"Bonne Rentrée!"

It's on the lips of every parisian today, and will be for about a week. Rather like "Merry Christmas" or "Happy New Year", it rolls off the tongue by habit, and from what I have ascertained, it is considered etiquette obligatoire. I find it rather hilarious that there is a phrase in french that refers to returning home from vacation, but as I illiterated in "August: the Month that Time Forgot", life as one knows it ceases to exsist here for about six weeks in the summertime, beginning in mid-July. Shops close, and the streets are quiet save for a smattering of tourists. Gare Montparnasse, a major train station that is my main artery to and from the burbs is all but deserted until the last weekend of August, when just as suddenly as the exodous turned Paris into a ghost town, it is jammed with 14 million people all trying to get home at the same time! Being there is like negotiating through a war zone full of land mines in the form of suitcases on wheels and small dogs - the former smashing your toes and the latter tripping you. Not to mention the française who hold their ground and defer to no one. The worst time to be there is on Sunday anytime after 6 p.m. (until midnight) as the french stay on holiday until the last possible moment, opting to return a mere 8 hours before returning to work on Monday morning. Then it's "Bonne Rentrée!" all day long as colleagues and friends greet one another and share the details of their vacances'. The routine of daily life has been restored to normal once more, it is the official beginning of the New Year in France.