Marseille

Our journey from Ajaccio was uneventful enough, fortunately as it turned out.  When our ferry docked at Toulon, we queued at the exit.  We were prevented from leaving by the staff who, shortly after, admitted four of the local police to deal with four of our fellow passengers in relation to a “vol”.  There was no information on what was stolen, from whom, how it was discovered or how the perpetrators were apprehended, but we were later pleased to recall that we had locked our cabin from the inside before sleeping peacefully on the calm Mediterranean for the passage to Toulon.

I have never been to Marseille, so all my impressions were formed by the media, in particular, movies.  They always seemed dark, dangerous and ugly, and so my expectations of the city were not high. We decided to spend our last few days of the trip in Marseille for two reasons.  Firstly, neither Dominique nor I had been to France’s second largest city and second, our train to Paris CDG on Tuesday was leaving from Marseille, and so to stay anywhere else would require another change of hotel.

First impressions were positive.  We found a hotel a short walk from the old port, took a walking tour around the area know as Le Panier, or the basket, which was named after a tavern which now no longer exists.  I was surprised to find that, in order to limit hiding places for the members of the resistance, the German troops in 1942 demolished 3,000 homes in this area, which was the site of the old walled town.  Combine this loss with the destruction of churches and royal buildings during the revolution and it is not surprising that the city was known as the ancient city with no signs of age.

Unfortunately, the museum of the ancient town, which is build around the archaeological findings which emerged with the construction of a shopping centre near our hotel, was closed for renovations. However the remains provide a physical link between modern Marseilles and the Greek and Roman ports established in the area.

Further up the hill, the old town is undergoing a slow gentrification, after being mostly abandoned to the immigrant workers recruited for the port and the related industries when the new part of town was built on the other side of the old port in the 19^th century.

We were delighted to find a small, new and creative museum devoted to the French national anthem, which of course, was the song of a regiment from Marseille which became the theme of the revolution.

They got a little carried away with the toilet design.

After the first good impressions, there were a few bad impressions which followed.  Urine – it seems that every man in town pisses just about anywhere he wants, and is proud to leave his scent for following alpha males to recognise and try to obliterate with their own piss.  Garbage – it seems that, in spite of a good supply of rubbish bins on the street, it is more acceptable to just throw stuff on the ground.  Sewer smells – around every corner.  I find it hard to understand how a society that can produce the glorious fountains of Versailles, the canal du midi and provide the world with two of the major water supply and treatment companies internationally, cannot seem to manage to get the sewer right at home - but they can’t.

My final bad taste came from one of the most recognisable structures in Marseilles, the Basilica of Norte Dame de la Garde.

Not subtle

NDLG in on the hill to the South of the city and is one of the basilicas built during the 18^th century along with, for example, a similar monstrosity overlooking the otherwise beautiful city of Lyon.  The structure sets out to be imposing with a huge statue of Mary carrying the baby Jesus on top of the church.  The diameter of the arm of the baby is 1.1metres, so you can judge the size of the rest.  The church is horrendously over decorated with gold, sparkles, stained glass and statues richly covered in every spare space in the building, and that is bad enough.  

Some views of the interior NDLG

What is worse it that every spare flat space, including most of the outside walls around the edge of the property, is covered by little marble plaques with messages of thanks to NDLG for some or other miracle.

The official claims of the church, set out carved in marble for all to see, include the protection of Marseille from destruction during the second world war (see above, apparently the protection does not extend to the poor areas), and the eventual liberation of the town. One of the personal messages was a thank you for winning the Tour de France and for assistance with the struggle against drugs in the following months.  I wonder how NDLG chose who to support, why she supported a drug cheat and why she did not support anyone the following year.

These concerns are all trite, but we did visit around 11.45 while the Sunday mass was underway in the Crypt. We noted that there was a café upstairs, and so made our way up for a bracing coffee prior to the walk down the hill.  We found ourselves in a restaurant, with sufficient seats for 50 to 70 people, all reserved.  We watched the congregation wend its way up to the restaurant and take their places, to be served by several young women in what looked like representative dress, if not national dress, from a range of poor, third world countries.  They were polite, respectful and hard working  (the young women, not the congregation)– meeting the needs of the good (catholic) burghers of the parish of NDLG.  A conversation with one of the young women, in perfect French, confirmed my suspicions.  The best and brightest young women of Africa and Asia had devoted their youth to becoming novices of the order of nuns who had their headquarters at NDLG.  Their vocation was to feed the hungry masses, after mass, with the plat du jour.

France, the eldest sister of the church, is sometimes the ugly sister.

Corsica - Ajaccio

We spent two days in Ajaccio before heading out on the ferry to Toulon and beyond. Our main purpose was to view the 14^th July celebrations, although we also wanted to have a look around.

Ajaccio is the capital of the south west province of Corsica, and stands at the head of the Gulf d’Ajaccio and on the mouth of the Prunelli River. It has been around in its current incarnation since it was founded in 1492 by the Genoese, but the area has been inhabited since pre-historic times as is clear in the evidence of many monuments around the coast. 

The town is famous for being the birth place of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Bonaparte family has left its mark on the city with statues, roads and squares all bearing the B word as their name.  As is the case across France, this is more due to the work of Napoleon III than anyone else and there is a feeling that NB was not entirely true to his Corsican roots.

 

Paying Homage to the Emperor

The other Bonapartian legacy was left by Napoleon’s uncle, Cardinal Fesch, who – in spite of devoting his life to the church – managed to accumulate more than 16,000 paintings while in Italy on official duties, and in the end bequeathed them to the state of Corsica for the pleasure of its later tourists.

We felt we had Ajaccio covered but we went on a guided tour of the city organised by Office de Tourism, and found a passionate and verbose young man who told us about “Red Gold”. The tour covered the history of the trade in red coral which underpinned the economy  of the city for much of the last four hundred years.  In fact, by the 1700s around 75% of the population of Ajaccio was employed directly by the coral industry.  There were 250 boats collecting coral, and the industry had been operating since Roman times.  In the 16^th century, the coral was harvested by divers who broke off coral pieces in relatively shallow water.  However, over time, the resource was depleted and the divers had to dive deeper and deeper.  The result was that divers frequently suffered from the bends and died at a young age.  Only 5% of the population made it to the age of 60, which indicates how dangerous the industry was for its participants.

As the resource was further depleted and left only coral too deep for divers to harvest, the approach to coral collection changed. The innovation of the Croix St Andre – a cross in an x shape on the end of a heavy anchor – allowed collection of coral from the deeper reefs.  The Cross operated by simply dragging along the coral and catching onto the branches, breaking them off and carrying them to the surface.  While the tool was effective at breaking the coral, the capture was less effective and only 30% of the broken coral reached the surface.  What is remarkable is that this methodology continued until its eventual banning in 1996 – a wasteful and unsustainable industry abusing a limited resource, just to make jewelery.

Napoleon helped out the coral industry in his home town by encouraging his wife, the Empress Josephine, to wear a piece of coral jewellery as part of her official jewels – this had the desired fashion impact and improved the profitability if not the sustainability of the Ajaccio coral miners.

Elsewhere in Ajaccio, we visited the French Submarine Hunter the Montcalm which was just back from Afghanistan and Libya (blockading the ports, not chasing ships of the desert).  Unfortunately, we could not decipher the signal flags, even with Google.

The Montcalm with its signal flags-  Vanessa?

We cruised on the harbour at night to watch the fireworks. 

And marvelled at the appropriation of the limited road space by cafés so that they could create outdoor seating to allow patrons to smoke.

It was probably a parking space in a former life

We, however, spent most of our time spotting the impact of years of excessive sun damage on the population of the older women in Corsica. 

A cluster of fine examples on closer inspection

I bought some more block out, I hope I am not too late.

Corsican Music Three

We found a pleasant little restaurant in Ajaccio on Rue du Comte Bacciochi, a wide pedestrian street (meaning only some cars use it) with the restaurant on the footpath, and enough room to stay away from the smokers.  The woman who served us coffee there in the morning promised that there would be music in the evening, and so we decided to sample our third offering of Corsican music, this time with food.  So we returned that evening (14^th July) to have dinner before heading down to the fireworks.

When we arrived we encountered the scene in this photo.  Duelling musicians.

Musicians on each side of the road in competing restaruants

Our restaurant was the one on the left, and our entertainment for the night was a guitarist playing jazz / blues loud enough to be heard on the restaurant on the other side of the road.  The restaurateur on the right had hired his own performer in order to attract the crowds to his establishment, but he was around 5 minutes too late. Our guitarist played continuously, not leaving a gap for the opposition to start up and drown him out. Le Patron across the road was more and more agitated as our restaurant was filling with customers and he had only 2 –not counting his children sitting out the front to make it look like there were plenty of customers.  Finally, our performer tired, and took a break, however the entertainer across the road had stopped for dinner and the Le Patron had disappeared. 

Then they arrived – Le Point de Séparation marched down the road and declared themselves the winners in the music contest.

We dropped in on the way home after the fireworks, and found the performer from the second restaurant in full voice singing disco songs from the late seventies!

Corsican Music Second Edition

Our last stop in Corsica is Ajaccio, the capital of South Corsica, on the South West coast.  Ajaccio is the city where we arrived and the one from which we will leave.

One of the benefits of visiting places in the high season when everyone else is there, is that events are organised for the tourists.  One such event was a performance of traditional Corsican music at the Église Saint Roch, which we thought may be a pleasant way to fill in the time before dinner on our first evening in Ajaccio.

The performance was amazing.  Five men in black, standing in a circle, no accompanying instruments, five part harmony and it filled the church with music for forty five minutes.

After the performance, the singers were outside signing their CD.  One of them was smoking.