We are here and typing on a French keyboard, so this will be short and possibly choppy.
Had one of the best meals ever last night at an amazingly decadent Moroccan restaurant. It was five or six courses with almonds, olives, wine, 7 types of various spiced vegetables (wow!), pastry stuffed with quail, tagine of free-range chicken, layered dessert of pastry and milk sauce with juicy slices of orange sprinkled with cinnamon and, of course, mint tea. This was served in a sky high mosaic and curtained room with two sets of musicians playing instruments I didn’t recognize and with waiters lurking to refill your water and wine if they should go low. Stuffed pillows and ornate woodwork everywhere. A top 10 in the restaurant experiences of life. And all while wearing travel clothes.. western wear works as long as it is clean and in good repair.
In the new portion of the towns, life goes on in a city similar enough to any other city with plenty of French to go around. It is easy to get around, and cheap, by Petit Taxi. You see folks in suits, everything closed during siesta hours except restaurants, taxis and cars driving much less erratically than in Italy and lots of folks strolling the palm tree streets searching out the cooler shady paths.
We had a guide lead us through the medina this morning. I’m not sure I can describe what I saw. It was surreal and even now a few hours later seems like my brain must have misfired. Something along the lines of (if you’ve seen Naked Lunch, they filmed it here.. and Romancing the Stone) 9000 streets of souks (shops), mosques, donkeys, live snails in baskets, live rabbits tied by their feet (poor things), freshly cut meat (blood in the gutters proves this), sellers swattinng flies away from the fish and meat laid out on stacks of cilantro, date and almond sellers, Muslim schools, regular preschools with arabic script on the black chalkboard in the room opening to the street and sellers, carvers of doors, weavers of cloth, metalwork, carpetweavers, teapots, lamps, tailors, odd musical instruments, incredible smells, the most horrible smell from the tannery (suffice it to say they use urine in the first baths of the process, a nasty business to be in), electronics, spices, museums… everything is unique and exotic and old… much of it built near the 9th century and the age really, really shows.
The people are extremely social, yet the hustlers are a hassle, many of them are kids with wickedly good English. We have 6 hours worth of stories from people that wandered in and out of our train cabin yesterday. We only had one guy try to hook us up with an unofficial guide in Fes, folks told us the guide business is way down since the govt is cracking down on unlicensed guides. We met a student studying law and will become a judge probably for commercial shipping. And of all things met a student that just produced a paper on IPSec, L2TP and PPTP and is currently reading up on WinNT security. That occupied a few hours of our train conversation.
It is very hot. We have tickets to the festival tonight to listen to Sufi music from Iran. It is in the medina and, thankfully, does not start until 9 pm when it cools down. We’ve heard nothing but positives about the festival and music, so we are looking forward to a sedate evening.
Mint tea is everywhere, and extremely sweet. We’ve only been in Morocco two nights and have had about 6 glasses of tea already. It seems to be built into breakfast, lunch and dinner. Olives and fresh squeezed orange juice are also ubiquitous (I always love it when I can use that word.)
The food is fantastic. I could go on and on and on about it. They use spices, spices and more spices. Did I tell you about the food?
Parts of the cities are stuck in the 1600’s and part in modern day. The people are nice, but everyone is out for themselves to part everyone else with money. It doesn’t feel overly directed at us. If we could speak Moroccan Arabic (a mix of French and Arabic), we would do much better on negotiations. Overall, this isn’t too annoying when you consider the exchange rate, arguing over 30 cents in a taxi just doesn’t seem worthy of the effort. The toughest part is that when you need directions (and this seems to be constantly when walking the windy streets) is to not pick up a hooligan child’s interest or any other ‘guide’ hanging around unemployed. Overly social, overly helpful and overly wanting money.. a hard combination to shake.
The world is Muslim here. Very, very Muslim. It is also very welcoming. They like Americans and other travelers from Europe. Many we have talked to have traveled to Europe a number of times. Morocco is definitely on the great places to travel right now, (but only if you don’t melt.. I’ve got long pants and long sleeve shirt on… standard dress code if you aren’t wearing a robe and veil.. which most women were in the medina… but only about half outside of the medina).
I’m almost getting the hang of this keyboard. And that is a very scary thing. Shifting to get a period (’.') is outrageous.
Arabic music is everywhere and so are cybercafes… somewhere in this building I can hear a computer game going. It warms me’heart, it’does.
