la vie est grève

This is actually going to have nothing to do with my previous post, despite my promise of a sequel (although I never actually said part 2 would follow immediately). But I just had such a typical French moment and felt I had to share it with you all.

In true Tyler fashion, I’m just now starting to plan a possible trip for the week-long February vacances (vacation) I have starting at the end of next week. (On second thought, planning something a whole nine days in advance is completely uncharacteristic behavior for me…) Anyway, if everything works out, I’ll be heading to Spain (specifically Valencia and Barcelona!) for the break, which is an exciting prospect after more than a month of this below-30 weather.

Still running on the caffeine high induced by my post-class café, I was able to motivate myself to leave the shelter of my hermit’s abode for the second time today. I hopped on to the T1 (literally – the doors were sliding violently to a close as I squeezed through them) and set off on my journey to Perrache, home to one of many SNCF train stations here, and one of two principal festering eyesores infecting the otherwise picturesque Lyonnais cityscape (the second being the Part-Dieu Tower, Lyon’s only real skyscraper, which pierces the skyline like a pencil and thus earns itself the nickname “le crayon”).

At Perrache, I was welcomed (I use this term loosely) by the unfriendly faces of TCL contrôleurs, who refused to let me descendre until I handed them my metro pass and proved that I was, indeed, a paying customer and a legitimate, rule-abiding traveler. From there, I ascended a series of stairs (I opted not to take the escalators following my rash decision this afternoon to eat two full sandwiches for lunch instead of my usual one), at the top of which I paused to catch my breath (its officially time to start running again) before walking the last stretch to my destination. When I got there, the line was nearly out the door. But I decided to stay because I felt like this was important (ha, let’s be honest, it was really because I had nothing better to do and a full 54 minutes to kill before Megavideo would allow me to continue watching the season premier of Lost). Grabbing a random selection of train- and travel-related brochures, I took my place in line behind an old woman sporting an ensemble (coat, hat, gloves) made completely out of fur. For 30 minutes I stood in line behind this lovely lady in leopard-print, reading the useless literature, and catching the occasional whiff of the offensive odor (a combination of stale cheese, smoke, and salami) that has undoubtedly been trapped inside of this woman’s thick fur coat for years. Needless to say, I was happy when it was finally my turn to talk to someone. Stumbling over the phrase I’d gone over in my head while I was waiting in line (Je voudrais me renseigner sur la possibilité de prendre un train de Lyon à Valence en Espagne - I’d like to find out about the possibility of taking a train from Lyon to Valencia, Spain), I was told that I’d have to come back tomorrow because they weren’t helping people today with questions regarding international travel. Why? One word, plain and simple: grève (strike).

Ah, the infamous French grève. Even before I came to France, I knew that grèves were common occurrences here. Last spring, for example, there was a student strike that lasted for almost 3 months, during which classes were canceled more frequently than not, and many students studying abroad had to find alternative means of meeting people and getting class credit. Within my first few weeks in Lyon, the TCL (public transportation people) declared a grève that they estimated would last 3 months (apparently you’re required to say how long the strike is going to last, but that approximation isn’t binding). It was something we all felt we should experience at least once, but got old pretty quickly. These people know how to strike; they don’t completely stop the metros/trams/buses, but rather figure out how to make traveling as inconvenient as possible. They’ll cancel some lines and not others, and force you to check the constantly-changing schedule online on a daily basis.

So after four months, this whole grève thing has become so second-nature to me that even when I’m aware of them, I store that information in some poorly-organized, rarely-accessed file lying haphazardly on the floor of my brain. Which is why I should have known that I wasn’t going to get the answers I was looking for today, but completely forgot. With several of these experiences now under my belt, I’ve been able to reach the following conclusion about this form of strike: more than anything, the French grève is a simple act of cultural pride (because yes, they do seem to be proud of this irksome tradition) masking itself behind the façade of a mouvement social.