Parisian Sewage

My little brother disappeared one day, when we were out and about, shopping with Mom. We looked for him everywhere, we couldn’t find him anywhere. The Gendarmes helped, and the neighbors, everyone spent the day looking for him.

Finally it was starting to get dark, and someone could hear a faint whimpering sound. It was coming from the sewer. They had found my little brother.

There was construction going on and they were putting in some new sewer lines. My brother being a boy decided to explore the “tunnel” the problem was the "tunnel" got tighter and tighter, the further he went. By the time he decided to turn around and come back, it was physically impossible for him to do so.

There was a parade and the neighbor boys were going to be in it because they were in the Boyscouts. They looked quite nice in their little uniforms and off their Mom took them. We all gathered down on the side walk to watch as they marched by. Whoosh - one of them disappeared. He’d fallen into the sewer.

His Mom burned those clothes and shoes in the neighborhood incinerator Wheeeweee it stank!

If you go to a public bathroom in Paris there will be a door marked for men, and a door marked for women, but they both lead to one open room. The toilets are holes in the ground. If you’re a woman you just have to squat over the hole and hope you don’t lose your balance. They didn’t even have the courtesy to build seats over the holes like in an old fashioned, country, out house.

In the neighborhoods in Paris when I was growing up only foreigners insisted on private bathrooms to use the toilet, shower, etc… Most neighborhoods had public toilets (sheltered holes in the ground) and public shower rooms for bathing.

Paris, France was a filthy nasty place. I believe that the only reason they invented perfume in France was because they don’t bathe properly! It always amazed me the things that Parisians charge money for and people actually pay it! Can you imagine paying money for the privilege of walking around in sewers? There actually are tour groups that go through the sewers of Paris.

You come across leaflets and such with advertising saying things like: “You may have done the Eiffel Tower and the Champs Élysées, but you haven't seen Paris until you've toured the city's sewers and catacombs”

After living there I can honestly say that those who enjoy Paris as tourists (especially the sewers) must be masochists who enjoy being treated like dirt/scum in a country whose people think they’re so perfect that their s**t doesn’t smell, in fact foreigners’ must pay a price to admire their s**t, and the way that it’s disposed.