Between love, waiting and nostalgia for home: meeting with the travelers of the Orsetti station in Sète

L'entrée de la gare Orsetti, et ses parapets ornés de diverses inscriptions. Midi Libre – Jérémie Margue

Ils sont Français, Algériens et viennent de toute la France prendre le bateau à Sète. Entre mélancolie et nostalgie, rencontre avec les voyageurs de la gare Orsetti.

"Yal babour, ya mon amour". On the dusty parapet of the Orsetti station in Sète, a poetic finger has written these few lines in filth. “Yal babour, ya mon amour”, this sentence is”taken from the title “Partir Loin” from the group 113 with Algerian singer Reda Taliani and can be translated as “Ô boat, Ô my love". In this title, Reda speaks of travel, love, an already nascent nostalgia, and gently compares the boat to an emancipatory companion. In Sète, the inscription is surrounded by a multitude of first names written in the dust, like so many ghost travelers. Yet, a few steps away, in the adjoining parking lot, a lively crowd is getting ready to take the boat.

With its 220,000 passengers transported each year, the Sète ferry terminal is one of the largest in the south of France. It serves Corsica, the Balearic Islands, Morocco and Algeria, as it does today, where the Jean Nicoli is preparing to set sail for Bejaïa. There you come across travelers, wandering souls, people in transit who come from all over the country and even beyond to embark. Facing the other side of the Mediterranean, the Orsetti station and the travelers who populate it tell in their own way a certain history of relations between France and the Maghreb. A love relationship, made of nostalgia, like in the song by Reda Taliani.

“Love of the country”

At the small snack bar next to the station car park, another Reda is quietly drinking his coffee while smoking a cigarette. In a few hours he will leave for Bejaïa, where another journey awaits him to join his family, a few hundred kilometres further east. “The first thing I'm going to do is go to my father's grave”, confides this thirty-something from Perpignan, an ambulance driver by profession. “I haven't been to the bled since 2022, I missed it”. So when his father-in-law offered to pay for his ticket to go and deliver a new car, Reda jumped at the chance. “In the summer, when I don't go back to Algeria, I don't know… Something is missing.” Behind his dark glasses, the young man's gaze is lost in the vague when he evokes the country of origin of his parents. “They transmitted to me the love [of this country], I can't explain it, it's like that, and to continue, I have a lot of memories there. There is a lot of nostalgia when I think back on it.” Once on the boat, Reda will take the opportunity to "take stock, êbeing in the middle of nowhere helps you think."

"Going far"

"Where there's a port, there's always trouble". A few dozen meters away, at the entrance to the ferry terminal, Amin sits in the shade of a palm tree on a small patch of grass. At fifty, this truck repairer would also like to take the boat and “go far away”, as far away from his problems as possible. “No matter the destination, I can't stay in France any longer, I have to go.” Stuck for obscure reasons in Sète, the man navigates between the local cafés and the ferry terminal where he watches the travelers go by. “I'm not in good spirits, something has broken inside me. And then, summer is not a time to have worries”, he says softly, rummaging in his bag where he has stored “all his administrative life”. Amin waits, like most people, for a boat that will take him to happiness. And in this wait, he too thinks a little about the meaning of his life.

“Heart cut in two”

Fathi, 43, comes straight from Le Havre. “I have 9 hours of driving in my legs, I'm tired”, he sighs, regretting that there are no boats leaving from his city. “Le Havre is a port, he could do rotations there. In addition, it would suit all the travelers who come from the West and the Île de France." At his side, Abdel, who comes from Argenteuil, agrees. "Around 75% of the people who take the boat to Sète come from the Paris region", estimates the Parisian who arrived the day before. Like many passengers, he slept in his car. “The hotel is really too expensive, and there is no more room”.”The price of the crossing is often mentioned by passengers. “At around 800 euros with a car, if you include the journey to get here it comes to almost 1,000 euros”, says Fathi. To pay for the crossing, and that of his children who left before him, he saved for four years. “This trip was necessary, we must not lose ties with family, confides this Franco-Algerian in France for 13 years now. I am French but also Algerian, my heart is cut in two: it is sometimes difficult.”

When check-in time arrives, the two random companions head to the ticket office on the upper level of the station and disappear into a large, empty room with cold tiles. Amin has vanished into thin air. On his patch of grass, only the shade of the palm tree remains. As for Reda, he has also left, leaving only a little of his nostalgia.

Orsetti Station: a gateway to the Mediterranean

With its many destinations, Orsetti Station is a real gateway to the Mediterranean Sea, as well as a border of the European Union.
High season
Morocco
From Sète, it is thus possible to go to Morocco, to the ports of Tangier-Med and Nador. For Tangier, there are two rotations per week in high season and the crossing time is 35 hours. For Nador, there are four rotations in high season and a crossing time of 24 hours.
Algeria
As for Algeria, the rotations are only open during the summer period. They concern the ports of Skikda and Bejaïa for the Corsica Linea company and the ports of Oran for the Algérie Ferries company – ENTMV.
Corsica and the Balearic Islands
Lines also exist, always during the summer period, for Corsica and the Balearic Islands with the company Corsica Ferries. They concern the ports of Alcudia on the island of Majorca and Île Rousse in Corsica.
Low Season
Morocco
During the rest of the year, only Morocco is served by the companies Balleària and GNV. There is a rotation every four days for the port of Tanger-Med and a rotation every eight days for the port of Nador.

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