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Published: September 12th 2008
St. Charles Train and Bus Station
Shows the steps of the train/bus station leading down to our street. Our apartment is just two blocks from the steps of the station.Friday, September 12, 2008: Greetings from Marseille. We hope all is going well back in the good ol’ U.S. of A. It is been an eventful week. The weather has generally very nice. We keep the windows open at night and much of the day. There are no screens on the windows because there are virtually no bugs!! We are bewildered by this. You biologists—do you have any explanation? We started off the week on a low note—we had to go to the Prefecture de Police to begin the process of getting our long-stay card. It was a rude welcoming to the French bureaucracy—we got exactly nowhere!! We came back to the apartment very disheartened, but quickly contacted our landlords (the husband is a mathematician who has a joint appointment at Cornell University in New York and at the Universite de Provence, just 4 blocks from the apartment), as well as the precious tenants (from the University of Washington). Both said not to worry and to have the university help us out, which is what happened in both of their cases. It will still be a long and nerve-racking process, but our hopes have improved.
Tuesday and Wednesday we worked
Garry and Apartment Elevator
Yep, this is our elevator. It is a two-person elevator and might be quite romantic if it was not for a slight (sometimes strong) mold smell. at the apartment and roamed around this part of Marseille. In 2013, Marseille will be celebrating its 26 century (yep, 26,000 years—signs everywhere). It is the oldest port in France. Thursday morning we had a plumber come and fix some plumbing and than had a third meeting at our bank, getting our account all set up and a bank debit card (that part is still not resolved). Thursday afternoon we took the subway and connecting bus out to the university I will be at (Universite de la Mediterranee-Luminy). It was our first experience on both the Marseille subway and bus system. It turns out to be very modern. The subway system is even easier to get around than in DC, and a 100X better than Boston or New York, or the rail system in Chicago. (It also has a very modern, sleek, above-ground tram system (electric rail), which we have not yet ridden on. We got to see the southern part of Marseille (where the university is located), which has some nice areas and wide boulevards with some beautiful white limestone hills and small mountains. The campus is in a generally arid area and reminded us a bit of Tucson.
Vieux Port and Basilica Notre Dame de la Garde
Vieux Port, the oldest port in France, is now filled mostly with large boats/yachts and tourist boats. The cathedral in the distance is the Basilica Notre Dame de la Garde. We hope to take a tour of it soon. As we were walking around campus, we ran into the fellow I will be working with, Jean-Michel Claverie. Jean-Michel took us and showed us around his building, for which he is the director, and introduced us to some members of his group. I will eventually take some photos of the area and put on the blog site.
Today, Friday, we hopped a nice travel bus near our place and rode out to Aix-in-Provence (north of Marseille). This is a very nice and clean city of about 200,000 people. It has a large number of fountains and has quite a number of anglos (Brits and Americans) who live there. So, most of the people at the shops and restaurants spoke good-excellent English. We would have been much more comfortable living here, but it is about 20 miles north of Marseille's downtown, while the Universite de la Mediterranee is 10-15 miles south of the downtown area.
We will probably lay low for a few days, so you may not hear much from us for a few days.
Best wishes to all,
Kathy and Garry
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