Day 14: Cheesy waxes philosophical

After a week basking under the provençal sun, Cheesy’s thoughts had begun to drift towards the more abstract. In Marseille the only thing higher than the rate of unemployment was the rate of drug consumption. One person told Cheesy that the reason he did so much drugs was to feel tired in the evening as if he’d just finished a hard day’s work.

Some might call Marseille a paradise. The unemployed receive €1300 per month in welfare. They can sit on the beach all day, smoking cheap product from North Africa, without having to worry about paying the rent or getting up early for work the next day. But Cheesy was not convinced that the Marseillais who lived like that were fully happy. If a person sits at home all day, it doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t want to go out. Humans are pathetically susceptible to inertia. The more of something we do, the harder it becomes to do anything else.

Cheesy was also coming to believe in the existence of social inertia. She had always thought of herself (with displeasure) as one of those shy, quiet, naive, and basically boring young women who sit waiting for more interesting people to come along to spice up life. Cheesy was meeting plenty of people, Cheesy was being sociable, Cheesy was having a grand time, but Cheesy was still Cheesy. She wanted to be more open, so what was the problem? It was slowly dawning on Cheesy, to her absolute horror, that maybe people don’t change. If the shy are all envious of the bold, then the shy should just go out and be bold. This was what Cheesy had had in mind when she set out for Europe. But what if Cheesy had once again built her plans around naïve hopes? What if the reason that the shy are envious is that they can’t change?

And so Cheesy felt a bit sad but also a bit at home amongst the Marseillais. Everyone here was caught in a lazy inertial flow that led nowhere. On the other hand, inertia can realize itself in many ways. Cheesy thought about people who couldn’t stop moving. Cheesy knew people who had almost 700 friends on Facebook. People like that must be insatiable. Nothing gives them a sense of satisfaction or calmness. Was there no middle ground? Cheesy dreaded that she would be boring her whole life. Or whether she would become caught in a travel-inertia, constantly trying to improve her life without ever changing herself. These thoughts made Cheesy sad and scared, and for that reason she decided to change subjects.

After her first night staying at the hostel in Marseille, Cheesy had moved into the apartment of a fellow named Julien. Julien lived in Vitrolle, a town in the outskirts of Marseille. Julien introduced Cheesy to rap marseillais and taught her all the local lingo. The accent was strange and there were many Arabic loanwords in Marseillais. While Quebecois pronounce “tu” as “tsu,” the Marseillais say “chew.” (For the wino’s interest, Parisians say “van” (writing with a Quebec accent), Quebecois say “vin” and Marseillais say “vinne” or “ving.” Anyone wishing to hear marseillais first-hand should listen to “Je danse le mia,” a famous marseillais rap song that came out in the nineties.) (Oh and apparently it’s not cool to drink red wine if you’re a meuf (girl, young woman) in Marseille. Emma will be pleased to hear that it’s all about rosé and white here)

Julien first brought Cheesy to Notre-Dame de la Garde, a basilica perched on a hill in Marseille. From there Cheesy could see the whole city, which sprawls out endlessly along the coast. The center of the city is the Vieux Port, which is a rectangular harbour jutting into the city. Opposite the city, in the Mediterranean, lie the Frioul Islands. One of the islands is occupied by the Chateau d’If, which is where the Count of Monte Cristo took place. A solitary highrise stood on the opposite side of the harbour. Cheesy thought it was pretty ugly, but voilà, gotta stick with the times.

Marseille was a strange city. It had the feel of a small town, although it was one of the largest cities in France both in terms of area and population. The public transit system closes at midnight at the latest. They had recently built a tramway system, which was more or less useless because it followed the same path as the metro. The metro didn’t cover even half of the city area. Cheesy was told that the north part of town is basically a massive selling ground for drugs – if you go walking in the streets there, you’ll be approached just as if you were a shopper in a marketplace.

Marseille was known for having one of the poorest city centres in France. The rich live along the coast in the south part of town, and ironically the poor get to inhabit the more historical areas. One such area was the Panier, where Cheesy stayed for a few days after leaving Vitrolle. The Panier was where Marseille was first founded (as ‘Massalia’) in 600 B.C. There were huge gnarly ‘platane’ trees (oak?) everywhere, little madonnas carved into the corners of buildings, and remnants of old windmills that once produced olive oil. The streets stank of sulfur, fish, and excrement. Fanny, Cheesy’s host in the Panier, said that there were plans to gentrify downtown Marseille. Fanny was convinced that this was the best time to be in Marseille, because in a few years it would be as snobby, expensive, and soulless as Paris (Julien had well informed Cheesy of the undying animosity between Parisians and Marseillais).

While Cheesy missed busy, bubbly Paris, she had a few good nights hitting the town around Marseille. She had tapas and mulled wine in Aix-en-Provence, danced up a storm at the Cours Julien in north-central Marseille, met up with other couchsurfers for pastis, and wined and dined with Fanny and her friends. She had only two more items on her list of things to do before leaving for Italy: play tarot cards, which were invented in Marseille, and walk along the calanques, the famous cliffs overlooking the sea. She had plans to do both, and was trying hard to remain optimistic despite her high rate of failed travel plans. Oh well, if all else failed, at least wine was cheap in France!

PS Still no net on my own computer so pics will have to wait :(