To escape the grey monotony of the Parisian winter, Guillaume Pitron decided to travel around the world. He boarded the No. 2 subway line and crossed the widest ethnic spectrum of the city.

First, a warning buzzer; then, the snap of closing doors. Amar, a 33-year-old Metro conductor starts a new journey on the No. 2 subway line, which takes riders from western to eastern Paris through the northern arrondissements of town. “I prefer this line above any other one because of its awesome elevated section; but also because you discover a rainbow of cultures along the way.” And he adds: “You realize you are in France because it’s multicultural!”

Welcome to 21st century Paris, a multi-ethnic city of lights.

On Line 2, every trip could be a journey around the world, turning Paris into a kaleidoscope of cultures, with each of its 25 stations a stopover to a different country. The Metro makes 650 trips daily, carrying 312,000 riders (92 million a year) from 5:30 am at Porte Dauphine to 12:42 am at Nation (“and 25 seconds,” Amar points out).

Line 2 was the second route of the Paris Metro system to be constructed. Partly built on a two-kilometer-long viaduct because of the ground’s instability, the construction of the twelve-kilometer-long line took three-years and was completed in 1903.

The subway starts its journey in the posh 16th arrondissement at Porte Dauphine. Until the Rome station, seven stops later, it rides under some of the wealthiest parts of Paris still populated by old aristocratic families. The ladies wearing Hermès scarves and Chanel glasses and the men driving luxury cars up the austere avenues to the Champs-Elysées rarely rub their bespoke shoulders in a Metro car. They inhabit Haussmannian buildings and take their children, outfitted in navy blue and dark green, to the nearby Parc Monceau.

Near the Courcelles station, in the 17th arrondissement, the red brick Swedish church reveals the presence of the small Swedish community, its 5,000 citizens now scattered all around Paris.

In the Metro, the look of riders progressively changes until it reaches a total transformation at the Place de Clichy station. The underground atmosphere becomes brisk and colorful, with the correspondance from the No. 13 subway line ushering in streams of Arabs and Africans from the northern arrondissements. Dozens of nationalities bump into each other in the crowed tunnels.

Among the various groups living in the area, the Portuguese are particularly well-rooted. They meet regularly at the nearby Sainte-Marie-des-Batignolles Church, now served by a Brazilian priest. On the Boulevard de Clichy, Madeleine, an 84 year-old French native, who has lived in Paris for 60 years and works at the reception of the Sainte-Rita Chapel says, “We have always had fun here.” But she deplores the recent arrival of South Americans, including many transsexuals and transvestites. “Nowadays, it has become a real mess!” she exclaims. “Transvestites come to pray to Saint Rita all the time. You’ve just missed two of them!”

The shiny buildings’ facades linking the Blanche and Pigalle stations contain rows of sex shops and their shadowy world of prostitution. It is time to escape the froufrou-dressed doorman inviting me for a show in his bar and to avoid the Anvers station, packed with tourists en route to Sacré-Coeur. The subway emerges from underground and rolls along the metal viaduct. It stops at Barbès Rochechouart in front of the deep-discount Tati store still covered up with Christmas lights. This is yet another planet.

In the 1950s, the inexpensive, run-down 18th arrondissement became the realm of North Africans. According to official figures, 100,000 Tunisians, Algerians, and Moroccans inhabit Paris today, with 12,000 in this area called La Goutte d’Or, literally “the golden drop.” On Wednesday and Saturday mornings, the vibrant Rochechouart market, situated under the viaduct, offers the most inexpensive fruits and vegetables in Paris, and the best immersion into the multicultural city. In the surrounding streets, multicolored Taxiphones advertise calls to Algeria for 0,15 € per minute; hammams and halal butchers pop up at every corner. The Al Houda shop on the notoriously dangerous rue Myrha offers djellabas, rosaries, and even prayer mats with incorporated magnetic compasses to help find the Mecca. A few steps away, Nasser Terqui, 52 and Zakari Zacharia, 55, who have owned a poultry business for the past 32 years, live with dozens of chickens cackling all-day long in their cages. “Things are not the way it used to be,” he complains, using the hackneyed sentence, not the first I heard on this trip. “The arrondissement is filled with drug dealers and prostitutes.” Still, he acknowledges good relationships with other North Africans, “since we only have one Islam.” He adds, however, “I cannot say the same about Central Africans; our customs are different.”

On rue de Chartres, Ahmed Chair, wearing a striped tie and squared-off shirt, knows everything about everybody within ten blocks. The 60 year-old barber, who was born in Algeria, came to Paris “to remind me of those days I liked, before the independence, when the French were present in Algeria.” “Until the renovation of the neighborhood in the late 1990s, Barbès looked like a ghetto, but now, it is cleaner and quieter.” But nothing is perfect: “I used to have five employees. Today, we are only two, and my clients always complain about unemployment, the increase of the cost of living and the bad reputation of Islam.” He complains loudly: “The Indians over there offer haircuts for 7 €. I cannot make it for under 8! The cut-throat competition has become difficult…”

The intertwined Central African neighborhoods form a “Parisian Harlem,” mainly along the rue des Poissonniers. There, the market takes place every day, with stands filled with exotic products like gumbo, tilapia fish, sweet potatoes, coconuts, ginger… Triple D bras dry on balconies, scalpers sell watches and leather bags on the sidewalk in front of fabric shops packed with colorful and shimmering African cloths piled up against the windows. The population here comes mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), Mauritania, Cameroon, Mali, Senegal and the Ivory Coast. Africans are believed to number 200,000 in the Paris area. “The mayor plans to move the market to a “Special Africa” marketplace in Aubervilliers [in the suburbs] by 2012,” notes Hendrick the 25 year-old owner of a music shop who hails from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “We feel like we are not wanted. You sweat blood for everything here.”

From Barbès-Rochechouart, the Metro hovers above the rail tracks of the Gare du Nord until the next stop: La Chapelle. The ride is like a quick jump across the Indian Ocean. The top of the rue du Faubourg Saint Denis, also nicknamed Little Jaffna (“little town” in Tamil), is filled with shops such as “Bollywood” and “Jaipuhr Silk Palace” offering food products from India and Sri Lanka. The nearby rue Max Dormoy leads up to a hidden Hindu Temple of Muthumarriamman. As I take off my shoes, sari-dressed women stare at me suspiciously. It is the lunch-time prayer. Sri Lankans and Indians gather around the Hindu priest. The air is filled with incense and the heat is more stifling than in Bombay during the monsoon. They pray to Ganesh, Turka, and Murujan while being served hot, glutinous rice. “I have no money,” I apologize, embarrassed. “You do not pay here,” someone replies with a mischievous smile.

Two gulps of spicy rice and four glasses of water later, I reach the bare-chested Hindu priest, Kumar, 38, laden with flower necklaces. “There are three Hindu temples in Paris and five priests for all the Ceylonese and Indians,” he explains. “In fact, I am a part-time priest. The rest of the day, I am a house cleaner.”

An estimated 50,000 South-Asians live in Paris. Among them are Sri Lankans who fled the civil war. “The situation in Sri Lanka is still not good; I’ll go back when it gets better,” says Kumar. Like 70% of the Tamils living in Paris, Luxmi, 42, works in catering. He feels “great” in France and wants to stay. About the various ethnic groups he says: “Sri Lanka and India share the same culture, and we have very good relations. Arabs and Central Africans do not come here, however. A Sri Lankan once married an Arabic woman. But we mostly remain within our own community.”

The train curves, passing graffiti-covered walls and going over the Canal Saint Martin. “Here, it’s Technicolor!” observes the client of a caftan shop, referring to the population living on the Boulevard de la Villette. After the Jaurès stop, the subway plunges underground again. It halts at the Belleville station. Here awaits a new experience.
As I get out of the station, I realize I have jumped over the Himalayas and landed in China’s heartland. For the last 15 years, a Chinese community has slowly ensconced itself in this part of the 20th arrondissement. At the top of the rue du Faubourg du Temple, a vegetable market, “Le Potager de Belleville,” sells lotus roots, green papaya, banana tree leaves, and lemongrass. Chinese restaurants and Asian food stores flourish in the rue de Belleville. A young lady in a bridal robe steps up the stairs of the “Grand palais royal” restaurant, holding the arm of her groom. Against a backdrop of kitsch decor and garlands, she strolls between guests’ tables, surrounded by a swarm of photographers. On Sundays, Chinese restaurants welcome weddings and become big familial and popular canteens. “We only served 360 lunches today,” a waiter states while I taste a shark-fin soup. “Sometimes, we serve up to one thousand!”

Official figures estimate the Chinese population in Paris and its suburbs to be 400,000 and the illegal immigrants over 50,000. Chinese neighborhoods are microcosms, impenetrable to foreigners. “The Chinese population in Belleville is on the increase,” Jessica, a Cambodian native points out. She owns the “China Bazar” in the rue Rébeval, a drugstore chockablock with saucepans and every sort of Asian tableware imported from Southeast Asia. Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians fled the political upheavals during the 1970s and the 1980s, often living among the Chinese and Arabs in the neighborhood.

Between numbers 88 and 100 of the Boulevard de Belleville, a Sephardic Jewish mini-center has emerged, with restaurants offering Kosher couscous. Many Tunisian-born Jews left their native country in the 1950s and settled in Paris. “We do not have strong relationships with the Chinese, they live in their own universe. They came into the arrondissement without creating tensions,” Muriel Nahum, 39, a Tunisian-born Jewish woman who owns a Kosher food store points out. “Living among the Arabs is fine; we partly share the same customs, even if relationships between younger generations have become more tense over the last years,” she observes. However, she ads that, “The cohesion within our community is not as strong as it used to be. Until ten years ago, people would come to Belleville to find their ‘native Tunisia.’ This is not the case today any more: we are progressively losing our customs.”

Two stops further, Ménilmontant is a mosaic of cultures—Berbers, Turks, Central and North Africans—living together. But then I pass the Père-Lachaise cemetery, and I feel like I am back in Paris again. The 12th arrondissement resembles any other French area in Paris. Every Saturday, the Charonne Market draws a white, jacket and velvet pant-dressed population, the bobos, or bourgeois-bohèmes. Mussels, dry sausages, Roquefort and Saint-Nectaire fill the stands. Expensive clothing shops characterize the Nation neighborhood, at the terminus of the No. 2 line. “Housing prices in some areas are even more expensive than in the 16th arrondissement!” Gérard Jonathan, a real estate agent notes, referring to the recent arrival of wealthy lawyers and doctors…

For my trip back, I take the elevated No. 6 line and stop at a French brasserie in Trocadéro. I order an overpriced coffee to help me absorb my experiences. Well… after having traveled around the world on Line 2, my habitual coffee seems tasteless.