My first step outside Europe...Marrakesh

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As a little girl, I would sit fascinated upon my Grandad's knee as he described his adventures in the British army in Africa and India. As a poor young lad he had joined up before the war and had seen the marvels of the world before War tore them to pieces. As he would tell his stories of Tiger hunting off the back of elephants, and wandering through the sahara, I could imagine the heat of a summer afternoon, I could smell the perfume of spiced food wafting out of a kitchen window, I heard the noises of the general street traffic, and I could feel the sun peeping in the corners of my squinting eyes.

Ever since I have always wanted to see these imagined places. Would the smell of cooking be as spicy-sweet? Would the streets be as noisy as I had thought? As I booked my tickets I hoped that the reality would not only live up to, but exceed my childhood imagination. Even the well-intentioned warnings of some friends about the dangers of Morocco, and traveling alone as a female, couldn't dampen my spirits. Plus, this was going to be my first time outside Europe.

I had a few hiccups with general planning. Firstly, my local health centre decided to be difficult one week and then downright bloody useless the next. As a result, I did not get the vaccinations I wanted. Not really a big deal as they were optional, but better safe than sorry. Secondly, after having some friends to stay the same week, I had a mountain of bed sheets and clothes to wash before I left. With Toledo experiencing one of its few annual rainfalls the day before I left, I was forced to turn my bedroom into a Chinese laundry-cum-steam room, using my miniature plug in radiator as well as the Gas fired heater to dry my clothes. At 4am my head was finally able to hit the pillow.

An hour bus ride to Madrid, an hour on the metro to the airport, (a short scarper away from a very scary Scottish lady) an hour passing through passport control and baggage collection...and I was walking out of the departure gate at Mohammed V Airport, Casablanca, and into a sea of people. The excitement of seeing my friend after 2 and a half years was beginning to give me butterflies, that, and the sheer number of people in the crowd. At least, I thought, he's tall, I just have to look for the head bobbing around above the rest.

Ironically, the first thing I noticed about him was how he was shorter than I expected, and stockier. He's clearly been benefitting from his mum's cooking. The second thing I noticed, was that I had completely forgotten how to speak Italian...which was quite important considering it is our only common language! I fought to control the urge to perform a circ-du-soleil running jump at him to collect my long verdue hug. Instead I walked calmly and with baggage in tow.
"come stai? tutto bene con il viaggio?" he ventured as we tried to decide the appropriate physical greeting between exes in an Arabic country.
"bene" was the utmost i could muster after my long trip.
"I called you before, what happened? it's been an hour. did you have any problems?" he continued in his heavily Arabic -accented Italian.
"Passports. bags. hour waiting. Capito?"
"Si."
Thank god. Now lets get the hell outta dodge!


We drove home in a friends car, to the heart of the city, and went for a coffee. Moroccan cafe au lait is a delicious version, served in layers of sugar, thick creamy milk, and coffee in a small glass cup. After, we went back to Hamada's house where I stepped over a cat the size of a small terrier dog, met his mum and dad, and finally put my bags down. I woke the next morning to a breakfast feast of bread, oil, eggs, honey, fruit, and the famous Moroccan mint tea.
There is clearly no rest for the wicked as Hamada triumphantly announced that we were to be going on a trip to Marrakesh that afternoon...thankfully, by that afternoon i had managed to drag my Italian language skills from the depths of my memory.

As the train aproaches we are two of many people clambering to get a decent seat. We take our seat in 2nd class. 3rd class Im told is "a mess". Sweetheart. Im from Britain, you can't scare me with any kind of public transport, let alone trains!

As we are chugging along, passing the many countryside stations, the lush green vegetation gives way to vibrant plains that seem like they would be spicy to the taste. The earth deepens in colour, with each mile south it burns darker and darker, until it begins to glow a bright umber-red. The clouds addorn the sky like puffs of smoke from a steam train...i almost forget that it is not us, in our high speed train, causing their pattern. As we near Marrakesh, the sun blisters through this side of the cabin while the night is falling on the other. It is as if our cabin is the world, spinning between night and day, as our train makes its final stop. Marrakesh.

My serenity was quicky broken by the comotion of Marrakesh city centre. And yet i was more suprised to find out that it was a quiet day because of the festival of Abraham. Our first activity, was to find a hotel for the night. I let Hamada lead the way, trusting him to pull me out of the way if and when a horse and cart hurtled towards us, which he did, expertly. It was a great help to have a Moroccan friend as my travel companion. However, with every pro...there is a con. ~Hamada and I were not allowed into the smaller hotels because we could not prove that we were married. This did not appear to matter for the European couple who walked in ahead of us. But apparently if one of you is white and the other Arabic. It does matter. Alot. So much so that they wouldnt even let us take separate rooms.

Instead we were guided to the Grand Hotel. A word of warning. Never expect a "Grand" hotel to be anything near grand. I did not expect a stroppy receptionist, a 'kind-of-flushable' toilet and a cold brown shower for the price you pay fo staying at the "grand hotel".

We decided to take dinner out. In the centre of Marrakesh in the plaza, every night about a dozen open air restaurants open, serving all manner of delicious food. Sprawling displays of vegetables and spiced olives draw the eye. The comfortingly rich smell of grilled meat, is unrelenting. Your tastebuds are screaming, your stomach wakes up, and suddenly you are ravenous. With each stall, there are a crew of eager food sellers speaking in numerous tongues to all who walk by. It is choreographed chaos as sellers dance around the passing tourists, waiters soft-shoe their way around tables and chef's juggle their kitchens. Everyone is part of the chorus line, in a song that crescendo's as you are finally tempted to take your seat. And then. you realise that the show goes on, except now, you are part of the performance. You have your place on the stage, and you line to sing.

After dancing around any eager food sellers, we obliged the guy who said his food was "bloody marvellous" in a better british seargant major voice than i can muster! Dinner was delicous, and the entertainment continued next door with an exploding gas bottle. In this theatre, restaurants run on camping-gas bottles. You could well believe it was a theatre here. The dance was perfect, as the bottle blew its fire, the customers ran away into the wings while the waiters did a hop-skip over the bottle in centre-stage. In the back the chefs provided a simultaneous comic routine of "how to put the fire out".

We topped off the night's entertainment with fruit smoothie to go, and Thelma and Louise dubbed in Arabic on the hotel TV. Hey, it's not like there was a bar we could have gone to!!!

The next morning the receptionist got it. All I wanted to do was hand in my keys. He gave us someone elses passports, without even so much as a "thankyou for staying"

"Umm. These are not ours" I say. Honestly. He already gave us ours back last night. Hamada translated.
"No. These are in the box for this room." He says like I just got dropped off by the special bus.
"We already have ours. These belong to someone else!" Hamada clarifies. Holding up the picture of a middle-aged woman, and presumably her husband. Neither of which look like us, in our twenties, and one of us Moroccan!!!!
He snatches them back like we were trying to make our getaway with them. Yeah. You're welcome you little ****. I swallowed hard and asked Hamada to let him know that the water was still broken. The receptionist said something dripping in attitude and waved his hand in dissmissal at Hamada. "Let's go, it's not worth it." Hamada sighed.
I had woken up in Marrakesh, Morocco, happy and contented, laughing and joking through my horrid shower. But this guy was fast killing my buzz.
"Excuse me. Do you speak English?"...he nodded and smirked.
"Fantastic. I just wanted to let you know that the water in your hotel is freezing cold and brown. It is the same in all the rooms, I checked. It has been since last night. If I pay for a room with a bathroom, I expect to be able to use it."
"you just need to wait. It takes time." he said. 15-love
"It ran for half an hour and nothing changed. And the maid couldn't fix it either" I answered. 15-30 to me
"we cannot do anything. But the water is working now. You should've waited." Very clever Mr... 30 all.
"If i had waited. we would be late to check out and you would probably have charged us another night!" haha! 30-40 to me!
"The water is working now. There is nothing I can do. This is Africa, not Europe" Yep. He did just say that. Deuce.
He began to get on with other things. He was done with this game...I wasn't. My good mood was holding on by its fingernails..."When you charge someone for a bathroom, they should be able to use it. Especially at these prices. So dont tell me "we are in africa" when you charge like a European hotel." Advantage ME... "And don't be so bloody rude to us when we just stopped you from being fired for giving out people's passports!" Game Me.
His colleague muffled a laugh. He looked straight at me. There, good mood back on track. My eyebrows relaxed, a smile sprang to my lips, I thanked him in Arabic, and wished him a good day.

Set and Match to me. My good mood sprung back in.
"what did you say to him" asked Hamada. I told him. "haha. you told him off? I don't think you need me to help you round anymore. You're fine! " He laughed his arse off for a good few minutes. Apparently a man getting told off by a woman is comical! Ah well, I try my best to entertain.

Bolstered by encounter with the recpetionist and enjoying the warm whining melody of the pipes in the central square of Marrakesh, I walked around the entertainments on show. A man approached with a snake lying limp in his hands. He put it to my forehead. "good luck" he said in Arabic...Its a phrase I learnt the first day. I thanked him, and he invited me to hold it. Hamada edged away as I took it.
I can honestly say that i didnt really realise what i was doing until I was smiling for the second photo opportunity, sat on a box by the sleepy whine of the pipes, with the first snake around my neck and left arm, and the second rather larger snake (that weighed about a half bag of sugar) in my right hand.

Im sure someone once said that there are two certainties in life...death and taxes. I would like to add last minute Christmas shopping to that list. You see, when you tell your family that you will be missing the annual turkey dinner and mass, you need to sweeten the deal a little. So, on December 23rd, after getting some goood luck from the snake charmers, we went shopping for some Moroccan Christmas presents for the family.

A couple of hours later and I had purchased myself my very own Aladdins cave of trinkets and crafts and was walking back into the main square towards to train home. An unusual noise by my left ankle stopped me in my tracks to find a little monkey looking up at me in exactly the same way my dog does when he wants a stroke. I couldn't resist, and I bent down to coochy-coo at it. When I stood back up, the man on the end of the monkey's leash shook my hand. The monkey quickly used my arm as a branch and crawled into my arms.

You know its a seller's trick. You know youre about to get fleeced. But you are holding a monkey, it is close enough to pull on your earrings and climb on your head, which mine did with expert timing as soon as the camera came out! luckily it came back down for take two. Much to his discomfort Hamada also got to hold it. Men, honestly, they can't bear to be outdone!

We took our trinkets and climbed the very packed train back to Casablanca. We wanted to be there in time for dinner. Strangely, compared to Marrakesh, Casablanca felt a lot like home. One hour in an unpronouncable outback station was the only delay. But it was no bad thing as it meant that we could see the whole of the beautiful sinset that night. From high in the sky, it fell towards the earth, scorching the earth as it fell further and further into the soft landscape until finally, the last embers extinguished themselves on the cold horizon, and with that, the sky seemed to cool into a deep blue, and then an infinite black punctured by bright white stars and a ghostly moon. No, it was no bad thing at all to be forced to pass the time staring at such a stunning syphomy of nature.

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Photos

botch job...moroccan style
at the "grand hotel"

No fear!!!
Snake Charming in the main Square in Marakesh

Camellos!
Had to take this photo fast before the guy demanded payment for the privillege...