The strike

I realized that I never wrote about one of the most amazing things about france that happened last week- The metro strike. The French in general are well known for their fondness of striking- but never is it so entertaining as when they basically mangage to half shut down a major metropolitan city. The metro strike was declared for last thursday: what this meant theoretically was that all workers (basically drivers) for the metro, buses and trains would not go to work and the city would be left to suffer until Sarkozy decided to give in. What this actually meant was that they shut down all but two metro lines (one was electronic anyways, built in response to previos strikes and the other was basically kept open because it's the tourist line) and all buses and most trains- the ones that remained came so infrequently that they were just packed with people and getting to and from the airport was a disastor. Thursday is also the day that I have an 8am class on the other side of the city- it takes me about an 45 minutes on the metro- and would take about 3 hours to walk there. The general consensus was that one was not obligated to show up for classes on this day- but many classes would still be going on- so it was a good idea to go anyways.

Thankfully the tourist line i was talking about is actually my metro line- also ironically the line that goes to Sarkozy's neighborhood (not that he takes the metro)- so i decided i would take this to a place as close as possible to the university and then walk and just hope i got there before the class ended. This was actually pretty brilliant- i set out a little before sunrise- 7am- and got out at this metro stop in the Marais- the old art district- and then walked across the seine, the ile de st denis, and another bridge over the seine where i could see Notre dame glowing in the early morning sun. I meandered through small streets where children ran past after the sounding of a bell- and down this staircase that just appeared out of nowhere. I walked past Marie Curie research labs and by butchers and bread makers putting out the morning's offerings. I finally arrived at the school only 40 minutes late (2.5 hour class) and the professor congradulated me on making it and I sat down with the 5 other kids who had showed up.

Friday the metros were just sporatic- most were back up - but the loudspeaker in each station kept insisting that the lines were "very, very, very perturbed" or I guess "disrupted" but i liked the sound of pertubed better. By saturday things were basically back to normal- someone yesterday told me they're thinking about trying it again since none of the demands were met.

And the answer to the viking quote is that I was researching where to go for my Toussaints (All Saints) break and a norweigan tour by train was described as such- i guess it was probably funnier in context- but it made me really want to be a viking explorer. I just bought my plane ticket to Sweden yesterday so i'm going to visit my uncle and his family via a flight by Ryan Air- I've heard scarry things about this airline - a wikipedia article states the following under "incidents and accidents at Stockholm-Skavsta Airport"- "21 July 2005 - A Ryanair crew carried out an "irrational and inexplicable" steep approach at Stockholm-Skavsta Airport according to the Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit"

yeah, irrational and inexplicable are basically amazing adjectives for describing a landing.