I will upload (and
write about this trip) in three different blogs (one for each day) due to the
total length I can imagine this becoming!
Back in October, many of the other assistants and I saw that
the French football team were going to play USA in Paris in November (yes, I
know, this is a rather delayed piece!) and some of us decided that we would go
to the match. While the other assistants decided to simply go to Paris for the
match and return early the next morning, I decided to take advantage of the
fact that I have friends from Warwick who are nice enough to welcome me to stay
with them for the weekend.
Friday
On the Friday night was the France-USA match and this was
clear from the apparel sported by trains that there even more full than usual. Red,
white and blue were the trend that night. Once we arrived at the Saint Denis station, towards the north
of Paris, the crowds streamed out and we had to journey about 15 minutes
towards the stadium.
Along the way, we passed food stands, people selling
merchandise and we had to walk through an underpass, littered with anti-Sarkozy
sentiments scrawled across the walls. The
latter particularly interested me as the echoing thoughts that those who live
in the banlieue, or outskirts of
Paris, are strongly opposed to Sarkozy due to laws he has introduced, laws that
have worsened their situation and have made it more difficult for them to find
a job.
Onwards we went towards the stadium until we found ourselves
shivering in our seats. In fact, we had to battle for our seats before we could
sit down; apparently some people had swapped seats and included our seats in
the negotiations leaving us with a struggle to essentially kick out the
occupants of our seats.
The match itself passed by without much incident and the
final score was 1-0 to France. They should have won by a far greater margin by
they appeared to struggle finding the net with their shots. The USA team on the
other hand simply seemed like a team that was very tired, with a lack of movement.
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