Day 2 in Marseille

As forecast, a bank holiday in Marseille means that there are lots of people out and about, a limited number of shops open and little opportunity for sorting the problem of finding accommodation for tomorrow night. At this point I was only aware of potential hotel rooms at €80+ for the night in the city, although by the end of the day I had the names of some cheaper hotels to look for. All the cheaper hotel and hostel accommodation had gone for the Friday night long before I arrived in Marseille. Anyway this morning I put this thorny problem to the back of my mind for a while and concentrated on exploring Marseille.

Notre Dame Cathedral

I had a couple of initial plans. I wanted a dictionary, ideally I wanted a map (other than the pocket leaflet from the hostel), and I fancied getting up to highest point around and looking at the whole city from Notre Dame cathedral. I also started to explore the whereabouts of doctor’s surgeries as I need a medical for the new job – vis they don’t exist, you call on the doctor’s residence with an appointment…

Anyway after refreshing my mind with a couple of Pain-au-chocolate from a Boulangerie and a bottle of water from a corner shop I wandered through the main shopping streets and found my way into a Virgin Megastore. They may have fallen under the radar back home, but this was alive and kicking with a choice of multiple dictionaries for sale. A ‘pocket’ –sized model made its way into my pocket for a worthwhile €8.50. Over the course of the day it got multiple usage as I wandered the streets assimilating words via osmosis and looking up how to say phrases that came into my mind. For instance alleyways labelled Monte ____ mean to go up (vis. Stairs!).

View over the 7th Arrondisement to the Ile Frioud

The narrow streets, packed with cars, tall buildings and many shutters reminded my of previous visits to Brussels. Maybe it is a continental style, although I can see the reasoning for the shutters in the summer in terms of keeping the properties cool (see photos). The view from the top of the hill beside Notre Dame was well worth the climb up there, counting steps in French and avoiding being photographed and then having money demanded from me! ( I suspect). The importance of Marseille as a port came back to me as I saw ferries from both Algeria and Tunisia coming and going in the short period I was watching.

A compact boatyard, Marseille-style

Among my wanderings I was particularly taken by two bridges on the coastal road over inlets or valleys. In this built up area the natural contours of the landscape are not so obvious, but here they were and every small corner of land was being used up. In this case beneath each of the bridges, or small viaducts, the ladn was being used for boatyards. Innovative slipways for dragging boats out of the water and separate winches for each mooring spot caught my attention (see photos again). The close-packed nature of the region is most apparent when you view it from above and make the prime residences with gardens stand out.

Back at the Vieux Port (a bigger version of Swansea’s marina only four times the size), it started raining heavily and I took cover alongside my first Bouledrome – pitches for boule – on which a pair of gentlemen continued to play despite the rain. They could see I was appreciative of their sport although no words were exchanged.

My French confidence took a slight battering today as I could make myself understood in a Boulangerie for my tasty lunchtime sandwich, but had no idea how much the lady was asking for. In the end I just held out my handful of change and she took what she wanted. I have a long way to go.

Finally I discovered a shop called Fnac (a cross between Virgin, Waterstones and HMV) and found the local climbing guide to the area. The hand-drawn diagrams look great and the routes seem to be graded from Fr4-6c so there will be plenty within my range. I’ll wait until I have someone to climb with and then buy a copy, dictionary in hand! Maps of the area however appear to vary between a 1:15,000 map of the Calanques and 1:200,000 or worse general maps. I think I’ve been spoilt by the UK series.

Cider with Rosie?

Cidre with Rosie?

I’m sure this isn’t what Laurie Lee meant when he wrote his famous book Cider with Rosie, but at the time I doubt rosé wine had made it to rural England. However it appears that the French now drink cider… or maybe they are trying to tempt the ladies of this province off of their Rosé wines and sparkling tipples. Either way I shall wait to see if pink ‘cidre’ takes off over here.

There is a saying which goes that if a film needs to be advertised it can’t be very good….

Kid in a Sweet Shop

In the third of this series of little windows on French culture… I just found a good sized supermarket. Up until now I had only found bakeries and small food shops in the centre of Marseille. An enforced move to a hotel on the outskirts landed me next door to the Casino. Consulting the dictionary Casino = casino… but I had been seeing Petite Casino around Marseille already (although they were all shut as it was a bank holiday), and now here is a Geant Casino, in reality comparable to Tesco Extra in the UK.

I guess I was like a kid in a sweet shop, or possibly a better description as a child exploring another child’s toy cupboard. Wide eyes, wandering around vacantly, you can’t find what you are used to, but there is this whole maze of lively items to choose from! Despite not drinking much at the moment I did have to wander down the wine aisle to see what I was missing out on at the moment. If my impressions based on the bottle are correct there are some rather nice bottles of Alsace white wine waiting to be sampled at €6-8 a piece, Montbarzillac at €8 and full bottles of Sauternes for €6-11… NOM!!!

Other things that caught my attention was the profusion of cheeses (fromage) and preserved sausages (Saucisson, take Choritzo and change the flavour a bit and you won’t be far wrong). Bread will never be the same as the UK, but there was a good selection of baguettes and other types of bread too, along with the expected Croissant, little tartlettes and sweet puddings. I was rather tempted. Yoghurt doesn’t appear to come in the large Onken/Yeo Valley size that it does at home. You can get little pots in all shapes and sizes or absolutely massive pots of plain yoghurt. There also appeared to be less in the way of fresh meat available too than the UK.

Excluding food products there were plenty of books and magazine for sale, but all appeared to be in French. For some reason I had expected a selection of both.. I recognised a number of authors, but in each case they had been translated. William and Kate – un bon amour (or something like that) and Clive Cussler stuck with me.

I’m sure there will be other observations that will come to mind over time, but these were my initial impressions of my first Geant Casino!

Car Parking

In contrast to the post about the toilets, the French are very good at many things from car parking to food. I have only been here a few days but watching the small spaces that cars can and have got into is amazing. Any little nook and cranny seems to be capable of holding a car. In most of Britain, London excepted?, you need at least two foot at either end of your car once it is in the space in order to get into it. Here you can halve that at least. I guess if you have a lot of practise you know exactly where the bumpers of your car are and how to get into small spaces, but I am impressed. I don’t know if I want to try it..
As you might expect many cars have scrapes and dents down them, so I suspect that in parking tightly many of them scrape bollards, nudge up too tightly to other vehicles and so forth. I think it was a good thing not to bring my fairly new car down here!

Thinking of food. I could get used to popping into a boulangerie for a sandwich most lunchtimes. We are not talking your delicate triangular British jobs, sur ou sans crusts, but full-on demi-baguettes. Your typical French sandwich will set you back 3-4 euro, but be 30cm long and full of salad, ham, tuna, egg, meat, cheese etc. I had a particularly good goats cheese and salad one yesterday (Thursday), although I didn’t understand how much it was and had to hold out my handful of change to have the relevant 3.50 extracted from it. Such is the life of a poor, but hopefully improving, French speaker.

Anyone for a fresh croissant or pain au chocolate as I pass the bakery? 

Toilet Humour

The French have a way of doing things that is different to the UK. Maybe that is us, maybe it is France. Who can tell? (Comments on the back of a single postcard or equivalent please!) Possibly they are just ‘special’.

If anyone can enlighten me as to how you are meant to go to the toilet without touching the bowl, I would be interested. For those who don’t know many toilets lack seats and in some cases bowls at all from memory. As far as I can see it must be some trick of contortion or very strong thigh muscles to enable you to lean back against the wall behind and brace your legs either side, but frankly it doesn’t seem possible! Thankfully many touristique places, such as hostels, have toilet seats for their international guests, but there are still many who would like you to be as quick as possible.

On that note, I have also met a timer on the light which must have been set to one minute and 20s if you are lucky. No reading time for you mate! Although my arms were long enough to reset it from sitting down…

Welcome to Marseille

The Vieux Port, Marseille

Having travelled down from the UK the day before, my first day in Marseille, the first of a new month, was an eventful one. After getting up at a sensible hour of 9am I walked down to the Vieux (old) Port and had a wander around. I was amused by the strange mix of old and new buildings in the area and cultures too. From block to block the scene changes. Marseille was historically a major port and there are many North African cultures here as well as French. A waterside Spar provided an expensive breakfast, as it would also have done in the UK, and I found where the 21 bus for Luminy campus left from.

Arriving at the end of the bus route and the end of the road, I was struck by just how rural the campus is. If you type Luminy into a image search engine you’ll find a few aerial photos showing what I mean. Set in a valley away from the conurbation of Marseille itself limestone outcrops from scrubby vegetation provide the views, while dry Mediterranean soils shelter drought-surviving trees and thorn bushes. The campus buildings themselves were built in the 1960s and show that typical concrete squared off corners and covered walkways. Many of the buildings show signs of crumbling and neglect, strange for a University in my view. The corridors and stairways remind me of schools and the lifts have a hinged door to access them and tend to only be trusted on the way up! Set within this there is much sophisticated equipment.

I bumped into my supervisor/boss on the stairs and after a few flights we put two and two together and introduced each other! The rest of the day was spent filling in forms, meeting people and touring the laboratories of our building. For the most part there are various research groups working in many fields of chemistry, oceanography and biology, but they are split up by floors and stairways and I wait to see how much interaction goes on. My research group is small and I will be sharing an office with equipment and my supervisor. That will be a new experience. I did meet some lovely people working in the department though and found one doing her PhD on some very interesting jellyfish populations in a local lagoon.

I also got a taste for how the French system works when you realise you can’t have a contract without a bank account, or a bank account without bills and a place of residence, and likewise residence without a job or bank account… There are always ways around these things, but they are designed not to be easy. Equally I hadn’t realised that the 2^nd of June was a Bank Holiday (Ascension Day?) and so work was closed this day, and that most people would take the one ‘bridge’ day between the Bank Holiday and the weekend off too. I suppose in the UK most bank holidays are on a Monday so this doesn’t apply. The holiday didn’t help the visit to the bank or the search for accommodation for me.

Eric with his Gambas

In the evening I went down to a restaurant in the Vieux Port with someone from the hostel and ordered food. At first I thought we were being ignored by the waiter, but overlooked was probably closer to the truth. My opening gambit of “D’accord pour manger?” (Okay for food?) was a bit Franglish, but I managed to get through the rest of the ordering and meal speaking to him only in French. It did wonders for my confidence. I also had a small carafe of wine without any ill effects. Maybe I am gradually relaxing…? Either way I still think that the alcohol isn’t the cause of my recent allergy, but the thing that tips the balance between health and ill-health.

There is hope for this Englishman yet.

Weatherwise – 20 degrees, strong winds and showers is not pleasant for the French but was quite nice for me!

Le Grande Voyage

Well I’ve started my movements to Marseille after a bout of fieldwork in Greece, a quick flurry of properly learning to dive in the Red Sea, and some frantic to and fro-ings to Swansea to collect my things. As with all these things not everything fitted into the car and I ended up having to leave a pile of things for collection by a friend. Still I was glad to have a day at home to sort through all my stuff before packing for Marseille.

For the moment I am keeping a diary (thanks Ruth) of my movements on the way to and around Marseille. How long it will last I don’t know, possibly until it stops feeling like a travelling holiday and starts to become reality. Anyway I thought the best way to keep all you readers updated was to post excerpts from it onto this blog and take it from there. I haven’t really advertised this blog to date, so you may have come across it by surprise. Happy reading of the archives! I suspect there will also be a series of frenchisms added to the text which may or may not be actually correct… but they seemed right at the time.

Travelling to Marseille or Le Grand Voyage

And so it begins.

The time has come to move on, to start a new job and a new life in France.I am excited about going to Marseille, but I’m having trouble convincing my body of this. There was certainly a considerable reluctance to leave the house this morning, rather like that shown by anxious divers. Combined with that the regular sneezing when I drink alcohol at the moment would suggest I’m stressed. I’ll get over it I hope.

I hope I’ve made the right choices with what to pack, not forgotten anything essential and taken nothing needlessly. Some would argue that the climbing harness and shoes, set of speakers and even a laptop were unnecessary… All in all I probably have 30-35kg of luggage.

Departure (from St Pancras) 2 minutes early under sunshine and cloudy skies. I’ve been collared by a lady from Ipsis Murray conducting a survey on board the train. All the usual questions about what you think of the train and station and where you are travelling to. I hope they have to create new codes for some of my answers!

Ha! Technically I’ve already crossed the border and am in French diplomatic territory despite being on the outskirts of London still and stopping at Ebbsfleet on the way.

I had also forgotten I got food on board (travelling first class as you do ;))! I can’t have the wine at the moment but pasta with pesto, pate on fresh bread, potato salad, carrot cake, orange juice and a cup of tea goes down very well. It rather settles the nerves. (Into the tunnel). It is nice to feel pampered and to have extra legroom. It makes you relax in a way that you don’t get on the airlines in cattle class.

Amazingly muddling up French phrases in my mind has made me laugh. I think I’m crazy, as if that is anything new.

Ah good, announcements (on the TGV from Lille to Marseille) are in French and English!

There is also something distinct about every country (or county for that matter). Things I have noticed so far – architecture (of course), motorway signs are much bigger and above your head than in the UK, and the shape of roads near a village. I think the absence of fences or hedges (further inspection suggests they rely on ditches) beside the lanes make them more open.

Landfill site, followed by farmland and a buzzard, followed by a quarry. There aren’t apparently many patches of woodland here (in the middle of France)… as promptly we went through a large patch of deciduous woodland – mainly oak and birch.

18:00 – This area, I guess would be middle eastern France, is much hillier with the ground rising and falling and more trees than northern France. A deep wooded valley with only a small river in the bottom would be good to explore.

British trains will feel slow after le TGV.

The lady (opposite me) and I have been communicating with hand signals. I’m sure I could do French, but it is the quiet coach and I lack confidence, of course!

Lyon Part Dieu station – Someone smoking on the platform, I suspect it was a quick sneaky fag before the train departs. It was, he moved fast when the whistle went.

On the outskirts of Lyon – Funky allotments. Better than erecting your own garden shed, each pair comes with a shed building back to back, complete with a red tiled roof and a veranda. You’d have to see it to get the full image, but wow! Ah, now a new bunch of allotments. These are only second-rate ones further out from the centre. They were again a pair of buildings, but with a boring/enuyeax felt roof. What makes both sorts special is the veranda on the front with (in many cases) plants growing up them.

Finally found the hostel. The road I wanted was marked on the map at the station but absent from those around the town, and I got the direction wrong. As I walked around several blocks searching fruitlessly I got hotter and more frustrated. Eventually I walked into a local police station and asked for directions in English. Very thankful to be here now and we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

To be continued (as they say, written on the third day from leaving the UK) but probably not so lengthily ;).