Bike sharing coming to New York?

I’m in New York City today, I’ve come home again for a baptism that was rescheduled due to last month’s hurricane.  It’s just a short trip for the weekend, so I’ve only brought a carry-on bag. Because I’m traveling light, I was able to take a bike to the train station this morning, which is always nicer than taking the tram.

I use the Brussels bike-share scheme every day actually, it’s quite nice to have in a city with not very comprehensive public transportation. It’s quite simple really. For €30 a year I can check out a bike from any the stations scattered around Brussels and return it to a different station at my destination. It’s free as long as I return it to another station within a half hour. If I want to take it out for longer, it’s €1 for every 30 minutes. It’s particularly nice because my apartment is downhill from my office, so I take the metro to work and check out a bike to coast home.

Today I’ve learned that New York is considering implementing a similar scheme. But will it work in New York as well as it’s worked in European cities?

No red carpet for pope in Britain

Back in September I wrote about my surprise when, during a visit to Prague, I was prevented from entering Prague Castle because the pope was paying a visit. I wasn't surprised that they weren't letting visitors in during the papal visit, that stands to reason. What seemed curious was the fact that we had been in Prague three days, made the journey all the way up the the castle, and all that time we had no idea the pope was visiting the city. Indeed, there was absolutely no sign of the visit - no banners, no news reports, nothing. People on the street seemed to either be unaware or apathetic about it. I suppose that's not surprising in the most atheistic country in Europe. But at the time, I contrasted it to the huge pomp and ceremony that accompanied the pope's visit to Paris while I was living there in the fall of 2009. You couldn't get away from all the fuss during that visit!

When I learned this week that the pope is planning a visit to the UK, another of Europe's most atheistic countries, I wondered how the visit will contrast to the ones I've witnessed in Paris and Prague. I suspect it will be an animal all its own, but disinterest may not be the main reaction from the public. The Czech Republic may be a majority atheist country, but it is still nominally Catholic. So it isn't so unusual or notable that the pope would visit. The UK is very much not a Catholic country. Historically it and Prussia were always the most virulently anti-Catholic states in Europe. Not only does the UK have a protestant state religion (with the Queen as church leader), it is also still technically illegal for an heir to the throne or a government leader to be a Catholic. One of the main holidays here actually celebrates burning Catholic effigies.

'Black Thursday'

The one-day strike in France has come to an end, and despite some predictions, it didn't shut down the country. Yet for anyone who wanted to dismiss this simply as the French being French, there were signs today that this wasn't your average French protest.

The nation-wide industrial action severely disrupted air, rail and commuter service across the country. Air France stopped its flights, and hospitals had to operate at reduced capacity. Even journalists didn't show up for work today.

Industrial action is hardly unusual in France, but one thing was significantly different about today's strike: the protest wasn't against a specific issue, but rather at the government's handling of the entire global economic crisis. The French public is furious at the perceived unfairness of government bailouts going to the bankers and investors who caused the crisis in the first place. The protests turned violent this evening, with riots and fires erupting throughout the city and clashes with riot police.

Sarkozy recently said that a country like France will be hard to govern during this global economic crisis. He seemed today to be quite rattled by the strike. And with the dismal views coming out of Davos this week, things clearly are only going to get worse. As these protests keep occurring with increasing frequency in Europe, it's looking more and more likely that 2009 will be a year of discontent on the streets of Europe's capitals.

Getting Settled in Paris

I'm doing my freelance writing shift at a sidewalk cafe in St. Germain des Pres at the moment, a move necessitated by the internet being out at my apartment this morning. My French really isn't good enough to call the provider and find out what's going on, so I'm hoping the situation resolves itself on its own! But as long as I'm here, watching the pedestrians stroll along the cobblestoned Rue de Buci, I figured it would be a good time to write an entry about my first few weeks in Paris, and share some photos I've taken.

I've now been here about three weeks, and I'm slowly adjusting to the "work-at-home" lifestyle. I have a freelancing shift I do for a news web site in the morning, and then in the afternoons I have French class every day for four hours (2 hours of phoenetics, two hours of grammar). The schedule has kept me much busier than I thought I would be, as evidenced by my lack of blog posts recently. Obviously the events of this week in the world's financial markets have inspired some ideas, and there's an entry I want to write about the root cause of the crisis, but I just simply haven't had the time. Why aren't I writing it now? Well I'm at a cafe nursing my capuccino, and it seems more appropriate to write about life in Paris!

So far I've actually found everyone here to be really friendly and nice, which is completely different from my previous visits here when I was visiting. Perhaps it's because I'm speaking French with people, although for more complicated interactions that has been difficult. It really is just a shockingly beautiful city. I've been utilizing the city's 'velib' service, in which you can check out bikes from stations posted around the city and return them anywhere else. The first half hour is free, and it's just a euro for each half hour after that.

This past Sunday I rode my bike around the city a bit, first visiting the Palais Garnier, the grand opera house at the center of Paris. It was really stunniny, I'm hoping to see an opera there before I leave. Afterwards I rode the bike to La Defense, the business district outside the city that is similiar to London's Canary Wharf. The tendency in Europe over the past 30 years has been to impose height restrictions for buildings in the city centers and establish skyscraper zones in specific districts outside the city. It was interesting to be in La Defense on a weekend, as it was almost completely deserted and I was able to ride the bike all around the walkways, platforms and planks. It's much bigger than Canary Wharf, and some of the buildings are really quite interesting. I went behind L'Arc de La Defense, a huge arch-shaped building that mirrors L'Arc de Triomphe miles away. >That's where the construction for La Defense stops abruptly, because there's a massive (and chaotic) cemetary there. Bizarrely, there's this long wooden plank that extends out over the cemetary. it looks as if it should be over a beautiful waterfront, and I rode my bike down it assuming that at the end there would be a stairway to go down to the cemetary/construction zone. But there was nothing, just a big plankway overlooking graves and piles of asphalt. Perhaps they're planning to put something in this area later? Afterwards I rode my bike through the Bois de Bologna, a gigantic park on the outskirts of the city just outside the ring road. It was rather uninspiring, as my guidebook predicted. But apparently they're planning to give it a big revamp soon.

Class has been ok, but not ideal. To my dismay the other students turned out to be mostly American college kids, all either 19 or 20. There are some other "older students," but not many, and none of them are anywhere near my age. It would appear the students in the program are either 19 or 40, but nowhere in between! There's a significant contingent of Latin American college students as well, but the Americans make up the overwhelming (and loudest) majority. I don't have a problem with their being American per se, or the fact that they're young. But they're clearly in this course for a very different reason than us old folks. Theyre on their semester abroad, and the course is being paid for by mom and dad. For that reason most of them are not taking the classes very seriously, and seem to be more focused on where they're travelling to every weekend than with how their French is progressing. Don't get me wrong, I was one of them once too! I mean, my study abroad semester in Prague was academically challenging (it's known as the most academic of NYU's study abroad programs), but I definitly didn't take my Czech language course very seriously as a 21 year old spending a semester in Europe and jetting off on fabulous trips every weekend. But I'm not in that situation any more. It's very important for my career that I have a proficient level of French by the end of this course, and I resent it when the American college students speak in English during the class and don't do the homework, because it's wasting my time. Maybe I'm just becoming a cranky old man.

My verdict on the city so far is that it's beatiful, very fun, but I don't think I would live here long term. It may be large and cosmopolitan, but it just isn't an 'international' city on the model of London or New York. It actually feels quite provincial. Most everyone I meet here is French, and most of them have never lived outside the country. In fact, I've met two people who have never even left the country! I can't imagine meeting any such person in London. Paris is just very French, in a way that London is definitly not British! London may belong to the world, but Paris belongs to the French, and they make that very clear!

I have some friends from London scheduled to come visit over the next few weeks, so hopefully the Eurotunnel mess won't mess up their plans. Other than that I hope to take some weekend train trips over the next few weeks. I hope to visit Lille, Normandy and Brittany in particular.

Je suis arrivé à Paris

I've made it through my first few days in Paris, and actually the move has gone remarkably smoothly so far. My friend Lori came along to help me move and we took the Eurostar train over with three suitcases, two backpacks, and a giant Argos shopping bag full of coats. I guess I'm officially a migrant now. You bring the suitcases right on the train and there's no weight limit or anything, so it wasn't too much of a hassle. It's amazing though, a two hour train ride and I'm here in this completely different world. I'm so glad I took the train instead of a plane, it makes me feel like I'm not going very far from London. And really, I'm not am I?

Last week I had a series of goodbye drinks and festivities. First Wednesday night I had leaving drinks with my friends, then Thursday I had drinks with my coworkers, then Friday I had another night of saying goodbye in Soho before I left Saturday morning. It was all kind of surreal. On my walk from my flat to Seven Dials, walking down Monmouth Street, there's this spot where a French cafe faces an English cafe, and they each have these giant flags of each country, facing each other across the street. I just kind of stood there for a bit, as it seemed appropriate.

My flat here is great. It's a one bedroom in St. Germain des Pres, which is a really lively neighborhood. It's a nice place, perfect for what I need. And it's right next to the river so Notre Dame and Place St. Michel are just a 3 minute walk from my door. It's quite funny though because the decor is really feminine, kind of the polar opposite of my grubby London flat! It's a quick walk to the Sorbonne so it's perfect for going to class. The only problem is it's on a party street (the locals call it 'the street of the thirst') so there are people out partying in the street below my window every night till about 5am. There's no cars, so it's relatively quiet during the day, but at night is quite a different story! Ah well, I'll adjust to it probably.

Paris

I went to Paris this weekend with Josh and Lori, who are both also recent transplants to London from New York City. As you can imagine it was a weekend of esoteric New York references. We took the train there which was really nice, I loved not having to fly. I was a bit annoyed that we had to go through this extensive passport and immigration check on both ends though, because you don’t have to do that on most inter-country train routes elsewhere in the EU.

It was a great time to be in France because they are gearing up for round two of their presidential election, which I’ve been writing about in this blog. The atmosphere is quite heated and everyone is abuzz about it. France had an 86 percent turnout for the first round of elections, so really everyone you meet has some kind of opinion on it. The contest for the second round is for Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, who would be the first female president of France, and conservative Nicholas Sarkozy, who was the interior minister under conservative president Jacques Chirac, who is now retiring.

There were posters and flyers everywhere, and tons of people running around handing out campaign literature (all for Segolene, Paris is solidly Socialist). Actually the whole time we were there I only saw one poster for Sarkozy, and someone had drawn a little Hitler mustache on him. The rest were all for Royal. Actually it was funny, the two friends I was with didn’t know anything about the French election, and Lori thought the posters were ads for some kind of beauty product. “Easy breezy beautiful cover girl!” Because, as you can see in the photo, Segolene is hot!

I used every opportunity to chat up people we met about the election. It seemed most people, especially people we met at gay bars, were Segolene supporters. But we did make a new friend Mattieu, who took us to this spot under a bridge on the Seine where all these university students hang out to drink beer. Here’s a photo (ah the joys of having a camera phone). Mattieu is a Sarkozy supporter, and the reasons he gave for this support I thought sounded totally rational and reflect my own opinions on the race. If France is looking for change, Sarkozy inspires a lot more confidence that he is the candidate who can bring that change, whereas Segolene seems more like the status quo. Ironic when you consider that Sarkozy was actually a part of the conservative government that has done basically nothing for the past five years. In fact the last five years of conservative rule have seen nothing but social tension and economic struggles. But Sarkozy has billed himself as an “outsider,” and for the most part the characterization has worked. And considering he seems to not be a big fan of Chirac and was actually working behind the scenes to overthrow him while he was interior minister, this may not be an audacious claim to make. But in the debate coming up in a few days, Segolene really needs to emphasize that Sarkozy is part of the ruling party of the last five years and shoot down this "outsider" label.

In general I was very impressed with how excited and engaged everyone was with the election. In the US what I mostly hear in the runup to an election is how sick everyone is of it, as if they’re angry that this democratic exercise would take time away from their nightly Friends reruns. Coming from a country which struggles to get a 40 percent turnout for elections, I was certainly impressed with French civic participation.

Actually, funny story. Me and Lori were sitting outside of a bar in The Marais, and this group of college-age boys came down the street getting people's attention and giving them pieces of paper. “Ugh,” Lori exclaimed, “here come the twinks with their flyers!” I confess I thought the same thing, as they resembled the army of pre-pubescent looking boys who accost people with flyers on Old Compton Street in London.

But then the boys started shouting “Segolene! Segolene!” and gave Lori a flyer. “What is this Segolene place?” Lori demanded. I burst out laughing when I saw the flyer, a promotional brochure outlining Segolene’s policies and platform. Of course the cynical New Yorkers assume a group of young gay boys are doing something stupid and frivolous. In fact they were young campaign volunteers working for change. For the rest of the weekend every time we saw campaign flyers we would say, “damn twinks with their flyers” and share a good laugh at ourselves.

This trip to Paris was much better than my last one, which was in the winter with awful weather. I went for a week by myself on my way back to New York after living in Prague, and I was depressed because I didn’t want to be leaving, so I spent the whole time moping. This time was much more fun, and the weather was great.

Some observations about Paris. The Paris metro is 1,000 times better than the London tube, although still not as good as New York’s I don’t think. It’s just below the surface like New York’s so getting down to the tracks is easier, and switching trains is a breeze. They also have the RSS trains which run on the same metro system, which are big trains that make only a few stops in the city so they’re sort of like express trains.

We all speak French but out of the three of us Lori’s was the best. She also hasn’t taken French since high school and I was surprised by how good hers was, and it made me realize that mine is really bad! I think also when you’re with a person who’s a better French speaker than you, you tend to kind of tune out and let them handle all the talking, because I was much better with the French last time I was there.

I’m making the final preparations for my big Germany-Denmark-Sweden trip in 2 weeks. It will be about half working and half pleasure, so in total it should be pretty exhausting. But the nice thing is since I’m working I can actually stay in hotels rather than hostels. I made some sort of public map on google, I’m not sure how it works but here’s a link to it. I’m not exactly sure why you would want to share maps, but I guess this is an instance where you might want to do it.