to foreigners and other cultures and all that, in many ways, as an American who doesn't have a passport and has never traveled abroad and I've tried it, man, you can't blame me for not having tried a lot of French people that I've met. here, you know, I wanted to be friends with who I would follow up with, I would message them and sometimes weeks and weeks would go by where they wouldn't even respond, like they already have their friends that you know from high school or college have its bubbles and maybe this is thedefense mechanism against the amount of foreigners and tourists and everything that passes through the city.

It's funny because of the French friends I have, almost none of them are Parisian, they are all like the French who came from other parts of the country and moved here, the Parisians themselves are like unicorns, these mystical creatures that you can never pin down and I mean , check out the other day.This is definitely a city that is full of amazing people who are very open and welcoming. All I'm saying is that I think the city owes a lot to the foreigners who live here, but that's like congratulating myself and Parisians. I'm not going to like that bad service in bars and restaurants.

Well, look, this is a stereotype. Well, but this does not apply to operations. It's specifically less like everyone is there, but there definitely are here and you know it pretty quickly. It's like you sit down at the restaurant and there's no proper menu and like 10 minutes go by and then you ask like Hey, can I have a fish? They say and like to respond to you with that kind of aggressive energy. It's like I'm here to support you. business, we are doing an exchange of services here, there is no need to talk to each other like that and to be honest the solution I have found is to just get up and leave, don't put up with it because not everyone is like that. that, but just don't eat that and then, of course, let's say you've found a nice place and you've eaten or drunk or whatever and then you want to get out of there and you want to kind of make eye contact and you're trying to get the sum of the check and you're like for like 45 minutes that last like 45 minutes and you're like I don't know what's going on something strange happens between like they put the check on your table and then they forget that you exist and again the only solution is for you to get up and you go and pay well, my final thoughts here are once again, I don't hate this place, it's okay, that's how it is.

There is a lot of rent for me and I don't want it to be a big part of my brand. It's good to let it out sometimes, but again I love this place. What makes Paris doubly frustrating is that it does so many things. alright, when it gets things wrong you say I really document and share a lot of my experiences living here and my travels in different cultures and different countries around the world and if that's something that interests you, consider subscribing and giving this video away. I like it, it really helps. I could definitely do another video where I talk about the things I really love about Paris.

If that interests you, let me know in the comments. I also made a brilliant trip guide to Paris which is available as As part of their subscription offer you can subscribe and get access to a variety of different courses there and that's one of them so if that interests you consider checking it out . I also have a couple other classes there while I'm there. talk about it about language learning and storytelling, which I did with Johnny Harris and they came out amazing, so it might be something worth checking out if you've lived in or visited Paris.

I'd love to hear your opinion on this. This is all good, thanks for

watch

ing and see you soon. They will throw us away from you.