'Système D' They Say

I've recently discovered something I both love and hate at the same time, for which France is quite popular: la grève. For all you non-French speakers out there, that's a strike. But we're not talking soccer-moms-with-pickets-protesting-outside-the-local-townhall, I'm talking about a full-on strike. Well, in France, this means that in order to go on strike and protest for better wages/conditions/union rights blah blah blah, that your job is to a.) not show up to work and b.) manifest at La Bastille as our famous ancestors did back in the day (you know, like the French Revolution, where they systematically dismantled the royal prison). We're talkin' parades, posters, angry people yelling, calm people singing, barbecues (!) and a variety of colorful balloons. I find this whole process iconically...French. Why? Because they really love their liberties and rights and take them very much to heart. That's why when the French are unhappy about something (which is usually...all the time, concerning Sarkozy, transport problems, Sarkozy, schools, the EU, Sarkozy) they'll protest it. A friend in Rennes (in Bretagne) even participated in a parade-type strike where angry moms and children sang and yelled about how much Sarkozy sucks.
This is just a little intro to the reason we had all our classes cancelled last Thursday: la grève. Except that this was no ordinary strike, we're talking a national strike where all public transportation is shut down across the country and people basically manifest and yell about everything they're pissed off about. This ranges from union rights (hence, transportation) to angry students protesting Sarkozy's reforms to angry professors protesting their students on strike to angry moms protesting the professors on strike.
Basically, Thursday was predicted to be a mess.
Actually, it reminded me a bit of the weather report of an ominous snowstorm; everyone predicts the worst, freaks the shit out of everybody else, and by the time the thing rolls around, it's never half as bad as we expect it to be.
That's kind of what this strike was like. Newspaper stands (called "La Presse") are laden with papers predicting the worst for Thursday. Strike reports (yes, reported exactly like the weather) say that the entire country will be immobilized, paralysed, you name it, on Thursday. And why would a country do this to itself and harm an entire day of precious work and income? For liberty's sake. To prove "Yea man! We worked hard for this right to protest and goddammit, we're gonna USE IT!"
My professors cancelled all class on Thursday.
Turns out, it really wasn't that bad. One out of two metros were running on most lines and three out of four buses were running throughout the day. Helllllo? Told you they were freaking out. So this day was OK because most people could get to work, unless you worked at La Défense (the Wall Street of Paris) which is on the outskirts of the city and were totally screwed (the strike shut down the main RER B line.)
However, in the case of a bad strike-storm, that is when all modes of transport are paralyzed, how does anyone get anywhere? The Parisiens have a term for it called "Système D." It's just one of those phrases people throw out there when you're stuck in some shit (literally) and need to get yourself out. We call this démerder, which literally means to de-shit yourself (goes well with my dogshit entry, doesn't it? An ubiquitous theme here in Paris). A less vulgar word is débrouiller, which doesn't translate directly (philosophically-speaking, anglophones don't technically need a word for it..) but is something along the lines of "to figure it out, to manage."
So when I asked a fellow Frenchman how does everyone get to work all across town on Thursday if there's a grève, he simply replies, "Systeme D." Voilà. Everyone is stuck in the same shit as you, and therefore you are just as responsible to se démerder, get yourself out of the shit and get your ass to work. Even if it takes you three and a quarter hours to get there, you made it. Even if traffic is hell and you can't get a cab. Walk. The système D way.
So I may have had a ball on Thursday with no class (Marion and I checked out the Picasso/Manet exhibit at le Musée d'Orsay, frolicked around Montmartre, ate ethnic Thai dishes in Belleville) but there will come a day when I have to get to my internship across several arrondissements on a grève day. Let's hope that day doesn't come soon.

Some little anecdotes about words not to mix up between French and English:
exhibition actually means to expose yourself in French. You can imagine the reaction when I said I was going to an artist's exhibition at the Louvre. The word is exposition en français.
plein- in English, we say we are "full" when it's time to stop eating cuz there's enough food in our bellies. In French, to say "Je suis pleine" means you're pregnant, not full. Again, please imagine your host family thinks you're breaking the news about an unwanted pregnancy randomly at the end of a big meal.
*more to come later on! I have to embarrass myself fully before learning them the hard way.