How to survive a strike in France

The good folks of France like to go on strike. Frequently. The main reason for all the grève-making is that the French are very adamant about protecting their hard-won rights, but part of me also wonders if the French don't also like getting out of work and school obligations.

To give you an example of how prevalent the strike is in France, I once missed an entire month of school because the students were blockading the doors. Amanda, a colleague of mine, missed four months of university classes due to a strike. The current grève has been ongoing for about three weeks and concerns the pension age. Président Sarkozy recently passed a law raising the national pension age from 60 to 62.

Even though the law already passed in the legislature, the public sector continues to strike. This includes postal workers, teachers, trash collectors, and more. It also includes train conductors. As you might expect, transportation is somewhat disrupted throughout France.

So when a girl wants to go to Paris on vacation, what's a girl to do?

Step One:

Go to the train station.

At the train station, it becomes evident that only one train in four is running. The train for which my roommate Katherine and I have tickets is cancelled, supprimé. We hop into line and explain our predicament to the ticket attendant. She issues us new tickets for a train that is still running.

Step Two:

Get on the train.

This part sounds easy enough, but we are frustrated to find that the train contains four times as many folks as there are seats, and we have to stand the entire two hours to Paris. Next to the bathroom.

Step Three:

De-train - is that a word? - and find a metro station.

This feat took Katherine and I quite a bit of time, as both of us possess wholly and completely abominable senses of direction. We attempted to read the map at each bus stop, until finally a little old Italian man took pity on us and directed us to a parallel street, where we found a metro station.

Step Four:

Check into the hostel and settle in.

This part always challenges me a bit, as I tend to find hostels a bit on the dirty side. Our hostel, Aloha Hostel, had a nice ambiance, but we didn't have any heat in our room. We were loud, we were bitchy, we were unreasonable, but to no avail. We slept cold. A bit on the pricey side at 28 euros a night (that's $39), and with abominable customer service to boot, we don't recommend it.

Step Five:

Go see the sights!

We saw the Parisian Catacombs, we treaded the Tuileries and Luxembourg Gardens, and saw the Eiffel Tower. Yes, the Eiffel Tower - we visited that beauty every single night.

Andrine