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Kind: captions
Language: en

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That's not gold paint on the bridge behind me,

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those are tens of thousands of padlocks.

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Put there by couples wanting to symbolize their everlasting bond.

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A bond that will, no doubt, hold them together into eternity

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as they steadily grow apart and more resentful of the other,

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eventually, spiraling down into death,

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always wondering what would have happened if they'd made different choices along the way.

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My issues aside, it's also a pretty good example of the difference between fantasy and reality,

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because those locks will not stay there for eternity.

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They will eventually rust and fall off or

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the council will come along and take them off with bolt cutters as happens fairly often.

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And that difference between fantasy and reality

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is the basis of something called Paris syndrome.

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And what it is,

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is a syndrome that affected mainly Japanese tourists,

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to the tune of about 20 a year,

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who would be so overwhelmed by the difference between

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their expectations of Paris as this city of light,

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and romance,

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and wonderful architecture, and art, and food, and everything,

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and the reality, which is a fairly dirty and polluted European city,

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the same as London or Berlin, or any other like it.

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The symptoms, well,

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they could be anything from delusions or hallucinations,

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all the way to tachycardia, which is irregular heartbeat,

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and other psychosomatic symptoms.

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Is it a real thing? Well, it's difficult to tell,

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because it does have journal articles about it,

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and it does have scholarly references and news articles,

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but I suspect if you looked at most cities with a big tourist industry,

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you'd have a good number of people sent home,

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just overwhelmed with jet lag and homesickness, every year.

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The fact that it's Paris,

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and it has this reputation,

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well, perhaps people are drawing a little too much signal

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from the noise of people just not able to cope

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with being away from home.

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Either way,

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it's Paris syndrome and it's something you might now have known.

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[Closed captions by MM.
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