To be honest, I was considering not even doing a post for Marseilles. I almost just skipped it, but I have decided to go ahead as I have three short happenings to tell which I have somewhat over-dramatically titled: The Drug Den, The Dripping Ceiling and The Authoritative Dilemma.

So what to say about Marseilles? Well, it’s a city in the South of France. That’s a nice, neutral start. What I have to say now is not so neutral … I was expecting some lavish seaside destination, similar to Nice, although it’s about as similar to Nice as a porcupine is to a tangerine. I think it can relate to that line in that Katy Perry song, “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?” Essentially what I’m skirting around is, it’s not my favourite place in the world. It’s not even my favourite big sprawling city covered in dirt in the world.

Since going there I have done some research and I now know why I was getting that strong criminal underground vibe. Spoiler alert, it’s because there’s a criminal underground. In a news article I read in The Guardian it says there are sometimes military weapons fired in broad daylight in criminal turf wars. Perhaps it was best I was sick while we were there, as I stayed mostly indoors.

This brings me to my first tale; the drug den, aka. the doctor’s office in town. To check I didn’t have some sort of chest infection or something we went to the doctor, an uninteresting task you might presume. It’s not often you could mistake a doctor’s office for a bus station. There were no signs outside the building to suggest that it was anything but derelict, and the interior furnishings didn’t much clarify things for us. It was a dirty, rundown room without a reception desk; just an empty room with folding chairs along the walls. We joked this was the place people came to get their daily methadone score, but judging by the sketchy characters that might not have been far off. We considered leaving, but after twenty minutes of scooting up the queue on the rickety chairs we went in to see a doctor. Inside it looked fairly legitimate like a real doctor’s office, I couldn’t believe it. After a quick checkup I was on my way with a script for some antibiotics, having obviously lived to tell the tale. Perhaps the moral of the story is don’t judge a book by its cover? As a rule though I think places that look like drug dens should generally be avoided just in case.

As for the second tale, this happened that night. I was taking a shower, again a fairly mundane activity. Our shower in Nice had broken in spectacular fashion in the last week we were staying there. My parents had noticed a brown stain on the roof of their bedroom and a damp patch on their bed. Turns out there was a problem with the plumbing (someone upstairs had flushed something they shouldn’t have) and raw sewerage (we presumed) was now dribbling down onto their sheets. I had a good laugh, until I found that meant the shower no longer had hot water (they sent me in as the guinea pig to see if it would work, penance for laughing no doubt). It wasn’t fixed until after we left, which meant by the time we arrived in Marseilles I needed a good shower. This I did not get. It is essential for this story to note the shower was the type where a nozzle on a hose is fitted to the wall. I turned the shower on and the nozzle went flying (movie style) and hit me in the face, only to start whipping around before landing on the shower floor where it sprayed freezing cold water up into my eyes. I struggled blindly trying to tame to beast that was the nozzle, before finally thinking to turn the tap off. By this point the whole room was wet including the ceiling, which was now so doused in water it was dripping.

After a few good days in bed to recover from my illness I was lured out of my cocoon to see the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations. The building is quite spectacular (a large cube on the waterfront with a fortress type thing attached). It also has a view to the Cathédrale La Major, another spectacular building. I should stress not all of Marseilles is like a scene out of a mafia movie, there are some nice areas of town (I just didn’t go exploring much).

The museum was quite good probably; what would I know? I was sick and grumpy, and I didn’t want to read all the long paragraphs. Mum however did read all the long paragraphs. I asked her to summarise, but she just said, “I dunno.” We make a great team. There were some nice vases, some tiny replica ships and some armour in one gallery, then weapons and agricultural instruments in another. All fairly standard stuff. Then in a bizarre turn of events there was one room that looked like a padded skate park with videos projected on every wall of people dancing. I think I can confidently say they were not professionals. With the full sensory overload that was, well, whatever that was, we left through a curtain made of strips of fabric, and went on to the next gallery. There I was approached by a woman who asked me about the exhibit (there was a video being played and she wondered if it was in other languages). I was quite puzzled, then had an overwhelming sense of deja vu. For the second time on this holiday I had been mistaken for a museum staff member. The last time I could understand, I was wearing all black and a lanyard, but this? I was wearing track pants and a purple fleece, hardly work attire. I had barely made any effort to even be presentable, and here I was singled out of a crowd, asked if I worked there. I concluded I must just exude professionalism. Or perhaps the world is trying to tell me I should be working in a museum.

We ended our stay in France that night by sharing a huge pizza. The next day we would leave for Morocco, an entirely new continent. At least with Asia and Europe we had had some idea what to expect, but Morocco was a complete unknown. And as we would soon discover, quite the adventure.