Couple spends romantic New Year’s trapped in Paris metro station
An Australian couple has spent their long-planned romantic New Year’s fighting for breath amid a dense mass of sweaty humanity deep in the bowels of a Paris metro station.
Nicole Karmen, 23, told The Tragic Traveller she’d always dreamed of spending NYE on the Champs-Élysées. Or, at least, in the stairwell of the nearest metro station.
“Can you imagine all those fireworks soaring majestically over the Arc de Triomphe?” Karmen said with a dreamy look in her eyes. “That’s what we did: imagine.”
Karmen and partner Lenny McKochnie had a solid plan for their romantic New Year’s. First, they headed to a nearby house party to drink cheap red wine until 10:15 pm. Then, when it was already far too late, they attempted to catch a metro to the world’s most famous street on the busiest night of the year.
At midnight, McKochnie craned his neck under an obese man’s armpit to give his love a New Year’s kiss. When the stampede finally dissipated two hours later, the pair got straight back on the train.
“For us, celebrating New Year’s in Paris is magical in itself,” McKochnie said.
It doesn’t matter whether we’re watching the fireworks from the top of the Eiffel Tower or suffocating in an overcrowded concrete bunker 200 metres below the ground. We’re just happy to be here.
At the time of publication, the couple was planning to spend New Year’s Day in a seven-hour line to enter the Louvre.
