La grève

Jean and I went to Rennes to get another rental car. It was the day of the National Strike. What a mistake! We thought we had avoided the strike impacting us as the public school was cancelled but not our private Catholic one. Little did we realize that the center of the strike would be at the train station....the same train station where we needed to go to return our rental car.


It was a series of wrong turns that resulted in dead ends or the angry crowd. At one point we turned off the car, got out our groceries and tried to make a lunch. We had no idea how long we would be sitting at this dead end. We did not want to get in the middle of the angry crowd. We wanted to return the car and we needed to be back in Baden to pick up our kids which was a 2 hour drive away. How long would this go on?

Finally, we drove the wrong way down a one-way street, got onto a main street and drove as far away from the station as we could to regroup. We needed gas. We talked to the gas station guy who gave us some directions back to the train station. All traffic seemed to be moving smoothly. We thought as soon as there was a problem we would turn around and go back home ...but we kept driving and arrived at the train station. There was not a striking crowd. Had we dreamed it. Unbelievable! The crowd was gone. Oh! It was lunch time in France. The French can't miss lunch so the strike was over. The police were still there though..with full crowd control gear. I was afraid to take an upclose photo as one reads about the foreigner getting thrown in jail for taking a photo when it is not allowed.