A new shopping centre

31 Mai 2014

On Thursday morrning, Ascension Day, I had agreed to meet some foreign visitors at Place de la Joliette for a leisurely walk in Marseille. I was early (as always), and my guests were late (no surprise), so I decided to pay a visit to the new shopping centre Les Terrasses du Port. I had no intention to go shopping, but I had ordered a smartphone on Darty's website, and after 5 days it had stopped working. I figured out that the employees in the new Darty shop in the shopping centre might be more than willing to change the phone and thus make a good impression only a few days after the official opening of the shopping centre.

At the main entrance a security guard asked for my pass, and when I said that I had no pass, he said that I could not get in without a pass.I must have looked rather incredilous because the guard asked me to confirm that I worked in the shopping centre. When I told him that I was a customer, he told me that I could not get in, at least not until 10 am when the shopping centre opened.

I fumed. I hate being told what I can do and not do. I wanted to change the bloody phone, and I had time to kill. However, there was no point of trying to force my way if the shop was closed in any event, so I decided to come back with my visitors and have them visit the terrace that everybody is talking about.

I was sitting in the morning sun at Place de la Joliette waiting for my guests and looking at the young women coming out of the metro and rushing to the shopping centre - all wearing the magic pass around their neck. They all looked fairly much the same; black clothes, trainers, fancy shopping bags in one hand and a cigarette in the other. They are the lucky ones who got one of the new 2,000 jobs created (of which 90% are said to be time unlimited jobs called CDI). With the high unemployment rate in Marseille, especially among young people, I am sure they are content and probably also proud to be working in the new shopping centre.

When my guests finally joined me, we headed straight to the shopping centre and entered without any pass! I rushed to the Darty store where the friendly staff gave me a new phone without asking too many questions, and then we looked for the terrace. There didn't seem to be a direct way up to the terrace, so we were forced to walk past shops which had no interest to me and circumvent plastic bamboos and giant elephants. At the far end we finally saw the natural light behind swing doors and found what we, as most others, it would appear, had come for: the view of the blue, blue Mediterranean.

The terrace is 260 m long, and you really have the feeling that you are on a cruiseship. The railing is like that on a ship, the floor boards are wooden, the chairs are low and invite you to sit and contemplate the sea. The port has become accessible to the public and not only to those taking the ferry to Corsica, Algeria and Tunisia. A place to see and be seen. A place to get away from the shops and find serenity. It was worth the mud, the holes and the smell of wet cement that I have had to endure all winter when cycling past the building site.