Part 1:
The Road to the Unknown

I’d traveled through most of Europe and parts of Asia when a new opportunity arose—a new country. They painted it as a dream: ancient culture, art spilling from every corner, and food served with such reverence it felt like a religion. Every patch of land was steeped in history, every village like a painting meticulously crafted by a master.

But even before the trip, that polished image began to fade. Shadows gathered more often—news of blood and fear filled the air. Threads of drug trafficking wove a web, murders and robberies multiplied, and crowds of refugees, like hordes of barbarians storming ancient Rome, battered the borders, breaking the old world order. I was heading to where it all converged—a city shrouded in dark rumors, a place where beauty hid deadly danger. This was Marseille. France.

Part 2
Nighttime Marseille 

Everything was supposed to be simple—meet a friend, swim in the Mediterranean, soak up that fabled romance. Instead, I ended up on another continent, straight in America. But that came later.

For now, I just wanted to reach the city before nightfall. If I didn’t, trouble would start—spending the night on the street would be the least of my worries. I pictured it vaguely: the sea, wine, maybe a couple of “bonjours” shouted in the air. Reality, as usual, had other plans. The journey was a true ordeal. From Cologne to Luxembourg, every hour dragged like an eternity. The road seemed endless. Time crawled, as if deliberately slowing my path. Then the French border—more time, more train cars. And I needed to get to the far south. I rushed, counting the minutes. Night fell before I made it. The train rolled into the city as darkness blanketed the streets. I was too late.

Stepping off the train, I began to realize the dangerous situation I’d landed in. Marseille opened its jaws of darkness before me, and the further I walked toward my hotel, the deeper I sank into its depths. Each step pulled me further into the heart of darkness, to the edge of the city center, where abandoned houses and ruins whispered forgotten secrets. Beyond that lay the Arab quarter—a place where laws fell silent, police dared not tread, and murders and robberies of tourists were just a way to pass the evening. I didn’t know my hotel was there. No one warned me I’d booked a stay in the embrace of darkness.

The city was a strange cocktail—French polish mixed with the Arab whisper of the East, modern high-rises jutted up beside grim medieval alleys, and the elegant 19th-century Haussmannian facades, elegant and majestic, drowned in piles of trash. The streets lay silent, empty except for the homeless gliding along walls like shadows that had lost their way. I stepped into this world, and it crashed over me—scents, colors, everything so far from the familiar Germany and Ukraine. And I liked it—this blend of mystery and danger, the sheen of modern life mingled with the spirit of ancient Massalia.

The streets, dimly lit by lanterns, seemed endless, and the shadows of old buildings stretched toward me, as if trying to drag me into the void. I wandered through a labyrinth of medieval alleys until I reached the night port. It was the only lively corner of the city, where the crowd gave an illusion of life. Throngs of people milled about — chatting, laughing, not even noticing they could get shanked or mugged just a few steps away. The city drew them like a magnet, and they pushed their way forward, heedless of the risk of losing their wallet or their breath. The port was strewn with countless boats and yachts, their masts rising like a gnawed forest, while the old buildings around stared with windows—black, empty, like eye sockets that had swallowed the light. I looked up, and above it all, on a hill overlooking the maze of streets, stood the Basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde, its golden Virgin Mary glimmering in the night like a star that beckons but doesn’t save. Darkness enveloped the streets, heavy, almost tangible, while the basilica glowed faintly in the distance, like a promise about to dissolve. It was all so mysterious that I nearly forgot how easily one could vanish here forever.

I’d missed the hotel—it wouldn’t open until morning. Now all I could do was keep wandering the city, slowly making my way toward it. After the center, I decided to head in its direction, weaving through nighttime Marseille. The air still carried the last echoes of summer—warm, but not the stifling heat of July, with a slight dampness that clung to the skin. I thought it would be a simple nighttime stroll—the center would give way to modern high-rises, old architecture would melt into concrete boxes, and somewhere among them would be my hotel, beckoning like a mirage. But I was wrong.

The center ended abruptly. Then came the quarter—the one guidebooks don’t mention. Here, reality seemed to fracture. The city lay dead—empty, lifeless, full of ruins and abandoned buildings. Streetlights didn’t work; their rusted poles jutted up like tombstones, and light seeped from nowhere, gray and sickly, picking out fragments of reality as if someone were tearing a photograph of the world. A menacing silence choked the air, so thick I could hear my own breathing like it belonged to someone else. The air was damp, laced with a metallic tang, as if the nearby sea and port had infused it with rust. The wind blew steady, too smooth, almost frozen. Abandoned houses stood grinning with windowless voids, their cracked walls resembling faces if you glanced sidelong. And there, among these ruins, hid my hotel—dark, like another ghost of the quarter.

Part 4: 
New Acquaintances 

Now I had to meet my friend’s buddies. Among the usual Ukrainians, one Belarusian stood out, nicknamed Antib. He’d grown tired of rainy Belarus and decided to move to the sunny south of France. But how? Getting refugee status in France is tough unless you’re from a former French colony. So Antib staged a performance worthy of an Oscar: he was a persecuted transgender person, oppressed by the Lukashenko regime. To escape, he fled to France, the land of human rights. According to him, for extra drama, he could’ve added some madness—drooling, soiling himself, or writhing in a fake epileptic fit like a tortured victim of the regime. And what did my new acquaintance do once he reached France? Work? Learn French? Of course not.

Antib introduced me to a strange new world—the world of professional freeloaders and “okupas.” Okupas aren’t just about squatting in someone’s house. It’s an art of living outside the rules, turning homelessness into a profession and survival into an ideology. He doesn’t beg. He walks in, smiles, and your home becomes his sanctuary. You? Just a guest in your own shadow.

Antib declared he wouldn’t attend French classes—too many Arabs there, and it wasn’t “noble” to mix with them, he said. Work? No way—he could scavenge whatever he needed from the dump. But what shocked me most was his housing story. He simply moved into someone else’s villa, strutting around like it was his own mansion. He stayed until the owners showed up. Did they kick him out? Nope—they offered to let him stay as a caretaker. But Antib, no fool, made them an offer he thought they couldn’t refuse: pay him to live large in their house. Genius. Naturally, they threw him out on the spot.

Modern laws never cease to amaze: squat in someone’s apartment for a couple of days, and you can stay. The police won’t touch you, but the owners will be in deep trouble if anything happens to you. Just look at the problems they’re about to face! In California, thefts under a thousand dollars are petty crimes the police ignore. Imagine: walk off with smartphones, shop goods—it’s all yours. In France, things are complicated by pressure to rein in the police. Not that they’re eager to act—remember my friend’s story, where the cops just laughed, or the districts they’re too scared to enter. Sometimes, like uninvited guests, they cut the sirens and gun it through the no-go zones. Or, like in the Paris suburbs, local immigrants grab them by the scruff and toss them out like mangy kittens. In Germany, Islamists have turned it into a bloody contest: who can wipe out Germans more creatively—slaughter on the dancefloor, bombings, or mowing them down like bowling pins. The winner of that carnage is still undecided. The same atmosphere, thick with recent riots, lingered in Nice, and that’s where my new pal casually invited me to go next.

Part 5: 
The French Riviera

After Marseille, a whirlwind of places swept through—Nice, Cannes, Antibes, Toulouse, Lisbon… and somewhere on the horizon, America loomed. Everything blurred into a single, hazy ribbon of landscapes and anticipation. But first, Nice called. A glamorous resort, all glitz with yachts and palms, yet hiding secrets beneath its sheen. Behind the dazzle of the French Riviera lurked shadows—abandoned courtyards, faded opulence, and a sense that something had long withered under the beauty but still whispered from the cracks.

Antib invited me to see Nice and “his” town of Antibes, painting them as the last paradise on earth. No surprise, he vanished—I never saw him again. Eventually, I ended up alone in Nice. Reaching the city late at night, I set out to walk along the impossibly long Promenade des Anglais—a string of lavish mansions in Italian baroque, Belle Époque, and modernist styles. Shadows glided across the asphalt—running figures, bicycles, old men on benches, lovers, and silent smokers. By day, the sea here is not just blue but a vivid azure, like a postcard. At night, it turned utterly black. Sky and sea merged into one inky abyss, as if nothing existed beyond the shoreline—just void. Only occasionally did the lights of planes flicker in that darkness, like distant stars, reminding me the world was still out there somewhere.

Heading back to my hotel, I, of course, managed to get lost. Stepping beyond the elegant row of mansions on the Promenade des Anglais, I entered another reality. On the other side of the villas lay a different world, painfully reminiscent of Marseille. A railway line, like an invisible border, sliced the city in two. Here, there was no baroque, no wafting perfumes, no Riviera gloss. Only concrete high-rises, a chaos of cars, and an endless labyrinth of road construction. For a moment, Nice revealed its dark side: the smell of gasoline, shadows in doorways, a faint chill down the spine—that same Marseille mix of freedom and danger.

My trip was picking up speed, leaving less time for other cities. After diving into Nice’s impossibly clear azure waters in the morning, I left the city. Cannes, another stunning southern town, flashed by, leaving nothing but another dose of glamour. Then came Antibes, with its utterly serene harbor, seemingly guarded by a giant. A colossal statue, arms wrapped around its knees, gazed out at the endless sea, as if guarding its secrets. Cities flickered past like frames in an old film, and I sped on, feeling the French Riviera slowly dissolve into the haze behind me.

Part 6: 
Toulouse

Somewhere beyond the horizon, the American dream still beckoned, but I decided to savor a bit more of France. Few cities here resist the urge to mimic Paris. Dijon, for instance, is called a little Paris—grandiose, but merely a shadow of the capital. Few can truly challenge Paris. One such city is Toulouse.

The rivalry between Toulouse and Paris stretches back centuries. In the Middle Ages, it wasn’t Paris but Toulouse that was France’s cultural heart. It set trends, its troubadour culture spreading across Europe, kindling the flame of romance and love in the darkness of the era.

Like a moth, Toulouse flew too close to forbidden fire and burned in its black flames. From the depths of Persia, from a darkness older than the stars, came a silent, merciless danger. It snuffed out the troubadours’ songs, turning romance to ash.

The spark that ignited the blaze for Toulouse and all of Languedoc was the Manichaean heretics. In distant Persia, where sands whisper of forgotten gods, they wove sermons laced with smoke and madness. Under stars that witnessed the world’s birth, these priests of darkness worshipped a fire—not one that warms, but one that devours souls. Their rituals, hidden in Iran’s caves, conjured visions of the apocalypse. The sect was crushed in Persia, but its fragments, like poisonous black smoke, drifted across the world, tainting the heart of Toulouse.

They called themselves the pure ones. Others branded them heretics. Truth, like ash, slipped through fingers. The Cathars believed this world was fallen, false, created by an evil force. They sought to blend Christianity with the venom of Manichaean teachings, to cleanse the earth of its corruption. But their dreams burned in the fires of the Albigensian Crusade. A black wind of a crusade swept through Languedoc, leaving only smoke and bones. Southern France was “cleansed”—not of evil, but of people. When asked what to do with the faithful, the crusaders replied simply: “Kill them all. God will know His own.” The streets of Toulouse, once singing of love, were soaked in smoke and blood, and the city that had once set Europe ablaze collapsed into ash.

Languedoc, this land of red stone and old scars, is oddly tied to my favorite character—Indiana Jones. Paradoxically, the image of the tireless Nazi-fighter was inspired by a Nazi archaeologist. Here in Toulouse, an Ahnenerbe agent once prowled, hunting the Holy Grail. For the Cathars, the Grail was a path to “true light”; for the Nazis — a superweapon; for Indiana Jones — a relic whose power dissolved into questions of life and death. I wandered these streets, and the shadows of Cathars, crusaders, SS officers, and adventurers whispered in the wind.

The entire city was steeped in antiquity and a singular red hue—from the brick walls that remembered the troubadours to the pavements stained red with Cathar blood. Every step echoed the past. The sun set, bathing Toulouse in crimson rays, as if reviving a medieval battle scene. Towers cast shadows like spears, and the air trembled with something unseen—a prayer or a curse. In that red glow, the walls breathed, holding pain and glory. But my road led onward.

Part 7: 
Lissabon