It's hard to tell exactly how big a deal this is here. It certainly doesn't seem to affect me directly; the heaters and oven in my apartment are electric, and France gets most of its electricity from nuclear power. It is probably a bigger deal in central and eastern Europe.
The weather also isn't as bad here as the story makes out; while they apparently had a big snowstorm here a day or two ago, as I write this it is 30 degrees and there is no snow on the ground in central Paris. (Even that is still worse than they are used to.) I did see a picture, which as far as I can tell is not online yet, of snowplows clearing drifts in front of the Duomo in Milan, and TV images of snow falling in Nice, on the Mediterranean, but that seems to have been a freak and localized storm.
The economy is definitely chilly; as I mentioned in my last post, we are now in one of the few periods of the year when it is legal for French stores to have sales, and they are certainly taking advantage:
Whether these 50% discounts apply to everything in the store, as I saw in New York last month, or only to "selected" merchandise, isn't yet clear -- the limited hours of French stores mean that I won't actually get to check it out until Saturday, probably. More to come.
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