on strikes and old friends

One less-than-desirable aspect of Paris was the strikes. On Thursday, the metro was completely shut down; it ran on a limited basis for the rest of the week. Not realizing what a headache the strikes would be, I made plans to meet up with a childhood friend, who now lives in Paris, studying baroque violin. After trekking quite a distance on foot, we met and joined in part of the strike march. It was enormous. I don’t know if I have ever seen a march so large. My favorite aspect of it was that many of the union groups had trucks from which they were selling snacks and drinks. Emma Goldman said that she didn’t want to be part of a revolution if she couldn’t dance. I might amend that to say that I wouldn’t want to be part of a revolution that has no mojitos.

After walking with a strike for a bit, we went for coffee. At a quiet moment in our conversation, I overheard the people at the table next to us. I understood what they were saying. My first thought was, ‘I know French!’ It took me a few seconds to realize that they were actually speaking Serbian. If only language acquisition was that easy...