Two days ago, Rene and I set out into the bitter wind to explore the city.
I bundled up my scarf in a way that kept me warm, but which Rene thought looked ridiculous.
We had plans to go to the Modern Art Museum, where there was an exposition of artists from the local academy. There was some interesting and provocative work on display. I was drawn to the photographic portraits of workers, Rene was drawn to a sculpture of colorful light and glass.
We headed upstairs and no sooner did we put our foot on the top step, than we ran into Cati’s guests from Bordeaux, Stephanie and her daughter Matilde and her son Niels. We decided to meet up downstairs and spend some of our day walking together.
Rene and I looked at some of the cubist and fauvist paintings from Marseille’s past, some local artists of international renown who were part of the museum’s permanent collection.
We then met up with our friends downstairs and walked together through the shopping district. Some considerable time was spent at the Monoprix, France’s answer to Super Target. Afterward, we set out to find Marseille’s legendary soap factory. The reputation of the city’s ability to provide the world with notable soap was far more inflated than the modest storefront that we found.
But afterward, we walked on, undeterred, our senses filled with the perfume of various, fresh bathroom scents. On the way, we saw a European restaurant chain with a funny name, Chickenville:
We were so inspired by the prospect of fast food, that we ducked into McDonalds for a free wifi fix and to see how the world class purveyor of wrapped sandwiches was doing things in the south of France. We checked our email on my Palm mobile device and listened to an interesting surf/rap mashup take advantage of Dick Dale’s signature sound in a new context.
After our meal, we had stalled for just enough time to take in a movie. We bought our tickets for Jack Black’s “Be Kind Please Rewind” set in Passaic, New Jersey. It was light fare when it came to character development or plot, but where it really hit it out of the park was in the Jack Black character’s comic inventiveness and in the film’s brilliant, endearing concept of “sweded” videotapes. Rene commented that the re-made scenes from Ghostbusters alone were worth the price of admission. I think too, seeing a distinctly American film, about an underdog, American city was a comfort to us. We laughed outwardly at a lot of the jokes, some of which might have been lost to the rest of the French audience reading the subtitles in the theater.
Fast forward to 24 hours. I spent most of the day reading, Seth Godin’s “The Dip” and, given the high price of last minute, in-person, language instruction, studying French through the audio CD that Rene had given me for my birthday. Aside from that, and a good afternoon nap, I helped stir and taste the chili which Rene had simmering on the stove for half the day. The last half of last night was spent drinking and talking at a going away party for one of Cati’s friends, of which the chili was an integral part. I know Rene will be blogging about the finer details of the event, so I’ll plan to link to her description here.
Walking East from the Vieux Port, our first stop on the day’s adventure is La Cure Gourmand, a super cute candy store which excites your senses both with wide swaths of golden yellow color and bins and bins of candies with infinite promises of great tastes.
I purchase several boat shaped pastries (specific to Marseille) along with tiny breads filled with marzipan and chocolate.
Rene picks up a salty caramel block that we later agree tastes out of this world!
Next, it’s on to the old, original chamber of commerce building which now houses the Marine Museum of Marseille. There, we are treated to a vast collection of model ships, and dozens of pleasing 1920’s Posters promoting the city’s shipping trade.
Rene and I take turns posing next to a proto-Iron Man diving suit.
Next, it’s on to what Rene calls the “Champs Elysees of Marseille”, an upscale shopping district. We stop at a few fashionable clothing stores, a trendy thrift shop and the manga and comic section of the Virgin Megastore.
Afterward, we stop for lunch in a public park, sitting beside an urban waterfall to fold slices of emmentaler and rosette onto wedges of baguette. The lunch is satisfying, and the buildings around the square serve as a welcome wind-break.
We head into this chilly wind through new neighborhoods.
Following Rene’s instincts, we turn the corner to discover the great old, Morrish church at the city center. Rene remarks that the alternating white and red brick arches are similar to the mosque that we saw on our honeymoon while visiting Cordova, Spain.
Armed with new knowledge about my camera, I try to think through just the right settings for taking photos. But I find that photography in dimly lit buildings is something of a challenge.
It is getting late in the afternoon, so we duck into a grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner (after last night’s late-night adventure to find a bottle of wine at 9:30 pm only to find that every shop in a mile radius had closed up – I decide that a bird in the hand is fair play – rather than wait on shopping till we get back to our neighborhood). Laden with asparagus, steaks and beer, we make our way back to the apartment. Between yesterday and today, we’ve taken a good look at both sides of the harbor. We settle in for the night to reunite with Alfredo and start a new game of Monopoly.
Today, I went out to the square and sat near the fountain in the noonday sun. I read a few poems in my manuscript and fiddled around with a typo or two. On the way back, I negotiated buying a baguette at the boulanger, picked up a few items at the corner grocery, and struck a pricey deal on strawberries from a street vendor.
Once back at the apartment, Cati called up to us from the courtyard to see if we wanted to join her for an informal walking tour of the city. We agreed.
Before the tour we were invited down to Cati’s for a communal lunch of a delicious salad with shrimp, spicy radishes, pasta with pesto, a 24 egg omlette cooked in a large skillet, and wine from the Bordeaux region of France which is where Cati’s friends, who we were sharing the table with, were from. There was much conversation in French which floated around me and which I only caught a phrase or two. A lot of discussion was around the people of Marseille and how they did not care to vote in the larger elections. Cati said that they care about their own home and that is that. But that there are larger issues, like global warming, which are causing people to start to take political action.
Afterward, we begin the tour, walking past a building with a distinctive architectural design similar to a once-popular art neuvo style from Paris.
We walk a short ways down the street to the plaza where I was earlier that morning. I learned how the fountain marked the end of the city, and that the high walls I saw melding into the facades of the buildings actually served to both constrain Marseille in its size just as the walls protected it.
We wind a little further through the narrow streets to the Pre-roman area of the city.
They did not bury people within the walls, and so we could see several ancient sarcophagus lined up near the sidewalk and against an old cathedral.
We head into the church which contains impressive, wooden domed ceilings and ancient stone arches.
There are a few reliquaries of with the bones of saints.
We all pay two euros each and enter into the catacombs below the church.
In addition to many burial tombs, we see a black virgin Mary which is paraded through the city on holy days along with some mosaics, and an old inscription lamenting the death of two brothers.
Afterward, we walk out towards the old port. Cati tells us more history about the city and the way Marseille was ruled locally, and how it never was a part of France. We learn too about the new port on the other side of the harbor and more.
We visit a few more stops, following Cati as she leads us through modern store fronts only to be surprised by the textures of ancient architecture worn and stained from years of human use. The way the architecture told its stories it was like looking at the carbon dating of tree rings.
We wind up our tour at a small bistro where we order hot spiced wine or cappuccinos and sweet crepes.
We could not get off the island of Friol fast enough. We methodically packed and cleaned at first light and caught the first ferry of the day back to Marseille.
The boat pulled up the dock and as we walked towards the end of the pier, we looked over the shoulders of the fishmongers chatting it up with customers, their morning’s catch laid out over buckets of ice.
I wasn’t going to haul any more luggage through the streets, so we hopped into a taxi and drove in comfort the few blocks up the hill to Cati’s apartment.
We knocked on the door and Cati was surprised that we had come so soon. She had been expecting us tomorrow. We were handed the keys to Rene’s new place. It’s super cute!
After showering and taking Alfredo for a walk, Rene and Cati go out into the the neighborhoods to pick up groceries. She comes back with sea urchins from the fish market, hot peppers from the Asian market, meat from the middle eastern market, spices from the African market, and onion, tomatoes and garlic from the grocery store down the street. Afterward, Rene cooks up a big pot of southwest chili while I take a mid-afternoon nap. We sit around the kitchen table and pour a couple of glasses of Fisher, our new favorite beer, made in the Alsace region of France. The chili turns out excellent and warms us to the core.
In addition to Rene’s laptop suffering a catastrophic hard drive failure, gaining access to the internet has been a challenge. Cati’s friend Laurant comes over and the two of us systematically determine that there’s an issue with the wireless router and that the only solution is to run a cable through the length of her apartment, from the office, through the hall, down the middle of the kitchen and through a transom window, up a trellis and in though a window to where Rene is now checking her email.
We play a game of monopoly on a French game board and settle into Rene’s new month-long home for the night.
It’s leap day! The calendar’s rare, four year occurrance. The last ferry has left Ile du Frioul. Rene and I are seated at the at the end of the quai, where we have the whole restaurant to ourselves. The manager or, I presume, the family that runs place just kicked up the volume on the jazz, to which he’d been humming to a few moments ago, and I am inspired to write.
I had a good idea as to what I would appreciate on this near-deserted island of 150 odd inhabitants. The idea of Rene and I being together, away from the city, with time to take stock of her experiences over the past month appealed to me.
Getting to the island was no joy. Rene and I hauled our luggage though the streets like immigrants and waited at the end of a long line of tourists hoping that we would not have to wait for the next ferry. I slept halfway through the passage and woke up only after most the other passengers had already departed to the Chateau Def of Alexander Dumas fame.
We walk down the pier, past a long line of varied, personal seagoing crafts. The studio is absolutely cramped. Rene and I have dinner of camembert and prosciutto and baguette. Afterward, Rene persuades me to insert a Golden Girls DVD into the laptop, while I curl up on the couch next to her and sleep.
And sleep we do, with gusto and in abundance. We wake up in the morning, and it’s Noon. After breakfast, we pack up our bags and, with Alfredo in tow, head out to explore the east end of the island. We walk towards the abandoned hospital on the hill, and as we follow the windy roads, then paths, the details of the clear ocean water and the many private, pebbled beaches emerge.
Rene has her iPhone out and is using it as a divining rod to uncover any free wifi zone that the island might choose to present. Sadly, all wireless zones that she finds are secure and private, locked against any tourist who might be in need of email.
We arrive at our destination, a hospital which, in its day, served as quarantine facility to safeguard the city of Marceille against epidemic, and peering though gates at every entrance meant to keep the place off limits into what, to me, seems like a dusty movie set for an unimagined genre, what one might describe as a neo-classical western.
But really, at every direction, the lure of the view inward to the walled buildings is more an excuse to discover different outward views of the full expanse of the coast of Marseille or the changing light and shadows on the Chateau Def midway cross the bay.
Early on in our walk, the batteries in my camera fail, impressing upon me, at this beginning point in my trip, the need to keep a backup set of alkalines handy. Rene comments that it’s fair play, that she should be without wireless, and that I should be without the ability to take photos. This point is soon underscored in a way which I will soon convey.
After a picnic lunch on the hillside overlooking a hidden cove, we meander back to town. I comment to Rene how I like the scale of this island, how in under an hour you can be out in nature where your focus sharpens on unexpected details, like the numerous tiny bleached sea-bones littering the high cliffs and how your imagination seeks to reconcile how they made their way to where they now rest. There is an urgency to spending these few days on the island, devoid of television and radio, of cell phone and internet. An urgency of falling back onto our own thoughts and our own time together, to discuss and refine our thinking, to evaluate and plan the coming weeks… and then some.
Taking the back way up the hill to our apartment, I stop next to the caserne (the firehouse) and what appears to be a municipal building whose windows are plastered with flyers and announcements for various island groups and events. I check the door handle and it opens. I can hear people talking and a man enters into the foyer. I try out my best bon jour and ask if he parley vous engles. He gestures, one moment, and another man comes out from the back. He offers us a comfortable, “hello” and I ask if I might ask him if he could tell us if this is a municipal building. He explains that the building is not municipal, in that it is not owned by the city, but that it is a community space in that it is here where all the groups of the island meet. He explains that this is a meeting place for various constituents from residents of Marseille, to residents of Paris who make their second home on the island, to expats from any number of countries (such as Holland which is where he is from). I ask his name, he introduces himself as Berting. We shake hands. He tells me that this meeting space is used for all sorts of groups from bird watchers to hydroponic farmers, from rock climbers to cartologists to politicians who all take their place among the 150 residents of the islands of Frioul. He tells me that the particular group which is now using the space is debating whether to participate in an event about “acting locally and thinking globally”. He explains that some of the members are saying that “they’ve done this before” in years past, but he confides that “you have to continue to represent Frioul”, to keep the islands fresh in people’s minds (we learned last night in the guide book that military and medical use have kept the island mercifully free from poplulation growth and development) and it is likely this obscurity acts as something of a double edged sword that the community groups have to contend with by both raising their profile and self interests on one hand and protecting their unique and isolated way of life on the other. He hands me their latest pamphlet (of which the previous six flyers we saw taped to the window next to the door). We thank him for his time and walk across the vacant lot to the group of apartments we call home.
Berting (Second from the left) and the Association Frioul un Nouveau Regard
Once back in our tiny studio, we settle in for the night. Alfredo is taken for a walk. We take a side trip to the grocery store which is more like a hollowed out store front with a few dozen shelves stocked with the barest essential items an island dweller might want. We pick up two bottles of beer for later on and a package of ham and a baguette for the morning.
As we get ready to head out for dinner, Rene translates Berting’s pamphlet aloud. It’s amazing. It’s a work of public relations that is both outlandish and indulgent to an almost ridiculous degree. It’s a philosophical and poetic tract about how the island is isolated and how, by extension, visitors to the island become isolated and are thrown back onto themselves for answers. I find this amazing in that it hits the nail on the head about why I thought it would be good for both of us to spend time on the island in the first place.
As a postscript, in an appropriate gesture, the island further communicates its desire to isolate us from our accustomed comforts through blowing a fuse and eliminating, save for a single light above the bathroom mirror, that is all the power we have left in our apartment. We laugh at the irony of this, and for the last hour of the evening look to each other and to ourselves for laughter and conversation and personal truth.
