around the world in 180 days

Yesterday, I couldn’t switch to an English keyboard layout and today Anna can’t. Lucky me, I guess.

Anyway, Morocco and Marrakesh are a great place to end our trip. We are staying in the Medina, a huge, walled area of the old town that is centered on the Place Djemaâ el Fna, which is the largest square on the African continent and is filled with henna tatooers, snake charmers, monkey tamers, orange juice salesmen and spice sellers during the day. At night, it comes alive, flooding with locals who come to see the jugglers and other artists and listen to the storytellers, drummers and singers. There are also tons of street stalls that serve food that smells wonderful but that we haven’t yet tried.

Behind the square is an enourmous labyrinthine marketplace, the largest we’ve ever seen, called the “souqs,” which means shops. The vendors are aggressive, but not like India and it’s almost amusing to once again see the same tactics deployed in yet another part of the world. It’s as if all the small time vendors, people who work in markets around the world, have an annual convention where they exchange tips and advice on what works and what doesn’t. “Hello, friend! Have a look! Looking is free, looking is free. I give you cheap price!”

Still, the vendors here are just a bit more remarkable. As a sort of crossroads for southern Europe, albeit dominated by France, Morocco has a large blend of languages. Most vendors speak their native Moroccan Arabic (distinct from the Arabic spoken in the Gulf and elsewhere), their colonial French, perhaps a dialect of Berber, and a smattering of English, German and Dutch. I’m wearing a hat of the FC Bayern Munchen, so a lot of vendors think we’re German. I get a lot of “Enshuldigung,” which I just ignore, same as if they speak in English. I just find it amazing that so many street vendors, who probably haven’t had as much in the way of schooling as the average American, can speak 4, 5 or 6 languages fluently.

Morocco, or at least Marrakesh, is also a great place for oranges. The trees that line the streets are orange trees, with ripening fruit hanging on them, and you can’t throw a stone without hitting an orange vendor. The oranges are some of the best I’ve ever tasted, juicy and ripe and delicious and the juice they make out of them is phenomenal as well. I want to go eat another one right now . . .

We’ve got another day in Marrakesh before we go to Essouira, a smallish resort/fishing village on the Atlantic coast, 2.5 hours by bus from here. We’ll spend 3 nights there, returning to Marrakesh on Wednesday, before our flight to Frankfurt and the end of our vacation. We have 9 days left (maybe less, if we get on an earlier flight to MSP, which is possible) and we’re both happy to be in Morocco and happy to be going home.

Please forgive me, but this post will be short and error strewn. The keyboard on this computer is significantly different, yet similar enough to really mess with me. In most places, you can change it to an English keyboard and ignore the letters on the keys; but that won’t work here. It’s frustrating being reduced to hunt and peck after years of touch typing.

So. We’ve made it to Marrakesh in one, albiet very tired, piece. We left Prague 2 days ago on another wonderful night train and arrived in Frankfurt at 6 in the morning. Each of our 3 night trains has sucked in its own special way; the first time with the all night passport checks, the second with the dreaded stinky roommate and this last journey because of the 2 middle aged drunks that were in our compartment. It was actually pretty entertaining: they were funny drunks and they were more interested in laughing than anything else, we were just ready for them to quiet down around midnight or so.

So we had a short night of sleep on the train. We wandered blearily around Frankfurt’s (closed) red-light district and the “old town” (almost everything was destroyed in WWII and subseauently rebuilt) before taking a bus out to Hahn airport, which is where Ryanair flies out of. The airport is called Frankfurt-Hahn; but that’s something like calling Duluth’s airport Minneapolis-Duluth, because Hahn and Frankfurt aren’t even close to each other. We’d done our research and knew this, so we booked a night at a hotel by the airport and did the 2 hour bus ride yesterday instead of at 2 this morning.

Marrakesh strikes both of us as a sort of India-lite: there is some of the same flexibility in traffic rules, there is some of the same madness, and the people are somewhat similar in their approach to life, from what we can gather. Still, it has none of the intensity of India, its not so overwhelming and intimidating. Most of the smells (and there are many) are pleasant instead of foul. Our hotel is centrally located, not insanely expensive and is nice. All of these things would be different in the big I. It seems a great place to end our trip: some of the madness of South Asia, but in a more managable form.

I’m surprised I made it this far, but I’m sick of typing. I’ll find another internet shop and post again once we’ve had a full day here and explored a bit more.

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