Velib' Action

Managed to persuade Sam onto a Velib this afternoon: we cycled to the Butte Chaumont park up in Belleville. It's quite an exciting ride, as well as negotiating some grand boulevards and big roundabouts full of mad drivers you have to go through all these steep cobbled streets of halal butchers and asian delicatessens and things to finally reach the park. There was an african wedding photo shoot going on in the park, and also a stall doing a brisk trade in gauffres. The journey back was even more challenging - just finding a pair of free bikes was tricky. Being Sunday night, the main activity in town is trying to find a parking space - not necessarily a legal one of course - and there's some kind of constitutional right to spend as long as you like fronting and backing into an impossible space while assorted relatives make uninterpretable gestures from the pavement and other drivers prevented from passing blast their horns. We got home pretty fast though and I still think Velibs are a fantastic idea.

Housewarming

We threw our housewarming party last night. Eight of my new colleagues from the lab came over, so we had to employ the steps (for reaching the top of the double wardrobe) as an extra seat. We'd prepared a few small things to eat, like bruschetta and goat's cheese and pâté on toast, but they all disappeared in a couple of minutes. A couple of people came with food: some foie gras and some quiche, and that disappeared too. We resorted to bringing random things out of the fridge, like tomatoes, which also disappeared. Eventually one of the guests ran out to by more bread and camembert, which was a little embarrassing. In contrast, the six bottles of wine I bought proved to be about twice as much as what was required. So lesson learned: in the UK, you have to make sure you have enough booze, in France, it's ok as long as you have enough bread and cheese. Everybody seemed to have had a good time though, I don't think we were considered to be total barbarians for under-catering. In particular, I think breaking out the Ardbeg Uigeadail (thanks to Chris, Julia and Caroline) later in the evening established us as people of good taste..

Ah!


Les agents de la RATP qui observaient une grève très suivie sur la ligne B du RER ont voté jeudi la reprise du travail en assemblée générale.

Strike off?

The unions have called for a cessation of the strike during the negotiations. According to the RATP press release, services are returning to something like normal on the metro, tramway and bus. Unfortunately, no mention of a return to work on the militant RER line B.

Protests

The strikers aren't the only ones out protesting on the blocked Paris streets at the moment. There's also the Stop la Grève (end the strike) anti-protest protesters - 20 000 of them came out on Sunday. And yesterday there were the anti-anti-smoking law protesters - specifically, the French association of Buralistes (tobacconists), whose arguments in favour of allowing smoking in bars are of course based on civil liberties, not the potential reduction in profits for tobacconists..

I've officially had it with cycling to work. Not only do you have to dodge mad parisian car, bus, lorry and especially taxi drivers, which takes any possible enjoyment out of the equation, it's also tiring. By then end of the week I will have cycled over 100km - ok so that's only about half the length of a single long stage of the tour de France, but I haven't done any serious cycling for years. My legs are starting to go. One of the worst parts of the ride is the big roundabout at the sinisterly-named Vache Noire shopping centre, which has no lane markings and a permanent team of angry drivers going round and round gesticulating at each other.

Yesterday, I witnessed a punch-up on the Pont au Change - I don't know what started it as I was joining the road from the Quai aux Fleurs, but a cyclist and a car driver waiting at a red light were shouting at each other, then the driver opened the door and started throwing punches. Of course all the other cyclists at the light pitched in to have a crack at the car driver, and all the car drivers were sounding their horns and waving fists.. the strike is obviously starting to get to people.

Wow, it's 12°C outside!! I'm going to put my bikini on and try to find some more space invaders.

Yet more on Velibs

The official velib website lets you search a google maps app for stations and click on them to see how many bikes or places they have. Useful, but not as useful as this hack which colours all the stations red, blue green etc. on the map so you can quickly see where the nearest one with a lot of bikes (or a lot of space to park a bike) is.

At lunchtime today my colleagues were discussing Velibs. One of the PhD students has his thesis defence on Thursday, and has to find a way of geting his examiners from the gare du nord to the university, so telling them all to hire velibs was suggested.. this silly conversation then progressed to an excellent idea to solve the problem of some racks running out of velibs while others are full: credit back 50 cents of your abonnement every time you take a bike from a > 90% full rack to a >90% empty rack! People with nothing better to do could zip between racks and clock up a healthy payback - Travailler plus pour gagner plus!

People on strike today include:

Train drivers. Bus drivers. Tram drivers. Postal workers, teachers, air traffic controllers and hospital staff. Newspaper staff. Civil servants. Students. School pupils. Lawyers. Bank staff.

Fortunately the staff at Société Générale weren't striking, so I was able to pick up my Carte Bleu this morning before work. Getting a bank card is a vital part of acclimatisation to a new country IMO. Now all I need is a proper pass for the transport system (I can at least use it for Velibs while the strike continues..). Irritatingly I am one day too late to get an annual pass starting from December, so I'll have to apply for one from January. In the meantime, I have to get a pass Navigo, the paris equivalent of an Oyster card. Well almost - you can only put weekly and monthly credits on it at the moment. The functionality to allow you to charge it up with individual tickets and carnets is to be added at an unspecified later date.

Wiiiiiiiiii

Nicolas' bike turns out to be considerably lighter than a Velib and correspondingly easier to ride home. It took about 45 minutes. I would get pretty fit if I rode to work and back every day - there are some notable hills between here and Bagneux that you strangely don't notice when you're on the RER..

I just had a request to bring over a Wii when I come back to Edinburgh at the end of November. Apparently they are running out in the UK. Well they have loads of them here, apparently they're outside everyone's pouvoir d'achat (which the civil servants are going on strike about tomorrow. Well not specifically that they can't afford Wiis. Just that they can't afford as much stuff as they want.). Anyway anyone else need a wii? If so, I suggest ordering from amazon.fr: they have availability and they're only 247 Euro with the sports pack.

Oh yeah - we turned on comments. Go ahead and write something..

Velo

The transport strike continues, and the RER B is still shut. I cycled to porte d'orleans again this morning and took a bus down to the lab, which was absolutely rammed. Just before it left, packed to bursting, three or four kids jumped on at the front door and all started shouting 'passez! il y a des places!', but nobody moved, and the driver made them get off again so she could close the doors. I think in Edinburgh everyone would have moved, just in case they had knives.

Now I have a velo non-lib: Nicolas has lent me his spare bike so I can cycle all the way home. This involves cycling across the boulevard periphique at some point, which is a bit like cycling through the M25, so should be interesting..

Just got back from the Dutch bar downstairs (3€ a pint of Grolsch) which was showing the Scotland/Italy game. They didn't have the sound on though and only a small crowd of Italians and Scots around the screen were watching it. The Ibiza house music was interrupted occasionally by a piercing howl from the fans as McFadden lashed the ball into the side netting. A bit depressing, but at least the Scots showed commitment and no little quality.

Basque Cuisine

We had lunch in a Basque café (Chez Gladines, 30 rue des Cinq Diamants) that Graham's colleague had recommended and it was excellent. I had the biggest salad I've ever seen, which came in a huge silver bowl with heaps of fried potatoes, cheese (2 types), meat (3 types) and even a fried egg. Despite valiant efforts on my part I was unable to finish it although the French man sitting next to me saw his off with no trouble.

We walked back (still grève!) and discovered some modernist buildings tucked away in the 13th arr. so I'm going to try to find out more about them, especially the one on rue Paul Gervais.

More Velib adventures

So I admit I'm fast becoming obsessed by the whole Velib thing. On the way home last night, after squeezing on to a bus back to Porte d'orleans, I found out what happens when you accidentally check out a vandalised bike. It was the last one left on the rack of 33, and I couldn't see it properly from the machine, so I checked it out anyway. When I picked it up I found out the saddle had been reversed and then glued into place. Nice job guys. So I checked the bike back in and waited for more to arrive. This didn't take long, there was a steady stream of people checking in and out. But, there's some kind of time delay: after you check a bike back in you can't immediately take one out. So I had to keep trying the ticket until eventually it let me have a bike, and I could join the peloton racing up the boulevard st michel and back into town. The traffic was terrible, but there's a bus lane all the way which was pretty much empty (not many buses running) so it was a very enjoyable ride.

Pendaison de crémaillère

That's French for a housewarming party - literally hanging the chimney-hook, which is supposed to be the last thing you do when you move into a new place. Anyway, we clearly need to have one, and soon.

I made it to work, malgré the grève. First I went looking for a Velib' - someone was just taking the last one from the rack closest to our flat, so I crossed onto the isle st louis, where again I arrived fractionally too late to get the last Velib from the rack close to notre dame (that's the one I photographed). I must get an abonnement - you can just scan your abonnement card on the bike stand next to a free bike and ride away, instead of having to use the machine. Anyway, I crossed to the 5th looking around for another rack and eventually found some on the Rue st jacques. Negotiating the one-way system and roundabouts to get to porte d'orleans was a little trickier than I expected, but I got there in the end and I think I just got my bike back into a rack before the free half hour ran out.

From there, I found a bus that was running (they're on a 40% service today apparently) not exactly to the Bagneux RER, where my lab is, but to nearby, so I took that rather than waiting around and then walked the rest of the way. The bus was absolutley rammed of course, and everyone was unfolding maps and looking at plans on their mobile phones to try to work out where the bus was taking them. It took about 1 hour 15 to get to work instead of the usual 45 minutes, so not too bad. Once the buses are running properly, I might even choose to take a Velib' - it's kind of fun to ride through Paris and the main road has a cycle lane most of the way.

Now all I have to do is get home again..

Grève situation

The RATP guys have decided to extend the strike through tomorrow as well.

Meanwhile, we made a final raid on BHV to kit out our flat. Most important purchase was a clip-on spotlight to light up the cooking area, so you can see what's making that burning smell. We're currently testing it out by turning a bottle of 2€ vin du table into vin chaud aux épices.



It's also Beaujolais nouveau day, so we decided to buy a cheap bottle. Vive la grève.

On the RATP as a whole, 1 in 4 trains are running, but on the B line (which I would take to work), nul. So another day at home. Line B is also the one that goes to CDG airport. A good day to be a taxi driver.

One metro line that's functioning at 100% despite the strike is line 14. It's entirely computer operated. Unfortunately it doesn't go very near Cachan - I'd guess about a 2 hour walk from the final station at olympiades.

Thanks to the strikes I didn't make it in to work today - our part of town was really quiet all day, so I guess a lot of people took the day off rather than struggling in to work in the traffic or on foot. The St Michel RER station was closed, so you couldn't even go down to look for a train. Apparently the RER B line is notoriously militant.

It's not clear what will happen tomorrow. It seems that some disruption will certainly continue. I'll probably go down to St Michel in the morning and see if I can get a train, but I'm not holiding out much hope.

It's a very interesting point in French political history - a narrow majority of people voted for Sarkozy on the basis of his programme of reforms, so they must now presumably be against the strikers? The early retirement privileges were given to state railway drivers in 1946, when they were expected to shovel their own coal into the engine, so are they really fair now? But how do you tell a 49 year old guy who has worked for wages below the private sector all his life, in return for the pension package, that he now has to do at least 2.5 years more work (this is the deal that's being proposed) ? A lot of UK workers might say retirement at 53 isn't too bad either, but the syndicats here are concerned that if they make any concessions then it will lead to all their privileges being eroded away.

Personally speaking, though the strike is an incovenience. and though I can't imagine how France can afford to pay for such a generous retirement package for state workers given the ageing population, I think if I was a state railway driver I'd be right at the front of the picket line defending my rights..

Grève

On Wednesday the railway workers are going on strike again, to protest against the proposed withdrawal of their right to retire at age 50 on a full pension. The results of this are a little unpredictable, but basically it seems it will be impossible to get anywhere on the metro, RER or SNCF train in any kind of reasonable time. The lab has cancelled all the 'missions' starting that day and meetings have all been rescheduled since people will either be unable to get to ENS-Cachan, or unable to leave their children at the nursery (since the nursery workers can't get to work). I considered going to work by Velib', but the last bike station in the south is still about a 45 minute walk to the lab, and more critically, the Velib's will apparently all be snapped up like hot cakes on Wednesday morning. So, it seems best to work at home on Wednesday, and take advantage of the situation by booking a table for a good long dinner on Tuesday night..

In other strike news, the fishermen are apparently back at work after their fuel price strike (which Le Monde claims was really triggered by customs inspections) and the students are still on strike at proposed welfare reforms.

Oysters

.. are extremely popular in Paris. They can be very reasonably priced or extremely expensive depending on the size and the source. We had a few as a light Sunday lunch, purchased from the market at Bastille. I've heard there are two good ways to go to the market: early, when nobody's there and all the best produce is available, or late when the vendors start selling things off cheap by the plateau. So far we've only managed the latter - we'll have to try and get up earlier and give the former option a go. Anyhow, the oysters we had were all lovely, and they were the cheapest ones - good job Sam packed the oyster knife.

Sam grilling oysters. I had mine raw.

Menu à 12€

We had our best 3-course meal for €12 so far yesterday, at Café Med at 77 rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Île. Similar to the other cheap places on the island, quite small with tiny tables and closely packed customers, but a noticeably higher quality of food. I had vegetable soup, which tasted fresh, sauté of chicken with curry sauce, which was better than I expected, and an excellent tarte aux pommes. Sam had tagliatelle with salmon for main course and a chocolate fondant for dessert, both of which were also excellent.

There's only one place left in the book on the island that we haven't tried, but there are hundreds of others further afield. My colleagues at the lab have recommended some of their favourite places in the Butte-aux-Cailles area down in the 13th - one of them even includes oysters as a starter on the €12 menu! There are also a lot of places in the 11th (which borders our arrondissement) that look good..

Gordon who?

Since we moved in two weeks ago the restaurant opposite our door has been closed. We have been hoping that the owners were merely taking an off-season holiday. Unfortunately, that now seems very unlikely...

Muenchen

We've now returned from a trip to Munich for the ESCAR conference and Lebkuchen hunt, both of which were a success in the end. The highlight was a trip to the BMW factory - like something out of a sci-fi film with hardly any people and just huge orange robots throwing car bodies and chassis around like matchwood, twisting them in front of cameras for the QA guys to check over, sparks flying from the spot-welding, enourmous noise from the steel presses, oil smell in the engine shop, it was all great. The lowlight was when a group of ignorant, sub-human Bolton Wanderers supporters entered the bar where I was having a post-conference beer, abused the waitress, chanted 'German scum!' at the bemused bystanders, pushed a waiter's tray of empties on to the floor, treated him to a few minutes of shouted abuse, before mercifully leaving to be ambassadors for our great island race elsewhere. I was glad to be flying back to Paris and not back to England.

Lebkuchen

I'm writing from München where I am about to commence the second day of the Great Lebkuchen Hunt. If you've not heard of them, Lebkuchen are particularly delicious and popular (supposedly) German christmas biscuits. The best type are made by Schmidt, a Nuremberg based company who have no less than 11 shops in Munich, all open for pre-christmas biscuit buying. Despite my best efforts yesterday (I consider myself no amateur when it comes to shopping) I was unable to find even one of the shops and returned home sadly biscuitless. I am anticipating greater success today since I have found the addresses for the shops on the web!

Velib' update

Having actually read some of the Vélib' website now, I've realised it's an even better deal than I thought - for an annual fee of 29 Euros, the first half hour of every ride is free, and you can take as many half hour rides as you like every day so long as you check the bike back in. Yesterday, over morning coffee in Pick-Clops on my way to work, I read in Libération that sales of bicycles in Paris have actually gone up, 10 to 20%, since the Vélib' scheme started. "You should have been here on Saturday, it was insane!" said one bicycle shop owner the paper interviewed. Apparently people try the scheme and find it's really handy to go around Paris on a bike, but then they get up one morning and find all the Vélib's are gone from their local rack, or they're all broken or whatever, and they wish they had a bike of their own..

ENS-Cachan

I started work yesterday at the Normale Sup' in Cachan - all seems well. They have the essentials for computer science: an excellent free espresso coffee machine, a water cooler and a good bakery a 5 minute walk away. And some computers and stuff. I work in the left hand side of the building in the picture. Not sure who the architect was - he's probably keeping quiet about it.

La Langue

I'm very pleased because I've been accepted onto a French course for December. It is an intensive course for 3 weeks and I will have classes every morning from 9 until 1. It is at a small language school in the 11eme so I will be able to walk there in about 20 minutes. I'm looking forward to being able to understand a little more of what's going on.

Non à la prohibition



I'll tell you pourquoi - because I like to eat my sashimi without a nosefull of carcinogens coming from the two girls at the next table, who inevitably seem to order coffee and light up their Gauloise full strength as soon as Sam and I get our first courses. Well, ok, that applies more to restuarants than bar-tabacs, and to be fair, lots of restuarants here are non-smoking already or at least have non-smoking rooms. Interesting to see how this all works out come new year...

"Sam and Graham in France" is a bit of a lame title. Can anyone think of a better one? Suggestions to the usual email addresses please..

Galettes

Today is a holiday in France so the Marais is really busy with shoppers and promenaders. There is a small and cheapish place nearby doing good galettes where we managed to squeeze in for lunch. They are surprisingly filling, although we bought some tarts on the way home.