Paris: A tale of two cities
The usual tourist hubbub during the summer is missing in the French capital as sports fans the world over descend on the city for the Olympic Games
A photograph of Bronze medalist Bolade Apithy of Team France reacting during the Men's Sabre Team Bronze Medal Match on day five of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Grand Palais is projected as part of Parisienne Projection on July 31, 2024 in Paris, France.
Image: Hector Vivas/Getty Images
There is no chatter, no discussions either. Even the AirPods and headphones have run out of juice. Exhaustion is apparent on the few faces onboard this Paris Line 9 Metro train to Mairie de Montreuil on a Thursday night around 9 pm. Even the rush hour trains and metros are empty. There is hardly any traffic on the roads, no one scurrying to catch a metro or a bus, no speeding cyclists brushing past pedestrians, no animated working lunches and cigarette breaks along the Seine, no usual swarm of tourists around the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, and Notre Dame, and no snaking lines at the city’s swathe of luxury stores—barely any tell-tale signs of a gorgeous Parisian summer.
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Then again, there is a non-stop rush of people around Grand Palais, Trocadero, La Concorde, Roland Garros and the Stade de France constantly checking directions on their cellphones, reconfirming what their phones display with volunteers, thousands of whom have been deployed across the City of Light. There is talk of medals and records, and, of course, there is wine, cheese, onion soup and tartare being ordered around.
It is the best of times, it is the worst of times, it is the Olympics. And Paris these days is, indeed, a tale of two cities. One where the fans are out having a good time (without any beer, wine or alcohol at the Olympic Games venues). And the other where most of the city’s constant population—the Parisians, the visiting fashion conscious and wealthy shoppers, gourmands and tourists, who always give Parisians a compelling reason to complain, are all missing. The city has never been emptier and its roads, despite the multiple Olympics-related closures and diversions, never been so easy to drive through.
Right from the day the French capital was awarded the Summer Games, Parisians have been clearly divided. There were the enthusiasts who were thrilled at the chance of watching the world’s grandest festival of sports and those who felt the city could have done without the extravagant expenditure ($9 billion is the estimated cost).
Locals say the warnings about travelling fans during the four weeks of Olympics and Paralympics, travel disruptions due to closure of several key metro stations for crowd management and multiple road closures and diversions for events such as cycling, race walking, marathon and triathlons for security reasons scared away a big part of the city’s population. Alexis Delori, 25, who handles internal communications for the a national scouts group and usually gets very busy during the summer because of holidays for teenagers, locked up his flat and took a train to Provence a day after the Olympics opening ceremony. Translator and artist Roberta Anino, 36, chose to care for a pet in Berlin instead of getting caught up in the Olympic mess she had anticipated. “Several companies have given people time off or the option of working remotely for the 40 days covering Olympic and Paralympic Games,” says Tanmay Garg, 23, an investment banker with Societe Generale, who is among the few who still has to go to office in Paris.
