Where are all the French?

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''Maybe this basement was bricked up in the War'' I suggested.
The backstage area of the Social Club in the Montmartre is a odd-shaped, angled-walled, tiny basement that would have been a useless place to store anything.
Upstairs, the club was pounding its stylish house music and downstairs, escaping with me was American Benjamin with his thick, art-student glasses and the two girls from East Berlin and Austria.
They all give me odd stares at my basement comment and I remember the old phrase... 'don't mention the war'

Paris, the capital of France has attracted foreigners and invaders in all its history, and as the Nazis advanced, people bricked up their valuable jewellery, wine collections and paintings in secret basements. Now here we were, a new wave of invaders, freely quaffing the free beers in the quirky Parisian cellar.

A new wave of invaders is what we felt like.

I had zipped across with tonight's Djs, Jamie and Nigel, for the weekend from London on the Eurostar and joined a small entourage of Brits over here... all English except for the Canadian couple living in Paris.
'They love the English music over here' Jamie had told me before getting up on the decks...
So where were all the French?

We'd met Annie, a photographer and model from America who had come to the club on her own. Elena and Sara, from Hungary who had spent the summer in New York and were roughing it here for the winter. And a Dutch guy who had come to see my friends DJ here.

Still no-one french yet...

Earlier that day we had strolled past the Notre Dame and heard the chattering of an international array of voices, - Spanish, Russian, broken English. We had sat in a typical french bar and supped red wine, served by a suspiciously Scandinavian blonde bloke, and commented on the number of asian and african people walking, working or wandering around the streets.

My home town, London is an amazingly diverse international place so I'm no stranger to foreigners, but Paris seemed noticeably devoid of the people who own it and make it the uniquely french place it is - The French.
In London i'll meet thousands of natives using and abusing their home town - in New York, Manhatten bars are staffed and drunk in by rowdy locals and Berlins art gallerys echo with intellectual German young folk. Paris's daytime streets and night-time nightlife seemed oddly populated by non-parisians - weekend tourists, international students and the other assorted waifs and strays.

Next morning:
One very late night, one very short sleep later and wearing a heavy coat of a hangover, Bob demanded we eat in a restaurant recommended by his Lonely Planet as an authentic 500 year old Parisian haunt.
On the way, American-accented men in suave suits sipped espressos on terraces, Spanish students carried baguettes along the street past English girls carried small toy dogs under their arms. All very french things being done very frenchly.

But not by french people.

Through the post-alcoholic mist I noticed the restaurants' fake-wooden beams with speakers and halogen lighting embedded in them. The window frames were pure DIY shop timberwork. The text of the menu was curiously art-nouveau for an authentic medieval atmosphere.

As the Belgian waiter whipped up our cheesy, garlicky mashed potato in an un-Gallic display for us tourists, I tried to explain to Bob how society attempts to manufacture 'authenticity'.
Myths are constructed for cities, historys are re-told and stories reinvented all the time I said as i bit the spicey sausage.
Visitors arrive with a pre-conceived idea of what a destination should look like and what they will feel or learn from it, I mused in between mouthfuls of mash.

People will find what they look for, as we all come to Paris to 'live the dream' for a short while.
Capital cities accept it, and absorb us, consuming and reshaping the lives of all of us who pass through them.
I considered that in my post-clubbing state, this garlicky mashed potato I had just consumed may reshape me for a while and we stumbled out and strolled to our return train from Gare de Nord.

Paris is a small, fun city where people will chat to strangers and its possible to stumble and discover suprises, day or night.
A fun, frentic and funny weekend in France. But where were all the French?

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