![]() When Diop’s father arrived in Paris, the man he knew wasn’t home. The only thing he had in his pocket was a piece of paper with the address of an acquaintance who lived in the neighborhood of Belleville. On March 16, 1966, her father disembarked from the famous ocean liner, known as the “Ancerville," in Marseille. This is the infamous département 93, which is often described as one of the least safe in the entire country.Īlice Diop’s parents came to France from Senegal. The French film director grew up not far from the Aulnay-sous-Bois station. An accident on the train tracks caused traffic to stop entirely for an hour and a half.Īlice Diop knows the compartments of the RER B very well. Yesterday, the delays - and the surrounding crowds- were unbearable. Today, at least, the train is running properly. The faces grow more tired.įor these passengers, squeezing themselves through Paris at rush hour is not an adventure, but an everyday reality, necessary for their return home. Their backpacks are slowly substituted by West African boubous and colorful headscarves. Half of the passengers eventually step off, spreading out between hotels and shopping malls. On this journey through the French capital, fragments of Spanish sentences mix with German words, overlapping with conversations in Chinese. They are surrounded by a mélange of parents with children, wide-eyed newlyweds staring at each other, laughing friends. Tourists from central Paris, intimidated by the historic city, take the train together, fatigue in their eyes, their postures slumped. As the train makes its way from North to South, the color of its stations changes, but so does the landscape: faces, color, style, clothes and even sound. Those who enter represent Paris in a nutshell, or even the whole of France. Every day, 1 million passengers use it to make their daily commute. The railway connects majority white neighborhoods full of single-family homes to the historical, tourist-heavy center, and to the immigrant communities of the Parisian banlieues. The train, known by some commuters as the Ligne Bleue, stretches for 80 kilometers, connecting the city’s Northern suburbs with its Southern surroundings. ![]() Anyone who has been to Paris has sat on this train on their way from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Châtelet-Les Halles, or, one stop further, to Notre Dame, near the center of the city. PARIS - The RER B is a “blue line” of the Paris regional high-speed rail network. ![]()
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