london- Strike!

I am back in Britain in time to watch it….behave like France! The Metro workers have declared a 48 hour strike, which began Tuesday afternoon and will apparently continue for the next 2 days unless a deal is reached between the unions and the TFL. I seriously thought this was a Franco-German problem, but I guess not. Our HR department sent us an email yesterday afternoon telling us to make sure to go home before the 7pm deadline. I walked past several tube stations around 6:30 and it looked liked a war was about to break out. The entire entrance was jammed by people trying to get in the station before it closed, people were pushing, shoving and shouting at each other in frustration. This morning was more surreal. The streets seemed to be filled with businessmen walking briskly to work, looking frequently at their watches to see how late their pedestrian route would make them. The queues at bus stops were epic, as people desperately looked down the road to see if a red vehicle was moving their direction. Yet despite the feeling that the streets were crowded with people, the office was dead when I walked in. at least half the staff were missing. Some later made it in, late, with tales of hour long waits for the bus and other horrors. The head of marketing for one bank told me she thought she would escape the mess by taking one of the overland national rail services....only to arrive at the station to find it closed due to a suicide!
Even in the rain, I was grateful for my bike!