After a late lunch and some rest on Valentine's Day, we went on a walk to check out Marseille's Rue Julien street art area. Even though I knew street art basically means graffiti, it was more... graffiti-ish than I expected, haha. It looked cool, but I hope I didn't take pictures of any bad stuff!
Poor Jeff caught a whiff of marijuana early in our graffiti walk, and had his usual allergic reaction to it: swollen throat, headache, and tunnel vision. Since Jeff can't actually smell marijuana, he didn't realize that the headache he felt coming on was from that until we walked past a marijuana store. Then he said "we need to get out of here." We immediately turned back towards Rue Lulli (home). While we walked, I stressed about Jeff's throat swelling closed and tried to figure out how to say "he is sick" in French in case he passed out before we got home. Thankfully he made it back to the apartment ok because when I asked him later if I had my French phrase right, I was way off.
In spite of my concerns for Jeff's health, I kept laughing while we walked back to our apartment, because the situation was too silly: the 350 year old historic main street in Marseille is La Canebière, which comes from the Latin word cannabis, named centuries ago for the hemp that was grown nearby. For 300 years, Marseille was one of the world's largest traders of hemp rope and baskets. Jeff was trudging along La Canebière with the more modern usage of cannabis reacting in his system. I joked that I must have gotten a whiff of the stuff too, I was so giggly. It's no surprise that La Canebière was the original high street of Marseille! Bahahaha. The plays on words are endlessly juicy and silly! The situation tickled my funny bone all the way home. I forced myself to resist taking a picture of my suffering husband with the Canebière street sign in the background. It would've been awesome, but he was suffering, and I didn't want to delay our return to the apartment, so I refrained.
When we finally slowly climbed the 3 flights of curving stairs up to our apartment, Jeff had to hand the keys over to me so I could unlock the door. I actually stood and watched him try to unlock the door for a little while before he conceded defeat and handed them to me. I am always paranoid about saying the wrong thing to a sick/suffering person, so I didn't offer to help right away. Sometimes my offers to help offend or irritate, because I tend to hover anxiously when I'm trying to help sick people. But the door to our apartment had three locks on it: top, middle, and bottom. The door itself was more like a funny skinny closet door--no doorknob--and the locks were all deadbolts that held the door shut when locked. The keyholes were worn and tricky, but Jeff was able to unlock the top one because it was at eye level. His tunnel vision and allergic fog made it too hard to get the key into the middle lock.
Enter the anxiously hovering wife! Hurrah, A Helpful Thing To Do! I unlocked the door with ease. Once we were inside the apartment, Jeff took an allergy pill and laid down for an hour, after which he felt much better. We decided to stay in for dinner, even though it was Valentine's Day, our last night in Marseille, and we hadn't gone out to a sit-down restaurant once during our stay. We'll just have to go back and try authentic bouillabaisse another time.
We still needed food for dinner. After poring over the map, and mentally reviewing key French phrases, I ventured forth alone to Monoprix grocery store to buy baguettes and cheese for our dinner. I'm not going to lie, it was a bit stressful. I managed alright, and only took like 4 wrong turns on my way to the grocery store. I even understood what the cashier meant when she asked me in rapid French if I had a bag. "Oui!" I said triumphantly, pulling my bag out of my pocket. I like to think she was impressed that I understood her, but French people are notoriously hard to read for me because I always get hung up on the main vibe that they exude: disdain at my incompetence with their [decidedly difficult] language. I don't do well under pressure, and feeling waves of disdain and impatience rolling off of a stranger while they wait for me to figure out what to do and say is easily a large reason that I am stuck in the rut of mediocre French comprehension.
On the way home from the supermarche, I gathered my scattered courage and stopped at a boulangerie for two pastries for dessert, feeling self conscious of the mass-produced grocery store baguettes that were sticking out of my bag as well as my glaring American-ness. Unfortunately the lady behind the patisserie counter was an extra intense version of the typical severe/disdainful French woman. I said "Bonne soir, Je voudrais deux religieuse." Good evening, I would like two religieuse. I even said most of the R sounds almost in the back of my throat! I tried not to preen.
My success was short lived. The pastry lady asked "chocolat o cafe?" I said chocolat but she did not seem to hear me. She tweezed a chocolate eclair and said in English "this or this?" (switching her tweezers to a coffee eclair). I said "une religieuse" and she tweezed between an eclair and a religieuse, saying in that tart, terse tone, still in English: "this or this?" Trying not to feel frustrated, I said "une religieuse!"
Pastry lady: "un?"
Me: "non, deux!"
Pastry lady, in English: "one or two?"
Me: "two, uhh deux!"
At LAST we got through the selection and I paid and got outta there. Wow, I think up to 40% of my problem with speaking French may be straight up vocal volume. I don't have it.
I brought my hard-won bag of food home and we feasted on baguettes and cheese and the cute miniature lettuces that I found, with those dratted religieuses for dessert. It wasn't a romantic fancy restaurant Valentine's date, but it was just what we wanted and needed. In fact, when Jeff decided that he wasn't up for going out to eat for dinner, I was relieved. After all of our rocky running and lengthy walks, I was simply too tired to sit in a French restaurant for a two hour multi-course meal!
After dinner, Jeff and I played the two new card games that he bought from a toy shop down the street. I tried not to feel frustrated/impotent/hopeless because of course Jeff beat me soundly in both of the games because he's way better at French than me. When we are on equal ground, Jeff is a formidable opponent in games, but when he had the French fluency advantage, there was almost not even a point in playing together. Eventually I told him "I can't take much more of this," and we ended our game. Too much French failure in one evening was crumpling my already miniature French confidence.
Later, while reminiscing about our past Valentine's Days together, we realized that although we went out to lunch on February 14th last year, we haven't gone out to eat dinner on Valentine's Day since our very first date, 13 years ago! Thanks a lot, cannabis.
I managed to get several interesting pictures of graffiti--I mean, street art--before we had to head home:
It's Plagg, the camambert cheese-loving miniature magical cat from Miraculous Ladybug! (A fun Netflix cartoon that's set in Paris)
Le Quartier des Createurs
Silly shopping success selfie while walking home.
Dinner with my Valentine.
That pesky little religieuse (basically the same chocolate cream-filled confection as an eclair, but a different shape).
To finish off our romantic Valentine's Day, we did laundry. Our apartment had a washer, and provided convenient drying racks for the clothes. We packed light: 3 changes of clothes plus church clothes and running clothes. We only had to do laundry once while we were traveling.
No comments:
Post a Comment