On va prendre le risque

I passed another great French milestone yesterday--I experienced my first French strike!

It's kind of funny--I don't remember EVER being affected by a strike anywhere else I lived, but France is rather notorious for workers strikes (admit it, you are), and it was pretty excepted that I should live through at least one during my time here.

Essentially, this is what happened: both the RATP and SNCF workers who run the RER A and RER B (like S-Bahn/distance trains) were on strike (from what I understand, they had to get extra training and wanted to be paid more because of it), so the RER B--what I take--was only running piecewise, with no service between Gare du Nord and Denfort Rochereau. This was not a huge problem for me, since I take the normal métro in the morning to get to the Gare du Nord and then go to the suburbs from here. However, there were also only 1 of 2 trains running on the line (or 2 of 4, according to some sources :P).

50% is not so bad, I thought, and left at 9:30 instead of the usual 10 AM to get to my 11:30 class. What I did not anticipate, however, is that they would be leaving from a different track. After running around the station, which, while quite well-marked for the actual lines, is not very well-marked for track numbers, I finally found where I was supposed to be departing from. I thought.

Everyone else seemed similarly confused. "Does this train go to Charles DeGaulle?" asked some tourists.

"Yes, we think so," responded one of our fellow passengers. Well, that's reassuring. Sort of.

Others continued to board. "Excusez-moi, mais savez-vous si ce train va à Charles de Gaulle ?" a man asked me.

"Um, je suis pas sûre," I replied. "Il y a quelqu'un qui a dit que oui, mais je n'ai rien vu personellement." (I'm not sure...someone said it did, but I didn't see anything personally.)

Another man got in. He addressed the man who had just spoken to me. "Est-ce que ce train va à Charles de Gaulle ?"

"Nous, on pense que oui, mais on ne sait pas," he replied. "On va prendre le risque." (We think so, but we don't really know. We're going to take the risk.)

This answer just tickled me. Once again, despite an utter lack of information and the potential for chaos and confusion, the French manage to keep a level head. Bravo :)