Finally, it feels like France

Something was off. I have felt somewhat at home in Paris so far, but there was just something that didn't seem right, and I could not put my finger on it. Until, today, when I stumbled upon a protest. It just isn't France until you know for sure there are protests going on somewhere. Now, there is a difference between a strike, a protest and a riot, all three of which seem to be staples in France and I have experienced them all on several occasions while here in the past. In order to educate you...


*A strike typically affects transportation of some sort and usually involves employees being mad that they have to work more than 35 hours a week. The French really like to strike. It could happen, for example, when train or air employees decide they are not going to work and thus your ticket is worthless that day. For some reason, they seem to feel that since they sometimes alert the public a day or so ahead of time about the strike that makes it all ok. It's like, really? I guess I just won't go to school or work or on that trip I have already paid for, but thanks for giving me 24 hours notice. What is even better is when the strike has nothing to do with transportation, but those striking march all over town and, therefore, you are unable to take the tram or bus anywhere. So, you being to walk wherever you are going knowing you will be ridiculously late and have to inevitably encounter the jovial strikers who march in non uniform lines and every once in a while yell something that may or may not be of significance.


*A riot, on the other hand, is much more dangerous. It usually involves youth and malatov cocktails and might just be a rite of passage for the young, French hoodlum. The last time I lived in France it was the year of the riot (literally), and there were several in Grenoble. It's not much fun when you are walking home from school and get caught in a riot and the riot police come with their tear gas, shields, and masks and you and your American backpack full of international business homework are just trying to get out of the way, but all the store owners are locking doors and pulling down those big garage door type barriers on you. So you just close your eyes and hide in a recessed door way as the riot police in all their scary gear chase down the drunken teenagers who are rioting over basically nothing. Yep. Awesome. True story.


I grabbed the below photo off the web as an example. It's a picture of the riots in France in 2005.





*Finally, a protest is the least scary of all and is what makes France feel like France. If the French love to strike, then they might just be obsessed with protesting. As you can see from the photos today, it mainly entails a group of people with similar interests getting together on a random street corner while one guy yells loudly on a megaphone and everyone else just smokes cigarettes and talks to each other, ignoring the leader who is yelling.