Three Strikes & You're French

SERVICE NORMAL sur votre ligne. NORMAL SERVICE on your line, reads the SNCF (French national railway system) website. 

Yeah, well, it’s about time.

After a week and a half of transportation strikes – one out of every six or seven trains running – the SNCF train engineers have decided they are ready to come back to work.

That’s right folks, it’s "strike season" in France. It’s kind of like "mud season" in the Northeastern United States, only less charming and more inconvenient. And you can’t wash it off your shoes.

The strikers are unhappy about a pension reform that includes a measure to increase the official retirement age from 60 to 62.  It seems trite, considering most of the world works well past age 62. I guess it’s like your parents having thirty years of vacation and being told that you only get twenty. Not fair! Strike!

A lively demonstration took place outside my window on Thursday morning. I was grooving to the live music (some guitars on a truck bed) when my Bolivian roommate came in, telling me his train to Paris was cancelled and he just lost 70 euros. I stopped grooving and expressed my sympathy. “C’est nul.” That sucks.

No one likes the strikes, because no one can get around them. Not even the black-robed, boot-wearing French beauties who surely have some magical powers.

Last week I took a train from Lyon to Roanne that had been overbooked and was jam-packed, sardine style. I was able to scrunch into a small ball on the floor – subliminal yoga plug – in front of les toilettes. Others sat on their luggage or stood for the one-hour ride.

Whenever I saw someone maneuvering through the crowd toward the bathroom, I would lean to one side and point to the button that opened and closed the sliding automatic door. You might call me the Bathroom Gate Keeper.

A few times, the door closed and then opened again. Poor bathroom-goers, only wanting a few minutes of privacy, were left peering out at a bunch of frowning people staring up from the floor.

And then, sitting there on the floor of the train in front of the bathroom, I observed something beautiful. People started chuckling, and frowns became smiles. The malfunctioning bathroom door made people forget how grumpy they were – the overcrowded train, the strikes, the cruel world.

Each time someone new squeezed through, the other floor-dwellers and I exchanged knowing smiles, hoping that the door would stay closed for the duration of the person’s...you know.

I enjoyed my stint as Bathroom Gate Keeper but welcome SERVICE NORMAL with open arms.