The author goes crazy as Greece scores during the finals.

I had done this before. As I got off the Orient Express at the famous Gare de l'Est (Eastern Station), I realized I had made the same mistake four years ago on this train when I decided not to pay for a sleeping birth. Once again, I had slept badly, contorted into an L-shape across four seats.

Hauling my luggage through the subway system, I cursed the inexplicable French distaste for escalators. It took a nap and a cup of iced coffee for me to regain the will to live.

Dimitris and Marton celebrating victory in a Paris bar

My Greek friend Dimitris, who lives here and put me up, was eager for us to get going. Euro 2004, a soccer competition only I seemed not to have followed, was in its final matches. "Greece is whopping major a_ _," Dimitris said, and told me I would be watching the game against France with him and his friend that night, on a giant screen that had been set up downtown. We would be among 3,000 screaming French fans, and our faces would be painted with the Greek flag.

Father and son face-painted with the Portuguese flag. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese people live and work in France. They saw their team lose to Greece in the opening game as well as the finals of the European Cup.

Europeans are about as crazy for football (the version you play with your feet) as Americans are crazy for football (the gladiator version), baseball and basketball combined. My friend's plan didn't sound safe. To hell with it, I thought. Greece would lose anyway. The French were the defending champions.

Of course, the Greeks won, knocking the French out of the tournament. The French fans were ready to mount barricades. By night's end, riot police had to be summoned. And incredibly, Greece kept winning until it captured the title.

The Bastille Quarter, famous for its nightlife

After each victory, Dimitris and I -- and what seemed like every Greek in the city -- celebrated in a Greek tavern on the Right Bank. They all said it was the only real Greek place in the whole of Paris. We would dance and sing -- well, they would sing and I would pretend to sing -- Greek football chants into the wee hours of the night, then get a cab, go back home, drink some more and pass out. It's what Greeks do when they are happy, apparently.

I stayed in Paris for a few months after this trip. I hate to act like a tourist; but to act like a Greek immigrant was the next best thing to acting like a Parisian.

Boulevard Auguste Blanqui, bathed in the summer sun

In the early 20th century, the Hungarian poet Endre Ady came to Paris eight times in as many years when he was my age. "My Eastern blood, the laggard, / Quenches its thirst in the West," he wrote in one of his poems. Ady never quit complaining about how horrible a place Hungary was back then. I've been to Paris five times now, and I like it, but these days I think Hungary is not so much worse.

Still, I felt at home here in ways few cities allowed me to. All I needed to do now is write some poems and drown myself in alcohol while breaking a few dozen hearts and I could be the next Endre Ady. But that would have to wait -- I had some business to take care of in Germany first.

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printable version of "EUROPE: The Re-Orient Express"