No Aix-It

In a country where eating out is a national hobby, “good restaurant” takes on a new level of meaning. Strolling down the narrow, winding alleys of Old Aix after nightfall, we pass two or three restaurants on every block. This is a tourist town, but nobody lurks in doorways trying to pressure us into eating at his establishment. (In Paris, one frequently had the notion that walking past certain cafes without at least glancing at the menu would result in grievous personal insult, physical harm or possibly even dead puppies.) This is the upside of life in Provence, so laid back and casual.

The restaurants vary in style as much as they are uniform in manner. There’s Chinese, Italian, Persian, Moroccan, Japanese—and of course both French and Provencal fare abound. The night we arrived, we ate at a Moroccan joint where the staff work as a team. Last night was spicy northern Indian cuisine with a French twist: saffron and raisins in the rice, caramelized onions in the sag paneer, and naan finished by pan-frying in olive oil. Today we made lunch our main meal at an Italian joint. I had a kind of modified lasagna, sans ricotta, with carpaccio of ham replacing the cheese and spicy ground pork instead of beef. After paying the bill I sat with eyes closed soaking up the sunlight, and a table full of young men who were obviously friends of the owner greeted me with a rather startling shout of “HALLO!” I jumped and they explained “Hallo English! We think maybe you are dead. How you doing? Do you like Aix our city? What you gonna do today?”

Anywhere else I would feel threatened by Franco-Italian soccer hooligans, but in Aix, it’s hard to feel threatened by anyone. We often encounter classic Gallic indifference, of curious stares from other tourists, but rarely outright hostility. We make plenty of friends, too. Our favorite Internet spot is a cafe-cum-bar called le Hub Lot which is a play on the French word for “portal.” It’s run by a 40something gypsy-looking guy (“je suis citoyen du monde,” he assures me when I ask his nationality) whose hobby seems to be introducing people and starting conversations. His Internet, coffee and beer are the cheapest in town; 90 minutes of web surfing and two beers cost me Eu$9. I think his prices may vary depending on the manners of the clientele because I saw him charge a rude German boy Eu$4.5 for 45 minutes, which agrees with the posted price.

I brought Mom back to the Hublot to check her email, and the gypsy king introduced her to Habiba, an academic from Atlanta who’s living in France for six months while researching some far-flung tributary of international relations in preparation for writing a book. She explained her research to me—something to do with the French national identity and their cultural discourse regarding race and culture in the 19th century.

While Mom chatted with Habiba in English, I struck up a conversation in French with an extremely Gallic-looking man. stretching my conversational French to the breaking point, we talked politics (do Californians hate le petit Bush? Mais oui!), religion, regional languages, and the finer points of learning languages. He would break into a slow and painful English when it became clear that I didn’t understand something but mostly he stuck to French.

Brittany Dude would rarely correct my grammar except when I called him “vous,” which he wouldn’t abide. “H’eye am zyour friend!” he would tut; “with me on utilise toujours tu!” He bought me a beer, “to help improve your retention” he insisted. The barkeep bought the next beer, and fixed Mom a cafe au lait on the house. We sat for three hours chatting in a combination of French and English with snippets of Provencal, Italian and German thrown in for good measure. I learned a great deal about the languages in western Europe and how they all fit together. It became apparent to me that Brittany Dude is highly educated with extensive knowledge of classical languages and regional dialects to boot. I think he may be a professor at U. Aix-Marseilles.