FRANCE: Pique-nic

Marchais eats a few words

Around the bend of the roller coaster, a booth peddled oysters, glasses of chilled Muscadet and posters decrying Brittany's disastrous oil spill of last spring. With a fine Gallic disdain for international worker solidarity, another food kiosk sold sangria and the message: SPAIN IN THE COMMON MARKET. A BAD BLOW FOR FRANCE. Workers hawked dish towels underneath a sign pleading SAVE THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY OF THE VOSGES. Break-the-bottle games featured images of such popular villains as French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and West German Chancellor Helmut...

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