Britain's Miserable Islanders Don't Get the European Dream

Click through to read the first and second parts in this series.

(Photo by John Montoya)

Paris is a city that looms large in the collective imagination of the planet. Its stubborn, stoic one-building skyline has been the setting for so much history, so much culture, so much civilisation, that for some people, it's just way too much. The Japanese might make up one of the biggest tourist markets on earth, but they are also the biggest sufferers of what is commonly known as "Paris Syndrome", a "transient psychological disorder" that occurs when the realities of the city can't match up to the romantic expectations held by camera-wielding visitors from Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. As a result, sufferers end up anxious and scared.

They come in search of the Moulin Rouge, foie gras, Victor Hugo, polite service and cobbled streets. Instead, they get child beggars, €7 hot dogs, Johnny Halliday, dogs in kitchens and scooters on pavements. The modern Paris, with its myriad of social problems and laissez-faire (there's a reason why it's a French phrase) approach to health and safety just freaks them out, so much so that the Japanese embassy even set up a 24-hour helpline to try to coax the afflicted back to sanity.

But I am not Japanese. And modern Paris, with all its faults, still has a place in my cold, cold heart. It might not be the coolest city to visit any more (the days when people gave a fuck about Uffie and Justice feel a long time ago), it might be ludicrously expensive, and a lot of the people there may well be undercover fascists. But there's something about the city that just seems to click with me. I like that Paris doesn't want me around. No one ever cared too much about someone who cared too much.

(Photo by Maciek Pozoga)

Stepping off the coach, walking like a Victorian slum child after three hours sleep, I logged on to a McDonald's wi-fi to find a bed and argue with those I'd left behind a bit more. Things have changed since the days of the "Royale With Cheese", and the menu was largely the same, but more expensive, as befitting a foreign delicacy. There was no smoking inside, or beer on tap, as the urban legends still suggest, and it was basically just like any other big city McDonald's: full of foreign exchange students with backpacks flirting with each other with straws.

I headed north, where I'd arranged to stay with a friend who'd also decided to sink into that new, austerity-enforced definition of transient continental life, the weird modern-day decadence of endless AirBnBs and Desperados. As I was doing so, I was reminded of one of my favourite things about Paris: the Metro station names.

Nation, Liberte, Stalingrad, Avenue Emile Zola, Europe, Bastille, Republique. In comparison, London tube station names sound like characters from The Desolation of Smaug. For me, these are names that could only exist in a city with a history of revolution and invasion. Republican, abstract, strong, inspiring, they tell the tale of a city that believes in itself, a city that is not afraid of its past, which – for all the lives it saved from Nazi bombs – you can't really say about a name like "Goodge Street".

But nor are the French parochial, or provincial, with their historical aggrandising. Avenue Du President Kennedy, Place Du General Koenig and Avenue Winston Churchill are all Parisian streets, suggesting they're more grateful for the British and American help in WWII than we'd like to admit. There's even a Rue Francois Truffaut, for fuck's sake. Lambeth's Bob Marley Way aside, London names its streets after bastard landlords and minor Earls. Because we are, alas, a country still in thrall to the monarchy, still doffing our caps to the cunts who keep us down. We'll probably have a Boris Johnson flyover soon.

(Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen)

The French aren't like that; the authorities seem to live in a permanent state of semi-fear, and tonight more than any other night that was going to be on show. Out of pure coincidence, the day I arrived in the City of Lights was the same day that one-time French colony Algeria were looking to qualify from the World Cup group stages. A small achievement in global football terms, but bear in mind there was nearly a riot when they qualified in 2009, and it's easy to see why there was a buzz about the place.

Like Britain, France is a country that seems to treat its former colonies with a sense of strained paternalism, as if they were distant cousins on a getaway, asking to crash on a sofa. Because of this, tensions build, and the Algerian community in France has been at the heart of a lot of trouble. You've seen La Haine, you know the deal.

After a few demi pressions, we set of to Barbes, a strange semi-ghetto at the foot of Sacre Coeur. A slew of Parisian robocops were already standing guard; red, white and green flags were stretched across the boulevards in any way they could be. Yet at the same time, the event felt undeniably French. The Algerians, with their anti-authoritarian swagger and complicated patriotism, seemed like the plucky French of old, the ones who stormed the Bastille, the ones who sung "Le Marseillaise" in Casablanca. The cops and the onlookers seemed to be having their own "Let them eat cake" moment.

The Algerians went through in the end, turning the north of Paris into a playground for young men drunk on relative glory, banging on shutters, dancing on cars, lighting flares and goading the police. At first it was tense, but this quickly dissipated into good-natured hatchback victory laps of the Boulevard De Clichy and makeshift percussion fests; "1, 2, 3, Vive l'Algerie!" the cry rebounding across Haussmann balconies.

(Photo by Hugo Denis-Queinec)

A few days later, Algeria were out. But that night I was reminded of everything that's great about living in a city with an abundance of different cultures, where you're not all living under the same calendar, marching to the same beat. Just because your own culture or football team dictates that you should be having a shit time, doesn't mean you can't bask second-hand in other people's rapture. For me, that's what living in a city is all about: the fact that there is always something else around the corner.

After another day spent rambling around, buying pastries and laughing at museum queues (the whole city is a museum, why pay to get into a smaller one?) night fell, dinner was eaten and I found myself on something of a bar crawl. I walked across the city, ducking in and out of humid terracotta booze caves, sipping on Cuba Libres, beneath the night sky and the lights of those famous buildings. I realised that this brand of post-bohemian, consumptive Europeanism – or, more simply put, the ability to wander around getting pissed in a foreign country – was something to be treasured, but something we in Britain don't seem to treasure enough.

We could see Europe as our own – it's just a drive and a quick trip on the train or ferry away – yet we see it as a distant land. One we have to get really stressed about visiting, as if we were staring at the bloodied waters of a Normandy beach in 1944, rather than just going to visit the neighbours for a cup of different-tasting tea. We get anxious, we spend the whole time scared and angry, seeking out ways to spend it with people we believe to be similar to us. Or we just swerve it all together, go to Thailand, take a bunch of photos and never shut the fuck up about it. Our understanding of Europe is all wrong.

(Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete)

There is a world at our doorstep, a huge mass of history and culture and life and cheap drinks and beautiful people and hot nights and warm seas that we apparently aren't too keen to be part of. Why? Because we don't like "red tape". For me, Britain's fearful relationship with Europe is nothing but a total tragedy, and I have no doubt that in a referendum, Britain would vote to leave the EU, and therefore surrender the power to just slip in and out of this continent, to constitute a part of it. Instead, we're intent on isolating ourselves further into the mire of small-brained post-Thatcherite oblivion.

Of course Europe has its flaws. It's a fucking continent, it's too massive not to. Most people I met on my journey from Lisbon to Paris said they'd rather live in London, and I guess it's true that the grass is always greener on the other side. But as I walked through the packed streets of Paris that night, watching people sip plastic cups of 1664, breaking three language barriers at once by slowly dissolving their mother tongues into a kind of drunken Esperanto, I realised that it's much better to have a ticket to this party than to live on an island.

I wonder if as an island, we've all gone mad, and have decided that Nigel Farage is our Wilson in Castaway. The only person who'll hear out our paranoid ramblings, a leathery delusion, a sounding board that will just bounce our own fears back at us.

(Photo by Melchior Ferradou Tersen)

We talk about all the terrible things in Europe, the collapsed economies, the bullshit legislation, the hysterical bureaucracy and the rise of extremism. But we very rarely talk about the good parts of it. The lifestyle, the idea, the dream. There is a reason why so many Ukrainians were willing to die to join Europe, because in essence, it is a great thing. Something that should be fought for, rather than fucked off at the first sign of trouble. It was Charles De Gaulle who dreamed of a continent that stretched "from the Atlantic to the Urals", not Peter Mandelson. But if the right of this country get their way (which I suspect they will), you'll need a Visa to go to Calais. Why? Because there's too many of them over there, and we don't like red tape.

It's fucking pathetic. To give up all that history, for such a petty, self-serving, island-dweller's dream. Oh, and good luck selling cars to the Germans and food to the French. Britain needs all the help it can get right now, but many of us seem intent on dragging it back to the 100 Years War.

As my MegaBus (25 quid, bought the night before) sank into the darkness of Calais, I realised that I never, ever want to be an islander. The world is bigger than that, even if you hate flying. Britain is a great country, but alone, it'll drift away into the Atlantic. In getting lost in Europe, I rediscovered my own dream of a continent, and in doing it by coach, I was reminded that this is a place people still take great risks to be a part of. I saw the sadness in the eyes of those yanked off by border control, and elation in others when Reina Sofia, or the Eiffel Tower, or Westminster Bridge, eased into view. These are the people who want to be part of this continent, and they probably deserve to be. Much more than the miserable fucks who'd be happier living above a Nag's Head in the Falklands or some other egg 'n' chips stalag state.

What did I learn? That coaches are cheap, service stations are shit everywhere and the dream of Europe is still out there. You just have to be willing to find it.

@thugclive

More in this series:

Part 1 – 'Fuck London': Why Clive Martin Went Missing in Europe

Part 2 – Clive Martin Goes Missing in Madrid