(Fri. Oct. 30th to Mon. Nov. 2nd)
The weekend of last Halloween was spent in Africa. Wow. I went to Africa. It was a two hour flight from Barcelona. It reminded me of the feeling I had when I first went to Italy- the feeling of WOW, what a vastly different place that I can only begin to understand. The language, the signs (not only in French, okay fine, but in ARABIC also) the food, the people (mostly not what I would consider African, but more Arabic looking) and even the different in vehicles.
Leaving the airport, we had a little excitement. Jessica, Dave, Nate and I. (Thank God Jessica came, cause she knew French, and we would have been kinda in trouble otherwise!) Anyway, we got to the ticket check in to find out that even though Dave purchased our departure and return flights all at once, on one credit card, that was charged for the full sum, only the return flights had been "confirmed" (and he realized he hadn't gotten confirmation email about the other flights) and thus we had no flights TO Casablanca. But flights back, and hotel paid for, and of course plans just generally made. Thankfully we were able to purchase one-ways on the spot, for of course, TWICE what we had originally paid, which had also already been paid for. We were all pretty pissed but glad it didn't go worse. And the best part is after trying to deal with the website we bought the tickets through (Terminal A) Dave ended up disputing the charges through his credit card, and since they were for both flights, our only charges ended up being for the one-ways bought at the airport. Score.
The international terminal at BCN Airport (our first of many forays out of the country) offered a nice view over the open floor of the new terminal, and of the pristine undulating roof as well. I liked it.
Here was a sampling of airlines flying out of there, including Vueling and Alitalia, the rest of which I don't remember. But the control tower out there was cool, looked like the Olympic Torch somehow.
The flight was good- we got FOOD. Like a full meal. Maybe only a two-hour flight, but I guess since it was international, we got the hookup. Drinks and everything. We didn't get jack on our budget flights around Spain. Nathan and I were pretty excited, so I took of picture of his fading smirk of enjoyment at eating the food. We had salmon-salad sandwiches and some yogurt and tasty dessert and other stuff.
I guess this view isn't that cool, but it looked very arid down there. Like I'd imagine Africa to be. Mountainous, too!
After a couple months in Barcelona and Spain in general, Spain was starting to feel normal- So Morocco was crazy. It was good to get out of the country and into someplace new. I pretty firmly believe that the human brain is wired to assimilate or acclimate or normalize to new surroundings or new experiences, and that the most exotic of places in the world would start feeling normal if you lived there for awhile. So traveling is great but I think peoples' pipe dreams of moving to Hawaii or something are unrealistic, because Hawaii, while nice, will just start feeling normal after awhile. That's why I think the four seasons here in the Midwest make you appreciate good weather more, and keep you on your toes :) And that's why I love traveling but don't feel the need to necessarily live all over. But I also know that the travel bug is an itch that will never go away, regardless the amount of travel. But maybe its just me.
Morocco definitely felt like a developing country. A place where everything was dirty. Where cigarettes are still seen as a luxury rather than something that kills you and isn't allowed in bars. Where people are lucky to have a vehicle or even shoes, where food at all is valued enough that who really cares if it's terribly clean. Where water is valuable enough that being "clean" isn't as much a concern as just being "available". This was the first and last place I travelled that I couldn't drink the local water. Just like Guatemala. It sorta sets you on edge- you even worry about traces of bacteria on your hands from washing them, or on your toothbrush- constantly thinking you're gonna get some nasty stomach bug. From the start made me feel like I would be happy to get back "home" to Barcelona.
In the airport, which was pretty small, they had a nice model, of the airport. Once we got in, we realized we were a ways out of the city and would hafta figure out our way TO the city.
We found the train that would get us there (which was ghetTO- open windows, dirty, old, felt like I was in Indiana Jones or going across Africa or something) and on the way we found a prayer room (I don't know French, but yknow you can figure it out). That was the first sign that we were in a Muslim country (my first).
After a pretty long train ride (I think it was like 45 minutes or an hour) we got to the city- aaaaaaaand got off at the wrong stop. So we had a walk ahead of us, once we figured out where we were and how to get where we needed to be. This proved to be an elaborate task, since maps were indiscernable with unlabeled streets, not to mention that many of the actual streets weren't labeled, or labeled in Arabic. We knew where we were on the map, but not which direction was which.
Finally, Jessica being adventurous and knowing French, walked into a hotel lobby (I thought it was a dirty bar- everything there was dirty white and looked the same) and she asked how to get to our hotel. The guy who apparently was the concierge, simply said "take a cab". We had no interest in being driven across kingdom come in one of the sketchy dirty cabs that were smaller than a Mini Cooper. She said can you tell me where we are on the map? He said "No." and walked away. That was our (her) first taste of the way they apparently often treat women in Morocco. Nice.
I can't speak for the whole country, but Casablanca was dirty. Everywhere. And it seems that most everyone speaks French, because it was a colony, though they have their own currency. So reading French is a lot better than reading Arabic. And my friend Jessica speaks some French, and in retrospect I shouldn't have considered coming here without her- considering how much we still struggled to figure things out!
We finally figured out which direction to aim, and started walking. We figured we were just in a dingy area and it would get better. Little did we know that the whole city was like that- even the uh, "nice" parts.
Still found some interesting looking buildings though.
By the time we found our hotel (cost as much as a hostel) it was late afternoon, so after marveling at the size and (relative) niceness of it, we headed out to find something to eat, and found out food was dirt cheap.
This was the sitting room of the hotel, with two double beds in the other room. Dave and Nate slept on these large couches, after putting down sheets of course. They were clean-ISH, but who knows. They were also dirty-ish. But the room was pretty big.
We wandered around marvelling at the dirtiness everywhere and then later found a bar that served crappy beer for really cheap. We called it a night relatively early that night as we had plenty of plans for the next day. Early being like 1am or something. But I needed a good nights sleep after a couple late nights in Barcelona (school related). Dave on the other hand is good at burning the candle at both ends, and was itching to stay up late AND get up early. Bloody hell!
The next day it was time for adventures, beginning with just seeing the city, our ultimate goals being seeing the main mosque there, and seeing the medina, which is the market that is in the original walled part of the city.
We found the medina, and you can see the old city wall there, with a small gate in it. Okay, something cool! Good.
Also something uh, cool, or something...splatters of blood on the sidewalk. Funny thing is, it was surprising, but yet, kinda not surprising. You can also see the patterned tiles that the sidewalks were made of- there were many different patterns, but all the sidewalks were made of these tiles.
Here's another cool building (probably the most common phrase in all of my blog) that looks a lot like Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim in NYC.
On the way to the mosque, we encountered one of a few parks, a nice place of respite from the rest of the city- felt clean-ish.
I thought this was cool looking also. The Prefecture, which uh, basically means some sort of official governmental place. I feel like I'd be scared of the government in just about any African country.
Finally we rounded the corner near the water, and there in the mist- yes! The mosque! We were hurrying because tours were only like every half hour and we didn't wanna hafta wait for the next tour. The thing was huge. You can see the giant tower, and behind it, the roof on top of the roof, is a retractable roof- see, when 20,000 worshippers are in there for Ramadan, I think it gets a bit stuffy. Plus, they want a connection with the sky, and they have connections with the earth and the water inside as well.
There was a giant plaza outside, where another 80,000 worshippers could fit. It was right on the sea, which is pretty cool. The weird thing is, this was no historical mosque. It was built by King Hassan II in the early 90s, for basically his own glory but also for the people, and it cost...I forget...over 100 million dollars I think? Or maybe less. Or more. I don't remember. It was a lot. Wikipedia says its the 3rd largest mosque in the world and the largest in Morocco.
This picture had to be taken. It reminded me vividly of my dad and Chris' stories of bathrooms in China. Thankfully this one was clean. But it was my first encounter with this type of...thing. Places for your feet, and a hole. Awwwwwwesome. The weirdest part is we were being basically solicited way too kindly to use the bathrooms there, by some guy who seemed to be the janitor- maybe he was just homeless and wanted tips, but he was like opening the stall doors for us and gesturing us in...it was kinda weird.
Sorry- these pictures are kinda disjointed, but they're in the order I took them :) Once inside, after taking off our shoes, we started checking out the place that was like a football stadium inside. And ridiculously ornate. Pretty dark, save for the light coming in the also-ornate window, which was a nice effect. They had runner carpets for us to walk on, also.
The retractable roof. On the floor are two channels running most of the length of the building, that fill with water.
Downstairs was the washing/cleansing area. These big fountains would direct streams of water, each used by one person, to wash hands, feet, face, to cleanse for worship. Quite ritualistic, interesting. This room was pretty huge too, they said it could accommodate hundreds of people at once.
I like how the columns disappeared into the ceiling and were lit up there, as if they were in the clouds or something.
Here's more washing stations, by the fountains- just a looooooong row of faucets coming out of the wall. Crazy.
Back outside after a kind of short tour, we checked out the water front. After checking the weather, we had decided not to bring our bathing suits- good thing. The uh, "beach" was just some rocks and the water's edge, with the occasional piece of trash lying around. Lots of people sat on the seawall, not many actually went down to the water. Kinda sad.
Here's Jessica doing just that, before we went down to the water. You can see there was a bit of sand, but I didn't take off my shoes or anything. I was always a bit on edge about the general safety and health of everything in the city.
Nate wrote his girlfriend a cheesy message in the sand that was an inside joke apparently- pretty funny, actually.
We went through the rest of the plaza and supporting buildings of the mosque afterwards, as we headed to find a little landmark from the movie Casablanca.
This is two photos stitched together. Cause that minaret was TALL. We got to hear the speakers up there chime the bells, and then speakers all over the plaza played chants for prayer time.
Here was the most disgusting revolting reeking pile of trash I have EVER seen. Cause there was like fresh rotting...stuff, in there. It was really nasty.
But the best part is having aforementioned pile of trash right in front of the mosque in a photo- I enjoy juxtaposition in photos, especially one of such irony.
I have no clue what these shacks were. Residences? They were across the street from the trash. And they all had dishes on their *roof*, as you can see. No clue about this.
For kids to play soccer. Weird thing is many of them were wearing these thin, flexible, transparent silicone *shoes* that was more like water shoes or something, except that they didn't fit very well. Strange footwear I'd never seen before.
We found the Casablanca landmark. Built in March 2004- so the original restaurant from the movie didn't really exist. The other three went here, later that Saturday night, but I was watching ND football. As I was most Saturday nights. It was nice, but really expensive. But apparently they ate pretty well.
We found our way into the medina, which was odd because there were of course lots of like handmade goods, leather, woven things, but then also touristy trinket shops, and then random nice clothing stores that were actually expensive. Didn't make any sense. They were next to shacks!
On the other side of the medina was a Hyatt. We thought it was kinda weird, decided to see if it was nice inside. It was. Lavish. And bizarre, for its location...
Again, the juxtaposition- I actually had to open the curtain for this photo, because the whole place was basically just sealed off from the outside- understandably, since it was pristine inside and the rest of the city was an unholy mess.
We decided to have a beer in the posh lounge, after Nate asked, two different times, how much the beers were, which he thought were 17 dirham (like 2.5 dollars). Yeah turns out they were 70 dirham. Good thing I only had one. But we got good snacks with the beer...
I like the composition of this photo. This might go in my Cool Europe Photos framed things, when I start framing...things.
We walked around for awhile longer and then decided to get some dinner. We stopped in a little place off the street that seemed to have as good of food as any place, and they had this soda, which is quite tasty- its like pina colada mixed with orange.
At night we walked more, which is basically what we did all day every day in any given city. We found more parks, and this university that kinda looked like a mosque. And palm trees. There were a lotta people out everywhere, just sitting around, walking around, at the park and stuff. It was kind of nice, but I sorta assumed it was because people didn't have jack to do at home.
Again, these same kinda gnarly trees that seemed to line streets all over Europe- and definitely seemed like they came from The Wizard of Oz.
A big park with even bigger palm trees. It was kinda quiet here and I was only slightly afraid that we'd be randomly mugged.
After that we went to a seedy little bar near our hotel, in the basement of a building, and had a few really cheap beers, and some small bottles of wine, one which we took for later back at the room, which really bent the owner out of shape when he couldn't find the other bottle- as if the deposit on the glass was really worth that much? We think he knew we stashed it.
The next morning we did some more walking. We tried to find a place to go to church, for one. We found this old yellow car, I forget but I think it was a Peugeot. Or Renault. Some French car, since the place was bloody French occupation however many years ago.
Also found an Audi A3, something I'd been seeing a lot of in Barcelona and taking notice of after finding out Tiffany loved them.
We found a Catholic Church! But missed the beginning of mass. So we waited until it was over to go inside and check it out.
Inside it was lots of concrete, with lots of stained glass in between. Narrow and tall. Mostly black congregation- I imagine most of the more Arabic-looking population was Muslim.
Outside, there was a walkway under the street. How nice. Lets go down the stairs and walk under the street....oh WAIT its full of trash. WHAT? Seriously? This is how people here treat their city. And that's why its filthy. Partly.
We found another park though, on our way to find the president's palace. There were people running around, lots of flowers, and red dirt. The weather was nice, especially since it was getting chilly in Barcelona by then. Of course, back in Chicago and South Bend, it had already snowed by then. Ha ha.
Here's one of the doors to the president's palace. We took quick photos in case some guard came out and yelled at us. We tried poking our head in that door but that didn't work too well- and we were scared of being arrested.
A cool building. A rarity in this city.
That evening we found another park, and this whole row of booths that were ALL selling GIANT bouquets of flowers. Like funeral sized bouquets. For what? Was there some holiday we didn't know about? No clue. It was weird.
We also managed to find an evening mass, that was a really long walk, during which time we saw like half the population of the city walking and bussing in the opposite direction, all wearing red, all going towards the stadium we saw on our map. Soccer game. We even got to see kids who were walking down the street throw ROCKS at buses full of people as they drove by. That's nice. The place we went to church was a tiny chapel, and the weird thing is they were all like Vietnamese or Laotian in descent, and though the mass was in English, it was definitely not their first language. Couldn't figure that one out.
Also that night (I think it was that night?) Jessica wanted to go to another bath house kinda place. I said sure what the heck, I'm adventurous, we're only in Morocco once, its probably pretty cheap, and should be fun. Dave was skittishly agreeing, and trying to convince Nate to come too, since he would be the only one out, but after multiple conversations about it, Nate decided to bail, and Dave decided to go with him. I think they didn't think it was very manly to be doing something like that, and I think they were worried about the male nudity. I was a little concerned but hoped for the best :) And I assumed I could just awkwardly keep my towel on and stare at the floor.
So Jessica and I went, and I realized we didn't have a map and was hoping we could find our way back okay- cause Dave had been doing all the navigating thus far and it was easy to get turned around since the city was not on a grid and there were very few landmarks to navigate by, since it was all a field of dingy white buildings and smelly cars. We did have a bit of a hard time getting back, after a couple wrong turns, and I was a bit worried we'd get mugged, especially after walking into a little store to ask for directions and he told us do NOT go down the street, that we were about to walk down. Okaaaaaaaaaaay... Anyway the bath house was not bad- got a hot shower, it was totally steamy in this place, covered in tile, with the floor soaking wet. Dudes getting massages on all the tables, but everyone was wearing at least something, and the massage was good...it was lots of water and shampoo I guess it was. Massage went a *bit* far, but apparently so did Jessica's- ha!
Then we got home to Dave and Nate gone, and our key gone from the front desk so we couldn't get into our room either- so we wondered if they were asleep in the room. Turns out they were upstairs on the roof, which was a cool view of the city.
They had been working on the bottle of Coke and caramel vodka we bought- the vodka because a guy at a liquor store told us it was a more traditional local-ish Moroccan liquor- after Jessica tried hard to explain that she wanted something local, in French. It was also the only liquor store we found, having walked by it by chance- most people didn't drink, because they were all Muslim. So even the bars were kinda viewed as illicit. Here also is the bottle of wine we stashed (we did PAY for it though).
An interesting side note is that though there weren't many bars, there were tons of other restaurants that at night turned on all their TVs, usually on soccer, and the places filled up with men, ENTIRELY men, only men. Again, sexist country. We assumed the women were at home cooking and cleaning, while their husbands were watching soccer and smoking cigars. When we walked in with Jessica sometimes she got looked at like she was an alien (how did they know she actually is??). There was usually maybe one other female in the whole place, and they were usually packed. All watching TV and smoking.
The next morning we headed up to the roof for more photos before our last half day farewell tour around, back to the medina.
We got some breakfast, which I just find funny in French because its just called a "small lunch". I learned a bit of French here and there that weekend, which was good since we were going to Paris in two weeks. Paris!
Again, taking care of their city. This is I guess a partially-built store front without door or windows yet, just an empty shell- and there was hoards of trash chucked inside there. Seriously?
I WISH I had more pictures of these guys. The first trick they did was the one guy basically jumping, getting a small hoist, and getting all the way up to standing on the other guy's shoulders- all in one fluid motion from the ground. Unreal. This here wasn't even the coolest thing they did. They weren't spinning around though- they were sitting still like that. WHAT! They were just trying to get money from people, when they were done. This was in the pedestrian shopping district, which was much less sketchy and dirty than the rest of the city.
We went into a huge trinkets and tourist-stuff shop, with blankets and other African/Moroccan types of things, jewelry and such. They also made knock-off perfume there- it was cool seeing all the bottles- they were labeled Hugo Boss and Chanel and stuff, which was funny. They tried swindling Jessica here, when she wanted to buy something, asked how much it was, and then found a price tag on it saying it was half as much as they just told her. And they said oops, they made a mistake, but that they also made a mistake on the other price she had asked and that the other thing was actually way MORE than they had told her. Whatever.
Back in the airport, this was cool because those were solar panels up on the glass, that were also shielding the interior from the sun.
Back in Barcelona! Home!(ish!) The parking garages outside the new terminal looked cool at night with all the lights on. They were skinned with channel glass, a c-shaped tube-like thing of glass. That looks cool.
And this was our neighborhood, on the way home- for some reason they were doing some kind of filming in the intersection. Weird.
That is all. Next up- leaving the country again! Seeing Chris! Family! Paris! A birthday present!
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