ex-Parisian here (or perhaps Parisian in exile, I'll always be Parisian in my heart, but I refuse to live in the city while it's under the tyrannical mismanagement of Anne Hidalgo)
We're nice to each other. The local social codes are perhaps not as obvious to visitors, but if you put some effort into befriending the city, Paris can be very kind.
Agree with the whole "Parisians ignoring people" thing though.
If you're running late for an appointment and you see hundreds of thousands of people per day, you don't really differentiate between a lost tourist and yet another bum asking for spare change to buy beer and drugs with.
I don't have a lot of experience with huge cities, thankfully. Paris is around ten million people, right? Are other big cities this rude to strangers?
I can think of a few examples: Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh, and Bangkok, where I found people quite friendly, and London, where people are close to but not quite as unfriendly as Paris. But that's the extent of my experience.
We're nice to each other. The local social codes are perhaps not as obvious to visitors, but if you put some effort into befriending the city, Paris can be very kind.
Agree with the whole "Parisians ignoring people" thing though. If you're running late for an appointment and you see hundreds of thousands of people per day, you don't really differentiate between a lost tourist and yet another bum asking for spare change to buy beer and drugs with.