Basically everybody in France goes on vacation for the month of August. We all know this. But what I didn't know until today was that the coming back from vacation and starting school and going back to work is this whole big thing. They even have a word for it: rentree (with an accent over the first e). Like it looks, it means re-entry, as in re-entering the "real world". Everything starts up again. People make resolutions, like we do on New Year. There are all these articles in the magazines about it, like "How to Make Rentree as Smooth as Possible" or "The 10 Must-Haves for Rentree." Weird, huh? Well, it's only weird because we don't have anything remotely like that here in the land of "What Vacation?" How ironic that in the so-called Land of the Free, we have less free time than anybody because we're always working. Imagine a month of doing essentially nothing. So much nothing that experts make money telling people how to get their lives in gear.
This summer has been remarkable only in terms of the weather. It's been stellar. It's been one astoundingly gorgeous day after another. Unfortunately I have spent most of them in a windowless office. But I'm not going into that now. As sad as I am to see summer go, I am now counting the days until the Large Hadron Collider goes online at CERN in Geneva on September 20th.
5 comments:
Are you gonna be there?
Sigh. If only. I'll drink anyway, though. What are you doing to celebrate?
I used to work for a German company, and it sucked that they all went on vacation for the entire month of August and didn't let us do it.
Ive been on vacation all summer. But now thats over and its back to work for me. I need the paycheck badly though.
Oh I'll have a toast, no doubt. :)
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