| Dear Mister Thoms # 28, 1992
Extract from the (Aberdeen) Press and Journal (1 September 1992} – courtesy of Bill Nicolaisen. See paragraph 13!
Dispatch from Paris.
Tourists head down sewers. Each day, say guides, 500 to BOO tourists from many countries make the tour. Britons are notably rare. Visitors do not loiter long beside the black rivers.
THERE may be nicer things to do on a summer holiday in Paris than tour the sewers. Yet, every day, hundreds of tourists take time away from the Palace of Versailles or the Louvre museum to plunge into the bowels of the City of Lights. It is hot and stuffy. It stinks. Rats are plentiful.
"This is a bit sick, but it is unusual," said Spanish tourist Yolanda Pasamio. "I thought it would be worse."
Guides claim Paris is the only major city in the world showing its sewers. A visit to the few galleries open to the public under the elegant Eiffel Tower district offers a rare insight into a mysterious city beneath the City.
Guides say that each day 500 to 800 tourists from many countries make the £2 visit. Britons are notably rare. The Japanese wear surgical masks against the stench.
Visitors do not loiter long beside the black rivers.
They are rewarded at the end of the tour with a fitting exhibition by Benyamina, an artist who works with lavatory seats. He turns them into mirrors, funeral wreaths, keyholes, clocks and letterboxes.
To avoid setting off explosions of accumulated gases, the underground city is devoid of lighting, except in the visitors' section. It has its own residents-up to 2 million rats, whose frantic breeding defeats any extermination campaign.
The 1,300-mile-long network runs 16ft to 260ft deep and follows the capital's streets. Each gallery bears the name of the street above it, marked on a traditional blue Parisian street sign, with street numbers corresponding to each building.
Thus, the 500 sewer workers know exactly where they are at all times.
The story goes that sewer workers, seeking to punish occupants of an apartment block who had been stingy with New Year tips, stuck a fork across its evacuation pipe, causing a blockage that backed up the sewage.
The maze of dark galleries is said to have provided haven for resistance fighters during World War II.
Access to all but the visitors' section is barred. Police fear that terrorists could set off bombs under key targets and burglars could burrow their way up into banks. Employees say anything can be found in the sewers: rings lost in lavatories, empty handbags discarded by thieves, and incriminating pistols thrown away by gangsters. Hundreds of weapons turned up in the wake of the war and in the troubled period after Algeria's war of independence from France.
They say they have also found pet snakes which escaped down lavatories, and a crocodile that was flushed down as a baby and survived to become fully grown.
Life in the sewers is far from healthy. Workers carry gas detectors to avoid being asphyxiated or setting off explosions.
A fall into the fetid rivers, called "baptism" or "assbath" in their own slang, can mean several days in hospital for anyone swallowing even a mouthful of water.
Staff are retired at 50, sometimes with lung trouble. Yet "My grandfather, father, two brothers-in-law and several cousins worked in the sewers," said 33-year-old Jose Lahaye, who shows visitors around.
Another danger looms from rainstorms, which can rapidly swell the sewers into roaring torrents. Headquarters keep in constant contact with weathermen to warn workers-and tourists-to return quickly to the surface.