Recalling Marseille

 A Prose Sketch

[After we left Marseille, I (Sarah) found myself wanting to capture a few more memories from this time for us and for any other interested readers]

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We arrive mid afternoon on Monday. It’s hot, busy and incredibly bright. We emerged from the station onto a white marble pavement leading down the stairs of the sun. Immediately needed hats and sunglasses. The road took us downhill through a street heaving with people, scooters, trams and chaotic road crossings. Such a different vibe from the more stately Torino. People of every race and condition. 

Turned right down the main drag to the old port and the pedestrianised road was full, with beggars asking for money. One older woman with half her face profoundly disfigured. Burns? Or leprosy? African women braiding the hair, seemingly, of their own daughters; babies in strollers; skinny men in jeans - a melting pot everyone trying to make their way, scrambling for a foothold, and yet somehow also here, alive, finding a way.

 I decided to give nothing - it seemed pointless to hand out a few euros at random, and also somehow not a real response. And the begging wasn’t the whole of it. Others were running shops, talking in cafes, going to work - all of it some vast, complex, interweaving set of histories and stories, way beyond anyone’s capacity to order and control. It made me think of 'being with what is' as the necessary and only place to start. To come from outside and notice the impulse to fix, and then realise that 'being with' is the ground of presence. 

Afternoon walk on the other side of the old port - a petit biere in a tiny bottle for me and a large one for Neil at a local bar with a friendly bar keeper. Later, a carafe of rosé and slice of apricot tart at a bookshop cafe in the Panier District run by an older couple, elegant, French, a little oasis of quiet and culture (music and books). And then pizza (anchovy and cheese) and supions (squid) and more rosé at Chez Etienne, a cult and vibrant Italian run pizzeria (cash only). The pizza chef sweated and shouted his way through each order, rolling out pizza dough, shoving pizzas into the wood-fired oven in full view of the packed restaurant. Then walking home through the still very warm night, streets quieting a little, but the old port and restaurants on the waterfront still full of people. We took a photo of a classic French brasserie in prime position for Arnie and Gerald. 

A slow start the next morning - we missed getting up to see the fish catch being unloaded - but found a traditional French breakfast cafe in the Place a block away from our hotel. Chairs and tables set out on the pavement, waitresses coming in and out with their trays. We had le petit dejeuner sucré (a choice of bread/tartine and confiture or pastry, and fresh orange juice, café au lait for 8.50 euros each and the use of their excellent loo down a spiral staircase. 

Then onto the Abbey St Victor to pay homage to John Cassian, which took us through another more local feeling neighbourhood. I went to give a donation to the two women looking after the Abbey and tried to explain in halting French the connection between Cassian and the World Community for Christian Meditation and the significance of the site for us. They got the gist and then were insistent we visit the crypt and Cassian’s sarcophagus - the crypt was much larger than we expected, and the rock hewn walls felt very ancient. I gathered that Orthodox visitors know and care about Cassian (there was a plaque honouring the visit of a Romanian patriarch), but most others don’t know who he is. 

Lunch was a beautiful meal of galettes with traditional Normandy cider. The little crêpe cafe, called 'Oil & Wax', run by a couple originally from Brittany but drawn by a love of surfing and the sea to the Mediterranean. There were two surfboards hanging on the café wall, a twin-fin designed by Australian surfer Mark Richards (about which Neil was able to engage intelligently with the husband of the pair - he was the cook, a crêpier of 25 years experience!). The wife was lovely and served us. She said she sometimes hates Marseille - they find it very difficult to live here, and see the poverty of so many and its relentless busyness. But they love the sun and the sea, and their children love it and have many friends. So they stay. 

We had a rest in the afternoon in our sloping-floored room, which was not far from our crêpe place. Later we went out again - had an expensive Apérol spritz at an Irish pub - then this time explored the left side of the harbour, having walked along the right side yesterday, past the fort which now houses a Museum of European and Mediterranean civilisation. Along the left side we saw beautiful old sailing boats, Neil pointing out changes and differences in design, and admired one which a younger guy was repainting underneath (it was hoisted up on the slips). Joggers, runners, cyclists, pedestrians pounded along the footpath along the water's edge, and the early evening traffic flowed along. 

We came to the entrance to a larger park - connected to the grounds of a Palais overlooking the harbour, a lighthouse, and then out to sea. Families and young people were there with picnics; 'boot camp' type fitness sessions were being held; young guys from north and sub-Saharan Africa looking out, having a smoke and a chat. What are their stories? We watched a catamaran coming into the harbour and ferries going out. 

We thought we might just get a supermarket salad for dinner, still fullish from our crêpes. But walking back into town and the old port, we went down a different street, lined with lovely lighted restaurants, lights threaded through trees, and amazingly quiet given its proximity to the main port road. We came to one and were greeted in a non-pushy way by its youngish proprietor. It turned out to be a Vietnamese restaurant in its first week of existence. There was a beautiful tree to sit under and we were immediately drawn to it and wanted to support the restaurant. We had a beautiful meal - clean flavours. Neil had chicken curry and me a duck brochette with puréed carrot and ginger and rice, and then a beautiful home-made coconut ice cream served in a small coconut shell for dessert. Back to our room passing a hundred more eateries - the streets still lively and the night warm. 

Next morning we missed the fish market again but not breakfast at 'our' cafe. Mid-morning saw us heading up the hill towards the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde. We'd had some conversation the night before at the Irish pub (over our €12 per Apérol drinks!) with a couple of Irish women, who assured us that the road up to the Basilica was way too steep to walk. They caught a taxi! Of course, we ignored this and found the road up steep but nothing like the Alps! The Basilica was busy but this was strangely moving - people drawn to something, and the idea of Mary as our protector. At one level, it seems inauthentic - a kind of projected or false hope. At another, it’s a profound expression of the real experience of human vulnerability - our need of help to survive the suffering of life. 

We walked down the hill on the other side - a crumbling set of stairs overgrown by weeds, which seemed not to belong in the city. More of a Camino path. It took us towards the coast, further around from the port, through a series of backstreets and 'impasses' that seemed an older Marseille residential neighbourhood - quite large houses with shuttered windows behind high walls. Google maps knew all the little alleys where bougainvilleas and hibiscus grew over the walls from the gardens hidden behind, and it felt a bit like backstreets on the northern beaches of Sydney or maybe somewhere in Portugal or Spain. We were headed for neighbourhoods - former fishing villages along the coast road (la Corniche) out of the city - and hoping to find fish and chips. We didn’t quite nail that outcome - maybe we needed to work walk further around, but we marvelled at the turquoise colour of the Mediterranean water as people swam off the rocks and small sandy beaches below the road. 

Up a side road, we came upon a Panamanian café restaurant advertising Latino food. A friendly greeting from the owner, a sign promising tacos, and some great Latino music, and we were hooked - and it was the most exquisite lunch. Neil had soft tacos with grilled chicken, guacamole and salad; for me, an entree of three bits - a beef empanada and two deep fried plantain baskets, one filled with guacamole and the other with marinated crevettes (shrimps). It was run by another couple. A French husband did front of house and a Panamanian wife did the cooking in a jaunty South American hat - a fedora. They were warm and generous and we said we thought we’d be back for dinner. We continued along la Corniche and soon were back at the Palais garden from the night before, and so had a sense of completing the circle. 

Another afternoon snooze in our room and some time working on the blog. When we went out later, we walked back up into the main city, up the main pedestrianised boulevard, past the tram tracks and through what seemed a number of Lebanese or Arab cafes along the sidewalks, the tables almost exclusively occupied by men having a late afternoon coffee and smoke (there were a few children but no women that we saw). Then back around to the seafront and the boats moored in the harbour, and back to our Panamanian café where Neil had chicken tacos all over again and I had grilled sea bream with sweet potato purée and coconut rice. Amazing!! 

Our train was leaving at about 9.30am the next morning so we left our room at about 8.00, farewelling our host and walking up through the city in search of breakfast closer to the station. Neil spotted a traditional looking French café - the sort with mirrors behind the bar, soft orange lighting, enticing tables and plaster moulding on the walls. It seemed an old world oasis on a very busy street - family run, and serving fresh pressed orange juice, fresh bread and home-made peach jam and good coffee. It was a beautiful pause before the last walk up to the station and the stairs like the Spanish steps in Rome. We leave so full of impressions and encounters, a sense of the extraordinary diversity and richness of Marseille's life and culture and history, the extraordinary fact of it working at all and managing some kind of harmony and being a context where so many are making their way.

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