Teepee For My Bunghole

Dear Diary

Last night I watched CSI in English (two episodes one after the other). It was heaven because the only other program I’ve seen so far in English is Magnum PI (I don’t count the Bold and the Beautiful).

I’ll keep checking all 50 channels every night and keep you posted.

Laters, G.

One of the cities that I’ve walked around in. Geneva, Neuchatel, Montreau, all pretty much the same – nice old buildings, lots of Swiss flags, a beautiful lake and cafes and shops along roads full of character.

Anyway, more pics on my photos site.

So visiting friends is a completely different type of travel to backpacking. I don’t interact much with the locals because here in the countryside, besides the language barrier there isn’t much mense walking around in the first place.

I don’t feel like walking around much either because the lack of pavements discourages one from walking. (For any rural Swiss people reading this, pavements are those pieces of ground on the sides of the road suitable for pedestrians).

Anyways, this leaves me with a lot of answered questions. Like this shutter thing. All the joints have shutters, which I imagine is great for a bit of extra warmth in winter but I can’t for the life of me figure out how they should be employed in summer.

I’ve been watching the houses and seeing the shutters shut and open on the houses and trying to correlate that with position of the sun, time of day, people in the room, direction of the wind and other factors but I still can’t figure out the logic.

There must be some reason why they keep opening and closing them. I just can’t fathom why dark rooms would be a bonus at any time during the summer. Maybe I’m just too African to figure this one out.

Things I’ve done in Switzerland:

• Chill by a river
• Go to a great indoor pool
• Chill by Lake Neuchatel
• Braai [BBQ] for Shaheed’s birthday
• Go to an dinosaur park in the Jura region
• Go to Geneva by car
• Go to a water park
• Eat chocolate

By the way, the link to my travel photos that I got wrong in a previous post is fixed. You’ll have to wait till next month before I can upload more photos though.

The weather is great. I was a bit worried on my way over from Morocco because I don’t have much cold clothes. Its about 26 to 30 every day.

Last night there was even a bit of a thunderstorm. A very Swiss thunderstorm. In and out very efficiently, with all the appropriate elements (wind, thunder, lightning, rain) at appropriate times for appropriate intervals.

 I’m pretty much just chilling around the joint feeling very much like a lurker. I planned originally to leave this weekend but I’ll have to stay a bit while I courier my stuff to Pretoria to get another Moroccan visa. Ya, against all expectations and what everyone said, I can only get another Moroccan visa from the South African embassy. What a bitch.

Nonetheless, Fatie and Shaheed have been very accommodating about me being a total leech (there’s nothing like Kaapse mense [Capetonians]) and I’ve just got to get this courier business done as soon as I can.

More on my travel pics site…

So I’m in Switzerland. I was on the internet deciding on my options and Fatima told she was making butter chicken and rootie for Sunday lunch and suddenly I clicked a couple of times and I had a ticket to the land of chocolate and trains that arrive on time.

I shagged myself with the price because I should have shopped around more and also realised that I was working in pounds and not euros but I’ve had butter chicken for lunch and let me tell you that it was worth it. 

Now if you’re picturing a place with cottage-like houses, green fields with cows, picturesque mountains and postcard views, you’ve just pictured exactly the area I’m staying in the moment. I’m trying hard to think of it as really real.

I’m so close to the border that if I fart it stinks in France but visa issues mean I have to stick to this side of the green fields. I don’t mind, this Switzerland place is a delicious relax mind trip. You can’t believe the peacefulness.

Heidi should be around here somewhere. Yodelayeeooo nurse.

Okay so I got permission to leave the country. It’s a typed four-line printout that I could have duplicated in an hour. It looks easier than manufacturing a fake stamp for a Le Club matinee (back in the day). I still need to get someone to translate it for me so that I can be sure there’s no hiccups though.

Anyway I went up to Rabat and met up with some Slovenians (not to be confused wth Slovakians) I’d met in the Casa hostel. In the hostel in Rabat I also met up with a group of Aussies. I also ran into a bra from Rabat that I’d met at the Gnawa Festival and ended up going for supper to his friends with the Aussies and the Slovenians in tow. Also a French 17-year old lightie who was staying in the hostel with his family went along.

Anyway the supper was late but great (normal in Morocco) and we ended up chilling the night on some rooftop somewhere. Music – strangeness – beautiful – bunch of characters people – lots of laughing for no reason (all normal in Morocco).

When we got back to the hostel the next morning, they chucked us out. Apparently the French kid hadn’t let his parent know where he was even though we checked with him a gazillion times that they were okay with him staying out and he had a cellphone on him.

Chucked out of a fucken youth hostel  – made to pay for a night I didn’t sleep there including a breakfast I didn’t have. We took photos and went out different ways. I came back to Mehdia to sleep, get my laundry done and shower and greet the ocean – basically wash off the crazy part of Morocco.

Deciding what to do – again.

Okay so I went to the Surete Nationale (cops) 9am today (in a very nice building actually) and they sent me to the airport to get letter from the airport police there saying that I couldn’t leave so that they give me a letter to allow me to leave. Serious.

Anyway the response at the airport was negative, very negative. I had to stry with them just to get a scribble on a card out of them just to prove I’d been there.

Then it was back to the police station where I got to see how the rest of the world used to use typewriters 20 years ago. Never clicking Print a couple of times, this was 5 layers of carbon copy in action. Yeah that got boring pretty quick but I just had to sit there and wait. Basically I figure typing so much makes you kak scared of making mistakes and kak lazy to type documents – which is what I needed them to do.

They called me over a couple of times to see if there was anywhere else they could send me but I had them covered and cornered. At times if I could have figured out the amount of kak I would have to cause to have me sent out the country but not put in jail, I would have done it.

At 4h30pm someone told me that it was possible for them to help me. I got slightly happy. At 5pm they told me to come back tomorrow. I wonder if I killed enough people if they would consider me too dangerous to keep in their jails and just send me out of the country?

Turns out that “semaine” in French actually means weeks and not months. So somewhere along the line I got told I have a 3-month visa when I actually have a 3-week visa. So they won’t let me leave the country – ironic that I have to fight to leave the country when one of the reasons I want to leave the country is to stay longer. 

I was planning to write this post from Switzerland instead the flight ticket butted and I got sent to Casablanca to sort out the problem. So after 5 hours on a hot train yesterday, then sleeping on a hotel roof terrace because the hotel was full, sleeping on some chairs because the terrace couches were full, sleeping in snatches for 3 hours and missioning early to the airport, I had the pleasure of missioning around the hassle of Marrakesh, another 4-hour train ride, followed by a couple of more hour long train rides and visiting police stations and airports and talking to lots and lots of uniforms only to be told that I needed to come back Monday morning.

It was heartbreaking to be stopped at passport control and be denied. To be told that my ticket isn’t refundable. To have to go all the way back to Casablanca. To smile and stay positive. It was one hard fucken day that’s for sure.

But if these motherfsckers think they’re going to wear me down by sending me missioning around in the heat with my backpack from place to place, they got another thing coming. They’re going to run out of places to send me long before I run out of energy that’s for fucken sure.

Basically I figured out now that I need authorisation to leave the country and I also figured out that these mense have been sending me around for very little reason. But now I scheme I’m on the right track, but we’ll have to see Monday I suppose and then its the budgetting planning mission to see if Switzerland is still on.

I could mission to London or Mauritania (bet that’s the first time you ever heard of that country!) to renew my Moroccan visa because its cheaper and easier but I just don’t lus for London and there’s some brasse I smaak to hook up with in Switzerland. Only now it looks like I’ll be limited to less cities. But I’m still here, finally showered, finally with some solid food in the belly, ready to face another day, ready to… ready to sleep actually. Mmm, sleep… ZZZ