France

Marseille

What can I say about Marseille that hasn’t been said already? Well not much, because we didn’t spend much time looking at it.

I gave my French a go in the bar carriage on the train from Barcelona. “Bonjour. Deux petite boutelle de vin rouge sil vous plais.” I said in my best French accent.

“You what mate?”

She was Spanish and didn’t speak a word of French, which is just as well given how bad I am.

Now Europe is a pretty excellent place in many respects but they have too many languages. You just don’t need them all. Some countries have recognised this problem and just use the country next doors language to make things easier. In France however, they have a different approach. I don’t know about you but I don’t count mumbling as a language. Just rolling all of the words together, talking quickly and not opening your mouth properly doesn’t make you sound sexy and mysterious if you ask me, it makes you sound like a lazy 5 year old with a mouth full of toffee who is asking an adult which way it is to the toilet. But they have got Gerard Depardieu so I’ll let them off this time.

We arrived at Marseille train station late on Friday night, and came out of the wrong door. We asked a guy delivering sushi on a motorbike which way to go. He looked more lost than we were and seemed to have a lot of undelivered sushi in the boot of his motorbike, but we followed his directions anyway. Eventually we arrived at a police station where a passer by told us to get off the streets because it was too dangerous there. We thought we’d be ok because we were outside the police station but I think that might have been the threat he was referring to. We ended up heading back to the train station and getting a cab that overcharged us but we finally made it to the hotel. Tub was in the huff and I had to sleep on the couch. Well so did she, the room only had a sofa bed in it.

Travelling makes you tired and that is all we have done for 3 months so we are knackered. We slept in then did the laundry and finally appeared out of the front door of the hotel at 3pm.

Marseille has a nice port, something called a Brasserie and a shitload of Irish pubs.

And there are some Eastenders fans here too.

It also has a shiny roof thing.

Well that’ll do pig. We bought some dips and bread and headed back to the room. 4:15.

We did emerge later to check out the real estate situation.

Apparently they are flogging this off.

I’ll translate it for you. Ideal investment. 33m wide. Detached building. One room with toilet (used by all the locals). Can be drafty in winter. Energy rating D.

They had a Christmas market down at the port.

But it was shut so we went to the Irish pub.

And then for a curry. Well the French can’t cook for shit so you have to avoid their restaurants, unless you like eating worms in a cream of dogshit sauce with a horse head jus.

See if you can guess what this is?

That’s right. It’s a shish kebab. Well spotted.

Tub was happy again.

And we didn’t get lost this time.

The next morning we found this place for ourselves.

Which was just as well as I was bursting.

These things are everywhere in Europe. I hear they’ve even got one in Paris. Lets go and check it out.

So here we are back at the train station in double quick time and so is this little man with a guitar on his back.

Paris

Well here we go again. Back in the Paris rail system exactly two weeks after we came through here to avoid the Belgian strikes.

We are here for 3.5 days. The culmination of the whole World Tour. Please God, let it end soon!

We went to the Christmas Market, which in France is run by a bloke called Noel. I gave my French accent another go at the mulled wine stand. “Un vin chaud, S’il vous plais.” I said shaking my head from side to side so much that my beret nearly fell off and landed on my onions.

“Do you want a big one or a small one mate?” he said, seeing through my stripey shirted disguise.

When most people hear the word Paris it conjures up images of a horrible shithole full of rude Frenchmen riding bikes and gouging people’s eyes in the scrum when the ref isn’t looking. That’s a bit unfair. True, but unfair. Did you know that Paris has the world’s largest collection of grey government buildings, and nobody knows what any of them are for?

Or that it houses some of the greatest art in the world?

They have the same issues as the rest of Europe of course. Outdoor pissing…

photobombing…

…and homelessness.

I came to France on a school trip when I was a kid and I was amazed at how big the supermarkets were. Apparently I was wrong, it’s like when you were little and a Mars bar was bigger than your head.

Vive la difference. The French always have something for you. Like these red coloured green men.

Tub says its because I’m colourblind but I’m not convinced. She told me to pull up my socks, but I couldn’t because she’s been wearing them for the last 3 weeks since she ran out of stockings. So here she is pulling my socks up.

This tug boat is in Seine.

We found this inside out building. The Popodum Centre.

And we also found this whole street full of wig shops. Seriously.

Yup. Human hair wigs for 1000 Euro.

I had to stop taking pictures in wig street when a bald woman came out and chased me down the street. True.

While it is quite true that French Cooking is an oxymoron, you probably didn’t realise that they can’t cook Italian or Greek food here either. Fact.

One common problem in Europe is that they only have mayonnaise to serve with their food. The whole continent is in dire need of gravy. If you or any of your British or Australian friends can spare some gravy, please send it over to Europe care of Bob Geldof. People are dying here.

In actual fact the place is full of surprises. Here is Notre Dame Cathedral.

Named after an American College Football team and build by Quasimodo who used to ring the bell with his head. One day he missed completely and fell into the courtyard below. A policeman and a priest came running over and the policeman said “Do you know who this is?” The priest replied, “No. But his face rings a bell.”

Sorry.

Actually Notre Dame looks like a garden shed compared to St Peter’s in Rome.

Lets move on and identify a real redeeming feature of Paris.

What about the Arc de Triomphe?

Or having seen so many of the blood things in Europe maybe its just an Arc de Triomphe.

In 1889 Gustave Eiffel unveiled his most famous construction for the World Fair. Unfortunately the tower has long since disappeared but somehow the scaffolding has survived.

Ok, I’ll admit it. Its a real struggle to find anything nice to say about Paris, especially when its raining and you’ve spent 5 weeks looking at every nice building in Europe. So on the start of our first full day in Paris we both looked at each other and Tub said “Fuck it. Let’s go home. I’ve had enough of this shit.” And with that, just as suddenly as it had started, the Redundancy World Tour was over.