la deuxième partie

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

onsdag 10 juni 2009

So, THE TENTH OF JUNE?

Today was just marvelous. I starting writing some preliminary stuff for the chapter, which is so exciting, and nerve wracking, but mainly exciting. As Fred and I have talked about, this isn't a costume history paper, and as I've been telling myself, it's also not a blog. Not that I started it, "hej hej everyone" or anything, but the only long writing I've done in, well, probably the last two years since I graduated from Bates has been this...so....I've got to switch my mind over from such a colloquial style. Actually, I had been a little nervous while collecting all my information but once I started writing...it kind of flowed. Of course, I'm only a few paragraphs into the FACTUAL, not expository, bit of it. I really wanted to say expostulatory, but that's a whole different chapter.

I just kind of can't believe that I'm getting the opportunity to write for this book! There's a possibility that my chapter will be mixed into the one about the clothing, appropriately, but I will still have my own credits...and I'm happy with anything!

I'm emailing to try to collection information; contemporary button information from other countries, clothing and button information about mariners of the period from anywhere, stuff like that. If any of you know anyone? And don't say Penny, girl's done been emailed. But all suggestions are welcomed!

Also, this morning, I codified the button types. They tend to be of fewer different shapes than it seemed when first surveying the collection as a whole, but even when they're cast buttons there is slight variation. It's enough in some cases for me to have written things like, "rounded cone" and "very rounded cone"...which is sort-of helpful, but not really. If "rounded cone", which has been changed to "blunt cone", I'll have you know, is the type, that "very" belongs in a different descriptive phrase, or maybe more in specific comparisons than on the description sheet. In any case, it was nice to have that be set.

I have two and a half weeks left, I need to keep reminding myself for so many reasons.

Then at 1700, bastu! But when I went home at 1630, I found there were no people-sized towels left, and I almost missed out--thanks David for finding me the extra. It was especially pleasant, with beers I forget the names of and it felt as great as ever--my skin is so soft!!! I actually sat outside to read the rest of the short stories in the book I was sent (The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories by Etgar Keret, very good in a way I will not get into here, I'm sure I'll tell each of you about it at least a few times later), even though it was gray and nasty all today--I needed to cool down my core temperature. I love that weather, but it makes it hard to get out of bed, especially when you have to jump down.

I really don't feel like explaining the rest of Marseille, so I'm going to do a photomontage, and I'm sure words will come. Plus, I'm pretty sure I only took pictures of things I liked, and everyone likes pictures. I'll probably even post all sorts of crazy photos in a post right after this one since I now can get them all off my phone and onto the internets!

So I took the train out to the hotel, and I already felt better, it was just a little...lighter where the second hotel was. It was a little further east and outside of the city, and literally down the street (well, a long one, but a big, easily recognizable one with bus service) from the beach.

I found it easily enough and as I went to reach for the door I heard a huge screech and crash behind me, which was as close as I've come to witnessing a vehicle crash...because it was a Vespa that, I think, ran into a car somehow. It was...suprising, but not exactly sad or scary, since everyone on the entire street was just so efficient and helpful and stabilized him and moved his Vespa out of the street, and directed traffic, all that. So that was really nice to see...well, you know what I mean.

But the door to the hotel was locked, and I called the number and they didn't answer, so I walked down to the end of the block where I had seen a cafe that I liked for whatever reason, screwed up my courage, and sat down. Swear to god, the waiter thought I was French, AWESOME. He was also, contrary to that popular thought about French waiters, one of the nicest waiters I've had in a long time. I had a Chinese salad, obviously...and it was actually exactly perfect. I read my book while waiting, wrote some fond Marseillian memories down, and drank my carafe of water. I kind of wanted a beer but didn't want to spend the money.

I checked in, and it is like budget of budget, but it was fine, all I'm doing is sleeping there.

By sleeping there I mean getting bugbites there, but oh well.

I decided to walk to the beach, because, hey, I'm in the South of France!

On the way, I saw this house, which reminded me of Baveno or Stresa, or maybe both, and I thought of my little Grandad that I love:

Not especially beautiful or exciting, but the style just made me think of our trip to see that house in Italy.

So, I got to the beach, and....it was a disappointment. Plus it was cloudy, so I'm sure there are usually more people, or whatever...and there are many beaches, so maybe I was just at the wrong one. But looking east, you can see these beautiful mountains, which I will have better pictures of later:

See how grey?

So I said, screw it, I'll go back to town and FIND THAT MUSEUM.

And I got to town, and it was boiling hot and sunny. Thanks, Marseille.

I guess I just walked around a bunch, I got another one of those Carïbos Guava drinks, and taught the man how to say "straw" in English, since he taught me it in French, even wrote it down for him on his newspaper. I still could not find that museum.

But I did walk through this market a few times, and was called to to try all these fruits and stuff, but I just was not in the mood, since I kind of wanted to be back at the beach since it was nice out.

But that was neat to see, and I wished that I had a stove or something to make good use of that market! On either side of the street it inhabits are other big fruit and vegetable stands, usually targeting specific cultural communities with ethnic ingredients, which were so packed I just couldn't go in to take a look.

I had tried to get on a 1700 tour of des Calanques, which I am taking to mean the precious, photogenic little inlets that the Côte Sud is so famous for, but there were not enough people. There were not enough people to take a boat ride in the sun on a Friday late afternoon. Marseille, come ON, self promote, baby! But they told me to come back tomorrow, and I checked out the boat trips to the "archipelago" where the Chateau D'If is located and some nice short hiking trails, a few beaches. Mostly it's sharp rocks, though, because why would there be nice places to sit?

When I turned around, there was a bus at the bus stop whose destination was "Pont de Prado", which was incredibly close to where I was staying, and thank god I had bought that Métro ticket, and I just hopped right on! I figured I could always hop off and catch it again, the beauty of that three-full-day-ticket thing, and would see where it would go. That was probably the best idea I had all weekend. We passed all the beautiful hotels, came up on a park, turned the corner, and stopped soon after, so I hopped off and nearly ran to the park....GREEN SPACES! It turned out to be not as big and lush as I thought, but it was a welcome change. I found out by walking around that I was just a little bit past the OTHER fort at the mouth of the river, and could see the spot where I had sat the evening before:

I had been sitting right behind where that catamaran is on the left...but a little closer to that big tower.

So that's beautiful. But I walked around, sat and read for a while, because what else would I do, and walked back to the bus stop. I waited longer than I normally will put up with, but since I didn't know the bus route, I didn't want to get lost trying to walk to the next one.

We drove along what I believe is JFK Street, or something, and it was a beautiful beach-side road, like California's Scenic Highway, but not at all. I had wanted to go back to the beach, since I had seen a supermarket and wanted to get something to eat for dinner on the beach, not so bad, right? This seems to be a trend, like even if the day was kind of a bust, just eat some nice food, and for goodness' sake have some wine, and it will all work out.

So, the weather was kind of just ok, cloudy, but that was actually wonderful by this point, since I wasn't trying to get a tan anymore, and there were few people on the beach, including the three Russian guys I had seen on the bus, whose bathing suits were smaller than mine.

But this is what I saw when I looked down:

That's burgundy (2 euros, 350 ml, awesome), serrano, minibaguette, mozz, peach, incredible. And that's the J.Crew dress I had yet to wear and really loved, so that was another plus.

But this was to the right:

And this was looking up:

so I can't be too mad.

This is when that young boulangère decided to be my friend. If I had been having this great fantastic time being alone I would have probably told him to beat it, but we ended up having a nice conversation, actually, even though he told me all sorts of weird lies that were probably just miscommunications, like that no one lived on the islands I was going to visit, when there were apartment buildings all over...whatever. It was nice to be able to have a full CONVERSATION in French, too, and he really spoke no English. I said, "pas de tout?" and he said no, and then I said "Not at all?" and he just looked at me. "Not one word?" I said, thinking that most people can at least recognize numbers, and again, nothing. Then he told me he knew two words, "tek oo"...which turned out to be thank you, and we worked on the aspirated "th". He really likes rap and wants to go to L.A. He said he's 20, but I swear he can't have been older than like 17. He kind of reminded me of Twiggy (the kid in Mystic, not the supermodel), for those of you who know who that is, which is probably part of why I let him hang out for a bit.

We went our separate ways, me back to my hotel, him further down the beach. I tried to call to him to get his name, but he didn't hear me, or something. Maybe that's better, if he had had some boring name I would have been disappointed. Maybe I should have asked if he has a rap name.

But I went to bed, woke up with tons of bugbites, awesome, kind of early to catch the bus into town. I couldn't decide if I wanted to go to the islands first or do the boat tour of des Calanques first...but the bus sort of decided for me, since the hourly island ferry left at 9 and I got there a few minutes after. Luckily, the boat tour had a 930 trip, so I bought my ticket and waited in line. The most OBNOXIOUS guy came up to me, trying to sell newspapers. I just did the "no, merci" thing, but he was like those stupid greenpeace kids on Boylston who try to make you feel bad about not giving them a donation. He was like fuming with rage that I wouldn't buy a newspaper, since it was for THE HOMELESS. He was so aggressive and mad that I didn't even feel bad about telling him I had no paper money or change, only cards, which was a lie, but worked.

But I did see this, which is really interesting, but will be less interesting to all of you, since for some reason the photo is upside down...I just thought I'd share it anyways...there are a bunch of little old fishing boats tied up, selling the fish they just caught (yeah, right, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt, since I wasn't buying any) in darling like stands...and that big yacht that has special hardware built into it for the crew to harness themselves to in order to clean the boat all day.

Sorry, that's kind of stupid to include on here, an upside down photo. but...just turn your laptops over for a second.

But I might have been inspired by a post Greg did about the poor monkey and the Lamborghini, you can click on the link to the right and read it!

It might be too tiny to see, but if you look at that boat's ensign, which that person so kindly is pointing to for you...it's Swedish! Yay! That big Eastern European structure is some sort of Cathedral, pretty, nice, blah blah blah.

Take me to Des Calanques!

We know I pretend to like doing touristy things for the experience but secretly hate it...and this wasn't THAT bad, but guys, I'm SO SICK of people's photo habits. First of all, I know this isn't fair, but I hate when people get their picture taken in front of everything. I can tell you were there by the existence of the photo, and if I'm not interested in the subject matter, you with a stupid smile on will not make it more palatable. And then on this trip, oh my god, people literally were falling all over each other, I witnessed COLLISIONS because people were trying to take as many pictures as they possibly could of....only things that the narrator described. Like once he pointed something out to the left, everyone raced over there with cameras at arm's length to avoid the rest of the crowd's heads. It was...fascinating, and kind of disgusting, but tolerable since it didn't really affect my experience of these beautiful rock formations and sweet little inlets.

That's pretty awesome.

I could have sworn I took a picture of another one where there were these two beautiful sailboats, probably 40 feetish, moored next to eachother with a bunch of young people on them, swimming and picnicking in this incredible setting. It made me realize how excited I am to find some Swedish sambol who can't wait to take me and our beautiful, blonde babies with Swedish names sailing there in our old wooden boat, where we will just read and swim all day...since this:

if I am not mistaken, is Cassis, where I should have stayed if I had any sense. When we reached that little town, after seeing so many people hiking and trailrunning and rockclimbing in parts of des Calanques that I realized I should have done more research into making that happen for me. Well, hiking, since neither of those other things are appealing to me. But what I realized, as well, is that I probably could have gotten to Cassis just as easily from the airport (maybe not, but let's go with it), and it would have been a totally different experience. Simpler, maybe, but it's not like I achieved anything of note in Marseille, just kind of wasted a lot of time.

Au revoir, Calanques! Je ne reviendrai jamais! I was burning the whole time, seriously unwittingly, I just didn't even think about sunscreen, but I'd like to blame this part, where I was sitting on the stairs looking aft, watching des Calanques disappear and watching lucky lucky sailboats headed out there.

We got back into port, I walked around trying to find that quiche place again, but found another little café à emporter, and got what I believe was a fried-brie sandwich and an orangina. Pretty mediocre, even when she warmed it up, but whatever.

Then I caught one of the boats to the island where the Chateau D'If is. It was used as a prison pretty much from the time it was built, the mid 16th c, I think, up until the 1840s. It was opened to the public as a tourist attraction in the 1890s. The island in itself is very cool, but at first it looks kind of barren and disgusting, and makes you think the museum itself will be rather second-rate. Trying to put off potential disappointment, I went to look at the gardens first, which made a difference, and came on this kind of creepy old shed. It LOOKS like it's staged, like a prison-guard's quarters from a while ago, or something...but since everyone else had gone right into the structure, and everything had gone kind of quiet, it was eerie and I felt like I was trespassing. I learned about the animals that inhabit the Marseille coast, which was blah, and saw a lizard, woohoo!

I went into the main building, and found out that a tour was taking place, why do I always miss that? Or, it wasn't a tour, it was this really cool talk that I only understood some of, but enough to know that he was trying to get everyone to forget what they've read about it being associated with the Count of Monte Cristo and to let it stand on its own (which is funny, considering a big part of their exhibit space is taken up by things related to Dumas and the CoMC...but it was an inspiring start to my experience there, something different). I really enjoyed seeing it, so that made me feel better. From this experiment I can say with assurity, which blogger is telling me is not a word, that museums make me just as happy as food and wine, which confirms my suspicions.

My favorite part was that the cells on the first floor were palatial, with fireplaces and everything, I think that's so funny.

I bought the book. I know, I know, I've already bought so many, but it has a Chateau D'If stamp on it, I'll have to read it at some point, anyways, and why not get it from the place that inspired the setting of the story! I also bought a postcard of a rendering of a rhinoceros by a famous artist to commemorate the king at that time's regifting of the huge animal never seen before in Europe. Speaking of never been seen, it's assumed that the artist had never seen a rhino, and especially not that one, and that's actually mostly why I bought it. Remember what I was saying before (probably circa Uppsala) about loving the evolution of understanding the world? This is totally that. He's not that far off, and, of course, I haven't seen that specific rhino either, so I guess I can't judge.

Oh! My second favorite part is the graffiti from the twenties and thirties, it's all over the place! It seems like 1926 was like Write On Monuments year, that date was all over. At first I thought they were jokes or fakes, since when you see graffiti that old? But the style of writing seemed to fit...and then I saw more of the same years, and then into the 50s and 60s, and I realized it's probably real, and that's so cool!

Maybe THIS was subconsciously inspired by Penny's love of graffiti, to keep with the blogging-friends-reference theme of this post, click at right!

I JUST missed the boat to the other island, of course, but that gave me time to read my little Passion Simple book, yay!

I don't mean to keep being so negative, but that looks so much more beautiful than it felt.

I walked around the other island for a while, nothing terribly special. I mean, obviously stunning, if tiny, beaches and interesting flora and fauna I had just learned about at the Chateau D'If, but I just kind of wanted to lie down. And I did, on some rocks, since that was the only place left.

Ok, so now that I've really looked at these pictures, I feel like a real brat complaining about this trip. But see that bugbite on my leg? SEE IT? I know, I know, that sunbathing was pretty incredible, with the sailboats and the sun on the water, etc etc. So I wasn't miserable the whole time, it just took until the last day for things to start looking up and that's so frustrating.

I walked around a little more, to the top of that rise on the left, and then back to wait for the boat. I walked up and down the docks, looking at the pretty boats, and ran back to get in line when I saw the ferry come in.

I went the predictable route and had dinner on the beach again:

I mean, of course I ate more than that, but those cookies were all that was worth photographing. They're like waffles with honey inside, and the leftovers are here in Sweden with me, waiting in the freezer, they're SO GOOD.

And that, my friends, is the end.

Except for the next day, when I looked at the subway map and realized, oh, right, I'm not in America, the transportation system here is awesome, and I probably could have gone to des Calanques by subway. And I saw all these young backpackers and thought, why don't I meet these people at places I stay? Regrets, regrets. But not really. I don't regret the trip, I just wish it had gone a little differently.

But on the bus back to Stockholm, I just couldn't stop smiling, I'm so happy to be here. And although I say it all the time, I feel like it's so important to repeat how lucky I feel.

Beautiful people, clean, green spaces everywhere, those dulcet tones of Swedish, my darling boat and amazing internship....plus I love a casual loafer, which the Swedes are also fans of, and I really couldn't bear to see another pair of the Birkenstocks which apparently are the craze in Marseille right now.

Thanks for taking me back, Sweden, it was only a weekend, and it meant nothing to me.

god nätt,

a