Marseille

We landed in Marseille around 10am, local time. After getting out of the airport into the city, we immediately checked into a hotel and slept for four hours.

Feeling somewhat rested, we walked down the hill to the old harbour. There was a market going on. In jet-lagged stupor, I contemplated the idea of walking all the length of the old harbour to see the outdoor market. That sounded tiring.

And then I saw a sign advertising a cruise to the Calanques, part of a national seashore nearby. That was it! That was the way to fend off jet lag. Student and I hopped on and let someone else drive for a couple of hours.

After the boat trip, we ate at a lovely vegetarian restaurant that the student tracked down to suit her dietary needs.

We checked out of the hotel, and took a taxi up to the university, now late at night.

When we pulled up, we saw a family of wild boars.

Then we had to haul our suitcases a long way past construction, shouting all the way to the wild boars that we did not want to see them, and they should please stay away from us. We saw no more wild boars the entire week.

****

The workshop in Marseille was called a school, with lots of graduate students in attendance, and four professors giving a series of introductory talks in their fields. I gave one series. A friend who was organising the workshop gave another. The very first day, she mentioned that with all the organising work she had been doing, she hadn't had much time to prepare her talks.

I smiled, remembering the paperwork I had been mailed earlier that week, and asked if that was the case, did she still want to record the talks, to post them on the internet for ever and ever?

"Oh," she said, "no one is recording my talk. Your talk is the only one being posted on the internet."

"What????"

"We had to choose one, and we chose yours. I hope you are prepared...."

Great.

****

Since I was only in France until Friday, I decided I had no problem with remaining jet lagged. The first night I went to bed soon after 8:30pm. The second night I was tired and not hungry, so I skipped dinner and went to bed at 7:30pm. The third night I stayed up for dinner, going to bed at 8:30pm. The fourth night was their special feast, bouillabaisse, with soup and bread and more cooked fish than anyone could eat. For that, I stayed up until 9:30. The fifth night I flew to London, in preparation for the next stage of the trip. And didn't check into my airport hotel until 10:30pm. And so after five days of slowly staying awake later and later, I found myself terribly jet lagged again in Seoul on Sunday morning, after all.

Here are some pictures of my trip to Marseille, short as it was.

View from the top of the Calanques, out over the Mediterranean. I timed it. This was a 30 minute walk from the conference centre.

View at the bottom of the Calanques. Wednesday we had a free afternoon, and I hiked down with a woman from Greece. The water was gorgeous, so we stepped in to swim.

And it was freezing freezing cold. The Greek woman was very disappointed. Her Mediterranean is never as cold as the Mediterranean of these French people. But we both swam anyway. Very very cold.

Me giving talks. Now available on YouTube.