Day 26. A try to go to Montpelier with a strike

Thursday morning I read the French news and it seemed the national strike against increasing the retirement age for the public sector from 50 years old to about 60 was about to an end. The negotiations had started on Wednesday. Also those we were on strike had already lost a week of the November salary and I though that would be quite harmful for a family budget. With all this I though it was time to move again and leave Grenoble. The idea was to spend two days in Montpellier and then two days in Marseilles. Possibly my friend Sofia could come and meet me in the week-end in Marseille since she had never been there, too.

This day was another bad luck day. I should not have left the sleeping bag :). I checked in the French national railroad site since I could not trust my Train Bible - the Thomas Cook European Time Tables. Everything was fine and I just had to travel to Lyon and take another train from there to Montpellier.








The train to Lyon was on time and the trip was quite fast, about one hour. However, in Lyon, the train station was a complete caos. I was not able to climb the stairs to reach my train to Montpelier since the previous trains had been canceled and many people were taking that train. I went to the information and there was a TGV train leaving in half an hour but there were only places on first class. That was a bit over my budget since my interrail ticket is second class and had to pay an extra supplement just to get in. I checked my book and there were still a few trains the same day from Lyon to Montpellier.


Bad luck, when asking in the informations those trains were all canceled and there was not another train this day. I checked then the trains to Marseille thinking that maybe I could go there first... but the only train had just left 10 minutes before. So after a few hours in the train station, yes in Lyon was raining heavy and I was not able to visit Lyon either, decided to try to take a train back to Grenoble. On No... there were no trains to Grenoble, too. The strike was still very strong this day. With a bit of effort I was able to find a bus alternative that I could enter with my InterRail ticket since the SNCF was paying for it.





In the end it was more then 6/7 hours in trains, busses and stations and was back to the first place again :)

Time to have dinner, sleep and try again in the next day :P

Day 23 to 25. Grenoble

Grenoble is a town that I do know very well. Since 1998 that I'm coming here almost every year for a few days. Sometimes years (1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005) stayed longer and profited of the mountains for a few months. I already said goodbye to Grenoble a few times thinking that it would take some years to be back again but was always wrong and visited again Grenoble sooner then expected. Well, here I am again !



I visited a few friends, got a permission to visit my ex-work place and meet my ex-supervisor :). It was a strange feeling to be on this places and meet this persons not having the felling of belonging here anymore.

Monday was disappointing. One of the reasons I made an effort to arrive to Grenoble in the beginning of the week was to have dinner with two special friends, Sofia and Paco. They are student and supervisor, respectively. Paco was coming to Grenoble to have the annual meeting with his student and her other supervisors.

Unfortunately, the ESRF travel office canceled the electronic ticket. This was some kind of mistake and Paco stayed for 2h in Lisbon's airport just to understand he could not fly. So my dinner was postponed to another time but my disappointment was nothing compared to the disappointment of them. For them it was work, hours lost, many effort done so that this meeting could take place. Was a big flop :-( . Well one must understand this things happen sometimes and be able to overcome the frustration. The ESRF travel office offer excuses....

The ESRF - European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

For those who do not know, the ESRF is an international research site. 18 countries support its budget but some of them are only observers and cannot vote and decide about its future (portugal is an observer).

The ESRF is a special kind of particle accelerator but with a different purpose of the well known CERN in Switzerland. The ESRF purpose is to produce high energy light in the X-ray bandwidth region. For this the ESRF is called a Synchrotron. My research work needed this high brilliant and strong light beams.






The research site where the ESRF is located is shared with the most powerful nuclear reactor for research, the ILL. (see picture on the left). Other research labs share also the same site like the EMBL, Grenoble outstation and the PSB, partnership for structural biology. Making this place an unique place to work. Many different cultures, languages and people working on the same place. This is not only exciting but rewarding in all levels not just professionally.










Oh almost forgot... I went to a old friend barber shop .. check bellow the result :)