An American in Provence

All my previous jobs have had, in retrospect, fairly easy commutes. Nothing more than 30-40 minutes on average, many times only 10-20 minutes.

Now I am doing a lot of highway driving. It is 35 kilometers each way. This was originally a long rambling rant, but I decided it would be more coherent if I broke it up into a series.

First, I am going to start with parking, or lack of.

This is tricky because in this quartier, for every 2 legal parking spots, there are 3 cars that need to park. Some areas are worse, such as in the very center of town, where it is about 1:2. To buy a spot would be about 15000 €, and to buy a garage would be about 30000 €. Renting a spot is about 100 per month. Which quickly becomes worth it after a few parking tickets at 35€ a pop. Trouble is, there are waiting lists to RENT a spot.

So anyway, I have done my fair share of parking on crosswalks and on sidewalks. I haven't double parked yet, but it is definetely done around here. Sometimes people leave their phone number on a piece of paper on their dashboard. I guess you are supposed to call them first instead of the towtruck to come move their car. This happened to me the other day. I was parked not exactly legally but less illegally than the camionette that was parked on the sidewalk, blocking me (on the sidewalk) and blocking a garage exit. Luckily, the number of the company was on the side, so I wrote it down, walked back home in a panic, called the number at 7 am. Hey, I don't care if you are sleeping buddy. I finally got through, I guess it was the boss. He asked where I was (I guess to figure out which of his workers would be in that area). He said he would call them and get them to come and move it. Meanwhile, I looked up Forriere Marseille. I finally see from our window walking about as slow as one can walk without a walker, he finally gets in his truck, and pulls out. I run down, get in the car, about 15 minutes later than I had hoped to leave. Just the time to hit all the traffic jams.

After about 7pm you might as well forget about finding a legal parking space and can only hope there are some illegal spots left.

The most annoying thing about parking is that behind our building, in the inner courtyard, are about 3 covered garages and 5 open spots that are- empty. Apparently they belong to the family that had this piece of land, and they don't want to sell or rent the spots. No idea why they don't at least rent, but no. The available parking spots sit there, empty, taunting me, day after day as I fruitlessly search for parking spots within a mile radius.