Grève, mais pas si grave

So there is another grève, or transportation strike. For the past week everyone has been talking about it - will it last? will it be like the '95 (when a massive transportation strike ground the city to a halt for more than six weeks)? Happily, it looks like this will not be the case. I took the metro yesterday and again this morning. It wasn't a very pleasant experience, mind you, being squeezed in between perfect strangers, but I didn't have far to go.

Strikes are always an interesting cultural experience. And so when I heard the unmistakable sounds of a manif' on boulevard Montparnasse from my office yesterday afternoon, I just had to make the few students who had made it to class go outside to take a picture and to experience the manifestation for themselves. I'll never forget my first manif' - walking from République to Nation, eating a Merguez (Moroccan sausage) and fries sold by vendors at the strike, listening to the monotonous chanting coming from the man in the truck in front of me with a microphone and 6-ft speakers...This time there were no Merguez vendors, but there was monotonous chanting, a dead rat on a pole, a van blaring Johnny Cash (?!), four very bizarre men in gold lamé robes and Beatles wigs singing and dancing, and small fire works. The students were unimpressed, especially our little Ecuadorian, who is used to violent strikes with pepper spray and militia. One student thought it was like a cheap version of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Everyone found it very anticlimactic...Oh well, I tried...