World Football: An American's Homage to Parisien Pub Culture

There's little reason in denying the incredible role chance plays in determining the course of our lives.

It's a common refrain in both film and literature—thus, in no small coincidence considering how my own life is inordinately influenced by both those mediums—it came to mold an entire year of my life.

I'd stumbled upon (no, that wasn't a shameless plug for the popular website, although I guess it is now) The Bombardier pub while browsing for locations that would be broadcasting an upcoming Liverpool-Arsenal Premier League football match. This was way back in December, 2009. At least it seems like ages ago now. Funny how time passes; slow as molasses during the rough patches, fast as lightning during the amethyst haze.

I was a 20-year-old kid in Paris, trying desperately to find some snippets of respite amid a culture that I was struggling to find my place in. It's always taken me time to acclimate.

I cope best with change and upheaval when I have, in the words of the band The Postal Service's song We Will Become Silhouettes, "Something constant under my feet". Three months into my time in Paris, I needed consistency. I craved it.

I just never thought I'd find it in a bar.

A quick web search showed that The Bombardier was nestled in the area surrounding Le Panthéon, the iconic structure initially commissioned as a church in the 1700s before becoming a mausoleum, which houses some of France's greatest citizens' remains.

The Friday before the match (which was to be played on Sunday), I headed to the area from my class at l'Institut Catholique, determined that I would make a mental note of the pub's location so that I wouldn't waste time trying desperately to find it on match day.

Unsure about the most convenient metro location, I hopped off at the 10 line's Maubert-Mutualité stop. A tad nervy as I took the steps two at a time out of the metro, my fears were allayed when I saw Le Panthéon's famous dome towering above the nearby buildings. I'd found my destination.

The songs I hold most dear are imprinted upon formative experiences, providing a Virgil-esque guide along some of my most transcendental personal reflection. Once I hit a certain resonance during my thinking, the song's notes strum madly, as though they were swirling about some electric aureole, fusing into my memory.

The moment I saw The Bombardier, I was listening to In the New Year by The Walkmen. Perhaps the timing was appropriate. This place would signify a fresh start.

That feeling would only strengthen during my repeated forays to The Bombardier, a pub with a decidedly English feel to it. My nine months in Paris were a peripatetic time, most of which I spent walking or bustling about the city. It teemed with interesting destinations.

There seemed so much to do, and so little time to take advantage of it. Yet despite my near-insatiable desire for movement, The Bombardier provided a welcome respite when I reached exhaustion after miles of walking.

I found it in no way bizarre that I had begun reading J.R. Moehringer's The Tender Bar. Just as Moehringer had found solace from the trials and disappointments of daily life in a seedy bar on Long Island, so too did I seek sanctuary in the guise of an establishment predicated upon drinking.

The football and rugby matches I would come to watch each weekend—I usually made the rather lengthy trip two times a week—often took a backseat to the overall experience. Because when it came down to it, who won or lost was irrelevant. I was in dire search for something enduring, and no scoreline was ever going to give me that.

There was no better feeling than throwing myself into the pub's inviting warmth after braving the bitter winter cold. The doors opened to peals of laughter spilling out into the street. Televisions blared in the background. The air felt close around me, still tinged with scents from the day's lunch menu.

Naturally reticent by nature, I grew to speaking terms with most of the regulars, but nothing more. I didn't need to. I was content with being a wallflower, grabbing a pint or two alongside the establishment's famous burger. The scene fascinated me, as if I were walking about within a novel.

Singer/songwriter Patrick Watson, of Cinematic Orchestra fame, sings in "That Home" about the delicate, near-flighty sensation of home that becomes ever-more delicate as we age. "This is a place where I don't feel so alone/ This is a place that I call my home," Watson croons as the song draws to a close after an all-too-brief crescendo.

There's no other way I could accurately describe the time spent in the comfortable confines of that bar. Like Moehringer, who fled for the "Tender Bar" when he had nowhere else to go, The Bombardier represented far more than a place to drink.

Like the ancient Greeks once did with their symposiums, where men met to discuss pressing matters while having a drink, the alcohol took a backseat to the experience. It was a welcome addition, especially during those dark winter months, but it's far from the first thing I reflect upon when thinking back upon that place.

Amid the bustling din of busy weeknights, or the lazy weekend afternoons in spring, the bar came to encapsulate some small portion of home I thought I'd lost forever several years prior, upon first moving to college.

When you're home, you don't think. You don't feel that terribly nostalgic twinge—that dull ache of regret that pervades the various places you find yourself within for periods of time. Time simply passes when you're somewhere you enjoy.

For a kid in desperate need of feeling he was on the right track of becoming a man, a place that I felt I not only wasn't a bother, but rather someone who would engage in breezy conversation with bartender and patron alike was a significant step in my development as a human being. I felt like part of a community for the first time since I'd played competitive sports.

I've often found I succeed best in realms I initially resist. I was terribly uncertain about going to Paris—I knew that I wanted (above all else) to spend a year away from my collegiate campus, which had been a dreadful two-year experiment—but I am renowned (painfully so) as a slow starter.

Yet like so many things, and echoing the paths of my parents, who have both traveled extensively, whether for school, work, or both, I found that the European lifestyle came to suit me perfectly.

It had taken until Paris for me to find a place that I could accurately call "home." I felt a genuine sense of pride that I had gone somewhere unknown, and crafted a life out of it.

By my final months in the French capital, I was free-flowing, my moods a perfect extension of the buoyant spring weather as Paris eased from its crippling winter chill into the inviting sunlight of March.

The Bombardier played as big a role in that self-discovery as anything. I explored, with intrepid desire, throughout the various nooks and crannies Paris had to offer. And I often found places of wonderful solitude, in which I could think before heading back to the bustle of work and acquaintances.

But none were more soothing than a small, homely pub in the shadow of one of Paris's great architectural achievements. There's moments that remain with you forever, seared into the mind's eye as if your body was actively telling you to not forget, lest you lose something powerful.

I think about that pub often, now that I am back in the states. A twinge of regret inevitably arises upon reminiscence—but it is always always crushed by an ensuing tidal wave of contentment that the experience was lived.

That's how I want to remember it.