Solidarity

Before leaving home, a few people asked me if I was concerned about the strike situation in France. Of course I wasn’t and I didn’t even bother finding out anything more about it. Silly, naive Allie. What a fool I was. Little did I know… Tuesday, after a full day of sightseeing in Paris, we returned to our hostel to find our street chock-a-block full of protesters, literally parading right past our window. It had apparently been going on all afternoon. But it seemed peaceful and the mess was cleaned up immediately after, so it still didn’t register as a problem. We had smooth sailing getting from Paris to Reims, our stop in the Champage region, and it is only now that we have been stuck in Reims for 5 days that we are beginning to understand just what is going. As far as we can tell, the government would like the French people to work for 2 more years before retiring. Obviously, this is outrageous! The country MUST grind to a halt while they fight tooth and nail against this atrocity. We had intended to spend a few days in Reims to tour a champagne house before moving on to Nice on the southern coast. No such luck. Stuck for much longer in Reims, with a ticket booked to Marseilles and our fingers crossed that the train will be running. (No guarantee there.) Only after booking this ticket, did we discover that Marseilles is rumored to have some of the worst rioting in the country and the city is piled high with garbage as the garbage collectors are also striking. Please keep your fingers crossed that we are able to both get in and out of Marseilles.

Dear France, Please stop being so lazy and get back to work. You are being greedy. Are you really okay with losing 200-40 million euro every day?! I am very grateful that Larissa speaks French so that we can deal with the people at the train stations. On my own, France would have been a nightmare.