France wins the World Cup!
What is this doing here? This is a food blog, right? Well, yes, mostly, but it is also about travel and we have just spent the most extraordinary two days here in Paris.
I’m not a big fan of football/soccer but I recognize a big deal when I see it. At the Aeroport Charles de Gaulle when we descended the stairs to enter border control, we were greeted by three ladies with the French flag painted on their cheeks and LIPS to guide us to the proper queue.
The highway connecting the airport to the city was jammed to a crawl with dozens of cars waving flags and honking horns. Our taxi driver was forced into an alternate route that took nearly twice as long as usual, muttering “le foot” with scorn all the way.
Some of the bars and brasseries in our neighborhood had mounted TVs and were packed with people waving flags, sporting blue, white, and red makeup, hair accessories, and fright wigs while they became right raucous before the match.
Right below our balcony a loud crowd assembled at Carmen’s, a brasserie, that spilled out into the street while yelling football chants and singing La Marseillaise. Each time Les Bleus scored a goal, the crowd outside erupted and when the game ended it was if they had witnessed the second coming.
A couple of hours later at dinner, we watched as a group across the street blew horns, stopped cars to slap high fives through open windows and make noise. This wasn’t the millions of people partying on the Champs-Élysées but a group of folks from the neighborhood celebrating their team’s success.
Of course the next day, the center of Paris was paralyzed as millions more arrived with honking honks and The Tricolor everywhere to welcome the players as they arrived home from Moscow.
Well, so what. People go nuts over sports events all and can hardly be considered remarkable. I have personally witnessed Boston and Philadelphia going bonkers over dramatic championships from their baseball and football teams but this was different.
I can’t really say that the intensity of the last two days here in Paris was greater than that of Philadelphia following their first ever Super Bowl victory, but Philadelphia’s celebration was only Philadephia’s. The French celebration was a NATIONAL event.
We Americans don’t have that. When a team wins the World Cup,or the Grand Prix or the Tour de France it becomes a moment that unites the country in pride. When an American team wins the World Series or the Super Bowl, it means that one region of the country vanquished another region – there is nothing unifying about it.
Our shining light in the Tour de France (Lance Armstrong) was disgraced for drug use, we didn’t qualify for the World Cup, and except for the Olympics I’m not aware of any substantial American presence in the world’s arenas.
What this means is that we don’t get the opportunity to celebrate AS A COUNTRY the way the French just did. I’m a little jealous.