Paris – the capital city of Slovenia!

We all know that Paris is actually the capital city of France, but for that one day, the day of the EuroVolley 2019 men’s final match, it really felt like it was a Slovenian city. After the last two euphoric matches in Ljubljana’s Stožice Arena, it was time for our men’s volleyball national team to head to Paris for the final of the EuroVolley. I wanted to go to the arena here, in Ljubljana, and watch more matches in person than I did in the end, but with all the other things going on, it was too hard to fit all of that into my schedule so I had to settle for just a couple of matches.

When Slovenia won the semifinal match against Poland, my first thought was, even if it was just meant more as a joke than a serious thought, to go to Paris for the final match. At first, we still didn’t know who would be the second finalist, the other semifinal was played a day later between France and Serbia, but even then, I kind of had a wish to go, no matter what. A lot of different tourist agencies started offering deals to take you to Paris, but I was always more inclined towards organizing a trip on my own, to have a bit more freedom with everything. Although, having everything taken care of, from the transport to/from Paris, and the ticket for the match, would be good, because nothing would worry me that much then.

In the day(s) that followed, I already made peace with not going, thinking that, if nothing else, at least I’ll save a bit of money. But after the end of that second semifinal, which Serbia won, I was persuaded by a friend, to buy the tickets for us and start planning the trip to France. It was pretty hard to fall asleep that night, from all the excitement and anticipation, along with being nervous about how to actually get to Paris. Not to go into any more detail because it would be waaaay too long, in the end we decided to rent a car and drive through the night to get to Paris on the day of the final.

I could say I knew what to expect on the road, since I have done trips similar in length and duration before, when traveling to visit my relatives in Germany, so I knew it was going to be a long drive and a pretty tiring one, as well. I wasn’t the only one driving, thankfully, but I only managed to get like 45 minutes to an hour of sleep that night, before reaching Paris in the morning. Those that know me a little better know that I always like to plan ahead, when visiting a new city, just to kind of be prepared for what’s waiting for me there. Because this trip was decided on such a short notice, I haven’t had the time to do my research and learn anything about the city that could help me/us navigate around it, so in the beginning, we basically decided to wing it and see where it will take us. At first, we wanted to walk to all of the places we had to go to, but soon it was obvious it would be too time consuming, and made our way to the Paris Metro and bought a daily pass for 7.5€. I didn’t think the price was too high, considering the city we were in and that you can ride the metro as much as you’d like.

First order of business, so to speak, was to get to a hotel to get the tickets for the two friends traveling with us. When we arrived at the hotel, it was pretty obvious that the hotel “belonged” to Slovenians! It was pretty much like walking into some Slovenian shopping centre or something. 😀 It doesn’t happen too often that I find myself at the right place at the right time, but at that hotel, that’s exactly what happened. We got invited to get some food and drinks with the other Slovenian fans at the hotel, and that really put all of us into a much better mood after leaving the hotel, because we weren’t hungry anymore and had some coffee, which was more than needed at that time. 🙂

Next up, it was time to head to the Place du Trocadero, a square next to the Eiffel Tower, where all Slovenian fans would gather before the match, and let everyone know we were there! I won’t say that all of the fans were there then, but there was a lot of us for sure, and we were loud! Any of the other people at the square, who had absolutely no idea what was going on, were a bit confused, some of them maybe even a little scared, but all of them looked at us like we were something out of this world. From there, it was already time to slowly head towards the arena, to get ready for the main event of the day. The train was, of course, full, with most of the people on it being Slovenians. We headed back to our car, to put on our “fighting colors”, and show our support for the team.

The atmosphere inside the arena, once the match started, was unbelievable. I have mentioned the atmosphere in Ljubljana during the quarter-/semifinal matches in my previous post, but being that far away from home, and seeing the stands being dominated by white and green (the colours of Slovenian fans) was something incredible. Don’t even get me started on how loud it got during, and even after the match! No matter how our team was doing, we were all cheering all the time, jumping up and down and just supporting the team with everything we got. Unfortunately, Serbia was too strong, so we had to settle for the silver medal, which is also an amazing achievement in on itself, but the players weren’t satisfied with it like 4 years ago. They really wanted to win the gold this time around, but they just might have wanted it a bit too much.

After the match, it was time to get back in the car and drive back home, through the night again. I’m not going to lie, it was exhausting. I’m not just talking about the drive back, but the whole trip. Sleeping in the car doesn’t really do you much good, wandering around such a big city tires you out, and jumping up and down during the whole match can be quite exhausting, too. But in the end, it was well worth it. Probably would change some things if I had to do it all over again, but we got back home without any bigger problems and that’s the most important thing!