So, on saturday I got back from one of the coolest vacations in my life. I don't have the energy to go through and deal with pictures for the blog, so if you'd like to see them, I made an album on Facebook. They also include ones that pertained to the last post.
Monday morning, I flew into Casablanca only half knowing where I actually needed to go to meet the people I needed to. The flight there was alright save for the small child that decided to scream at the top of his lungs for an hour and a half. My parents have told me stories about how on the flight to America I was that child, so I guess I'm paying for it dearly now in my old age. Upon arriving in Casablanca, I was greeted immediately with an offer to take a taxi somewhere, but I knew that there was a train station 10 minutes from my hotel. Unfortunately, I didn't know exactly which train station that was, so when I went to go buy my tickets I merely asked to go to the city, and they gave me tickets to the largest station there. As it turns out, this station is about 10 minutes away from my hotel as well... by car. Thinking I could get there easily I decided to just start walking in a random direction until I found a street on my map which I cleverly purchased at the airport before venturing into the city. I quickly realized that this map could have been a map of Cairo, Washington DC, or Tokyo and it would probably have served me better. It had neither train stations on it, nor any of the streets that I managed to find. Not to mention that the location of my hotel was completely uncharted. I feel like the google map might have actually served me better. In any case, after realizing that the donkeys on the roads had a better idea of where I was going, I decided to taxi it after all and ended up at my hotel after some time. Meeting up with my friends was not a huge problem after that since they were just getting back from exploring the area.
Casablanca, as it turns out, isn't the best city ever. In an attempt to avoid the phrase "shit-hole" I'd like to elaborate on the ridiculousness of the little streets of the town. There were many uncharted and many without any sort of semblance of sanitation. There were many times when I was offered weed and other various things of which I'd rather not go into detail. In general the scenery wasn't anything spectacular, and the shops and restaurants seemed like they haven't been cleaned in a good year and a half. Of course there were interesting little markets and people selling all sorts of random crap, including bootleg DvDs and 1 MDH fried doughnut heart attacks. I actually bought "Horton Hears a Who" (which is different than Harry Sees a Who, which is what Paul remembered it as) although it doesn't have any of the special features, but I can't be picky. That night we did go to a restaurant to try the local Moroccan cuisine, and I had a lot of olives and a small dish of seafood bathed in cheese and the seafood's own juices. Personally, I thought the food was lovely, but it didn't sit very well with some of my colleagues who woke up in the middle of the night with food poisoning. My parents thought that I was going to be the one ending up with the food poisoning, but little do they know what kind of crap my stomach's gotten accustomed to in the past three years. I think after Pierce dining I can withstand anything.
The best day in Casablanca was the same one that we were leaving. It wasn't the best because we were leaving, but rather a mix of that fact and tanning on the beach. We were able to see a bunch of moroccans play soccer, a sport which they are surprisingly good at on the beach. I, on the other hand, decided to sit in the sun with my shirt off in the same position, receiving a ridiculously ill proportioned burn on my body which by now has started to peel back to pale. Everyone else got a nice tan, although Paul did suffer some of my bad luck and got a spectacular burn on his arms as well. He always knows how to make me feel better. Getting to Marrakech that day was a trial to say the least. First there was a little suspense in having to meet Sam at the train station, but after that got settled we were able to all congregate in a semi-orderly fashion onto the train. Unfortunately by the time we got on the train it was already packed, so we couldn't all sit in the same compartment. Upon getting to Marrakech it was already dark and there was absolutely no way that we'd be able to make it to our hostel on our own, so we got in a cab. As benign as that sounds, Paul and I were scrunched into the front seat, me with my head sticking out the window and him basically sitting on the gear shift. It was one of the best taxi rides of my life, mostly because I got to keep my head out the window and act like an idiot, hardly a common occurrence.
After the taxi stopped, we weren't actually anywhere near our hostel. Oh no, after that we had a nice trek through the maze known as the Grand Place (it's in French). From there, there are about 13 different entrances into the small streets which encompass the large central market of Marrakech, where we spent virtually all of our time. After we walked aimlessly for about an hour realizing there was absolutely no way that we were going to find this place on our own, we asked somebody where it was. This was our first lesson as tourists in Morocco. If you ask for directions, you don't get pointed in a direction and told where to go. Oh no, you get walked right to your destination by the person you asked. This may seem like a friendly gesture, but that's before they ask you for 100 D's (Moroccan Durham) for their kind service. Ultimately, we did get to where we wanted to go, but I'd rather not have shelled out the D's to some 14 year old punk that knows how to navigate the streets. The hostel wasn't anything special, and in my opinion we made out pretty well. Upon getting there, however, they told us that we had 2 rooms for 6 people, one that housed 2 and one that housed 4. Now it doesn't take a genius to see that with a group of 3 guys and 3 girls, one of the guys (read: the guy that gets confused during lodging procedures) is going to get shafted into the girls' room. Not only does he get shafted, but then all the girls decide to take the large beds and leave him the smallest and lowest to the ground. I'm not bitter though, because the sunburn I received earlier that day prevented me from moving in my sleep, so all I had to do was get comfortable once. Also the girls decided that it'd be a good idea to make my bed into a harem, which entailed setting up the curtains so that they draped over my bed making it look very royal and moroccan. That's right, I was the king (of the castle).
The following day, we had our first foray into the Moroccan market. The first few hours weren't too terrible. They involved just walking through the shops and looking and browsing, the entire time receiving very rehearsed offers to browse their wares and many jeers towards the ladies of the group. I was more or less used to this kind of market structure, and handling the people wasn't a huge problem for anyone I don't think. The problem was that we were trying to find the leather tanning grounds, and there was absolutely no way that we'd be able to do it. The worst thing to do is stop as a giant group of tourists. The 14 year old punks, henceforth known as guides, cling on to you and ask you questions about where you're trying to go until they get an affirmative answer. Using one that claimed to work for free, we found the tanning grounds, and immediately the first thing they gave us was a few mint leaves that they called "gas masks." It didn't immediately click why we would need gas masks, and even less why they were simply mint leaves, but we quickly discovered as we walked into the tanning yards. This was the first time in my life that a stench has made me gag. As it turns out, these people use pigeon shit as a regular means of working with the leather. Not only that, but they didn't actually know how to say a nice word for shit. According to the tanner, first they put it in water, then the pigeon shit, then grain, then whatever color they need. It was somewhat ridiculous. After the tour they took us to the shop that sold the leather, a quality of which I haven't seen yet. I couldn't resist myself so I bought a sleek leather belt (bargained down to 150 D's from 400). They also had a bunch of rugs and carpets made out of silk, proven by holding up their lighters to them. Also, the quality of the leather was tested by throwing water on it and watching it just glide off. I was very impressed.
Other than that Morocco is simply a place where tourists go to get haggled and buy a large quantity of crap that they're never going to use. Our entourage got a whole lot of crap from morocco, and all of it had to go back in my bag. Paul and I got a hookah for the apartment next year, which was actually a great deal. On top of that, we spent a lot of time chilling on top of the roof of our hostel overlooking Marrakech smoking it, playing cards, and munching on dates and cacahuetes (peanuts in french). It was undoubtedly one of the best vacations of my life. I was so relaxed and at peace that coming back to school is somewhat of a shock that I'm not too pleased that I have to endure, but that's for another time. I'm actually glad to be back in the land of pressurized showers and merchants that don't try to sell their wares.
Only three weeks left. Cheers.
