My stay in Marseille was short, just 3 days. I came to this seaside city to catch a plane to Venice. Again my expectations were low, but I found some pretty cool things.

Upon arriving, I met with my couchsurfing host Jean-Alain. Jean is a personal trainer originally from the Caribbean.
We met up with some of his friends and went to dinner. The dinner was overpriced and underwhelming but there was some interesting art in the area.

After we went to this “Old School Hip Hop” party.
I would never go to a party like this of my own accord, but being the first night with a CS host, I felt obliged to express interest in his musical taste and venue preference. I felt like this was a good practice in loosening up and getting out of my music cocoon. As far as music goes, my preferences are pretty narrowly exclusive to the newest varieties of the ever evolving electronic music scene.
There was a sense of letting go underlined by an atmosphere of pressure to have a good time under predictably upbeat tedious beats.
I left the party with a sense of not knowing who I was. Refreshing.

There is a story I once read ” The well of madness”. It talks about a king whose subjects all went mad from drinking poisoned water. He tried to rectify the problem but was hindered by all the crazy people. Finally he gave in and drank the water too.

The next day I had a walk around town. I went to the Palais de Justice.

The city center is next to the water front. They have this mirror installation thing that acts as a shade.

Part of the old city is on hills.
That evening, Jean took me the Marseille ballet company performance in the park. I love France. Where else would you find this? We met up with some of his friends and had a picnic. The performances started with kids and progressed into adults. There were themes of androgyny, domestic abuse, sexuality, aggression in the dance studio, and unicorns.

The next day, Jean couldn’t host me, so I found a hostel. I headed up to the Notre Dame Cathedral that overlooks the city. Later, I met my roommates, Luca, Romanian, and Kheli, Parisian. Kheli and I walked around the center in evening. She’s fun! I had to wake up early the next day to catch a flight, but she insisted we drink wine and walk the evening streets. We found this spontaneous party by the waterfront. I can only guess it was some kind of Arabic pop. Marseille is a big immigrant entry point.