Ça rend chèvre

So I've now been back for barely 4 days and today was already grève and manif day 1. Today's nation-wide strike and manifestation, as it's been for a whie now, was in protest of raising the retirement age from the current 60 years, to (the French record-high) 65 years. Even 60 is a recent jump up from the previous situation, which no one is particularly happy about.

In today's manif in Metz there were metalworkers, teachers, miners and other taxing professions.

After marching through town, they assembled in front of the Opéra-Théâtre, where I happened to have a nearly-front-row-seat as I was reading on a bench on a pedestrian bridge in "my backyard" (are you jealous yet!?!)

Hoards and hoards of people kept pouring in across this bridge, for nearly an hour, before all arrived.

They had balloons, signs, lots of noise-makers, vans piping Village People classics, with the lyrics rewritten, criticizing Sarkozy and the retirement changes.

My favorite though were these stickers, that members of the teacher's union were sporting. It says "30 students in a class, that makes you crazy," though the idiomatic phrase rendre chèvre literally means "to make someone a goat" - kind of like "to get someone's goat," in English. Funny how that goat pops up in each language.

Never a dull moment in Metz!