Speaking of summer, I need to cook up some plans fast. I thought I would be here until pretty much July, but as it turns out I may finish all of my classes in May, which would be nice. I was considering this summer a total loss and planning on just prepping for the LSAT and trying to learn how to cook. Now I can either go home and have a normal length summer or hang around a bit and travel. I imagine I'll be home mid-June. The problem then is finding some sort of employment. I don't have my life together or any sort of letters of recommendation ready, so I'm kind of overwhelmed with where I can start. The Comptroller's Office at the University of Chicago is officially not hiring this summer...
By now I'm officially matriculated and everything. I'm very much looking forward to registering for fall classes at the end of this month though. I'm upset with my schedule this semester. I thought I could handle the early/late Monday/Tuesday business since I survived last semester, but it is muy pesado. It is harder to make myself get out of bed to get across the city for my 8:30 class since I don't have another class after it. Also the professor talks really slowly, which makes it harder to be awake. I also really dislike having class until 9:30 at night, but I like the professor. I have one less class on those days compared to last semester, but it's harder to handle for some reason. Also my three-hour class on Wednesday is muy pesado, and from there I have to ir corriendo al Museo del Prado. I have a different tutor in the Prado this semester, and I am sad about that because there is pretty much no way the new one can top Irene.
Oh, yeah, I went to Morocco last weekend. I guess that's pretty exciting.
We flew easyJet from Madrid to Tangier. At Barajas they wanted me to check my backpack, which was ridiculous because it's just a normal-sized backpack and fit quite comfortably in the overhead compartment. The airport in Tangier is very small. Once through passport control, a taxi was waiting for us. It probably would have been cheaper to just catch a taxi, but from where he had to stop the car, we had to turn three corners and probably would have never found it on our own, so I guess it was worth it.
We stayed at a bed and breakfast in the Tangier medina (old part of town). A friend of Allison had stayed there last semester, and we wanted to make sure where we were staying was good. We could have done better for our money in a hotel even (you can stay in a hostel for less than 4 euros a night), but it was a pretty good experience. Maggie, a probably 70-something of Scottish origins, has spent most of her life travelling, living for a long time in Spain and then Morocco. Up to this point she has operated just on word-of-mouth, but she reluctantly is going to start advertising on the internet. She said her house is about 100 years old. It is a typical Moroccan house, three stories with a nice rooftop. It's pretty much falling apart though.
That afternoon we wandered around the area. Maggie recommended that we exchange our euros for dirhams (about 11 dirhams/euro) on the black market, so we did so in a tobacco shop (is the U.S. the only place in the world where we don't have these??). We had a delicious inexpensive meal at a hole-in-the-wall kind of place. We were very close to all of the shops and the open-air market. We had our first Moroccan mint tea (delicious, but ask for the sugar on the side!) at a cafe that was pretty touristy, but there was a reason for that: at most cafes in Morocco, women aren't really welcome. There are many, many cultural differences between Morocco and Spain despite their geographical proximity, but the most striking is the separation between men and women. A heavily Muslim society, women mostly cover their heads.
That night we went for wine before dinner (many places don't have liquor licenses since Muslims aren't supposed to drink alcohol). We had a traditional Moroccan dinner (harira and tajine) afterwards in the Hotel Continental, where the restaurant overlooks the port. Tangier is right on the coast of the Mediterranean. There is a beach, but apparently it's not really good for swimming.
The next morning we wanted to go to Chefchaouen (or just Chaouen). Maggie told us we could take a grand taxi directly from Tangier. There are two types of taxis: grand taxis and petit taxis. Petit taxis just travel around a city and are metered. Grand taxis travel between cities and have a fixed rate. Even though they are "grand" they really aren't that big, and they sell four seats in the back and two in the passenger seat. It is pretty inexpensive, so most of the time Allison and I bought four seats so we could have the back to ourselves. After a bit of a snafu (the petit taxi driver took us to the train station...my French pronunciation isn't bad enough that Gare Routierre should be confused with Gare Tanger Ville!), we arrived at the bus station where the grand taxis congregate. We said we wanted to go to Chaouen and were told that ida and vuelta would be 50 euros, which seemed really steep to us, although as it turned out that wouldn't have been such a bad deal. The problem is that grand taxis don't go directly from Tangier to Chaouen, they all stop in Tetouan. After a pit stop (my first encounter with squat toilets...and we had to pay to use them), we set off for Tetouan. Grand taxis are a pretty comfortable way to travel. It was about an hour from Tangier to Tetouan and an hour from Tetouan to Chefchaoen. The bus would have been three hours because it makes a lot of stops. On the road, we saw all kinds of animals (cows, sheep, goats, donkeys), grazing pretty much at the edge of the road. Also, a lot of Moroccan people were along the side of the road, either walking between towns or trying to hitchhike, both of which would be very strange and also illegal on this kind of road in the U.S.
The two official languages that pretty much everyone speaks in Morocco are Moroccan Arabic and French. Because Spain is so close and most tourists seemed to be Spanish, a lot of Spanish is spoken. A lot of people also speak English. People who wanted to sell me something and were trying to figure out where I was from sometimes tried German too. We were in almost every case able to communicate with people using some mix of those languages. Even people who weren't trying to sell us anything would say awkward things to us (once again, the relations with women thing). One of the most awkward things they said was, "Hello, flower," because in their eyes, young women may not be worth more than their "flowers." Females who are so obviously not Moroccan (I'm pretty obvious and Allison is blonde...) are a target for Moroccan men since they don't have what I would term "normal" relations with women, i.e. they don't talk to them.
"Chefchaouen" means "look at the peaks" and used to just be called "Chaouen." It is small town nestled in the Rif mountains (supposedly the origin of the term "reefer"). Its most distinctive feature is that many of the buildings in the medina are painted blue. There is a heavy Andalucian architectural influence from when the north of Morocco was controlled by Spain (it was a cultural exchange: you see the Andalucian influence in Morocco and the "árabe" influence in Andalucia). In a vacuum, seeing the buildings you might think you were in southern Spain. However, the people, smells, and sights are very different. I've never seen anyone in Spain wearing a jellaba, the full length wool garment with a pointed hood that is somewhat common in Morocco.
Maggie recommended Casa Hassan for lunch. After asking several people for directions, a young boy was enlisted to show us the way. He didn't speak English or Spanish and tried to talk to me in French, which obviously didn't work. After a while, it became apparent he didn't know where it was, but Chaouen is small enough that eventually we ended up there. Allison gave him a couple dirhams. We had cous-cous, which was good.
The market in Chefchaouen:
View of the ruined Spanish mosque on the mountain from Chaouen:
Afterwards we wandered around the medina. Very awkward: we were just wandering, not lost, but three boys came up and wanted to show us where the plaza was. We tried to get rid of them, but we are not very good at that apparently. When they found out that we didn't have caramelos and weren't going to give them any monedas, they touched my arm, which seemed harmless enough. Until they moved to the back and proceeded to, ahem, grab my ass. They were probably 8 or so. I don't think I've mentioned this, but there seemed to be more cats than people in Morocco. All strays I think.
We caught a grand taxi to Tetouan and decided to have a look around there since its medina is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Someone came up to me and started talking in French, which I obviously ignored, especially since I don't speak French. He then proceeded to try to figure out whether I spoke English, Spanish, or German, but I tried not to respond. Somehow he found out we spoke Spanish. He claimed to be a French teacher on his day off just wanting to practice his language skills. We couldn't shake him, so he showed us around the market in the medina, which he claimed was only there once a month, an obviously dubious claim. The entire time he had been walking really fast, since he obviously wanted to get us lost. At the end of this unsolicited tour, we arrived at a carpet store, where he said we could get great views of the city for free. Our "guide" ran off somewhere. Inside, it was dark, and I was starting to get even more on guard. In the morning Maggie had asked for our emergency contact info, jokingly in case we "got kidnapped by the Algerians." The owner of the store did turn on the lights, and there was a nice view from the roof. I really didn't want to buy anything and Allison wanted a very specific kind of rug, which he didn't have. She ended up buying a bedspread just so we could leave.
Much to our dismay, our "guide" reappeared and the store owner asked him to show us the way out. Once again, he was walking very quickly. He wanted to take us to some kind of spice pharmacy which he also claimed was only open one day a month. It's one thing to buy a small carpet or blanket, but we weren't in the mood to buy a pound of spices or anything, so we were mad and just demanded to be shown out of the medina. If it weren't by this point very dark out we would have obviously tried to find our own way. At this point, he very aggressively started asking for a propina, which was ridiculous since he was already going to get a commission on the bedspread Allison bought. We were relieved to get in the grand taxi at last.
In a moment of much-needed comic relief that night, when we were walking down the "street" (probably three feet wide) to Maggie's house, there was this huge carcass, a goat I think, blocking the way. The local children couldn't figure out why we were laughing so hard.
The next day we made our way to Asilah, a town on the Atlantic coast. We could have taken the train, which I've heard is actually very efficient, clean, etc., but we just took a grand taxi since we were comfortable with that. It was drizzly but fortunately it didn't start to rain harder. The medina is uniform, all whitewashed, but my favorite part was the ocean view. I miss water.
Camels on the beach in Asilah:
We never did ride camels, which is the ultimate touristy thing to do in Morocco, because the day we saw them it was rainy and we didn't want to discover what wet camel smelled like. Maggie recommended Casa García for lunch, but they were jammed, so we went elsewhere for a mint tea and wine while we waited. We forgot to ask for the tea with the sugar on the side. It wasn't bad, per se, but it was so sugary that it tasted like a different beverage. At Casa García we had fish.
Back in Tangier late Saturday afternoon, we went out in search of Allison's dream rug, which had been on the floor of our room at Maggie's house. It took a while, but finally she found something suitable.
Saturday night for dinner we had this really good chicken tajine that Fatima, Maggie's maid, made for us. I really hope that at least some of the money we gave to Maggie for the meal makes it to Fatima! Fatima was really sweet, but she only speaks a few phrases in French, so we couldn't really communicate with her except to say thank you ("shukran" or of course "merci").
Sunday morning I woke up early, wanting to see the kasbah (fortification) and just kind of get lost on the streets of Tangier. Mission accomplished on the getting lost part. Luckily petit taxis are very cheap, so I made it to the kasbah and then as I was making my way back, it turned out I was only like 10 minutes away from where we were staying.
Except for that morning, I had never been by myself, but Allison had slept in, and I decided to get a tea by myself in a cafe, which seemed much safer than getting lost by myself had been. I didn't realize it, but some guy followed me from the cafe to Maggie's house. To get in, you have to open a metal gate and the door. When I opened the gate, the guy approaches me and starts talking to me in French. When I tell him I don't speak French, he says, "I see you in cafe. I like." He's trying to get me to invite him inside or at least get my phone number, but luckily I was able to get rid of him. After that, it was off to the airport, back to Madrid.
The trip was not without its uncomfortable parts, but all in all I enjoyed it. At first I had worried that Tangier would be "too European" and that I wouldn't be getting the "real" Moroccan experience. But for two American girls on their own, that was probably fine. I'd go back to Morocco again if someone was going to a different city. If you buy the easyJet flight early enough, it's a ridiculously cheap trip.
The Grand Mosque in Tangier, close to Maggie's house:
The Grand Mosque in Tangier, close to Maggie's house:
Moroccan mint tea, sugar on the side:
Also, I am pleased to report that I have finally acquired American-style deodorant. It figures that the first toiletry item I run out of would be hard to replace. Something like shampoo would be easy, but deodorants are mostly aerosols or cream things, and I just wanted what I was used to. Especially since, ahem, b.o. is generally much worse here than in the U.S.
My next trip is to Brussels at the end of the month. We'll probably also go to Bruges, and maybe Luxembourg City, or another city in Belgium. I will unfortunately have to miss the group excursion to Segovia, but it's only an hour away by bus so I can easily make it there on my own if I want. I unfortunately will also miss the "mini cursillo sobre vinos españoles," which is troubling. P.S. Moroccan wine is terrible. Make sure it's Spanish or French or something if you get some.
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I've tried to change it five times, literally but I can't fix the formatting. I hate that pre-photos I have the space between paragraphs but after the photos I don't. FAIL
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