Thanksgiving Française

Marseille and the Mediterranean… and the Chateau d'If!

This past week, I took my nose away from the grindstone and took myself off to see a Fordham friend and colleague who's living in Marseilles. Being an American medievalist means mandatory travel in nearly all cases. This means coping with new challenges, academic and personal, without a social support system, of course… but also: living in Europe. It was my first time visiting France outside of Paris, my first time “en province,” as well as in Provence. The soil is different from that of my part of Germany; the building materials are different. (Parenthetically, I’m sure I wouldn’t be as conscious of this if 2 of the 3 weeks I spent tramping across northwestern Spain a few years ago hadn’t been alongside a professor who kept calling our attention to slate, to stone, to clay.) The countryside of Provence is the country of Marcel Pagnol, who managed to write tender and lyrical novels about how punishingly hard it can be to wring a living from the wind-weathered hills, as well as about the ecstasy of springtime there, and the unexpected enchantments of cultivated gardens. It’s also the territory which so often appears as “Countryside, near...” on museum plaques next to paintings by Cézanne.

Thanks to my friend and host, my first experience of Marseilles was not its subway, but the glittering spread of the city below the grandiose terrace and staircase of the railway station: lamps molded like plants, sensuously curved statues, the haphazard pile of white houses with red-tiled roofs, grouped around the port, under the benevolent gaze of la bonne Mère, Notre Dame de la Garde. Following Nathan, who made himself a marvelous guide as well as traveling companion, I discovered that, in Marseille, people really do walk the streets with multiple baguettes in paper sacks: from lithe boys on reckless scooters, to solid middle-aged women, to old men with their small dogs on leashes. I loved the city’s blue skies and bright buildings, the laundry hanging out on balconies, the faded shutters over tall windows, the artists’ quarter with its exuberant graffiti.

Palais Longchamp: for socializing and education of 19th-century bourgeoisie

Apse of Notre Dame de la Garde, with votive ships

The people of Marseilles surprised as well: I was disconcerted when strangers actually spoke to us, making friendly offers of an unused bus ticket or an extra coupon, or asking us (well, Nathan) for renseignements about this or that. I will defend German helpfulness and kindliness to my last breath, but... initiating contact with strangers? smiling at people for no reason? Coming to France showed me that I’ve been in Germany (and NYC) long enough to find such behavior very odd. Still, it’s hard to fault the savoir vivre of a place that heats outdoor terraces where you will be served (for example) duck breast with figs and clementines alongside piping hot frites and a salad dressed with something dijon-based. This indulgent lunch was had in Aix-en-Provence, where we were taking refuge from a November rain.

Le bon roi René

Aix in the rain

French textbook, chapter 6

Avignon was a perfect destination for travel with another medieval nerd professional historian, as its main tourist attractions (other than being a town with winding streets and nice architecture in the middle of French wine country...) are the bridge (medieval commerce! folksongs!) and the papal palace complex (Babylonian exile! Catherine of Siena!! political drama!!!) The buildings themselves were mightily imposing, but I suspect that viewing the courts, the halls, the sumptuously decorated chapels, is exponentially cooler if you are the sort of person who is super-excited to see where the curia met in the fourteenth century, where church law was deliberated and where envoys were received. Fortunately, we were the papal palace’s ideal audience in this sense. We also got a kick out of the euphemistic language of the exhibits about how the papacy ended up in Avignon and what this meant at the time. We also saw the Pont d'Avignon, on which it is so famously danced, and experienced the famous mistral of Provençal winters.

France posing for its calendar close-up

The papal palace. 17th-century soldiers knocked off the towers;
19th-century reconstructionists put them back up.

Inner courtyard, designed in 14th century

Avignon from the palace

The papal palace cat: likes pigeons, head scratches, and medieval architecture

The city from the battlements

We climbed to a park with monuments to the dead of WWI

…and climbed back down to the bridge...

…arriving in time for sunset-light photos.

Having gotten to experience this corner of France on the cusp of winter, I’m having trouble imagining what it would be like baking under spring sunshine, and I’m very glad to have experienced it as one of comparatively few tourists. Sure, we encountered some Austrians also visiting Marseille’s historic churches, and heard a few other Anglophones on the streets... but I like the streets comparatively quiet. Even the café just opposite Avignon’s office de tourisme, where we stopped for a fortifying cup of coffee before the trip home, was hardly full, and to judge by the conversations about le foot and the friendly greetings to new arrivals, we were the only non-locals. Even the most idyllic vacations must end, of course. Following a scramble to the train station (my poor sense of distance/orientation strikes again) I was bundled safely on to the TGV that would return me to Frankfurt. Traveling out of Marseille, it was early enough that even the Mediterranean was only a dull and dusky blue. The reflections of dawn could be seen behind the sharp-ridged hills, illuminating a clinging village here, silhouetting a solitary church or crumbling fortress there. As the sun climbed, the cliffs and scree could be blindingly white, pebbly inclines into gorges, with olive trees and scrubby pines, not tall-grown firs, crowding the hills. I found myself entranced, fascinated by this landscape which is so unlike Germany. I wouldn't trade the gray skies of Mainz, though… but that's a topic for another time.