College Street boy Writtwik Banerjee, 34, watched the first football match of his life surrounded by French supporters in the Eiffel Tower fan zone on Sunday evening. Writtwik, who has been living and working in Paris as a corporate trainer in a language centre since 2008, recounts to Metro how he had a ball cheering the Les Bleus to a 5-2 victory over Iceland in the Euro 2016 quarter-final.

I had never watched football in Calcutta. So it wasn't exactly love for the game that made me board a Metro for Ecole Militaire, one of the three stations closest to the Eiffel Tower fan zone. It was more a wish to celebrate the positive spirit that Euro 2016 has brought to my adopted homeland. Post Charlie Hebdo (the terror attack on the satirical magazine in January 2015), the local economy has been going through a difficult time. There is unemployment. Trade unionism has reared its militant head. A state of emergency is on since November. Tourism is down by 45 per cent. Many shops in Paris that depended on tourists for survival have downed shutters.

Euro 2016 has brought two million tourists to France this summer. And more importantly, an air of optimism. The local supermarkets are giving away free stick-on French flags with every purchase. The shops at Champs Elysees are decorated with flags of participating nations. And with France in the semi-finals, people are smiling even broader.

Security at the Metro station was tremendous but efficient, much like traffic management in Calcutta during Durga Puja. There were trains every five minutes or so. The guards made commuters wait for the next train once one had filled to capacity. I asked two female security officers what they thought of the evening's opponent, Iceland. They said the match would be "interesting". No one had thought this unfancied team would make it to the quarter-finals.

Champ de Mars, a long stretch of green between the Eiffel Towel and Ecole Militaire, had been barricaded and turned into a fan zone with a giant screen and 12-14 smaller screens on the sides. They even took away my large umbrella at the entrance.

It was raining when the referee signalled kick-off at the Stade de France in Saint Denis, a 40-minute ride to the northern suburbs of France.

Some wore jerseys, with Dimitri Payet's name being a popular choice on the back. Funnily, a few wore the city club Paris Saint Germain's jersey bearing the name of Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who quit the club recently!

The fan zone had stalls from Carlsberg and McDonald's and even mobile ATM counters. Food and drinks are a very important part of the French way of life. Even during trade union agitations, sausage stalls come up on the side!

The ground was wet. So we all stood there watching the match and every time Les Bleus netted a goal, the crowd broke into full-throated renditions of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. Such an intense show of nationalism among the French was surprising. Five years ago, this would have been unthinkable.

The only Iceland supporters I found were members of a family from Norway who had painted the island nation's flag on their faces. They said they wanted to support both teams - their neighbours on achieving this football feat (reaching the round of eight) and the host nation too.

Despite the 5-2 victory, newspapers like Le Monde have not made much of the French victory. If anything, there is concern about the next hurdle along the way: Germany. The old rivalry of the Second World War has not been forgotten amid the bonhomie between two prime constituents of the European Union. And with the German wall in the way, it would be premature to start dreaming of a repeat of the 1998 (World Cup) triumph.

AS TOLD TO SUDESHNA BANERJEE