Essai #13 - Back to the south - Part I
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Since i moved to northern Germany (three years and four months ago) i’ve rarely returned to the place that saw me grow up. Sometimes i missed it. Sometimes i didn’t. I’ve already shared on this blog why i left southern France for the north of Germany. But i never really talked about what i loved there, what i still carry with me.
Time to fix that.
I was born in the North, near the city of Nancy, a beautiful place, rich with history and subtle elegance and i moved to the South when i was just a child. For more than 30 years, the sun marked my days, sometimes burning my skin, always present.
And with that sun came the wind. The South isn’t calm. It breathes through its main winds. Four of them, to be exact. They don’t just blow, they shape your days, your mood, your rhythm.
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And now... after two full years without truly seeing the sun, without feeling it on my skin, i ended up in a deep depression. I don’t have it anymore, thankfully. But i’ve come back with extremely low vitamin D, pale skin, and a strange kind of hope.
At first here in the South, during summer, you can swim every single day. You just have to choose your time, early mornings, late evenings, or find that one secret cove no tourist has ever stumbled upon.
And when you do so, with a simple mask, underwater you enter another world: You might see octopuses, royal wrasses (Girelle royale), and the deep, mesmerizing blue/green of the Mediterranean Sea, where fish glide between soft currents and the underwater vegetation sways like silk in slow motion.
It’s always a pleasure to hear native French voices here, laughing, speaking loudly, their hands moving with every word, almost like in Italy. This is where i am right now: somewhere between Nice and Marseille. Not far from Toulon, a city with echoes of history.
It was here, in 1793, that a young Napoleon Bonaparte made a name for himself by recapturing the port from Anglo-Spanish forces. Years later, Victor Hugo would draw inspiration from Toulon’s prison to shape the haunting opening of "Les Misérables".
The South isn’t just beaches, sun and palm trees. It’s full of stories: loud, buried, and still breathing through the stone walls.
The air is constantly shifting. Sometimes it carries that fresh, humid scent of sea iodine. Other times, it’s thick and warm, filled with the deep aroma of pine trees, released as the sun touches them. And then there’s the sweet, unmistakable scent of monoï - drifting in the air, while you sip something cool on a bar terrace.
Whether you’re a fish fan, you will surely find options to eat freshly caught seafood around here. The colors and the smell of fruits and vegetables at the market will always enchant me like a deep nature witch, and i can sometimes enjoy a delicate, fresh white peach during a walk in the old medieval part of the city of Hyères.
There’s still so much to tell, of course but for now, it's warm and it’s time to swim.
To be continued...
mot4i