View of Le Vieux Port in Marseille Photo: David Scott Allen MARSEILLE: “EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE” IN 2013 One of my scariest walks was to the Gare-de-Marseille-Saint-Charles. It was just as dawn was breaking and, having made a couple of wrong turns, the clock was moving uncomfortably close to the departure time of our train. Weighing the remaining minutes and the long distance to the Europcar office, my husband dropped my daughter and me off—along with a lot of luggage—so we could walk just a few blocks to the station while he deposited the rental car and ran the numerous blocks back to the station. Given the congested tangle of one-way streets, he dropped us off as close as possible, but I recall that walk as seeming to go on and on. The sleeping homeless men that lined the sidewalks evoked no fear but the young men who emerged from the dark to approach us for money and who shouted at us from a distance were as unnerving as I can ever remember. I held my daughter’s hand tightly and gripped our bags as best I could. I instructed my daughter to look straight ahead and to walk [...]