Quiet conditions in a train station in Lille, northern France, made for excellent acoustics as a piano player improvised over Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata during the first day of a rail workers’ strike on April 3

The head of the SNCF, France’s state-owned rail company, said that only 10 to 20 percent of trains were expected to be running during the day, La Depeche reported.

The four main rail workers unions supported the strike, which was organised in opposition to government plans to make the SNCF profitable. Some unions see this as a step toward privatization, Reuters said. Credit: Claire Lefebvre, La Voix du Nord via Storyful