Strike!

Thursday. Paris.

And France finally goes on strike. We've been here since the beginning of September 2008 and this has been the first major strike since our arrival. Today, the 29th of January 2009, teachers, postal workers, railway and airport workers figured among the millions participating in a "manifestation" or demonstration going all the way from the Bastille, down the Grands Boulevards via République, to St. Augustin in the 9th arrondissement. These workers are protesting the general economic climate and several reforms made by the government, which were supposedly made without their consultation. The protest march marks the beginning of a much longer strike in some areas, the universities especially.

Thanks to the grève, I'm sitting at home. My professors at the Sorbonne are both on strike, and I don't know how long this will last. Perhaps two to three weeks, perhaps a month or two. I sincerely hope, however, that it gets over soon. Strikes, in my opinion, are not the best way of protesting something. The reason being the inconvenience caused to everyone else — selfish as this may sound, me included. A protest march like the one today is quite the manner of expressing one's opinion, but a strike over an elongated period of time? Not really.