Follow The Crowd

Coincidental to our Paris visit is the UEFA 2016 soccer games. You know there's a game going on if you're in the city. Just before a game, everywhere you'll see someone with blue, white and red painted on their face or a French flag draped on their back. People in cars roar by blowing car horns, sticking their heads out chanting. Waves of people walk to bars, cafes or friends' homes where the game will be showed while yelling their battle cries. Bars, cafes and living rooms become packed with people who are hunched over watching every move of their players.

Whenever the ball is close to the goal or when France scores, you'll know. The whole city erupts. Loud enough to make the hairs on your arms stand up. It's amazing to witness this much passion. It's almost impossible to not get sucked in.

And at the foot of the Eiffel tower, UEFA organizers set up a “Fan Zone”. Basically, they fenced off the whole base of the tower and set up a large projector screen so fans could come and watch the games.

Today was the finals – France vs Portugal. The schedule said that the gates will open at 4pm. We planned to go check out the Eiffel Tower Fan Zone at 6pm. So, we set off.

Droves of people were walking all at the same direction, like rats following the Pied Piper, including us. Drunken hooligans were already out and about, bullying everyone who was wearing Portugal colors. It was all in the spirit of fun, though. Like a big party. Car horns were blaring, voices were hoarse from screaming. Everybody was smiling.

When we came closer, the crowd stopped. Police in riot gear closed off the road we were on.

At first, we though that there might just be a fight and the cordon was temporary. We hung out a bit. It was interesting to see how the police handled the crowd. It was kind of a culture shock to me. People, mostly drunk with beer bottle in hand would walk up to a weaponed cop. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but, from the tone of voice and body language, some guys would be saying something like “what the fuck?” and “let us through!”, all up on the cops' faces, but the cops would always respond very calmly, with no animosity, explain what's going on, quashing the situation. Almost like with the kind of gentleness a doctor would have when breaking to you the news of your terminal disease. A far cry from the low tolerance reaction of police in the Philippines, where I grew up and in, and the US, where I live. It was surreal.

This guy was really up on the cops' faces at times spilling his beer on them, whipping out his cellphone and taking pictures and selfies with the full riot geared cops. The cops were as calm as statues.

It looked like that they were not going to open up the street, so we thought of following most of the crowd who thought of going around. It was the same scene again.

All that walking called for a stop at a hotdog stand.

It was the same scene over and over again until we reached the entrance to the Fan Zone. Apparently, they were not letting anybody in. I imagine the venue reached max capacity a long time ago and they were closing off roads to the venue to disperse the crowd.

We decided to walk back home and just watch the game on the computer.