La Grève

Tuesday, September 7, 2010 Day 69

Today is a general strike day in France. We were alerted about it before we left Paris; however, we weren’t sure it applied down here as well. Apparently it is nationwide. The strike is in protest to the proposed raising of the retirement age from 60 years to 62 years. France, like Greece, the U.S. and many other industrialized countries, has found that it cannot support a generous retirement age and is moving to raise the age in an effort to stave off bankrupting the system. The result of the strike is that many of the trains, metros, trams and transit systems were not running today. Others were running, but on a reduced schedule. At least 30% of teachers were expected to be out, maybe more. I am not sure if that includes college faculty. Government workers were scheduled to strike – the post office is closed – as well as broadcast workers.

We took a cardio walk this morning. We set out for the Peyrou, which contains lots of steps. We spent 15 minutes walking up and down steps and between staircases. It was a good workout. We need to do this every day. Of course, the 61 steps up to our apartment get our hearts to working quite hard as well!

Today we got copies made of our carte de sejour application stuff and will send it in tomorrow. Then we have to wait for our appointment for a personal appearance. I think there is going to be a lot of red tape. We managed to cut through much of it in the U.S., but here I think we may be stuck plowing our way through it a bit at a time.

We saw the aftermath of a protest march when we went out about 4:00 to walk to the river. There were a couple of thousand people or more in the main streets and the Plaza Comedie, many standing around in groups talking. Some people carried furled flags, a few wore some sort of uniform. When we returned through the Comedie an hour later, the crowds were considerably reduced, although still heavier than normal.