Well, I did it. I broke one of the cardinal rules of my program: I walked towards a grève (strike). Yup, I saw a blocked street, police presence, and smoke but I kept on walkin’ right towards la manifestation. More on this very vie parisienne experience in a minute….
Last night I hung out my rugby team as a final farewell get together. They played a tournoi without me yesterday afternoon (I had class, boo) and they lost both games. We were planning on going out to dinner but we ended up hanging out at their school’s bar/café place. For all the Hamiltonians, it’s kind of a mix between Opus and the VT, if you can imagine that. It was really fun to hangout with all the girls one last time and get to know them a bit better off the rugby field. I wish we could have done it more often during the season! One of my teammates is actually coming to Cambridge next summer for a stage (internship). Small world, eh?
The rugby farewell was the second in what will be a week of farewells in Paris. Besides homework (I’m almost done!) I am trying to soak up all the Paris I can in the next week. One of those things includes getting to see some of the famous French grèves. Like I mentioned at the beginning of my post, our program was on the more cautious side in telling us how to deal with grèves. Even though I knew I wasn’t in any danger whatsoever (and not the only person standing around watching the grève parade, as I like to call it) I still was coming up with crazy responses in my head in case someone came up to me, yelling at me for taking pictures and making a mockery of their serious fight protecting their retraite (retirement) or whatever they want. “Vive les ouvriers!” (Long live the workers!) was the best I could come up with. Luckily, I didn’t have to use it.
Unfortunately, Sarkozy was right when he said « Quand il y a une grève en France personne ne s'en aperçoit » “When there is a strike in France nobody notices anything.” There are so many little grèves here and there in Paris that they’re not really a big deal. Everybody knows when they are going to happen and the city knows how to deal with it accordingly. I would have been really mad though if this strike had been taking place when my family came to visit though. As it turns out, they left right in time. The Musée D’Orsay, le Louvre, and le Chateau de Versailles have all either closed entirely or closed partially due to the strike. The Centre Pompidou has all these little signs in the window that saw “En grève!” It reminds me of when Leah (ma soeur cadette) was little and used to tape a sign to a yardstick and march around the house on strike for some reason or another. The best part of the grève parade I watched this week: the food truck! Along with all the marchers and the van with the guy with the blow horn, there was a truck driving along with the crowd selling food and drinks (including alcohol, what a fantastic idea……). Hey, even les grévistes need refreshments, right?
The only way the grève is affecting me is that it makes the metro more crowded. Right now, the RER A line is on strike. That’s right, only one line. At least they’re nice about the strikes, and still operating during rush hour in the morning and evening. I took RER A to class the other day and I didn’t have to wait any longer than I normally wait for the train in the morning even though signs everywhere said that “Trafic très perturbé” (No, it’s a faux ami, traffic is just disrupted, not perturbed…...)
Nine days until I fly home!
Bon après-midi!
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