Travel is all about feeling like a weenie

Paris and Marseille and the limits of everything.

I have been in Marseille for the past week and a half, and before that, I was in Paris for a couple of days visiting an old friend. I hadn’t been to Paris in about 15 years - not since I was a high school student - and it was both as devastatingly beautiful and as dirty as I remembered it. (I remember thinking, as a 16-year-old, that I couldn’t believe the Parisians could graffiti on such gorgeous buildings; I hadn’t yet lived anywhere besides Oklahoma.) It was even dirtier this time because of the strikes, which I was overall happy about. I wish Americans could strike like the French do. I love that for them. They don’t want to work very much, and they shouldn’t have to! I don’t want to work very much, either. Anyone who acts like the French are unique in this needs to take a look at themselves. Everyone should retire right now, is my opinion. Onwards.

I caught some sort of mystery bug in Paris and ended up with a low-level cold that was kicking in even as I boarded the bullet train (gorgeously called the Train de Grand Vitesse!) to Marseille. Three and a half hours later, I was in the south of France, exhausted, checking into my apartment and telling myself that it was okay to have an easy rest of the day, that I’d earned it, and after all, I had a week and a half in the city, there was no need to rush things. I didn’t know that, from there, my energy levels would only get worse. 

I feel like I’m constantly writing about being sick in this newsletter. This has been a new life development for me, and I don’t know what to blame it on: is it that I had a bad case of COVID and the effects are still lingering? Is it that I’ve moved to a new country with a very different climate, and the result has been killer on my immune system? Have I suddenly come down with Adult Allergies? It’s all frustrating and sad and I genuinely don’t know the answer. What I know is, I didn’t feel well the entire time I was in Marseille, and it made me sad. I still did things, but I was operating from a low energy level, a poor appetite (biggest tragedy of them all), and a generally depressed vibe. My body was producing a lot of snot and that’s never fun. I was also vaguely worried I’d be pickpocketed or abducted or something, based on the scary things a few friends had told me about Marseille (ALWAYS what you want to hear right before you’re about to travel somewhere alone, thanks friends, I love you all but also Oh My God). For the record, I didn’t end up finding the city scary literally at all, so those fears, at least, were quickly set aside.

I am not going to do an essay sugar-coating the fact that I was sick for my entire highly-anticipated solo trip (which was to celebrate my 30th birthday). It sucked! I don’t regret going even for a minute, because I still got to see my friend Fred and ride on a bullet train and practice speaking French in a bunch of teeny-tiny ways with Actual French People, and all of that was worth it. But I did feel like a weeny the whole time, walking around in an absolutely treacherous meat sack that has been failing me so, so much in the past nine months. And then I thought about it more and was like, yeah, but in some ways travel is always kind of about feeling like a weeny. 

Here’s some stuff that made me feel just so incredibly wimpy during this trip:

-Being absolutely humbled by how much I did not enjoy traditional Marseillaise bouillabaisse, which felt (to me) as though it was confrontationally assembled from an array of the gnarliest, chewiest, bottom dwelling-est fish in the sea.

-How merciless the French are about people trying to practice their language. Now, I adore the French, and I am fine with them being mean to me. But truly, they pull no punches when it comes to putting up with non-native French speakers (at least in the two large cities I was in). I speak pretty decent conversational French - it was my second major in college, and I do regular French tutoring even now - but if I took even a moment to pause and try and think of a word, the person I was interacting with would seamlessly switch to English, giving me an incredibly pitying look as though I had embarrassed both them and their country with my shitty-ass attempts at speaking their native tongue. Occasionally, I would persist in French anyway, refusing to be shamed like that - which caused one very begrudging waiter to ask me if I was German. (Lol.) French speakers - please give me a break!!!

This chocolate mousse from Sépia was not only the best thing I ate on this trip; it was potentially one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.

-Hauling around a set of giant European-ass keys that made me feel like I was renting an entire castle when, in reality, I was renting a very snug studio apartment. If you’ve ever visited a European country, you know the type of key I’m talking about. Maybe this is very American of me, but I like small keys that actually work when you attempt to use them, rather than requiring the upper arm strength of a literal body builder. We (globally) have the technology! 

-Realizing, helplessly, that the French pharmacist was going to try and give me some sort of “herbal remedy” type medication for my cold and having to ask her for the meds “with chemicals added,” which - you are all going to be shocked to hear this! - she did not find amusing.

The thing about all of the above, though, is: I kind of liked it. (Well, not the illness part. I am begging someone to switch lungs with me.) But the rest of it: realizing over and over that as much as I’ve studied, there is still a huge gulf between my current French skills and fluency. Or ordering a meal that I genuinely want to try, only to learn that, when it comes to fish, I have the palate of a toddler who was raised in a landlocked state. (Which is true, by the way. You have to be pretty fancy to know much about seafood when growing up in Oklahoma.) There’s something genuinely thrilling about all of these things. New neural pathways were firing up in my brain with every minor setback, every delightfully French microaggression I got to deal with. I have been feeling less and less discomfort in my new home city of Dublin lately, which has been great - but when I go somewhere on vacation, I am purposefully putting myself in the way of those minor discomforts, and that feels good, even when it feels vaguely bad. 

I didn’t find Marseille to be the scary place people warned me of: if anything, I found the Marseillaise to be very friendly, slightly (EVER so slightly) more willing to let me practice my French or have a chat with me. I found it to be a lively, diverse port city with a blend of cultures that absolutely rivals New York’s, and in that way it reminded me of being back in the city that I still - at least for now - consider home. But because I was sick and couldn’t explore as much as I’d have liked, I left feeling like Marseille was still almost as much of a mystery to me as when I arrived. 

I walked up to the highest hill and looked down at the city from Notre Dame de la Garde, and I saw firsthand that there’s no way I could have explored a metropolis that sprawling in only nine days, especially while plagued with a nasty cold. So I kind of stopped trying (which was humbling in itself), and instead I did a bunch of little things that felt pleasant and matched my energy level: eating a long lunch of steak frites in the sunshine while reading a book. Going to see a movie (or actually - in the end - several movies). Walking to exactly two vintage stores, finding a couple of treasures and then calling it a day. Eating so, so many bread products, both at the café and taken to go and enjoyed in the privacy of my Airbnb, while sitting around in my underwear and catching up on TV. Working on this essay, which I started to draft at MucEM while sitting down on a bench because I was exhausted from walking so much and needed a break.

I don’t recommend being sick on vacation, but I do recommend the feeling of being confronted, constantly, by all the things you don’t know, all the ways you are different, all the things you still have to learn. And I do recommend getting dragged by a bunch of French people. It’s a beautiful country and they’re right to be protective of it, and also, I deserved it.