“Aucun tram et bus ne circule.”
This means “no trams or buses today.” Why, you ask? Well, according to the TBC website, there was a strike/demonstration today (a grève), planned to coincide with the strike by the national teacher’s association… meaning that in addition to me having no way to get to school, which I actually needed to go to, my homestay brother, Balam, got to sleep in and didn’t have to go to school. Evidently, they passed out fliers announcing the planned absence of all staff that day.
My story begins with me standing in the freezing cold waiting for the bus at 7:45am… after getting up at 6:30am. The bus is late, but I suspect that if it’s already 5 minutes late, then its not going to show up (this has happened before) and I’ll have to wait for the 8:01 bus and deal with the tram being very crowded. There is one other guy standing at the bus stop waiting with me… he’s also waiting for the 34; I recognize him from prior days at the bus stop. Then, a series of rather strange and certainly unusual events occurs.
First, the guy waiting next to me gets a phone call. He mumbles something in unintelligible French and hangs up. 30 seconds later, he gets another phone call, mumbles again, and walks away.
Event Two: There is a middle-school aged girl who lives in the house directly across from the bus stop. Every morning, she meets her friend outside and they jaywalk across the street to the bus stop. Today, she meets her friend outside and they head to the crosswalk. Weird, I think, but I guess they’ve decided to be safe this morning... except that instead of turning back towards the bus stop when they cross the street, they keep going, meaning that they’re not talking the bus this morning and they’re walking wherever they need to go.
Event Three/Realization #1: The people waiting for the 34 on the other side of the street (as in the bus going in the opposite direction as the one I’m waiting for) walk away. I realize that I haven’t seen any bus at all in any direction… and I should have seen about four by this point in time.
Event Four: The French guy waiting for the bus next to me (a new French guy) looks at the bus schedule and says “Je crois qu’il n y a pas de bus aujourd’hui.” (Translation: I don’t think that there are any buses today.) Greaaaaaaat.
I walk home and my homestay mom says “there’s no bus?!” Me: “Nope.” I check the website, which informs me that “Aucun tram et bus ne circule” due to a strike. Meaning that I have no way to get to school, save walking or biking or driving… and no one else in the city of Bordeaux has the ability to get anywhere either. Thankfully, my homestay mom has a lunch date in Talence (where campus is) at around 11:30, so she drives me and Lauren to school… and then comes back and picks us up at 3:30, since we were basically stranded once she dropped us off. I missed my first class and my second class, but I did indeed make it to my third and final class… then returned home to check the times for the SNCF (railway) strikes to make sure that we wouldn’t have any problems the next day with our TGV train to Barcelona… thankfully, the email from SNCF that informed me of the strike (with precise hours) reassured me that this voyage would be sans problèmes.
Ah, la France.
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