Marseille

i'm reading a paper which is so annoying to read, i figured i might as well take a break and blog for a while.

so last week ben and i flew to Marseille, France for work (you say it "marsey". france is weird, half the letters in the word are pretty much redundant).
the trip was a great success, i met with some people at the cosmology institute, and spent a long time working with them. it's so refreshing to be around people who do exactly what i do, and run into the same problems as i! i didn't have such a work environment in a long time.
plus, they were all so nice!

there's not much to tell about that week besides work things, we didn't get to see much of the city (we spent the weekend in paris, that's another story) but there are a few anecdotes:

we stayed at a small apartment-hotel at the center of town. the bedroom has a bathroom, toilet and a small kitchen, and opens to a small living room. i walked around and opened all the doors in the room, looking for the bedroom - and then realized that the bed is actually a fold-out couch. hmm.

the second night there, we asked people at the institute for their recommendations for restaurants in the area we were staying in. when in France, eat like the French, no?!? someone suggested the area around the port, that is pretty touristic and has lots of restaurants. on the metro on the way there, consulted with our lonely planet chapter and selected a Marrocan restaurant that was a few blocks away from the train stop.
we navigated to the restaurant easily, but were very surprised to find that it was closed! looked around, and basically everything was closed! hmm. 7pm, on a weekday, the tourist book says that the restaurants should be open way after midnight, what's going on? this was so weird. i thought, maybe it's some national holiday? but someone would have told us that... hmm.. as we kept walking around, more and more places were closing their doors, and we decided to stop at a grocery store, so at least we won't go to bed hungry. we got some ingredients for dinner and breakfast (juice and cereal, and milk that tasted more like half-n-half) and made our way back to the hotel.
still puzzled, we stopped at a bakery to buy a baguette, and to our surprise the guy behind the counter was wearing a black yamaka, and spoke hebrew. i asked him what's going on? how come everything is closed today? he thought about it for a minute, and then said - ahhhh, i bet i know what it is. there's a soccer game today, so all the restaurants are closing early.
yes.
there's a soccer game.
so all the restaurants close early.
surely, you can follow the logic behind that?!?

french. go figure.


all in all, i'm really glad i went there, and very happy that ben could join me :) ...and sorry, no pictures.