Recycling, Paris-Style

So, this doesn't look like much, but it is the glass bottle recycling for our building. The recycling can itself is full, so we've had to add our bottles in plastic bags for the "guys" to pick up.

The interesting ideas about this are: 1) everyone in the building takes the glass recycling seriously 2) there are a LOT of bottles in our recycling considering how few people live in our building 3) the amazing recycling truck that picks up this load.

Where do I start? First we have several trash cans to choose from. The big green topped cans are for normal, household trash. This is picked up every day of the week except Sunday. Next, the yellow topped can which is for (weirdly enough: paper and cardboard, plastics and small household appliances) sorry, no idea how this all works! The last bin is the skinny, white-topped trash can that is earmarked for glass. In Paris, most of the contents of this can consists of wine and beer bottles. Oops! Why is this can always overflowing? Are people too eager to recycle? Or...

I was surprised that there is a special truck for the glass recycling. I watched the truck today. It arrives and the workers put the cans on a platform. Two fit at one time. Then a mechanism in the truck lifts the cans slowly over the back of the truck, eventually turning the cans upside-down and emptying the contents into the truck. Voila! Crash-Crash-Crash! All the bottles tumble loudly into the truck, the cans arrive on the sidewalk and the truck moves on.

All the ills of yesterday are erased and the can is empty, ready for today's bottles.

Le Pont

Le Pont is "the bridge" which is used to mean that a holiday is extended on either side of a weekend to get the maximum number of days off. November 11 (Tuesday) is a holiday. It never occurred to me that this would create a "pont" of four days, stopping me from doing a lot of important things.

Saturday, I tried to go shopping for some kitchen items I needed and tickets to two expositions. Shut down by massive crowds, I went home, empty-handed and tired. I had no idea why it was so crowded at the time.

Sunday was Sunday, nothing open, I'm used to that.

Monday rolled around, all should be normal, I thought. But, as I walked to the gym, most things were closed. Hmmm, what is going on? Then, I remembered, Tuesday is a holiday so everyone is making it a four-day weekend. Aargh! I guess I'll survive one more day, especially since I was completely innocent of these four days until this morning.

Much To Our Surprise

Another water crisis!

I turned on the water in the kitchen sink, around 8:30 AM and a trickle came out.

TER-REEEE! The water is off!

So, Terry went down to to check on it and sure enough, our water is off again today.

How Many Days Has It Been?

I bet you thought we were still without water. No, we're on to the next crisis.

I hate to whine all the time, but now we've had a holiday on Saturday (Toussaint) followed by Sunday (stores are closed) followed by Monday (many stores are closed and if they're not, they're closed from 12 noon until 2 or 2:30 PM).

Where does this leave me?

Hungry, without clean clothes and without a newspaper. Whine, whine!!!

I don't know how the small stores survive. On Saturday, I didn't take the holiday too seriously, since Saturday is a very big shopping day for people who work. Many, not all stores were closed. Sunday of course, nothing changes, most places are closed except a few small "Alimenation" which charge a fortune. I use them only if I am desperate for an ingredient.

But, Monday, I thought the world would "right' itself and things would be open. Ah ha! The things that are normally closed are closed. The things (like the grocery store, Franprix) that are open, are not well-stocked because they've been closed.

I had to "dig deep" to cook dinner tonight and I am not happy.

Odile says that all of this is historic and hard to change. All I can say is, "where are the French entrepreneurs?" Those people who want to work extra-hard to earn more money? I guess they're at the cemetery visiting their loved ones or at their country house, closing it up for the winter.