old entry: halloween, morocco and chestnuts roasting on an open fire
this entry is from about a week ago:
i can't believe i was just in africa this weekend.
nick came to madrid from england and i rode the bus to meet him. then we took an eight hour bus to algeciras and stayed in a hotel near the ferries. the area was shady, i definitely saw prostitutues and someone doing some drug in a car that involved flat metal and fire. the next morning we took a ferry to tanger. tanger was nuts. it's a port city in morocco, where they speak arabic and french, but since it's so close to spain, we got around with our spanish. we crawled into a tiny shop to eat a delicious lunch of chicken tangine. we stayed away from the fresh vegetables. every time we sat down to eat, we wondered if we were going to get sick. we never did. i heard that a group of 60 students went to morocco this weekend and about 50 of them got sick.
we then took a five hour train ride to fes. here, i fell in love with a grimy city teeming with life--almost unjaded by tourism. on the ferry from spain, i found this free travel magazine that described fes in, what nick and i thought, was an overly dramatic way:
this is the most beautiful imperial town in morocco, a feast for the senses: tiny squares, donkeys carrying heavy gas cylinders, women covering their faces, strong smells everywhere, groups of children screaming in the streets, merchants watching life go by from the interior of their tiny stores.
like i said, we thought it was ridiculously overdramatic. it wasn't. nick and i saw everything listed in there. the medina, or old city of fes, has roads so tiny that one car can't even fit through it and it truly is a labyrinth. we saw donkeys carrying ridiculously heavy loads of everything from gas cans to flattened cardboard boxes. the women were, of course, covered, and although i was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers and a shawl wrapped around my upper body, i still got bombarded with arabic jeers. i don't think the moroccan men knew what to think of me, because i looked so much like them. the smells included incense, shit and trash, which was everywhere. every nook had some candy wrapper or used kleenex occupying it, as if the townsfolk couldn't stand to see an empty niche. when we went to see the tanneries, where we saw colorful vats of dye used for the animal skins, the man handed us fresh mint to smell before we walked out because the smell was so strong. there were groups of small children running around screaming. some of the older ones, maybe 10 or 11 years old, would come up to us, just as their older brothers would, and talk like big, older men, trying to offer us directions to our riad or a restaurant. the most disturbing thing i saw was a young man beating a little boy until his nose bled, right there in the street, probably for no apparent reason.
our riad was another story. it was absolutely beautiful and so romantic. it was a painfully beautiful renovated mansion that once belonged to a wealthy merchant. with only five rooms, the french brother and sister (and her husband) bought it and renovated it. the brother decorated each room with rich arabic designs and perfect lighting and aromas. it was in our riad at night time the first night that i realized that the city was too romantic to not see without damien. i wanted him to be there more than anything.
we bought random things and bargained. we had a horrible tour guide and picked a horrible day to have in an arabic country: a friday, the muslim holy day. but once again, as i was in palestine, i was mesmerized by the minerets that called the muslims to prayer five times a day. it was one thing in palestine, where there were maybe one or two mosques in each village. here there were at least a dozen, and they would all call their people to prayer around the same time. i remember standing up, over looking the city from the hotel meridiana hearing the call the prayer coming from 10 different directions and just being mesmerized.
we didn't have enough time. i wanted to see more cities, to see the sahara. i will come back to morocco.
on the train ride back, we stopped at one town for an hour and decided to walk in. here i realized that most of the people that were out were always men. men walking on the streets. men sitting at cafe tables filled with more men watching men walk by on the street. it's a man's world.
after hours of traveling, we made it back to madrid at 6 a.m. on sunday. we slept a little on the overnight bus and slept a couple of hours more in the bus station. we brushed our teeth in the bathrooms, had dunkin donuts for breakfast and went to the reina sofia where i finally got to see the guernica. it was amazing.
i didn't sleep much at all last week. the night before i left was halloween. i found a viking hat for 5 euro and the spaniards (all the spaniards in my house are art majors or mechanics) fashioned me a wearable boat out of cardboard. we partied until 6 a.m., my bus to madrid left at 9. i lost my viking hat.
today i talked to damien on the phone, which pretty much made my day. it's election night, he's got a lot of work to do. i got a job offer in new hampshire that i'm seriously considering. i talked to mr. wegener on the phone for a long, long time. i miss him.
it's bloody cold over here. i don't know how i'd survive new hampshire. this little metal shed near the clock in plaza mayor opened this week, and two homeless-looking people started selling roasted chestnuts, which i'd never had. they taste horrible, i'm not going to lie.
and right now alex is playing me radiohead on his guitar. life is good.
i can't believe i was just in africa this weekend.
nick came to madrid from england and i rode the bus to meet him. then we took an eight hour bus to algeciras and stayed in a hotel near the ferries. the area was shady, i definitely saw prostitutues and someone doing some drug in a car that involved flat metal and fire. the next morning we took a ferry to tanger. tanger was nuts. it's a port city in morocco, where they speak arabic and french, but since it's so close to spain, we got around with our spanish. we crawled into a tiny shop to eat a delicious lunch of chicken tangine. we stayed away from the fresh vegetables. every time we sat down to eat, we wondered if we were going to get sick. we never did. i heard that a group of 60 students went to morocco this weekend and about 50 of them got sick.
we then took a five hour train ride to fes. here, i fell in love with a grimy city teeming with life--almost unjaded by tourism. on the ferry from spain, i found this free travel magazine that described fes in, what nick and i thought, was an overly dramatic way:
this is the most beautiful imperial town in morocco, a feast for the senses: tiny squares, donkeys carrying heavy gas cylinders, women covering their faces, strong smells everywhere, groups of children screaming in the streets, merchants watching life go by from the interior of their tiny stores.
like i said, we thought it was ridiculously overdramatic. it wasn't. nick and i saw everything listed in there. the medina, or old city of fes, has roads so tiny that one car can't even fit through it and it truly is a labyrinth. we saw donkeys carrying ridiculously heavy loads of everything from gas cans to flattened cardboard boxes. the women were, of course, covered, and although i was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers and a shawl wrapped around my upper body, i still got bombarded with arabic jeers. i don't think the moroccan men knew what to think of me, because i looked so much like them. the smells included incense, shit and trash, which was everywhere. every nook had some candy wrapper or used kleenex occupying it, as if the townsfolk couldn't stand to see an empty niche. when we went to see the tanneries, where we saw colorful vats of dye used for the animal skins, the man handed us fresh mint to smell before we walked out because the smell was so strong. there were groups of small children running around screaming. some of the older ones, maybe 10 or 11 years old, would come up to us, just as their older brothers would, and talk like big, older men, trying to offer us directions to our riad or a restaurant. the most disturbing thing i saw was a young man beating a little boy until his nose bled, right there in the street, probably for no apparent reason.
our riad was another story. it was absolutely beautiful and so romantic. it was a painfully beautiful renovated mansion that once belonged to a wealthy merchant. with only five rooms, the french brother and sister (and her husband) bought it and renovated it. the brother decorated each room with rich arabic designs and perfect lighting and aromas. it was in our riad at night time the first night that i realized that the city was too romantic to not see without damien. i wanted him to be there more than anything.
we bought random things and bargained. we had a horrible tour guide and picked a horrible day to have in an arabic country: a friday, the muslim holy day. but once again, as i was in palestine, i was mesmerized by the minerets that called the muslims to prayer five times a day. it was one thing in palestine, where there were maybe one or two mosques in each village. here there were at least a dozen, and they would all call their people to prayer around the same time. i remember standing up, over looking the city from the hotel meridiana hearing the call the prayer coming from 10 different directions and just being mesmerized.
we didn't have enough time. i wanted to see more cities, to see the sahara. i will come back to morocco.
on the train ride back, we stopped at one town for an hour and decided to walk in. here i realized that most of the people that were out were always men. men walking on the streets. men sitting at cafe tables filled with more men watching men walk by on the street. it's a man's world.
after hours of traveling, we made it back to madrid at 6 a.m. on sunday. we slept a little on the overnight bus and slept a couple of hours more in the bus station. we brushed our teeth in the bathrooms, had dunkin donuts for breakfast and went to the reina sofia where i finally got to see the guernica. it was amazing.
i didn't sleep much at all last week. the night before i left was halloween. i found a viking hat for 5 euro and the spaniards (all the spaniards in my house are art majors or mechanics) fashioned me a wearable boat out of cardboard. we partied until 6 a.m., my bus to madrid left at 9. i lost my viking hat.
today i talked to damien on the phone, which pretty much made my day. it's election night, he's got a lot of work to do. i got a job offer in new hampshire that i'm seriously considering. i talked to mr. wegener on the phone for a long, long time. i miss him.
it's bloody cold over here. i don't know how i'd survive new hampshire. this little metal shed near the clock in plaza mayor opened this week, and two homeless-looking people started selling roasted chestnuts, which i'd never had. they taste horrible, i'm not going to lie.
and right now alex is playing me radiohead on his guitar. life is good.