Reading: Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything – a laymans book about the greatest discoveries in science, really quite funny, actually. Who knew scientists were such a bizarre bunch. Take the attidude of deep-sea decompression researcher J.B.S. Haldane towards the effects of the ‘bends’ and his self-experimentation:
“Collapsed lungs were a routine hazard. Perforated eardrum were quite common, too: but, as Haldane reassuringly noted in one of his eassays, ‘the drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment.” p301.
Hey, who wouldn’t want to give up their hearing for a neat party trick! 
Seriously, I’m beginning to wonder how it is that men once believed that they had the rationality and women had the childishness.
Watching: Deathproof – was expecting it to be terrible, but you gotta love Zoe Bell, that is one cool Kiwi. The film has absolutely no point to it, but that’s fine. Brick Lane – rather beautiful, important movie, which doesn’t end as many of these kind of movies do, so was very refreshing.
So much for Strasbourg
So, my big disaster of the day, is that after carefully spending the day before packing, doing my laundry, scrubbing my room and the house, laying my clothes out, waking up at 5am, being ready on time, and even arriving at the train station 10 minutes before the departure (usually it’s 2 minutes and I have to run), I missed my train to Strasbourg this morning. Why? Well, I hadn’t bothered to check if the train departed from Lille-Flandres Station (domestic trains, usually) or Lille-Europe (international trains). I suppose my Strasbourg train was actually on its way somewhere else – it’s very close to Germany. I realised at about 6 minutes before departure and ran as best I could in tight jeans and a bung knee to Lille Europe, to miss my train by 1 minute. Fuck.
Of course, the ticket was non-refundable, and, being France, the ticket I originally paid 30 euros for, three months ago, now costs 129 euros, so there I was, not going to Strasbourg. Defeated, stinking and sweating like a pig in my snow jacket (remember, I was on my way to Iceland), I had to stumble home and go back to bed.
All is not lost for the whole trip – instead of going from Strasbourg to Brussels, and then Brussels to Caroline’s house for Christmas, I’ll just go straight to Carolines on Christmas eve (from Caroline’s I go to the airport for Iceland); I’ve already considered going to spend Tuesday night in Bruges (it’s in Belgium, boom cha) – technically, the reason I wanted to go to Strasbourg was to see the Christmas markets, and Bruges is very Christmassy at the moment, I’m sure. I can drink mulled wine anywhere. I could totally kick myself up the arse, though.
Baggio riots continued
Anyway, Friday was my last ‘working’ day; in inverted commas as, a) I only have one class on Fridays, b) I arrived at the metro station to be told that all the metro was closed down, c) I had to walk to Baggio, and I arrived half an hour late for my one-hour long class, and d) there was only one student. But, it was informative; the one student was a kid who loves to talk, and he happily described the morning events to me:
- the metro had been closed down because of fires at Baggio, under the metro line. This occured exactly five minutes before I arrived at my metro station to go to work (!)
- there had been three more fires, and when firemen had arrived, they’d been pelted with stones and bricks, so they turned around and promptly left the fires – and the firebugs – to themselves
- aerosol cans had been thrown into the fires to cause mini-explosions
- more kids were arrested, more glass was smashed, more wheelie bins set alight, the chicken wire barricades destroyed, and a public telephone destroyed. No cars were set alight this time, though this may have more to do with people now parking their cars far far away from Baggio.
From inside Baggio looking towards the carnage.
Yep, its the end of the poor bus shelter.
Baggio door with Anarchist posters ripped off.
Melted plastic (from Wheelie bins) and newspapers on the road.
Remains of a wheelie bin.
Barricade smashed against bin.
The bus shelter across the road.
Remains of another wheelie bin.
Where they got the bricks to throw at the firemen.
Scorchmarks on the Baggio main entrance.
Police safety barriers - or whats left of them.
On another note, if you’d like an idea of what Baggio normally looks like without the carnage, have a look at the Google street view which was taken on a pleasant summers day …
Lycee Baggio on Boulevard d’Alsace, Lille, Google Street View
Can you spot the whole and complete bus shelters? The lack of scorch marks? The lack of mounds of melted wheelie bin in the road?
Well, it’s school holidays now, hopefully this will fizzle over the winter break. While it’s been exciting, it is getting a little tiresome having only one student in a class, or even more so, hanging around in the teacher’s room waiting to see if any will turn up.
Meanwhile, I’ll be focusing on my trip ahead.
