Quiet Chaos

A sticker I saw on my way home. It says, "I struggle [against] the classes."

Yesterday was quite interesting, and, like today’s title, was filled with a sense of quiet chaos.

The French have many pastimes, and enjoy exercising them on a regular basis. They love smoking, drinking coffee, drinking wine, driving fast, and, most of all, going on strike.

Strikes in France aren’t exactly like strikes in the states. They’re much more organized. They even inform the public when they decide to strike. Yesterday’s  was about the move to reform retirement. Nicolas Sarkozy wants/wanted to raise the age of retirement – something the French would definitely not stand. So, they strike. (Today’s vocabulary word: strike)

My experience of the “grève” was definitely not as dramatic as the media makes it look, but I didn’t really trouble myself to be in the way of the strikers. What I did see, however, was really interesting.

I don’t have classes on Thursdays, but I came to school to use their internet, and on my way back home, I saw several police vans parked in the middle of Avenue Bosquet (just to the east of the Eiffel Tower). There were a couple satellite news vans there, including TF1, a major television news network. Only a few police officers were walking around.

I then walked to the Louvre, where I was supposed to meet a couple friends. Walking back down Avenue Bosquet, the sight was a bit different. Now there were more vans, more police officers, and a larger roadblock. I would have taken pictures of this, but I was on a mission (from God).

I got to the Louvre, forty-five minutes late, and decided to people watch for a while. For an hour, I watched tourists around the inverted pyramid in the Louvre taking pictures, and posing in strangely similar ways. (I decided to make a sort of compilation video of people and their poses. I think I’ll try to put it up some time next week.)

After walking for much longer than I ever intended, I decided to take my chances with the metro. There weren’t too many people going into the metro. How full could it be? Answer: this full.



Photo: Thibault Camus/AP



While this is not a photo I took, it’s definitely an accurate representation of what I experienced. Only ¾ of the trains were running, making the metro especially crammed. At one stop, there was the disheartening sound of engines turning off. The train didn’t leave for about four minutes. We were stuck like sardines in the hot, smelly metro. At least the people were polite.

Getting off at Ecole Militaire on Avenue Bosquet, I didn’t think anything would be different from when I passed by earlier. Wrong. Now there were crowds of people with signs and stickers and raised voices.  I kept walking to the school, passing by several fleets of “Policier Nationale” (National Police) in full crowd gear – helmets, shields, batons, heavy boots, and armor reminiscent of a rhino or some prehistoric dinosaur. By then, the entire avenue was blocked off.

The sun didn’t shine at all the entire day, lending the whole scene a certain ambiance. The air was almost electrified by the prospect of anarchy. It was both exciting and a little unnerving.

There was no violence (that I saw), and it seemed like the blockade was unnecessary. As I walked home from the school that night, there were dozens of police vans rushing down the street – more than I could count.

I returned home that night exhausted from all the walking, but I couldn’t forget that sense of quite chaos.