Couscous at Sur le Pouce

As I mentioned earlier, Rachel had learned her fondness for North African cuisine, especially couscous, at a specific restaurant, almost fifteen years ago, when she was studying in Marseille as an undergrad.

She had given me a list of recommendations for places to visit while I was in the city, and one of them was her definitive example of The Couscous restaurant, a place called Sur Le Pouce, which I couldn't resist prioritizing during my short stay.

So on Wednesday night I walked there from my place -- I have chosen such a central location for my various accommodations this trip that I haven't even really used the transit systems much, honestly.

Sur Le Pouce is a French expression that literally translates as "on the thumb" but that we would, in English, equate to "on the go" or "on the run." Intriguing because it was a restaurant that felt settled, comfortable in the city.

It looked eternal. you know those restaurants that seem to be older than the buildings around them?  A fixture, like a hill.  Just . . . always present.

It was quiet, and like so many comfort-food places in the modern era, seemed to be balancing its quiet sit-down business with a quantity of takeaway orders.

When I arrived, around 19:00 (I know!  Quite early for a French dinner, but it aligns with a late lunch for my coworkers back home), the place was mostly empty, the two late middle aged Tunisian-French men who ran the place were happy to show me to a table, and brought me a basket of bread and a plate of one of the best (and spiciest) dipping sauces I've ever had.

It was really good and I appreciate that the spice slowed me down just enough to keep me from absentmindedly eating all the delicious bread and ruining my appetite.

Instead I focused on the essay about the impact of Large Language Models on culture by Kyle Kingsbury that I'm reading right now (it's excellent).

. . . And sending pictures of my dinner to Rachel, so she could be jealous/live vicariously through me 

And then my food arrived, and it was perfect. 

But also, I was eating it wrong: 

It was so, so good. The merguez was perfectly seasoned, the steak exquisite.  The couscous and sauce perfect together. 

The whole meal was heavenly.  If you ever have the chance to return to someone else's favorite restaurant from a city from their youth: 10/10, recommend.

Afterwards I was absolutely stuffed, so I strolled through town to stretch my legs a bit, and there was some sort of fancy party happening on a tall ship in the old port. It made for a very picturesque final shot of the evening.

Marseille is Marseille

A few stereotypes about the character of Marseille have been rattling around in my head this week.

"Marseille is in a hurry" and "Marseille is Beautiful" and "Marseille is full of Vandals"

Marseille is Marseille.

If you've seen Taxi, (no, not the 2004 remake, the original -- a silly French action-comedy movie from 1998, it's a Luc Besson picture starring Samy Naceri, Frédéric Diefenthal, and Marion Cotillard, and everybody is having a great time.  The show is often stolen by Bernard Farcy though as the bumbling, inept, and casually-racist Commissaire.) then you already have been given a little insight into the Marseille mentality about driving and roads, which is :

GO FAST.

Busy sidewalk? Scooter don't care.

Crosswalk full of pedestrians? Peugot hatchback will approach it at 50km/hr and assume that they'll get out of the way.

There was a boldness mixed with paranoia to the way it seemed that pedestrians moved in the city because damn, so many of the motorized forms of transport seemed hellbent on mininizing fuel economy and maximizing g-forces experienced by everyone involved.

Unfortunately, this is very hard to photograph or video.  Suffice it to say, it's a place to keep your wits about you when on foot, and I enjoyed myself immensely because while all that was happening the pedestrians are ALSO in this mindset and so will stride into the street with purpose and also reclaim what they can.

(A couple of times when I saw young drivers try to sneak through a light and wind up with their car in a crosswalk, I witnessed pedestrians get loudly verbally abusive with them about it, which was honestly, a delight.  More people in cars should get berated for thinking they are entitled to block or disrespect traffic that isn't also in cars.)  

A couple of other things stood out about Marseille, and I think they're both summed up in this picture.

The architecture of Marseille is gorgeous -- the city really thrived in the interwar years, and the result is that it has a huge amount of Art Nouveau architecture that is just stunning.

And as a port city facing North Africa, with a massive immigrant population and people passing through all the time -- there is a constant struggle among the young and poor in the city to grow, make the city their own, and express themselves, and one of the ways that comes out is in street art and tagging culture.

There's so much beautiful architecture and embellishment on buildings here.

And there is so much street art and vandalism, and the line between those two things blurs, and makes you question what counts as embellishment.

The visuals of the city blurred together for me over my time there, but left me with a very strong impression that I want to return and spend more time in this city.

I have a couple more specific stories to tell.  Next, we'll take a trip down someone else's memory lane.

Settling in, the walk to work, dinner on the terrace.

Fair warning: I won't have as much writing about my weekdays in the coming periods because I did work a fair amount, but I'll still have a few stories to tell, and I took lots of pictures so I'll still have a few stories.

Upon arriving in Marseille I grabbed some food from the local grocery near my Airbnb and decided I'd be a little more frugal this week in how I ate -- when I was traveling Europe on a rail pass after being a bartender, more than twenty years ago (click back through the archives if you like, this blog also covers those halcyon days of yore!), I managed to spend a very long time in Europe for very little money, in part because I simply purchased almost all of my nutrition in Grocery stores and my calories in Boulangeries (and from Ice cream and Gelato vendors).  

I had been on the road long enough to start to feel like returning to my roots, but unlike 21-year-old me, who was staying in Hostels and therefore rarely had access to cooking tools or heating methods,  I am now a Monied Individual and Airbnbs do have those resources, so the quality of my grocery store food experience has definitely gotten the opportunity to improve and expand. 

(Did I take any pictures of the delicious Tortellini pasta dish I made my first night?  Nope, can't say that I did.  Sorry y'all.)

But the next morning, on my way to work, I stopped at a well-reviewed bakery along the route and was rewarded with an absolutely fantastic pastry (that I'm pretty sure was a roulle de canelle, but don't quote me on the spelling) and a very tasty Pain au Chocolate to go along with it.  

Like most food shops in France, This bakery had a couple of small tables and chairs outside, so I could enjoy my snack en terrasse before returning to my commute.

En terrasse dining is one of those silver linings I was most excited to see come out of the pandemic in the states. 

I feel like a lot more Americans got the chance to realize how great eating outside is, in the right weather, in a city, and I'm really hopeful that we continue to see people encouraging cities to cannibalize parking spaces into additional seating areas for their restaurants, as well as encouraging more wide sidewalks so there's enough space for both foot traffic and seating.

Less parking, more walking, transit, and outdoor dining, please thanks.

A picture from one of my commutes:

It seems that Marseille is working to combat fare-skipping on trams and busses with a PSA campaign.  The sentiment here is "I Board, I Tap" -- encouraging people to take the moment to tap their transit card when they get into a form of transit.  Literally it would translate as "I mount, I validate", which just makes my inner 14 year old giggle.

My commute each day took me past a few really stunning buildings, including this theater . . .

. . . and through a public square with a beautiful public statue paying homage to the spirits of the water and wind that really define Marseille as a place.  Port Town is written all over the bones of this city, and with good reason.

About that commute and where I was going: I have a membership in a coworking network via an organization called Spaces (spacesworks.com) that I'll rave about in another message later. Suffice it to say for now: they're great.   As a result of my membership I have access to "Business lounges" (coworking spaces) across their network.

The basic pattern I've established is: pick a place to work, send an email to the office manager via the Spaces app's "Contact this location" option, and give them my information so that they can look me up in the system and get me added to any building security register that I might need to navigate to reach the office (often they'll be a high floor in an office building with security in the lobby that needs to know who you are/where you're going before they can let you into the elevators).

So, in Marseille, I looked through the pictures at the locations available to me in Marseille on Monday night and picked one based on it looking like it had some comfortable office furniture, basically.

The next morning I had a voicemail from the office manager, who encouraged me to give her a call to talk about which center I should use, which was very sweet of her, because she encouraged me to consider the other office across the street from the one I had chosen.  The one I had picked was ground level, and the other center was on the 8th floor, and had a bit of a view.

and I'm glad she did, because what a view.

(This fisheye effect flattens the city tragically. It's a very 3 Dimensional place.)

So after a long day of working with a great view, I went home and had great dinner with a different great view (and kept working, because it was mid-afternoon for my co-workers and they could use my help).

Delicious for the senses.

That eye-catching building you see on the hill in the background on the right in both views is Notre Dame de la Garde -- we'll get to her later this week.

To Marseille with Love

On Monday, Rachel and I parted ways after an indulgent morning together, her to the airport and me to the train station.

While I was there, I noticed that sadly some French train stations seem to be as unhinged in their organization as Heathrow.

"Alors, your train departs from Track One?  Ah Oui, but is that Track 1, or Track 1A, or Track 1B, or Track 1C?  Are they anywhere near each other?  Mais Non! Of course not!  [Laughs threateningly in a French accent]"

This feels especially egregious because French signage in train stations is generally quite good.  In fact, the French do one of the most thorough and flexible jobs of solving the "oh god, where do I stand on the platform?" problem of any railway network I've used.  For those of you that aren't frequent train travelers, let me fill you in:

In non-terminal stations, once your platform is announced and you've reached it, you have a small puzzle: If you have assigned seats, then you probably know what car you're supposed to be in, but if the train hasn't arrived yet, it's a crapshoot whether you'll guess the right spot to wait, and if the train is only in the station for 2-5 minutes (Try that with an airplane) you might wind up needing to board in the wrong car and then drag yourself and your bags through a bunch of doors between cars, which can be a hassle, especially if other people also had to do this and are heading the other direction.

So the French solve this problem with one set of static signs, which assign letters to segments of the platform, and a set of dynamic monitors, which render the next train as a series of numbered cars, aligned with the letters.   This is genius.

So figuring out where to go is as simple as looking at the monitor and going "aha, the doors to Voiture 8 will line up with the sign for X" or whatever.  I'll try to get a better picture of this later, but here's the idea.

This is great. More like this please.

Every non-Parisian train station I've used so far does this, and it's fantastic. 

So anyway, I had a very pleasant ride to Marseille.  Sadly the views, which were great, did not photograph well (the problem of traveling backwards at proper-country speeds -- it's hard to look up and realize there's a great shot in front of you and grab your phone in time to actually take the picture).

I arrived in Marseille in the late afternoon.

It's possible, when bouncing around France, to get really plugged in to the sense that you're immersed in a foreign culture.

You have a pastry and a tiny coffee every morning in an independent boulangerie and you sit in a park and watch the velos and trottinettes and Peugot scooters and Citroen cars go by.  You board a regional  train and listen to the announcements be delivered only en francais. . . and you can forget that as an American, your pop-culture has applied stupifying amounts of energy, money, and resources to exporting itself e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e.    And so you'll be floating along in your little "Je Suis En Fraaaaance" bubble and then you'll step out of a train in Marseille and

WHAM. Carl's Jr.

So yeah, that can happen.

But also you can walk past the Carl's Jr. and be graced with one of the most aesthetically pleasing exits from any Transit hub in the world.

Because, DAMN, the Marseille Saint Charles station has got A View To Beat The Band.

It was gorgeously gray when I arrived.

These pictures DO NOT do it justice. I took more on my way out and hopefully I'll get to share some of those but really you need to go there in person.

I walked through the city, picked up my airbnb keys from a local hotel lobby (KeyNest is doing good work these days) and discovered that my 4th floor walk-up airbnb, chosen in part for it's small terrace, also had a great angle on the city.

By Day

Or by night.

I was to learn over the next few days that Marseille is a town full of beautiful views.

"We apologize for the delay. . ."

Hey gang.  I got a little behind over the past two weeks.

The fact is that this trip is a bit of an experiment -- it's the longest time I've spent on the road where I've tried to both write AND work remotely for 70-80% of the week while traveling, and that's turning out to be quite a challenge.  Let's say that, taking the positive view, work gave me some opportunities to be helpful that I wasn't expecting and that curtailed my writing muse a little bit.

(Truthfully some of that was due to work that I intended to accomplish before my departure and left unfinished.)

Where were we?

Ah, right, Toulouse!

Sunday we had another day of exploring -- Rachel and I had another pastry as breakfast, and then it was off to Toulouse to explore The Church of the Jacobins.  Which is a church and convent abbey sortof thing.  Anyway, the Dominican monks and friars were an order that was permitted to mix with the city, so their center was right in the heart of town.

... and recruit other people to be poor with them -- It's tiptop!

So they have a beautiful building dead in the middle of the city and an idyllic little courtyard to match.   It's also the final resting place of (most of) the bones of St. Thomas Aquinas.  I failed to take a picture, but the little house that was used to transport his skull during it's recent tour of the US* is there, sadly empty because the skull is back with the other shards of him they've managed to retain. Catholicism is truly in the running for most-metal religion.

*aside: holy-hell how did I not know that the relics of saints still go on tour?!  Do you have to buy tickets?  Would bring new meaning to the term "Scalping" I suppose. . . 

Ahem.  Anyway.

The building itself was stunning -- it had been converted into an army barracks to house Napoleon's forces at once point, and then, after some restoration, was used to hide and safeguard museum pieces that had been moved from Paris before the occupation in WW2.

Check out this single column supporting . . . A Very Large Number Of Arches (which has become known as "The Palm Tree of the Jacobins*")

About that name -- if you know your French history, you probably associate that name with the French political group that was so influential during the revolution.

Turns out that as the political party was growing in Paris they rented a refectory as a meeting house, which had been the home of the Dominican Friars known as Jacobins (who had gotten that nickname because they got their start in Paris on Rue Saint-Jacques, and been nicknamed "Jacobins" as a result, and that nickname then spread outwards across France).  The name transferred to the blossoming political party in the 1700s and stuck.

In any case their courtyard was lovely.

They did seem to be trying to lay brick specifically to antagonize me though.

I stopped in one corridor and remarked to Rachel that the uniformity of the bricks was giving me the shakes.

What even?  Did you guys have a way to make uniform height and depth bricks but they had to be arbitrary lengths?  Why.

And then I turned around and saw this.  And I know, I know, that there must have been a doorway here or something at some point but with this amount of weathering and age on the structure it sure looks like that's not the case and this is just malice aforethought.  

Me, minding my own business:

Some Dominican in, I don't know, 1417: "I have a great idea, let's give an engineer in the 21st century a mild stroke. That'll be my legacy."

REALLY?

So afterwards we wandered the streets of Toulouse for the afternoon.

It's a gorgeous town, with a lot more red roman brick than much of France, which is why the French call it La Ville Rose ("The Pink City").

Like most large French cities, water features heavily into the town and there are some great elevation changes, in the process of our wander we found ourselves the tiniest, most practical bridge.

I also stopped to take a picture of another, practical but less picturesque thing.

One of the problems of any city is public urination -- and in a society with a drug problem that tries to solve that problem with prohibition and criminalization, that problem gets far worse, because you can't offer the public small private spaces to relieve themselves without those private spaces also being used by folks who don't have a private space of their own and need a place to consume drugs out of the public eye.

So public stairwells that double back on themselves tend to often wind up smelling awful because the sightlines make them prime candidates to be impromptu urinals for folks who just need a place to pee.

This is especially bad because the instinct is to pee in the corners, because you're most-out-of-view and it feels most discreet, but this is the worst because it means rain will have the least success washing the urine away after the fact.

So, enter these brilliant devices, which keep piss from building up in the corners of the stairs by . . . diverting that piss back onto the feet of anyone stupid enough to try to use the corners to pee. 

Brilliant.

Five minutes later we walked into a gorgeous church and I took a picture of one of the most aesthetic Pipe Organs I've ever seen.  I'm not sure I should be allowed to own a camera.

Also brilliant.

We received word during the day that Rachel's bag would be arriving in the late afternoon/early evening, so rather than stay out for dinner we returned to our Airbnb and grabbed an assemblage of ingredients so Rachel could prepare a riff on this excellent salad from Smitten Kitchen.

It was really good, and after a couple days of rich food something light and fresh was exactly what we both craved.

Rachel's bag arrived!  We took a short nap, got dressed, and went out dancing again.

It was lovely.