Marche des Fiertés

It's gay pride march day, and the after march party is just kicking off, mostly in the street outside our flat. The lesbian nightclub 3ws and the two lesbian-friendly bars are wide open of course with sound systems open onto the streets and a huge crowd. Ever alert to a business opportunity, the italian pizzeria, one of the yiddish restaurants and the jewish butcher opposite have all set tables up on the street and are selling cold beer and sandwiches to the crowd. In the rest of the marais, highly dressed transvestites stroll about handing out club flyers and the crowds outside the most well-known bars like Cox and the Open cafe are effectively blocking off the streets to traffic - it's an excellent atmosphere of course and everyone seems to be having a good time, but it was quite difficult to get back to our front door with a baguette. Lots of the young ladies in the street outside were keen to enter into conversation with Sam.

Bac

The compulsory philosophy questions from the high-school leavers exam or Baccalaureate were published in the French press today, as they are every year, for armchair philosophers to discuss over aperitifs and dinner. This year's questions included 'can one desire without suffering?' and 'can one love a work of art without understanding it?'. Not exactly Wittgenstein but sure to provoke happy disagreement amongst the bourgousie. More details here.

Grève

The sporadic strikes by RER B/RATP staff continue. Since Sarko passed the minimum service law in january, they aren't allowed to completely shut down, so they've taken to various measures such as cutting one in two trains and stopping every train at every station - which actually makes it impossible to get on at some stations (the trains are all full, so unless a lot of people get off, as they do fortunately for me as St Michel, you can't get on). Yesterday evening I walked up to bagneux RER and it was closed, so I had to get a bus, but that was full, so I got a random bus and ended up in Chatillon (then end of metro line 13), it took me about an hour and a half to get home. This morning I cut out the RER and cycled to Porte d'Orleans on a velib, and took a bus from there. This took about an hour in total. It usually takes a total of 40 minutes more or less - including the mandatory coffee stop on the ile.