Cassis ate my camera

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Saturday - 14th of June, 2008

We finally get our act together and make the much anticipated journey to Cassis, a small coastal village / township situated just east of Marseille. (Contrary to my opinion, it was not in fact named after the black currant that takes the same name in France, which is actually native to the Burgundy region.) The quickest way to get there from Aix is to hop on a bus to Marseille (bloody expensive at 4.60 euros considering the frequency and demand for that line) and then another 20 minute train ride to Cassis. French train stations have proven to be rather challenging so far - the electronic vendors do not accept any major credit or debit card that uses a magnetic strip instead of a chip and they do not take bills; only coins up to 2 euros. Now this becomes a major pain in the ass when your ticket costs more than 10 euros! The other option was to try and buy it manually but with a crowd rivaling that of New Delhi Railway Station there was no way we could have bought tickets on time. So, in the time honored tradition of cheap traveling students, we just hopped on hoping the conductor wouldn't check our tickets. By the way, after a few train rides I've realized that for short trips (i.e. 45 minutes or less) it really isn't worth buying the ticket because so far, I have never gotten checked. It is an extremely bad habit nonetheless! But I figure that by the time I do get caught the fine will probably cover all the tickets that I would have paid for!

So after an immensely satisfying free ride, all that was left was a short taxi from la Gare Routiere in Cassis to the beach. Thankfully the weather was extremely kind that day and we were blessed with a cloudless, powder blue sky with temperatures in the mid 20s. However, I guess the water takes way longer to heat up because when I first jumped in, I swear I must have recessed temporarily into prepubescence. Although after the initial shock of not being able to breathe properly for a few minutes, back muscles seizing up etc. etc. it really became quite pleasant! And then my curse with small electronic objects came back to bite me in the ass after a long time. As soon as I stepped out, I felt something heavy in my pocket and lo and behold, its my f****** camera that I bought with my own money last December!! Needless to say, I was, and still am, extremely pissed off not being able to have a camera with so much time left here. I guess I'll just have to make these blogs extra detailed! Anyways, determined to lift my spirits up, I managed to convince Brian and Taylor to come kayaking with me (the girls, of course, didn't move a muscle all day). In all honesty, that was probably the best decision I made in a long time because the one hour spent under the blazing sun, paddling furiously against the nefarious menstrales and choppy waters and ending up caked in salt was highly therapeutic! I don't know what it is, but there is something about the coast, the sand and the ocean, spending time with myself there and doing things like windsurfing, surfing or kayaking, which is when I really get to reflect upon myself and the things around me. In fact, if I were to recount some of my favorite memories, I'd bet a good portion of them would have taken place around the beach - Thailand, Dubai, Santa Cruz etc.

The other great thing about going kayaking was that we had access to some fantastic views of the surrounding blood red cliffs and then close to sea level, the craggy calanques, or inlets, that have recently been in the news actually because apparently, kayakers, windsurfers and small boats have been swept up in the wind and just smashed against the sharp and unforgiving rocks. So towering above me were the cliffs and below me, was deep, crystal clear water through which, if I stayed still and focused, could see right through down to the ocean floor. I was slightly surprised and a little disappointed not to see any marine life however.

As another picture perfect day came to a close, we begrudgingly headed back to the train station to try and get back in time for the 5:30 train to Marseille. For some reason, I'm one of probably two people in our group who can actually speak French, which can be cool because it means I'm the only one of the guys who can chat up the girls but unfortunately, it also means that I have to take on the role of interpreter - sometimes this implies I become the bearer of extremely bad news. So today I had the not so enviable task of letting everyone know our train would be delayed - by 2 hours. And then, once we got on the 7:30 train, probably the freakiest of all freak accidents happened! A bloody rock, from nowhere, just flies in front of the train and CRACK! shatters the windscreen! Fortunately the driver escaped with only a few scratches. So now we had to coast the rest of the way to the next stop, which was Aubagne, (I could have walked faster), to catch the TGV to Marseille. Now, throughout this entire song and dance, the girls in our group were seriously nothing less than obnoxious, loud and highly irritating. It was like something out of Family Guy, like the episode where they make fun of the View. I could not tell the difference between them and a coop of constipated chickens trying to lay eggs. On top of that, at the mere mention of the delays they all started whinging and whining, like they really had important things to do.

As for me, I couldn't care one bit whether our train was on time or not. I'm sitting pretty in the south of France - anything that I was planning on doing back at Aix could wait. In the meantime, I was going to make the most of what I had. In the entire time the girls were lamenting about the end of their worlds, I went and juggled a football with a random kid who was waiting for his friends outside the train station, listened to his views on the state of the French football team (this was the day after their drubbing against Holland), listened to my Ipod which eventually ran out battery, forcing me to in French with an extremely nice old lady for half an hour on the train before she switched trains at Aubagne and even then, I was entertained by a French dude on the TGV rocking out to Marvin Gaye's 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough', who actually had not clue what he was singing but just liked the melody! I don't know about anyone else, but now that I think about it, I'd take those delays anytime.

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