Another Once in a Lifetime Experience

I mentioned that we were planning to go to the Champ de Mars to see the fireworks for the 14th of July.  We did go, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

We were concerned that we had not left early enough to get a place, but we managed to squeeze into an open area right in the middle of the Champ de Mars dead in front of (or in back of) the Eiffel Tower.  Also going on at the same time was a free concert, called "Champ Libre," being put on by France 2, one of the main TV networks.  It started at 8:45, and went on for almost two hours.  It wasn't bad, exactly -- the music was all well-performed, the artists (listed here for anyone who cares) were backed by large orchestra, the sound system was excellent, there were large TV screens so you could actually see the artists (Google Earth, a wonderful tool, tells me that we were 560 yards away from the stage), and the volume was loud enough but not too loud.  The music was OK, mostly derivative, but easy to listen to, and it definitely helped pass the time.

What is hard for me to describe is how magical it was to be there.  The evening was absolutely perfect weather-wise: the temperature was mild, the breeze was soft, there were only a few high puffy white clouds in the sky.  We sat and watched the concert as the sun slowly set, turning the sky a deeper and deeper blue.  The crowd there was mixed, mostly young, but a few older folks like me, but everyone was exceedingly polite and respectful.  If someone had the audacity to stand up and block the view of those being them, shouts of "assied" would soon follow, not angry shouts, but shouts conveying "you have apparently forgotten there are people behind you."  Suzie remarked at one point that if this had been a similar event in the US, there would have been lots of excessive drinking, lots of loudness, lots of stupid dancing, lots of idiotic "look at me" posing, and a number of fights.  There was none of that in this crowd (save one incident when the group in front of us resented having their space infringed by two late-coming Czech girls, an incident that was soon amicably resolved).  The crowd was happy but restrained, not in a neurotic "I can't really be myself" way, but in a "I want to be respectful of others" way.  I asked in an earlier post why it is that I feel so comfortable here, and I think that this is one of the reasons -- I am very much that way myself (OK, in addition, perhaps, to being a little suppressed in a neurotic way, too).  So even though the crowd was estimated at between 300,000 and 400,000, it did not feel at all threatening, but rather like an intimate gathering. 

Anyway, here are a few pictures from the concert.  More are on my Flickr site.

 

 

 

I realize you can't really get the scale of the massive crowd from these pictures, so here is one I borrowed from Flickr, taken by someone from the Tour Montparnasse (the large building you see in the center in the picture above).  See if you can spot us in the crowd.

The best came last, however -- the fireworks.  At the end of the concert, and before the fireworks began, they lit up the Eiffel Tower.  In the dying light of the dusk, it was beautiful:

 

We had thought the fireworks would go over right over us, but instead they went off over the Seine, on the other side of the Eiffel Tower, which was cool in a way, as they were often framed through the bottom arch.  I had brought a tripod and researched how to shoot fireworks, but as it happened there was a short fence about 15 yards behind us, which meant that everyone stood so they could see, which meant everyone behind them had to, which made my tripod too short to shoot through the arch.  Even so, I got some good shots.  But the most amazing thing about the fireworks were the way they were set to music, almost seamlessly, although the music had been made for the fireworks although, of course, exactly the opposite had happened.  Beautiful classical music, soft, then building, then louder and louder as the fireworks made their crescendo, movement after movement, like an opera or a play with lights.  At the end, the crowd was quiet for a moment, then joined in sustained applause for something that really had been artistic and beautiful.

 

 

 

 

By the time we gathered our things to leave, it was past 11:30 p.m., and 400,000 people were trying to get home at the same time.  Yet that same odd calm prevailed.  The crowd oozed out into the various sidestreets like a dexterious amoeba.  There was no hope of catching a Metro at any nearby station, as those were jammed, and while stations further down the line were less jammed, they were served by trains that were completely full.  So I decided we should walk to Montparnasse, where we could catch the line that goes directly to our house, which we did, albeit with some complaint from the young-uns, which, I should note, subsided somewhat once we found them a hidden spot along the way.  We didn't get home until almost one, but we still had with us the sense that we'd seen something special and wonderful, and had had an experience that we may never have again.