With a couple of hours to kill before meeting Heidi at la Gare du Nord on Saturday afternoon I decided to seek out the Canal St Martin area, which I had heard was the latest hotspot for up and coming designers and artists, as well as a hip place to party come nightfall.
The Bastille area of Paris, of which the canal is a neighbour, has long been the centre of rowdy demonstrations of democratic strength by the french lower classes. The most famous of these, of course, being the french revolution....but the french are still known to regularly throw their weight around in protestation...there are regular strikes of postal workers and train drivers which tend to disrupt the country somewhat.
So when I arrived above ground at the Place de la Republique metro station to dozens of police wearing full riot gear and heard the sounds of chanting and yelling from the thousands of people clambering on the statue and milling around it waving Tunisian flags I wasn't necesarily surprised but I was definitely wary. Not particularly fancying a mouthful of tear gas, any sane little aussie chick on her own would have meekly turned around and moved on to the next metro stop....
Not me....
Curious to find out what was going on and drawn by the crowds I made my way to the square, closer to the statue and stood on the edges of the demonstration watching the flag waving chanters, trying to work out what they were protesting/celebrating. Of course I know of the troubles in Tunisia at the moment but the atmosphere was celebratory (I have since found out that France refused the Tunisian prime minister assylum that day and I believe the crowd was celebrating that decision...)
In the end the police seemed to be enjoying a nice day in the sun. The crowd seemed well behaved, if excited, and eventually I moved on to a lovely walk along the canal and my excited visitor watiing at the train station...
till next time.
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