Marseille

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Vieux Port de Marseille
  Bonjour à tous!

   I'm sorry I haven't written in a while. The closer I come to finishing up here, it seems the less free time I have. But I have another entry for you!

  This past weekend, I took a trip to visit my French penpal in France's second biggest city, where he goes to business school. All I'd known about Marseille before I got there was that it was the setting of a few films I'd seen, like the Count of Monte Cristo and Marcel Pagnol's Marius and Fanny, as well as the warning of safety my host mom gave me before I left. Marseille is a port town famous for it's murders, drugs and organized crime, making it the most dangerous city in France. The wealthy have an entirely fenced in district, where they hide from the crime and reality around them. My friend Simon has witnessed someone's credit card get snatched out of their hand and his roommate has had a knife held to him a few times. Needless to say the French are surprised when you say you actually liked visiting Marseille.



  In spite of the madness, Marseille is still a Mediterranean town, and beautiful in it's own right. Life goes on, and families flock to the Vieux Port, the Old Port, on a Saturday afternoon for a café or to promenade next to the boats that no one seems to be using. At night, the port is for the young, with bustling bars and outdoor terraces because it would be a sin to sit inside when the weather is so nice.



View from Notre Dame de la Garde

   Mostly because of Simon's adorable five year old sister (who drew me a picture of a snowflake and sang Frozen songs with me!), we rode the little tourist's train up to Notre Dame de la Garde, the Catholic church that stands on a hill and looks over the city. In the distance, you can see the islands off the coast, most famous of them the Chateau d'If, formerly a prison and an important setting in Alexander Dumas', the Count of Monte Cristo.

   What I loved about visiting Simon and his family in Marseille is that I experienced a different cultural French life than I have in Montpellier. I have learned more French slang than I have from my sixty year old host mom, to no fault of her own. For example: the French word d'accord means okay, in agreement, but the young will tend to say d'ac, a shortened version.



   After dinner in a Pakistani restaurant, where I taught him and his family the meaning of the word "food baby", Simon and I went back to the Vieux Port where we drank on a terrace with his friends and enjoyed the mid-spring evening. They introduced me to a incredibly delicious cherry flavored beer, called Kir, that miraculously and thankfully didn't taste like beer at all. We bonded over TV shows, music, traveling and more, forever alternating between French and English. When they spoke amongst themselves, I was proud that I could mostly understand them. However, there were still plenty of times where I awkwardly, fake laughed because I had no idea what they were laughing about. I've perfected the art of the fake laugh and look of comprehension over these past two months, because sometimes, after the fifth time you've asked someone to explain something, it's necessary to admit defeat.
   At midnight, led by Simon, they erupted in a chorus of Happy Birthday for me. I blew out the flame from a lighter as my candle. This has been my third year that I've been away from home for my birthday, and while I miss being with my family, I am lucky to always find a group of new friends to celebrate with.
  The next day, after a Moroccan lunch, I said goodbye to Simon and his family. It is one of the many goodbyes I am going to have to make when I finish my program here, and I realized I am completely unprepared to leave. It's one thing to say goodbye to your friends and family back home. It's another to say goodbye to people you don't know when you'll see again.
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April in Paris

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     It's been said that Paris is at it's loveliest in April. Images of budding flowers with a blurry Eiffel tower in the background come to mind. Though it is true that Paris is beautiful in every season, from my experience, April in Paris better relates to the phrase: April showers bring May flowers.

   I arrived in a rainy Paris by the TGV, the high speed train that can bring you from a Mediterranean city like Montpellier to Paris Gare de Lyon within a few hours. This being my third time in Paris, I am embarrassingly proud of my ability to navigate the city's metro system. Without my backpacker's backpack and blond hair that screams "tourist", I like to believe I would have blended in.

  The more I visit Paris, the more I fall in love. Walking the street's of France's capitol, you get the "anything's possible" feelings of New York with the beauty of Old Europe. You can find every kind of person imaginable, whether you're promenading the Seine or between the streets of the lower 15th arrondissement or on the metro.

  My friends and I stayed at an apartment rented through Airbnb. I've never had a bad experience through the website. The couple (who have been together eight years and are the cutest imaginable) who rented us their apartment for Easter weekend, Clementine and Romain, went above and beyond to make sure we had a pleasant stay. They bought us a bottle of wine and placed little bowls of candy around the place for us to eat. It was a small apartment, but with character. They had polaroids of themselves on the doors, on bookshelves, on their desks, as well as positive affirmations hanging on the wall. They are the epitome of relationship goals.
Taco dinner at the apartment

    Saturday, another rainy day, was filled with pictures at the Eiffel Tower and waiting two and half hours in line to climb to the top of Notre Dame. It's something I've never done before, and around the time my toes were about to fall off from the cold I wondered if it was worth it. But, of course, it was. I should never doubt a good view of Paris.


Notre Dame de Paris


   
Crêpes avec Nutella while waiting in line

View from Notre Dame

    The gargoyles brought me back to my childhood, watching the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I saw the bells, and stood on top of one of the towers. Paris seemed to extend forever. Paris is it's own world.

   After the Notre Dame, I tracked down the bakery that made the best thing I ever tasted, the raspberry and pistachio eclair I mentioned in my last entry. I was giddy in my search, in the most embarrassing way. I knew I could find it at a bakery to the left of Notre Dame and I remembered how it was set up, the display case on the left and the eclairs prominently in the front. I found them with no problem. There they were, as if nothing had changed and I was eighteen again on my first trip to Paris, about to eat the most amazing thing in the world.


    I would like to tell you that it was everything I remembered. I would like to tell you that my taste buds were just as in awe as they were almost three years ago. But that was not the case. On my phone, there's a video of me trying it again and the hope that drains from my face is so sad that no one is ever going to see the video
  Maybe the recipe had changed. I like to imagine an elderly French baker, beloved by all, had made it a few years ago, and even though his legacy was still being carried on after he passed or retired, the pastries were never the same. Whatever the reason, the pastry part of the eclair was somewhat tasteless, and the pistachio was neither sweet nor tasted like pistachio.

   Sunday was the third Easter I've spent in another country. In Sweden, I went to a Catholic service in Gothenburg. In Italy, I was lucky enough to get a glance of the pope in St. Peter's Square. But this Easter was definitely the most interesting way I've spent the holiday, at the Catacombs of Paris.

  The Catacombs are a series of tunnels under the city filled with thousands of bones neatly stacked along the walls. Back in the 1800's, when the city's cemeteries were getting overcrowded, many of the bones of the dead were moved to the catacombs, which had been old quarry tunnels. In between the bones were plaques with morbid phrases, such as "Death is a gain" and the ones below.

Entrance to the Catacombs, says "Stop! This is the empire of the dead"


"Believe that each day is, for you, the last"

"For me, death is a gain"

"God is not the author of death"
   While my friends went to Versailles, I fulfilled a lifelong dream by visiting the Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, the most famous English language bookstore in Paris. On my half an hour walk to the store, I walked the cobblestone sidewalks along the Seine, following the leisurely pace of tourists and locals alike. It was finally sunny. Along the sidewalks on the side of the river are rows and rows of green stands, where you are less likely to find cheap tourist trinkets and more likely to see books, paintings, or copies of old newspapers. I struck up a conversation with an elderly Parisian vendor after he saw that I was looking at a French copy of Renée Descartes' Méditations métaphysique. I know absolutely nothing about philosophy and I am far from understanding the entire book, but I bought it in hopes of one day reading it.

Green stands along the Seine

   I arrived finally at the Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore. Although every bookstore is different, entering into each new one is like coming home. In this one, I was transported into a time of artistic importance in Paris, where authors of the "Lost Generation" such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald thrived.
   


   Everything in the store encouraged literary expression, from sections entirely devoted to French life, authors, fiction and culture to printed out advice from writer's taped to in random nooks and crannies.
  

Writing Advice (found under the staircase) from Raymond Chandler, American author
   Waiting in line to enter the store, I struck up conversation with the young woman my age who was letting people in person by person so it didn't fill up. She was from Philadelphia and was telling me about how the owner of the store encourages young writers or even avid readers to stay in the apartment above the store for free in return for volunteering a few hours in the store during the day. "If you go upstairs to the rare book section, you'll see my bed." Sure enough, I came across a blue cot that looked completely out of place in the corner of the room filled with books.

   Afterwards, I felt as inspired and passionate about the literary culture and history of Paris as Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris (great movie if you haven't seen it). I walked the Seine to the Musée d'Orsay, and visited my favorite place in the city. Waiting in the half hour line, I read the Hemingway novel I bought at Shakespeare and Co, one of his many that I was never required to read in school, the Sun Also Rises. The impressionist and post impressionist paintings found in the Orsay are impressive as ever. One can find Monet, Manet, Van Gogh and more in the rooms of the former train station turned museum.
Inside the Musée

Monet
   Paris always makes me question the fact if I could ever live in a city, and it makes me want to try. 
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Avignon

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Avignon, France
    Walking from the train station to the Palais des Papes (Palace of the Popes), it's hard to imagine this small, provencal city was once one of the most powerful in the world. Just around the corner from the Palais is a Sephora and a McDonald's. It's tourists shops sell more lavender products popular in Provence than anything related to the golden years of Christianity in the city. If it weren't for the giant cathedral and palace, Avignon would seem nothing more than charming, medieval city. But from the years 1309 to 1377, the city of Avignon, not Rome, was the seat of the Catholic Church.
            Like most papal doings of the time, the land for the Catholic seat was bought somewhat unethically. The fiery former Queen of Naples, Joanna I, sold the land to the pope on the condition that she would be exonerated for alleged murder of her husband (her first of four).
            During the sixty eight year reign of the popes in Avignon, the palace and cathedral was built and modified by seven different popes.

Palais des Papes

Courtyard of the Palais des Papes
     And what is a day trip in France without an unbelievably interesting meal. For lunch, my friend and I ate in a restaurant just off of the courtyard around the corner from the Palais. Because le mistral, the chilly wind that runs throughout the south of France, was very present that day, we ate inside. One thing to remember when coming to France is to specify how you want your meat cooked, otherwise they will place in front of you a steak as red as a flamenco dress and as raw as a cow still breathing on a farm. One thing that is so universal it makes me happy inside is that French fries always taste incredible in every country, and no matter how fancy the meal, they are always acceptable. 

Moelleux au chocolat

    Now, I'm going to be 100% serious when I write this next paragraph, because dessert in France is serious. Up until this past weekend, I'd always remembered the best thing I'd ever eaten. The year: 2012, summer. The place: also in France, in front of Notre Dame. I'd bought it at the bakery around the corner, a raspberry and pistachio eclair. Ditch the preconceived image of those stale Stop & Shop eclairs lined with cheap chocolate. This eclair was filled with an almost frosting like consistency, a pistachio cream in the center, lined on the outside with the most perfectly ripe raspberries you've ever tasted. It was heaven to enjoy, and gone too soon. How could anything compare to this dessert that made me feel closer to God than the giant cathedral before me?
  My answer didn't come until this past Saturday, in Avignon, eating this chocolate cake that was so much more than chocolate cake. Beneath the thick and moist cake was a liquid center of pure chocolate batter than flowed slowly out of the opened cake. The small glass on the side was filled with Madagascar vanilla cream that you could pour over the dessert at your leisure. When every last bit of the cake was scraped off the plate, I was brought back to that same place of utter contentment I only felt once before: when I ate that raspberry and pistachio eclair almost three years ago.

From the park, the Alps in the distance
     After a quick sunbathe and nap in the park, we visited our last destination for the day, the ancient bridge that crosses the Rhone, the second largest river in France.

From the bridge

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