A light was flashing. Flash flash fucking flash you're a noob flash flash flash. The light was well within its right to do so though and to proudly serve the purpose for which it was placed. The light you see was attached to the top of a large black dildo looking dong object bolted lengthways onto the wall. Opposite dong number one, attached to the facing wall was dong number two. Between said dongs was the invisible dong barrier. I refer to them as such because our noobidity had put us in the prime position to get royally fucked. I know exactly how and why this occurred; ironically because we'd been too busy watching our asses and not our damn noses. Let me explain.

It was shortly after midnight, when the train platforms thin of commuters and the workers emerge from their holes to go about their business. There is a slight overlap between these when the last of us, the commuters, and they, the first of the workers, co-inhabit the platforms. A single worker milled around the western end of the platform, shuffling piece of equipment in and out of his work room. He'd noticed our arrival of course since there's precious little else to notice around this time of night. Not that we were particularly interesting in any way but he was certainly aware of our presence.

Though we chose a convenient moment in his to-ing and fro-ing to rapidly depart the platform into the tunnels, he would find it awfully suspicious we simply vanished during the 20 seconds he was in his workroom, particularly as no trains had come or gone. So running down the tunnel, skipping from sleeper to sleeper, looking over our shoulder for Mr Worker we hit the required jiggawatts and accelerated through the dong barrier. In smashing the dong barrier there was no thunder clap, no streaks of reality, no distortion of the time-space continuum, no decrease in gravity, no collapse of the astral planes; just a solitary visible light flashing at us.



This may seem like an excuse for noob action and I understand that but in reality it's just an example of dumb ass complacency spawned by months of getting buckwild in the system. The one thing they actually seem to give a fuck about here isn't Oh My God Teh Terr0ristz, it's graffiti on their shiny white trains. So really we should have known better since our destination was in the immediate vicinity of a train yard. The alarm we tripped had probably caused a chain reaction of flashing lights on a panel elsewhere, indicating the dong-barrier had only been tripped to half its height and whatever or whoever just passed through was clearly not a train, irrespective of any choochoo noises made by said man-train.



Still, hopefully nobody would notice, realise or care and if they did we'd be long gone. Besides, retreating on account of one flashing light seemed pissweak. This may be France but I'm still according to my passport a true blue dinky die aussie cobber, committed to upholding that digger spirit. Shrimp, barbies and she'll be farkin right mate.





This my friends is Molitor, hardest of the abandoned stations. We'd never heard of anyone exploring Molitor and the lack of graffiti suggests the writers don't generally bother either. Google image search turns up some RATP tour photos and little else. According to Magic Paris by Jean-Christophe Patat "The legend even says that you can climb down the lycee's (high school's) main stair to the station". We didn't notice any surface access and other than the platform itself there is little to see. Like Haxo this station was never used so the facilities are a little sparse. Unless you're one to bust out triple-ply soakers at the sight of gleaming white rolling stock, then you're in for a treat. A quick look was sufficient as our presence under the platfrom's security cameras was a nagging problem. With the heart pounding away at 200bpm we took flight south down the Voie Murat.

I'd neatly copied a map of the surrounding tunnels and the Voie Murat onto a small scrap of paper folded in my chest pocket. In case of capture I was to eat the paper and claim we were looking for the bathroom. The Artline pen I'd used said the ink was non-toxic but considering the rest of the night's activities I don't know why I bothered to check.

The Voie Murat is much longer than my hastily scrawled map suggests and through a dozen full length trains we snaked, dodging the cameras frequently bolted to the tunnel wall. By climbing over the couplings or walking through the trains themselves we avoided the cameras but not the dong barrier infestations which sprout up between the nose of one train and the ass of the next. Passing them isn't too difficult if you're athletically inclined. For sake of brevity one method is depicted below, discovery of other methods is left to the reader. A word of advice however, the choo-choo noises won't fool 'em.



With various conspirators I returned twice more to Molitor and both were nail biting experiences. The first time we encountered cleaners in the old station and spent an hour lying on the floor of a train carriage hoping the broom wielding cleaner ninjas wouldn't bust in on us.



The second we were separated and pinned down in the approach tunnel by a late train coming in for overnight storage. The driver knew something was up as he parked, exited the train, walked towards us, paused for a while then turned around and walked quickly off the other way. While heard us running off, our unorthodox and circuitous route to the surface guaranteed that nobody would catch us before we vanished.



Of all Paris' abandoned stations Molitor is the king and my favourite. The tiles, the trains, the challenge, dodging cameras and wall mounted dildos, the fact it was built and never even used, the closeness to the yard which guarantees activity and trains passing in and out. As I've said before the metro is more about the experience and the adventure than the places themselves. We'll always return to places like Molitor and while the space may never change each trip will be a unique nerve racking, adrenaline pumping adventure. And that's the point, n'est-ce pas?


-dsankt, 2010