Alain

Reflection by the deep blue coasts of La Ciotat

Alain was the Airbnb host for our brief stay in La Ciotat. La Ciotat isn't far from Toulon, but it's also not exactly Toulon - a small town in between Toulon and Marseille, famous for its natural beauty and train station (where the Lumière brothers made “train approaching the platform”). We only discovered Alain’s listing, and for that matter, La Ciotat, while browsing through affordable places to stay near Toulon. I immediately decided that Alain was my man after seeing someone leaving him a low rating because “he tried to talk to me too much”.

But Alain does talk a lot. Originally of Sardinian descent, he would mix French (and occasionally Italian) with his semi-fluent English while enthusiastically introducing his city to us with a paper map that has probably seen the sun for longer than I have been alive. He takes pride in his city, jokes about his old age, complains about young people using their phones too much, yet knows all the must go places to see all the natural beauty and human beauty (girls) of La Ciotat. After all, he's somebody who manages to list his home on Airbnb, somehow, with no internet, no smartphone, and no modern technology other than a TV.

But Alain’s “talking” is almost never about himself. His talking is sharing, and he really just wants to know about us. After asking where we're from, he would tell us how he knows about Hong Kong and its friction with the mainland, how China is on the rise just like a book he read 50 years ago predicted, how Marco Polo, supposedly, brought pasta to Italy from China. Well, he did also mistake David, who is Chinese-Finnish, for an Eskimo, after he said he was from Finland (he did not clarify about his ethnicity/background).

Alain’s talks are about history - wars, soldiers, villains, heroes; music - Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Andrea Bocelli; family - daughter, sister, mother, grandchildren. They're never too big, or too small, or too much, or too little - they're just words coming from the bottom of the heart, of a human being who's seen all the good, bad, and ugly of the world but still chooses to be just as excited as the day he stepped foot on this earth.

Alain’s someone who leaves his dishes in the sink for later but brews coffee for you in the morning, someone who eats all three meals at home and works his garden, someone who does the laundry faster than you leave the door, someone who leaves no lightswitch on, even at night, and someone who, although often jokes about himself being at the end of his life, lives fuller than most younglings ever could.

Alain has the French declaration of human rights hung up his wall, along with hip pictures of himself when he was young. Alain has a cookie box full of all the notes his guests left him. Alain offered me his secret stash of cookies, with coffee, the first time we met. Alain apparently also drinks 30 cups of coffee a day.

Alain is human. And that's what I love about La Ciotat, even more than its beaches and shores, sunsets and breezes, clear waters and calm waves. When we left, he said to us, “you are young, no more wars, eat for all, house for all, music for all, peace and love for all”. So we kissed goodbye. It was also my first “la bise”.