Super-greve

In France, this is the poster for Superbad. It may strike you as similar to another country's poster for Superbad. But I won't tell you which one.

*Note: In French, "grave" means "bad, but in a good way." It is pronounced gr-AH-v.

As any decent human being will also know, in French "grève" means "strike," which is exactly what the entire fucking transit system is doing.

But that's not important. What is important is that you come see this film, coming shortly to a theater near you.

My apologies, by the way, because I think the accent looks, after the fact, like it is going the wrong way. As you can see, it's pointed on the right tip, but joining it with the E proved to be too much for my brain to handle, and so it kind of looks like it says "soo-pehr-gray-v." I think we'll live...

Anyway, with that out of the way, now I can tell you my story.

Yesterday I took a taxi to the train station at around 11. It was three hours before my 2:42 train, admittedly, but the hotel's exit time was 11, so I figured I might as well just go to the train station and get some work done.

Arriving at the station, not knowing what the situation would be, I found the place rather deserted. There was a small sheet of paper posted with information, and it stated that because of the grève (they keep calling it a "mouvemente sociale," which fucking pisses me off because it's not a social movement, it's just a small population of angry miscreants ruining life for everyone), there would only be three trains running today (people are free to work or not work, you see, so while the system is crippled, there are usually at least a few trains on any line). The first had been by Biarritz at like 8:30, so that was a lost cause, and the next one wasn't until 5:48. Fuuuuuuck...

Anyway, after briefly believing that I would stay at the train station for the remaining 6 or 7 hours, I was finally convinced by my friendly cab driver (who even came in to help me decipher the chart, or, rather, confirm my dechipherings of it) to go back to the village, since there would actually be shit to do there. So, I spent the next six hours in a bar, and did actually get to finish those novel corrections after all, in addition to my class reading and my course packet.

Around 4:45 I returned to the station, just to be safe, since I had forgotten what time after 5 the train was arriving, and then I waited there for an hour for the 5:48 train. I had a shitty, microwaved quiche in the station's bar and wrote a couple letters. Finally, I boarded the train and it was pretty smooth sailing, though slow, since the train had to make more intermittent stops since, probably, the trains running those stops had been shut down. All in all, it was a six hour ride back to Paris, and I managed to 1) read all of Sartre's Huit Clos (No Exit), 2)watch half of Pasolini's Oedipus Rex, 3) read the first letter (it's written in letters) of Sade's Aline et Valcour, in French, before becoming tired of reading still more French (and of Sade's propensity for using forms of the subjunctive that I am unfamiliar with) before 4) sleeping.

I arrived in Paris at around 11:45, and quickly rushed through the station to the Metro, feeling like Jessica Harper in Suspiria. Anyway, as I was quickly wending my way through the vast, vast, vast bowels of the Montparnasse train station, I heard a little voice on the intercom say that the next train in the direction I was headed on the line I was taking would be there in two minutes. I immediately bolted, and managed to just get to the train in time, dashing between the doors as they were shutting. Good thing, too, as the next train was in 36 minutes. That would have put me in an even better mood.

Anyway, I got to Chatlet, the station where much of my transferring takes place, and was pretty confident that I would be able to catch the (at worst) last train back to my dorm's neighborhood, since it was only like 12:10 and the line is only like a half-hour long. Nevertheless, when I worked my way through the entirety of the station, I came to find, arriving at my platform, that there were, presumably, no trains left, since the entrance was being blocked with candy-cane-striped warning tape.

I wandered around for a while after that, trying to figure out what to do. Could I take the 7 to the 7b and get off relatively close to my dorm? Probably not, since that required a transfer. Perhaps...

Anyway, after wandering to the seven and being told something by some guy in some Slavic language that I didn't understand (why would he do this? what are the chances I speak his crazy language?), I eventually gave up and exited, figuring I could add to the morning's 30+ Euros in cab fare with another good 20, at least.

As I wandered around the square, trying to figure if there was a bus route that would take me where I needed to go while looking for cabs, this Indian guy and this British guy passed me, and I heard them talking (in English) about getting to exactly the place I was going to. I rushed after them and asked if they were indeed going there, and they were, and I joined them in their quest. They were going to wait for the night bus line, the Noctibus, which I had discounted since I figured it only started running after 1, when the Metro closes, and it was only around 12:15 at this point. Nevertheless, after waiting at the stop for a few minutes, shivering in the rain and bitching to each other, we were delighted to see one of the buses that would take us where we needed to go pull up, and we quickly fought our way through the crazed throngs swarming onto it and got some seats.

Anyway, I got back about 1:30, UNHAPPY, and unpacked my stuff and ate my McDonald's dinner (I got the thing on the menu designed to appeal to the French--it's called a 280, I think because supposedly it is possible to top it in 280 different ways), and it was actually pretty good--a burger on cibatta with tomato and mayo and ketchup and whatnot. It is also worth noting that, because I was so frustrated and tired, I super-sized it, or whatever, which produced a side of fries and a Coca-Lite that were about the size of US mediums. Oh France...

Anyway, the only thing that pleased me was the arrival of these lobby cards I ordered. When I get around to putting them up (yup, I start decorating 8th week), I will put up pictures. They're quite awesome.

Anyway, the next day I figured I would have to wake up at least an hour earlier to fight the grève to get to school, which was not a pleasant thought, considering it was already 2:30. I set my clock for 7 and went to be around 3, though found that I absolutely could not sleep. At 5 I finally reached the decision to skip the first day of the last mini-quarter in the morning (shocking!) and just go to grammar class in the afternoon. Then I got to wake up at 10. Yay.

The system wasn't so bad at lunchtime, when I went. There was a train about every 11 minutes on the line through my neighborhood, line 11, and then the 14, which gets you the rest of the way to school, is always running because it's the computer-automated one. If you ask me, France should see to computer-operating all of these lines. If the fucking workers hate to work so much, take that horrible burden away from them.

Anyway, apparently tomorrow is going to be worse, for some obscure cultural reason that I don't understand. I don't know if it's the particular day and things are just lining up poorly or if it's actually related to this strike, but whatever the case, apparently like everyone is striking, so we started calling it the "Supergrève," and now we've come, with regards to topic, full circle.

Fuck you, France. Fuck you hard. Get your shit together.