1. Week One

The idea of a blog cringes me out a bit (I don't really know why) but I’m writing this because I've found other people’s interesting and because I just love to over-document my life :D I should warn immediately that I’m just going to end up Franglais-ing a bit… if this annoys you, you should probs stop reading now x

I chose to go to Marseille based on the advice of a French friend I made last summer. I trust her judgement for she is wise and knows me well. However, after making that decision I have had a mixture of strong reactions, from people who know and who don't know the city (the term shit-hole has been bandied about in my presence). My main Marseille-specific fears before coming were not understanding the southern French accent, and the heat. (That's in addition the obvious moving abroad stuff: numbing loneliness, total confusion and embarrassing faux pas). However, the heat is not an issue because there is a big sea and also fridge sections in supermarkets. The southern accent is not a significant issue because everyone has an accent here, and most are Tunisian, Algerian or Italian. Sometimes I find people tricky to understand but I also feel much less self-conscious about my lack of oral maîtrise.

Upon arrival, my first couple of hours journeying to Gare Saint Charles were graced by an octogenarian who was like an adoptive grandmother: at first heart-warmingly kind (she waited for me to get my big suitcase from bagages when she didn't have one herself) and then irritatingly bossy (instructing me to get my pal who had arrived the night before to come and collect me from the train station). This was to prove a fairly standard template for interactions to come: conversations begin amicably, but I leave having to refuse invites to people’s houses or going for a drink (not cos I'm rude - usually because I have plans) (that's right, I'm busy! B)) pretty insistently.

Enfin I managed to shake off my warm and caring, if slightly annoying, friend and endured a theoretically 20 minute walk that I managed to make last 40, to Ye Olde Air BnB in the troisième arrondissement. Never before have I had such a high rate of one-way interaction with members of the general public. Eyes followed me and chuckles prodded me as sweat dripped off the end of my nose (I was inadvisedly sporting black dungarees to save packing space) and I lugged my suitcase through the (extremely) narrow streets, bashing it into skips, bollards and my heels. Many had the joy of witnessing my struggle twice! As my incomprehensibly weak sense of direction betrayed me time and again. The kindest comment I got was courageux, which, TBF, it was! I don't uber uber anywhere B)

The first day set a premise for an oscillation that I am adapting to as I settle in here: violent swinging between intense fear/anxiety and some sort of odd euphoria I’ve rarely felt ~hitherto~. I’ve always thought my emotions were quite extreme and oddly fickle but this is something else. Upon first leaving the flat, we were struck by the unsettling number of bonjours (that means hello x) directed at us by men sitting in groups of varying sizes on the street. Classic French café culture: an espresso and some mild harassment.

Me and my amie’s spirits lifted, however, as we trudged over a diagonal bridge and looked up to find the cheerful, if a little contrived, graffiti of Les Escaliers Cours Julien (COR, JULIAN!). African drumming became a fanfare for our arrival. We could have been in Montpelier... the Bristol version. Overpriced thrift shops, jewellery shipped in cheap from India and bars with a ludicrous range of beers brought more familiarity and comfort than I’m proud to admit. Heureusement, there are gems among the commercialist bandwagoners; my amie bought herself two gorgeous, locally- and sustainably-made dresses for €20 a pop. Stokes Croft and Brick Lane spring to mind, but picture them enhanced by the Mediterranean sun, with an open communal space populated by bobo cafe-goers, youths with tinnies and speakers, and unthreatening gangs of giggly stoners, the odd one occasionally careering through the square on a moped. They drive them on the pavements here…

Next day, we stagger up a large hill to visit The Big Church. The city looks blurred; the faded peachy pastel of Marseille’s buildings gives the impression of a city bustling beneath a fine layer of dust. Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde is The Big Tourist Spot of Marseille. There is a petit train (really just a car... it is not on rails) (in fact a glorified conveyor belt) which dumps tourists up the hill in batches and brings them back to the city centre after half an hour of apathetic ~cultural experience~. Although the church is really pas mal, in the 33° heat I reckon everyone up here would really rather be at the beach. The Christians predictably practise their endlessly enticing capitalism in the gift shop (WHY do icons just look so damn good?), we are amused by a WhatsApp shoosh-emoji statue and by images of Jesus as a hairy baby. Also, the church is pretty shiny inside.

The next day we go out for a meal after a long days' lounging at the beach. My buddy burps softly as she masticates her mound of moules frites. Our coked-up waiter has shown her how to improvise pincer-like cutlery out of an emptied mussel shell. She is overjoyed. So is he; his jaw swings. I opted for an excessively cheesy pizza and a kir royale. She also persuades me to taste a mussel and I don't like it, so any veggie FOMO is ruled out - yay! She reveals that her fortnight-long trip thus far has been building to this wonderful, edible crescendo. As the French don't say: good shit.....

We get taken to the Calanques by an English-speaking Français we met at a (surprisingly un-cringy) Erasmus meet up the night before. He is patient in the face of our ineptitude (these hikes may be a walk in the national park, but they're not in the metaphorical one). He's kind to have taken us; if he could just grow hooves he'd be a vrai mountain goat. He also comfortingly confesses that he strode confidently into his Sheffield office one morning bemoaning the fact that he was " bloody naked" after (not) learning the word "knackered" the day before.

The Calanques are truly fucking gorgeous. They deserve all their hYpe. We swam into the "blue cave" where the light made us look radioactive. Our guide (slash hero) lent us his goggles so we could see the wee fishies (I have come so far in battling my pesky pescaphobia). 

Our Air BnB host was fab; we went to a great beach, bar and club they'd recommended, all in one day. The bar, Atelier Juxtapoz, felt genuinely exciting; the former-factory is an artists' residence; they offer spectacles in exchange for use of the space. Between midday and 10pm it’s a bar, but there were families and pets chillant alongside the groups of fashionable jeunes. We also witnessed some truly terrible French rap. Our evening continued to a club with an equally (genuinely) -buzzing- atmosphere and roughly 40 people on the dance floor dancing astoundingly sincerely to really (even I could tell) low-quality techno. In contrast, there were over a hundred people were in the outside area; drinking, smoking and talking. There was a motley crew dealing weed behind the Portaloos… Something for everyone, really.

Unfortunately, our stay chez aforementioned Air BnB was tinged with a final layer of shame as we learnt we'd left the front door open after this crazy night out on the town. By this point we have already misgendered our host, brought stinky cheese into their vegan homestead and unintentionally gulped from their bottle of OJ rather than our own as they sat watching. Upon meeting Andrae I thought I had found a bosom buddy (they had feminist zines everywhere! And pot plants!!). Alas, we have not exchanged numbers (nor blog URLs, conveniently).

I’m not going to dwell on negatives here because they won’t make much of a fun read but in the interest of some balance: I have near-death experiences on a daily basis nearly getting run over, and any conversations en route home at night are interrupted by squeaks from fat rats which scuttle down the pavements with no humility whatsoever. The city’s streets are, to put it mildly, filthy. People seem to assume the tarmac pavements will just absorb their dogs' faeces. I miss herd mentality, my navigational incapacity is a vrai ball ache and not having anywhere to live yet is a looming stress. My desperation for familiarity is hallucinogenic; I keep imagining that I've seen someone I know (from my best friends to people in the year below me at secondary school...). My mood swings are volatile; in one day I can go from holding back tears of joy at la belle nature to weeping in the street after another apartment rejection (apparently noone wants to pick a random Brit to fill their spare room for just 4 months... who'da thunk). Entering Week 2 and my Semaine d'Initiation, the draining effort of forced, clumsy social interaction in a foreign language makes me want to hide away. However, it is true that we Erasmusers are all in the same cringing, lonely, fragile boat. This makes the number of invitations high enough that accepting just a fraction will fill a significant portion of the week.

Anyway, overall I was expecting the beginning to be so, so much worse. At the moment I feel like I've let myself go really limp in a big wave, and haven't, until writing this, taken much stock of what I'm doing. I have started doing things that I never thought I would: approaching groups of randomers in social situations; managing to go and make myself relax at the beach with people, despite not knowing where I’m going to be sleeping in a weeks' time; and calling my Mammy on the phone everyday for a week... I keep puffing out my lips and making little frowny faces like the French. An outil utile, as it is equally employable in instances of derision (someone made it at me when I commented that I thought the beach might be in the direction of the sea) as of stupidity (I made the face back in response). Same goes for putain: use it for realisation, exclamation, damnation, fascination... Comme tu veux.

Overall, I feel kinda fierce and kinda fière; going to flat viewings and navigating a new city alone. I’m trying to stay optimistic but realistic, focusing only on the near future: on existing through these alternations between hope and despair; getting wet in the sea and drying off in the sun; dehydrating myself at night (hellooo €2 bottles of vin rouge) and rehydrating in the morning...

As I’ve said, I didn't know what to expect from Marseille because people had such polarised opinions of the city, and this wee blog post is only me Stacey Dooley-ing the city after about a week of being in it. But I’d say that, so far, everything I have heard about it is true. It's dirty and it's beautiful; people are lovely and people are scary; it's collapsing and it's flourishing with culture. For now, I am just enjoying the novelty of my skin getting darker and my hair getting lighter. Next time you see me perhaps I will resemble some sort of sci-fi villain... if by the Fin I've managed to achieve full-body monochromatism x