Corsica

June 22–24, 2013

Corsica is sort of France and sort of not France. Everywhere you turn, you see the island’s symbol—a moor’s head with a white headband.

It even appears on the license plates.

Here’s someone selling tomatoes against a backdrop of posters with the moor’s head and a message about how taxes are killing the Corsican people.

Corsicans are a freedom-loving, independent and proud people. They even have their own language. They’re also terrible nationalists. That’s why the French text on all the signs on the island has been crossed out, leaving only the parts in Corsican.

A traffic detour diagram.

A gas valve cover.

School.

The speed humps here are made of red rubber and don’t quite span the entire lane. Everyone has to drive over them with one side of their car.

Highway guardrails are decorated with logs (like in St. Barts).

Half the traffic signs have solar panels on the back.

The sun’s energy is used to power the LED lights on the front. Their vile blinking makes the signs considerably harder to read.

Ajaccio

Napoleon was born here. Today, his likeness is used to sell everything imaginable, from ice cream to furniture.

The city is filled with wonderful traffic lights that resemble camera lenses (like the ones in Rennes or Brazzaville).

An underground garbage container. It’s interesting that Russia still doesn’t have anything like this, yet the model here is already hopelessly outdated.

The trash dumpsters in Ajaccio are gray.

A trash can.

A public drinking fountain.

A «no standing» sign.

A parking information display column amidst the chairs of a sidewalk café.

At some point in the city’s history, the little bollards and fences that protect people from traffic left the sidewalks and boldly marched outwards, taking over a meter or so of the roadway.

A lamppost.

Street name plaques.

A signpost shadow.

Interestingly enough, half the buildings don’t have white or color frames painted around the windows like they’re supposed to.

The lack of coloration on the facades creates its own unique style.

A style I’d call «makeup-free.»

Propriano

A little town on the coast.

A bollard.

Bonifacio

A town on the bay.

With fairly ugly lampposts.

The cliffs here are sandstone, so it’s easy to drill garages into them. The locals all park right inside the mountain.

Porto-Vecchio

A tiny town consisting of two and a half streets.

Trash dumpsters are housed in special corrals here.

A tree has been allowed to grow freely in the middle of the sidewalk for the past hundred years.

Saint-Florent

Good luck finding a parking spot.

The dumpster corrals here have an extra feature: plastic top lids.

The waterfront is lined with streetlights that have an extra blue light on the top.

Bastia

This is Corsica’s best-kept secret.

A city of stunning beauty.

With incredible architecture.

Unexplored.

Untouched.

With lots of detail.

With old signs.

Electrical boxes.

Water pumps.

Trash dumpsters.

Authentic Bastia is living out its last days. A lot of money is being pumped into this place to turn it into yet another European city.

New curbstones have been shipped in.

The streets are being repaved.

There’s construction everywhere.

Authentic Bastian facades look funny next to the newly redone roads.

But authentic Bastia continues to live on.

Authentic Bastia doesn’t give up so easily.

Facades supported by concrete, four-story-tall struts—that’s authentic Bastia.

As well as—most importantly of all—bathrooms on the balconies.

All the drainage pipes are laid right along the facades here. All the bathrooms are situated right on the balconies.

As long as the balcony bathrooms continue to live on, so will Bastia.

A surprising, unique city.

Even the screens at the airport remain frozen in the 1980s.

Authentic Corsica.