Unreal Estate
Perfumed train stations, psychotic fish & other observations from Monaco
“Pour votre bien-être, cet endroit est parfumé par Sensorys.”
(For your well-being, this place is perfumed by Sensorys.)
That’s what the small white box in the train station says.
Bolted to the marble like it belongs there.
It hums quietly from the corner, diffusing serenity and a scent that reminds me of Wunderbaum across polished corridors while, just a few hundred meters down, the harbor smells like every other harbor: industrial salt and a dash of sewage.
I tried to fact-check it — this idea of Monaco’s station being intentionally perfumed — but found nothing. Nothing official, at least. Monaco does that: constructs realities with no need for explanation.
But the box gave itself away.
So yes, Monaco perfumes its train station. For your well-being.
And this fact somehow says more about this place than most things that are actually said.
You can spend the maximum amount of money to get an aggressively average to below-average coffee. It seems like there are more fancy cars than birds in the air. And still, somehow, fewer human beings than both.
“Fantasia Land,” I call it.
Not as mockery — as classification.
It’s a place that performs itself with such precision that it becomes a mirage. A place that feels fictional — not because it’s fake, but because it’s fully committed to its own fantasy.
Pains me to admit, but I find there’s something strangely admirable in that.
An accidental study in polished absurdity
It wasn’t my initial plan, more like a series of unexpected casualties (some more charming than others).
So a few months ago I pressed pause — on work, city, structure. No plans, no return ticket. I wanted to see what would rise when everything else fell quiet.
And somehow, what rose was this: a place I had always passed through but never fully entered.
So here I am —
spending more time than anticipated in a place that feels like the result of a billionaire’s fever dream interpreted by an interior designer with a god complex.
A place that’s both deeply artificial and nostalgically beautiful, depending on which angle you’re looking from.
Fortissimo - Ferrari, Fences, and False Facts
In music, "ffff" signifies "fortissimo," meaning extremely loud or "as loud as possible."
For some reason, I like to remember this random moment during Formula 1 weekend - which is half spectacle, half sensory assault of champagne breath and engine noise. It took place at one of these maximalist lounge-bar-restaurant hybrids with three bartenders who couldn’t care less.
You need to know I have this talent for talking at length without saying anything particularly relevant, and I once read this thing about climatotherapy from the '60s — and thought it was the perfect obscure non-fact to drop. So I found myself trying to convince three people from Monaco that the Côte d’Azur is a healing destination for people with tuberculosis. I insisted that this is the sole reason the average age at this place is so high.
“Surprisingly” they didn’t buy it.
One of them may have even taken it personally — as if I’d just called him old.
So I told him I have compulsive liar syndrome to win back my credibility. Which, of course, was a lie.
Anyway. Fun night.
Side note:
“I hide myself in your confusion, creating an imperfect illusion.”
It was my first time witnessing F1, and I’m not sure if it was the fact that the city becomes a maze of cage-like fencing during the event, or the constant soundtrack - that reminded me of every sponsored afterparty I have ever been to - but I have to say that while all the commotion was interesting to look at, being in the middle of it was probably the most accurate description of my personal nightmare:
Everything designed for performance.
No one really looking.
Everyone desperate to be seen.
The cost of freedom (smells like Wunderbaum)
A few days later, I was at Parc Princesse Antoinette, staring into a small, unnoticed pond that about ten fish called their entire reality. Most were the size of my hand, drifting around playfully. Except for one koi — bright yellow, roughly the length of my arm. He swam in tight, obsessive circles. The way he moved made me want to ask him if he was okay.
The pond itself was shallow — no deeper than 40 centimeters — half-covered with water lilies and netting. Coins rusted on the bottom, as if someone had tried to buy a wish and accidentally polluted the ecosystem. In traditional dream interpretation, fish represent abundance. But here, abundance looked like captivity.
Watching my psychotic yellow friend loop his laps in this polluted luxury puddle, I had this thought:
The bigger you get, the smaller the world becomes.
Is that the cost of freedom? That when everything becomes accessible, it begins to feel like a cage?
In a place where you can have anything, most people seem caught in a loop — trying to prove they deserve it, or trying not to lose it.
Either way, it’s exhausting to witness.
And even more exhausting to perform.
Like an onion - The shiny side of nowhere
It’s not that I despise it all. There is beauty here. But often not in what’s moving.
I find most of Monaco’s beauty is in the dead things.
Not in the materialistic sense — although, sure, I love some occasional Bling — but in all that has outlasted the people who brought it to life. Façades, new and old. Silent staircases. Handrails worn smooth by generations that seem forgotten. I look for honesty in these places. They whisper stories instead of selling them. Stories of all the different lives Monaco has lived — watered down by its own evolution.
The longer I stay, the more it feels like I’m peeling back layers.
Not just of this place, but maybe of myself in it.
Like something real is hiding under all the glass and marble and neatly planted (but rapidly dying) pine trees.
Maybe you have to stop playing the game long enough to see it.
Maybe you never take part in the game at all.
