FRANCE - PARIS

Since I have been living in Paris, I have regularly witnessed various different strikes, as well as demos. On October 14, in the north of France, refinery workers went on strike, resulting in almost all gas stations in the Paris area being out of gasoline and diesel. At the few gas stations where it was still possible to fill up, queues were forever long, and people had to wait up to 3 hours to refill their tanks. A few days later, employees of nuclear power plants and railroad workers also joined the strikes and stopped working. This combination meant that no public transport was running, nor was it possible to drive, and cabs and Ubers were so busy that it was impossible to get one.

Since I live just outside of Paris, the strike affected my friends and me especially and we had to constantly resort to bicycles or walking. The public transportation strikes were nothing new to me, as I have had to deal with very fluctuating bus times, as well as frequent train cancellations, on a very regular basis since I have lived in Paris. The so-called " mouvement social" or strikes in general lead to very irregular train/bus travel times, which has already brought me to complete despair. I waited several times over 30 min for buses or trains, and once even waited for two h. The biggest problem I have/had with it is that the waiting times are not communicated as such. There are specific apps that are supposed to show you the exact time the bus is coming, but the information is often not accurate, and the times jump back from 3 minutes to 50 minutes.

There were also huge demonstrations in downtown Paris with over 100,000 participants. Due to the rising cost of living, the unions called a strike, which led to mass demonstrations. For me, this experience of such a large demonstration was something new, as I have seen smaller demonstrations (e.g., against the political situation in France), but I have never witnessed a peaceful demonstration of this size. I lived in Nantes a few years ago and witnessed violent demonstrations in which the demonstrators set fire to garbage cans and police cars.

Another difficulty, which I encountered more often in this context, is the general issue of punctuality. In France, there is a general opinion that it is considered rude to be late because you are wasting other people's time, but in everyday life, punctuality plays a rather minor role. If a party starts at 22:00, then at the university, as a rule, no French person will be found at this party before 23:00. This phenomenon applies not only to party life but also to some other areas of general public life. I am a very punctual person and learned in my bachelor's that academic punctuality (15 min before) is always to be respected, so I am very rarely late. For me personally, it was very difficult to deal with being late or even running late for university due to bus delays or train cancellations.

To my luck, the irregularities do affect us not only us students but also some of the lecturers, which has also already led to the fact that our lecturers have been late. I gradually came to terms with the situation, and I think I started to adapt a bit. I no longer stress myself out excessively about the situation, and I try to be more understanding with my friends when they are running late for team calls or sports again.