the right time

One of my favorite scenes in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's 2001 movie Amélie shows the film's protagonist, the world's greatest philanthrope by the word's original meaning, hurrying through the grimy Gare de l'Est. Amélie is hot on the heels of the mystery man that haunts the photo-machines of Paris, but the good girl that she is she has the time to stop for a beggar despondently leaning against a dark wall. She gets her wallet out to drop the old man a franc, but he parries her gesture with a line that goes a long way toward explaining France: "Sorry Madam, I don't work on Sundays." In France, even vagabonds take the weekend off. Think about what this kind of self-image implies.

The scene is neither a cinematic distortion of reality nor a manifestation of the bizarreness of France. It's a reflection of how a substantial number of Europeans deal with hardships. Depending on your political leanings you'll call it keeping your dignity or ignoring reality, but you can't deny that such behavior exists. On my way back from Germany this afternoon, I was reminded of just how entrenched it is.

One of the pleasures of flying Lufthansa is the generous selection of free newspapers at the departure gate. In a habit developed when I took regular long train trips, I grabbed a Zeit, a massive broadsheet weekly that weighs a good pound and unfolds to more than a meter. It cannot be read in the confines of economy class but shrinks to nothing, with insightful comments, well-reasoned opinions and in-depth reporting, the time before take-off and after landing.

What caught my eyes this week, though, was non of the above. In a story about the fragile economic situation in Greece was this brilliant sentence: "Many expect unrest in fall when the Greeks return from their vacations." Like the beggar in Amélie, the Greeks won't let their predicament come between them and a holiday.

How tough is it in Greece? How hard are the austerity measures, the economic downturn, the lay-offs and the increases in retirement age? I don't know; I've never been there. But I'm guessing that while things are serious from a European perspective, on a global scale they're overblown. People have houses, people have food. They are educated and have reason for optimism. Most importantly, they have a tradition of taking the summer months off and won't let the government or the economy take that from them. If the system has to be fought, it will have to wait until the people can make time.

There is precedence for such behavior, for time-managing labor strife and public unrest in seemingly incongruous ways. In France, temporarily unemployed part-time actors, night-club bouncers and musicians have been known to go on strike while they were unemployed. Hard times call for hard measures.