In the past six months, bicycles have been pro-liferating in many French cities, and Toulouse is no exception. But these are not your ordinary, private bicycles; they are part of a red-and-white fleet lent to you by the city, complete with basket and bicycle lock. You can borrow one from any of 135 stations like this one, ride it wherever you like, then leave it at another station. If your trip has taken less than 30 minutes, you pay nothing. If longer, they debit your vélo subscription card or bank card a certain amount. You can buy subscriptions by the day, week, month, or year. And the bicycles supposedly fit everyone over the age of 14 -- don't ask me how! They are very popular, and you see all manner of people riding them everywhere. It's quite common to pass a station like this one and see only one or two bicycles left. So far I haven't tried it -- Toulouse is a real city, with crazy city traffic, and no one wears helmets. They apparently don't worry about lawsuits, either -- this would never fly in New York City (probably not even Palo Alto).
More surprises: a few weeks ago we stopped as usual at a newspaper kiosk to pick up a 10-pass métro ticket and a Le Monde. The cashier placed the newspaper on the counter and then plunked down a thick, hardcover volume of Plato on top of it.
Non, non, we said (thinking somehow our French was at fault), seulement le journal, s'il vous plait (impressed though we were that Plato was available at the same kiosk as cigarettes and métro tickets). Mais ça vient avec (it comes with it), she said, grinning.
After politely expressing our astonishment and gratitude, we carried the book out to the street and scrutinized the flyer inside: Les grands philosophes n'ont jamais été autant d'actualité (the great philosophers have never been so relevant to current events). It seems that the editors of Le Monde have decided that they and the great philosophers share the same mission in life: "to furnish keys for understanding the present, tools for figuring out reality, signposts for orienting oneself in history. Their goals have always been the same as ours: discovering truth, conceiving rules of ethics, and establishing a more just society" (roughly translated).
Wow. Quite a mission statement. Kind of puts "All the news that's fit to print" to shame. Anyway: as a promotion Plato comes free, but the subsequent volumes, appearing every week (Aristotle, Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, etc. ... collect all 20!), will cost you about 10 euros apiece with your copy of the newspaper. Me, I'm waiting for Montaigne's sortie on March 13th.
Luckily, if you're French, you work only 35 hours a week, plus 5-6 weeks vacation a year, so you might conceivably have time to read all this.
(Note: Tomorrow morning we leave to tour the Aquitaine region and the Pyrenees; no more blogs till the middle of next week!)
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