Finding My Fix: Chronicles of a Travel Junkie

So here is that lovely post I promised, the one I accidently deleted… I’ve basically cut/paste it from an email I sent my mother and edited for your benefit, it’s not for the faint hearted.

28 May 2006–No, homesickness was not the kind of sickness Kara was refering to when she emailed my mother to let her know that I wasn’t in my best form, but not to worry, they were doing their best to take care of me. I had a nasty bug, probably food poisoning. It started out with some “pleasant” trips to the bathroom, and the next day involved three bouts of vomiting. The part that worried me most was that I couldn’t keep water down and was getting more and more dehydrated.

Now, two mornings ago is when it started. That night, Kara and I went to get dinner and I felt like I wanted to explode. Kara wanted to walk along the water, so I walked a bit of the way and then turned back. I don’t think Kara realized how sick I was. But I think she got the idea when she had the pleasant experience of listening to me retch, as did everyone else at our hotel. The hotel is made of concrete with a courtyard in the middle so you can hear any noise above a certain decibal from any corner of any room. That first bout, I’ll admit, was self-induced. I’ve battled stomach bugs enough to know that sometimes you just have to get it out, and a good way to do that is to chug water.

Upon hearing the lovely sounds, the hotel employees put on a pot of tea they said would help my stomach. I knew it wouldn’t stay down even if I did try to sip that concoction, the smell of which made me want to vomit on its own, but Kara, wanting to help, pressured me that I should. “It’ll help clean out your stomach.” You’re damned right it will; it’ll do the exact same thing the water did, but water tastes better. I took a few sips anyway, and 15 minutes later, they got to hear bout two.

I knelt with my head in the toilet, barely able to breathe. When my stomach was finished, I collapsed on the cold tile floor until my breathing slowed and my muscles stopped trembling. I peeled myself off the floor and crawled back into my bed where I tried sleeping until Kara came up to report that I ought to finish the tea because the hotel staff said they would be needing the glasses back. I had finally found a position on my left side, my hand at my knee, where, if I concentrated hard enough, my stomach would stop churning. But I finished that tea anyway, and that’s when I had bout three, and that’s when I cried a little bit, and that’s also when Kara and the hotel staff went off to find me a doctor. But as it turns out, doctors in Essouira don’t work on Saturdays, and are fairly worthless anyway. They’ll take your money (and then some, if they see your a foreigner), and send you to the pharmacy to buy something you could have bought had you not gone to the doctor at all. Antibiotics and intravenous are not readily available there. My throat, parched from dehydration because I lost more water than I was able to keep down, would have to wait for my immune system to do the work itself. Luckily, it did.

Now my stomach is doing a hell of a lot better (I had breakfast of a bit of fruit and cereal), and the rest of the system is also having an easier time of it. Now my biggest problem is homesickness. I really cannot wait until we get to Spain. Spain is a developed country and by god I want to be in a developed country!!!! Never in my life have I appreciated so much being born and raised in a developed country. Sanitation, hygeine, medical care, these are things I used to take for granted.

Oh, I called my mother first chance I had to leave the room without wreching. The phone was a pay phone and I was only able to talk for 20 seconds or so, and the sound of my mother’s voice sent me into tears. The woman working at the phone place held me to her shoulder as my tears fell on her scarf. People here are wonderful, if only it werent so easy to get sick in countries like Morocco!

For anyone wondering or worrying. I am now safely in London and enjoying it. Stories about my other destinations will follow some day.

My friends let me keep the crackers. They were preparing to spend the night on a warm steam vent in Rome’s Termini Station, and I was boarding a train to Bari.

“See you in New York” I said as we did our best to hug goodbye with an extra 30lbs on our backs.

It was the first time on this trip that I would be alone since Barcelona. The train I was taking was headed for Bari on the South East coast of Italy where a ferry departs bound for Dubrovnik. That was the plan, catch that ferry and catch a ferry back from Split four days later. Dubrovnik and Split are two cities on the Dalmatia Coast of Croatia and according to every review is a place not to be missed; so naturally, I didn’t want to miss it. Croatia is also a country recovering from a war, and recovering well according to an acquaintance of mine who worked with refugees in the Dubrovnik area several years ago.

I chose a seat in a little cabin with a Canadian backpacker. Not long after, we were joined by a man who informed us he was from Punjabi. He had a way about him that made a warning alarm go off in my head. He had an insistance in speaking in English, a language of which he knew absolutely nothing. His smile did not match his eyes, which could barely stay open except when he forced them every few seconds.

We were soon joined by another Italian man whose seat I had apparently taken, but he assured me it was fine, and the four of us arranged ourselves in the most comfortable manner possible, stretching across the aisle, my purse as a pillow for my shoulder crammed in the corner.

Several hours into the ride, I was jolted awake by the Indian who had begun shouting and kicking the Canadian, and the Italian, who, lucky for me, was a buffer. The Indian, still seemed to be sound asleep as his hands began to work their way towards the Italian and Canadian’s pockets. I moved myself out of that car first chance I got.

As I disembarked at 7:30 in the morning in Bari, I went to the information office which was locked and dark. Like magnets, the other English speakers, two from Canada and two from the US, and I picked each other out of the crowed. Together we warmed a stone bench as we waited for the bus to the port.

When we were almost to the port, the bus driver had a confrontation with another Italian.  His hand gestures and tone of voice were the kind you would see on an episode of the Sapranos.  The only word I could make out was “respect.”  Five minutes later, he finally sat back down, and continued the two minutes around the corner to the port.

I sat with the Canadians and Americans, waiting for the information to open at 10.  But it seemed all the ticket booths were for ferries to Greece.  so I asked.  And sure enough I was at the wrong ferry terminal, so I left my newfound English speaking friends with my leftover crackers as peace tokens, you might say, and headed to the other ferry terminal. 

When I arrived, everything was closed.  The company I would need to buy the tickets from to Dubrovnik (the only company with ferrys to Dubrovnik) didn’t open their office until 6pm.  9am, I wasn’t ready to wait.  So I went back to the busstop to wait for the bus.  That’s when an old Italian man on a bycicle came up to me and told me to go to the information desk, which was closed, to take another ferry to Montenegro and catch a bus to Dubrovnik.

A younger man joined him, telling me, “Listen to me.  I tell you stay here take the ferry tonight.”

The men at the baggage drop told me that the ferry wasn’t running today, Sunday.  THe next ferry would be running tomorrow at 10pm.  Two days in Bari, and two days to spend in Croatia?  Not worth it.

THe younger man, piped up, “listen to me.  I tell you stay here.  Take the ferry to Albania.”

The older man asked me if I wanted to come get some food.  He patted the seat of his bycicle for me to sit down.  He wrapped his arm around me and kissed me on the cheek, but it wasn’t the sort of kissing both cheaks greeting I’m comfortable with.  So I was done with their ‘help.’  I had formed a plan.  I got on the next train to Milano and fell asleep in my seat.

I wrote the following my journal on 8 June 2006 immidiately after it happened:

I was waiting in front of the Florence train station for my 8pm to Milano. An Indian man just came up to me. I gave him the silent treatment about 15 min. as he spoke nothing but English to me.

“You don’t have to worry; I’m Indian. I’m not Arabic. Those Arabic people, they’re dangerous. You have to watch out for them. My wallet was stolen. See, this is the card the police gave me.”

He shoved the thing in my face and I went on popping strawberries in my mouth refusing to engage him.

“Florence is enough. FLorence is no good. Where are you from? Don’t worry; I’m Indian. I have a friend here. He’s no good. My friend told me give me money; I give you house. I give him money; he not give me house. My friend is no good. Where are you from? You are afraid? Don’t worry; I am Indian. You speak English? Italian? Spanish? French? German? I can speak it. My native Indian. Don’t be afraid; I am Indian. That is my friend over there. I will go talk to him.” He hobbled off. And then, to my strawberry eating shagrin, he came back. “You see, he’s no good. He said ‘go away, bastard.’ And I said, ‘Fuck you. I’ll kick your knees in.”

A few more repetitions of “Don’t worry; I’m Indian. Where are you from? Do you understand English?” It seemed the silent treatment was not working.

“Where are you from?”

“I’m from Florence.”

“Where?”

“I’m from Florence.”

“Italian?”

“My boyfriend is Arabic. Please go away.”

“Oh! Arabic? That’s ok. I’m Indian. I can respect that.”

Sir, you clearly cannot. “Please go away.”

He took his time putting on his jacket.

“Please go away.”

He finally did, muttering, “Arabic. Arabic.”

The first picture is actually of the McDonald’s in the Paris airport before we left on Royal Air Maroc. Stylish are the French, ey? The rest of the photos are all taken in Fes, Morocco. I love their architecture in case you can’t tell.

Oh, and I forgot to mention… I accidently deleted the Misery post. I’ll do my best to recreate the wonderful images of my three days from digestive system hell some other time. Enjoy.

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We sat, or folded you might say, into our Trenitalia seats, incomplete with only a lumbar and headrest that bent the upper half of your back into an uncomfortable C with your chin resting on your chest.  No amount of squirming could make the seats bearable for our overnight from Venice to Rome.  Not until the man and the woman who was “chewing her boyfriend’s tongue,” as Bryan so well put it, left were we able to catch a wink by contorting ourselves into oblong fetus shapes accordianed across two seats or dangling over the aisle like a clothes line.

We arrived into Rome, disembarking at the wrong terminal where I reserved a seat to Bari for the wrong day before we headed to Roma Termini only to find out that not a single bed was empty in this city today.  After an hour of unsuccesful wandering, we gave up and headed for the Sistine Chapel.  The line wrapped around to St. Peter’s Square.  Parades of smiling people with signs in Italian and groups of boys playing guitars while girls danced in circles around them stretched through the streets and into St. Peter’s Square.  A nice young man with a yellow vest told us that the Pope would be speaking today, so we figured we’d stick around to see.  5:30pm, the boy said, so we headed off.

At about 1:30, we returned.  We stood in a sweaty crowed, scarfing down our gelatos and joking until the sun grew too intense.  Firenzians gave us hats because they were concerned for our skin’s well being under the Italian UV rays.  At 2 they were scheduled to begin allowing people into the Square, but we soon became aware of a bountiful number of blue tickets in the hands of our fellow crowdmates.  When the gates opened at 2:15, the little old German women standing nearby rushed the gates, and I was swept up in a current of Catholic excitement.  I was carried through the gate before they shut it on Kara and Bryan and the rest of the crowd behind me.  I’d made it in without a ticket.  Another rush and Kara was through.  But in the third rush, Bryan, the only Catholic in the three of us was caught.

Kara and I gave up the wonderful opportunity of being stuck in a squirming mush of little old Catholic ladies chattering in German and Italian to check out the Parthenon with Bryan. But I let my stubborness take over.  I was determined to see that man with the funny white hat appear at St. Peter’s Square.  No amount of antireligious protest from Kara was going to stop me (a chica raised by scientists) from seeing the Pope.  At 5:30, my stubborness paid off.  We found ourselves a place among the masses and readied our cameras.  Late as usual, the papal music began, such as pop songs in English about the radio, etc.  The Pope’s caravan crept along the street in front of St. Peter’s Basilica.  As he drew closer, the crowd went wild, shouting, waving banners, raising their cameras high over their heads, trying to catch a glimpse or a touch of the Pope.  I began to wonder where the moshpits would be forming.

The Pope was dressed in red for the event, his white hair gleeming above the crowd in a stylish bihawk.  As Bryan observed, and I agree, “He’s so cute!”

It wasn’t until much later that we discovered the reason for the fuss… Pentecoste! 

NOTE: if you’re going to Rome, check whether or not it’s a Catholic holiday, and if it is, book well in advance.

Disclaimer: the views expressed by Mohammed in this post are absolutely not mine! 

I’m writing from Marrakesh, Morocco.  Morocco is a country of insanity (in a good way for the most part).  It’s a bilingual country, bilingual in two languages I don’t know–French and Arabic.  My French, however, has improved ten fold since I first arrived in Paris.

Anyway, in Fez… Kara and I met an Australian guy and an Argentinian brother and sister.  The five of us stuck together as an unofficial guide named Mohammed showed us around.  Now the guidebooks advise against unofficial guides, but sticking together, we survived.  In hindsight, however, I would say, pay the $15 or so for the official kind.

Mohammed had many stories to tell.  First, Mohammed has five daughters and two sons.  In terms of his daughters and his wife, “when I tell her eat, she eats.  When I tell her sleep, she sleeps.”  His daughters are not allowed outside the house without supervision.  They do not attend school (by their choice), they do not work, they spend their lives inside the walls of his home, watching television, cooking and sleeping.  The reason for this, he says, is that men will try to sleep with his daughters, and if his daughters are tainted, it will be harder for them to marry.

Mohammed has a business in the United States selling Moroccan goods (of the legal kind), fountains and the like.  How was he able to stay in the US?  He married an American woman.  “I found a black woman.  You know those black people; they’ll drink your blood,” he said.  But she agreed to marry him.

He showed us the pictures of a wedding for one of his daughters.  He had offered an American boy several thousand dollars to fly to Morocco, marry his daughter, and take photographs to show to the immigration officials so his daughter could gain entry into the United States.  She did.  She has now recently married a Muslim unofficialy, and is living with him. “Those Americans, they don’t know anything,” he said.

And that was Fez.

On a side note, the Australian and I had horrible allergy attacks as we wandered the pulsing maze of alleways and souqs with vendors, pickpockets, hustlers (like the one that was leading us), donkeys, mules, etc.  It was a smorgasboard for allergy sufferers and anyone interested in Moroccan arts and culture.

And now, after an eight hour train ride, I’m in Marrakesh.  It’s tame in comparison to Fez.  Tame and about 20 degrees warmer.  Fez was comfortably cool; Marrakesh is nearly blistering in midday.  The markets are less crowded, the men less agressive, the pickpockets more careful.  Unlike in Fez, I feel safe walking alone, or well, without a man.  This city is much more used to tourists.

As Kara and I made our way through the stalls, doing our best not to be run over by donkeys and motorbikes, men said everything from “hello, hi, hola, ca va?, gazelle, beautiful, yes yes?, fish and chips, irish?” anything they could come up with to try and rope us into buying shoes, jewerly, silver tea sets from them. 

At one stall we were rudely recieved when a man tried to sell us beaded jewerly worth no more than $5 each for $20 each and we refused.  He put the jewerly back and told us to not waste his time.

At another stall, a young salesman who could speak the lingo of trade in four languages, and was doing his best to speak three at once haggled with me for a couple pair of beautiful turqouise shoes.  He laughed as Kara made faces at each price, and he did his best to switch French to English to Spanish, the latter of which I forced him to speak.  Now that sort of attitude will get me to give in on the price a bit sooner.

Kara and I found a stall with the most beautiful fabrics on the face of the earth. A royal fuschia lace over a solid fabric of the same color. Startling blues, burgandies, oranges, the perfect stuff for Moroccan wedding dresses. The most beautiful, and most perfectly matched to my skin tone, as well. I couldn’t help but be girly about it. No way will I be wearing white at my wedding; I’ll be returning to Morocco and buying that fabric. Unfortunately, however, the price of that fabric was 15 nights worth of accommodation, and I’m not getting married any time soon… must prioritize

Finally, here in Place Djeema el-Fna, before sunset, open air cafes (if that’s the word for it) set up shop in the plaza.  Less than $5 for a full meal of couscous and vegetables, bread and drinks for two people as you watch the sunset behind the red mud buildings, the Moroccan flag blowing in the evening wind, and hoards of men dressed in white labcoats coaxing tourists to their tables with “Merci, merci, merci.”

Marrakesh is doable for females on their own.  Just watch out for the snake charmers!

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Barcelona won the European Cup. Thousands of Spaniards, Brazilenos, and even Arsnel fans flocked to the city’s bars to witness the event. And in Barcelona it was the event of a lifetime. Sitting in a bar with a beer and temporary friends, cigar smoke rising from the floor below, heads glued to the big screens mounted on the walls, fans from both sides and from neither side came together with an energy unparalleled in the US and definitely in New Zealand.

I sat with four new English friends and a Russian. Being American, from a country that couldn’t care less about a European soccer game, I got to root for the winning team. So Barcelona it was.

Decked out in blue and red stripes, Barcelona fans jumped and yelled for joy and hugged each other, and flooded the streets headed for La Rambla. And then the explosions started, the fireworks and the glow of orange flares, and drums and chanting and dancing and blasting of horns. Traffic lights were torn down. Fans climbed light posts and trees to string up their flags–Barcelona, Senegal, Brazil, Catalunya.

Men stood by tins of ice and beer selling for a euro or two. Hands were loose and found their way to pockets and purses and asses and other hands in celebration. The entire Rambla was packed tight. The English fans couldn’t be depressed for a moment with that kind of fiesta.

According to my Russian friend, the next morning the news stations around Europe broadcast these images, and reported how unsafe La Rambla was that night. But the next day, the streets were sparkling clean and the decapatated light posts had been removed. If it weren’t for the few hardcore fans roaming the streets with their banners and blow horns, no one would know what had happened the night before.

What a wonderful time to come to Barcelona on a whim. I had no idea until an hour before just how wonderful my timing had been. See why having only flexible plans is a good thing??? And now I have again settled into the travel routine, overcome the culture shock, the loneliness, and stepped back out of my shell. And I can painlessly skip down European streets with my 10 kilo pack fitted to the curves of my back. No regrets now!