Unhappy New Year

I may be the only American to ever have taken part in a this franco-french ritual- les voeux (new year's wishes) given by the President of the Regional Council. And I lived to tell...

There were over 1000 people (of the over 5000 who work for the Regional Council assembled in the concert hall where the DGS (directeur général des services aka the guy who does all the work but doesn't have the power of signature) gave his voeux to everyone, thanking the president for a wonderful year and then giving us our gift : a hand cranked flashlight. He even mentioned "us", the 35 people from 14 different countires working for territorial cooperation and bringing a butt load of European funds and prestige to the region. After an hour of thank yous from the 8 vice presidents of the region and 20 or so minutes in which the President indirectly belittled Sarko who came to Lille in a private TGV for his voeux aux fonctionnaires (wishes to the civil service) earlier in the week (in which he and his entire entourage took 5 private buses to go the 1km from the station to the Préfecture effectively shutting down the entire city and then promised general job insecurity in the public service and the mayor of Lille gave him a bike custom made for his size) there was a show: a burlesque opera called Le Petit Opera Therapeutique which opened with the following verse "many babies seem dead when born"and sang on for another 30 minutes about various ways to help asphixiation (it was actually kind of funny but strange). This was followed of course by alcohol and local snacks like waffles, caramel and some sort of bread pudding which looked like regurgitated cat food.

So the next time you wonder why french civil servants are unhappy, unpleasant, depressed, overwieght, alcoholic or seem to take advantage, look no further than the new year's voeux.