Europe @ 2.4 km/h (40 page)

The History Museum of Marseilles — the only museum I’ve ever come across inside a shopping mall — chronicles the first 1000 years of this city’s story. Marseilles — we have it on Aristotle’s authority — was founded as a Greek colony, Massalia, in the sixth century BC. Celts, known as Ligurians, already lived here. Soon Phoenicians and others added to the rich mix — what you might call the ethnic bouillabaisse. From a museum leaflet I discover that the fascination with Northern Europe occurred much further south, and much earlier, than I would have supposed. Pythéas — a traveller, savant and astronomer from this town — explored the North Atlantic coast
circa
330 BC, going further than anyone before him.

In 1983 I flew in a Cessna — the only plane owned by Druk, Bhutan’s fledgeling national airline — from Calcutta to the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu. During a passage of violent turbulence the captain’s voice came over the intercom, reassuring us he had once been personal pilot to the prime minister of Malta. I remember thinking, What did he do so wrong that he’s now working in this backwater of international aviation? Today a similar thought occurs when I perceive the following notice — in English, oddly — in the window of the Shanghai Restaurant: ‘Mr Han, the senior chef, holds the professional certificate issued by People’s Republic of China. He worked in the Embassy of China in France. He is willing to serve you now.’

Which is more than I can say for a certain old man at the bouilla baisse restaurant on New Bank Quay. I couldn’t leave Marseilles without sampling its most celebrated dish. But it is costly, more than €20 (A$33). Six months into the journey, I have spent nigh on €11,000 ($18,000) and now I have an extra incentive not to splurge, as I am just €18 ($30) over budget.

As if on cue, I see a chalkboard offering a half serve (still quite a lot) of the famous dish for €11.90 (A$20) — a bouillabaissement bargain if ever there was one. The stern old man (I assume he is the owner, he has that proprietorial air) stands squarely in the entrance, and when I point to the chalkboard item of my choice he announces, ‘I have no right to serve you’. And, what is more, ‘We do not have toilets for the disabled’.

‘I am not looking for a toilet,’ I counter. ‘I have just been to the one at the museum.’ Even as I speak, a disturbing idea occurs to me. Is there something I should know about this fish soup, that I will need to go to the toilet straightaway? This shot across the bows leaves him physically and figuratively unmoved. I put my brakes on (the equivalent of digging in my heels, which I find too anatomically challenging) and feel my voice rise. ‘If you don’t serve me the bouilla baisse, I will call the police.’ This brings out the restaurateurs from next door to see what all the commotion is about. At this point, a man in early middle age who has been standing behind the till while this impasse deepened indicates with a wave of his hand that I should draw up a table.

As his old man retreats into the shadows, the son commences to fawn. I hand over €12 — to ensure my fresh catch doesn’t escape back into a sea of hostility — and the fish arrives shortly before the rich red spicy broth, with side dishes I am instructed to dip into it. The younger man soon shamefacedly returns half the amount, so — to the disbelief of anyone familiar with Marseilles — I can attest that bouillabaisse at €6 (A$10) is a possibility. Then again, I doubt the circumstances would ever repeat themselves.

1229-1236 km

Arles may be a quintessential tourist town, but the summer crowds are a distant memory by the end of October. Here by the swirling Rhone I can explore this elegant habitation at my ease. The principal attractions of this World Heritage Listed town are its architectural remains from Roman and medieval times — many of them wonderfully well preserved.

I visit several hotels but their architecture defeats me. The closest approach to success is when I make it clear to the lady of the house I’m quite happy to haul myself up steps if someone could bring my chair up to me. She asks me to come back at 6 pm but our conversation has roused her husband from his
sieste
and he is grumpy.

‘What’s going on?’ he demands. She explains.

‘
Jamais
. No way. You cannot stay in our hotel,’ he says. After nearly three hours of searching, I seem to have run out of two-star options. So, I think, why not ask the impossible? (Occasionally it works.) And, at the first three-star hotel I sight, the greatest good fortune of the journey befalls me. The
hôtel
particulièr
(private hotel) d’Arlatan — three stars but deserving of five — encapsulates Arles’ cultural history within its own stone walls. This is not a place I would have dreamt of staying in (actually I
would
have dreamt of it, but nothing more) were it not for the lack of alternatives.

Hélène drops the price to €40 — from a tariff I will leave to your imagination — and doesn’t seem to mind when I ask to stay two nights. I am staying in the former townhouse of the 15th-century Counts d’Arlatan de Beaumont, rightly renowned for its antique furnishings, refined comfort and tranquillity. The Lords of Arlatan built this mansion over one of the ancient world’s grandest civic basilicas. Luxuriating in the bath this evening, I gaze at a wall fragment from the reign of fourth-century Emperor Constantine.

Next morning I breakfast in the most sumptuous of settings. At any moment I expect to hear a troop of horse commanded by Jean d’Arlatan arrive in the courtyard below.

Outside Le Havre I saw that city was ‘twinned’ with St Petersburg and Southampton. Tours has seven ‘twins’. Now, I see, Arles has nine
jumeaux
in as many countries. Isn’t it time someone in authority practised civic birth control?

In spite of its antiquity the majestic oval of Arles Amphitheatre is a new wonder to me. One of fifteen Roman stadiums, of which the Colosseum in the Eternal City is the best known, this one measures 136 metres long by 107 wide, and was built
circa
AD 90. To think this massive monument has stood for nineteen centuries impresses me mightily.

A brochure titled The Roman Amphitheatre of Arles contains a couple of amusing observations. One is ‘Stagehands would set up decors or make animals appear by using trapped doors’. And Two: ‘The public delighted in watching gladiators or animal fights as well as hunting spectacles.’ (You can just picture a member of the delighted public asking anxiously, Where did I put my glasses?)

1239 km

On a day like this I begin to see how daunting it is to get people thinking like Europeans (whatever that might mean). In a laundrette I meet Stephan, a Croatian steel-mill worker employed here for eight months — because here he can earn much more than he could back in Zagreb. Still, Man cannot live by bread alone.

‘This place is shit,’ he says.

‘Arles?’ I respond, doubtfully.

‘France.’ Stephan is proud that he speaks virtually no French.

‘What is shit about France?’ I ask him in English.

‘The food. The food is shit.’

‘But,’ I counter, ‘the food here is some of the best in the world.’

‘Yeah, I know. But they give you salad. Salad is OK,’ he concedes, ‘but not every day.’

I assume Stephan’s culinary preference is for something unsophisticated and straightforward, and am about to point out that the butcheries here sell horsemeat — but think better of it. As he removes his clothes from the dryer and prepares to leave, Stephan speaks the only
français
sentence I hear from him though it is really too weird for words. He has one thing more to say about the French, he tells me. ‘They should speak English.’ To an outsider, Stephan may be a European. But he’s an insider, in Europe, and nothing of the sort.

If horsemeat doesn’t tickle your taste buds, how about wolf in a provencale sauce? Over lunch at an Arles brasserie today I mention to the waiter, who speaks some English, that I have seen on the menu
filet de loup avec sauce provençale
and, having prided myself on translating the name of an Arles CD shop called Le Loup des Steppes as nothing other than Steppenwolf, would like to know whether fillet of wolf in a provencale sauce is a local delicacy and, furthermore, just how easy is it to catch a wolf these days?

He laughs the laugh of one in the know. ‘It is the same word,’ the
garçon
admits, ‘but ours is a fish, like a sea bass.’ What a lucky escape! I could have ordered wolf and sent it back out of ignorance (though a provencale sauce can make any dish delectable).

1242-1246 km

Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse,
L’on y danse.
Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse tout en rond

We learnt the French nursery rhyme at primary school. And here today — a mere handful of decades later — I am on the bridge itself. At one point, in a case of life imitating lyrical art, a five-year-old French girl in golden plaits performs a jig on its pebbled surface.

The Pont d’Avignon was begun in 1177 when a Provencal youth, Benezet, began to raise funds for its construction, saying he had received a divine call to do this for the glory of God. Originally, the span was almost 1 km long. Raging floodwaters destroyed most of the bridge long ago. So you proceed along it, over halfway across the Rhône, and there — unless you are extremely unwise — you stop.