Quiz time

Who's on strike this week in Marseille?
A) The postal workers
B) The bus drivers
C) The garbage men
D) High school teachers

Strikes happen so often here in France, it's not even funny. You may remember when I just arrived in Marseille in September that the public transportation workers went on strike for 6 weeks. And then the high school and college students went on strike this winter. Not to mention the odd days here and there where the postal workers, trains, etc went on strike. I've gotten used to the strikes and the general inconvenience they cause. In general, we are given prior warning, like 3 days in advance, that a strike will take place. We grumble a bit and just go on with our day. C'est la vie, en France. But with a 35 hour work week, 5 weeks vacation per year, I don't know how they get any work done!

Who invented the trash can?
A) Mr Garbage--American
B) Mr Höchstetter--Swiss
C) Mr Poubelle-- French
D) Mr Falk--German


The answer to both above questions is C). The garbage men are on strike in Marseille. It's the 4th day now. I was downtown catching a bus, I can tell you I could SMELL the garbage. It's stacked in piles by the bins. I do hope they sort this out soon. It's starting to be tourist season, we don't want them having a bad impression of the city. Nor do I want to have to walk past the ever growing pile of smelly garbage in front of my own building. And it's hot here, folks. Over 30 C, so the stuff is rotting, fermenting and otherwise smelling up the city.
As for Mr Poubelle, he did indeed "invent" the garbage can, about 118 years ago, he decided the people of Paris needed some other way to dispose of their daily garbage ("ordures") other than the normal way of tossing it into the streets. Hence the start of garbage bins, garbage pickup and sanitary engineers, aka garbage men. I LOVE the word "la poubelle" or garbage can, named after the smart man, Mr Poubelle himself. That's poo-belle. Yep. Belle means beautiful in French. Yep. Enough said.