La Rentrée

Apparently the French have a term for the back-to-work, back-to-school period of late August: la rentrée, or literally, "the return." When I arrived in Lyon on the 19th, the place was dead: many restaurants and boutiques had shut down for the annual congé, or leave, not to reopen until the 28th of August. Larger chains were still open but even as the week opened many stores in the area where I live remained closed. If no one is living here during the month of August, why bother opening? Impossible to make a living off of tourists who will never make their way to these parts.

Little by little, activity has trickled back into Lyon and yesterday, the 28th of August, there were large droves of tourists and schoolkids out for their last few days without school mulling about on the main shopping streets of Rue de la Republique and Victor Hugo.

Just like in the U.S., stores are having their back-to-school sales on all sorts of goods for school-bound youngsters. I decided to pick up notebooks and pens now, while the sales are on and companies are giving free extras. Notebook sets of buy 3, get 1 free. Pens with 2 extra pens, free. And so on.

At the Wal-Mart-like hypermarché (place which sells both perishable goods and non-perishables on a large scale) supermarket Carrefour, I found an extremely good buy on half-sized notebooks: four for 1,61 EUR. They're a good size, compact and fit easily into backpacks but also in to pouches. I hope to go back and buy some more before they run out.