21.12.2011 - The flight to Morocco

It was a strange flight, especially, since I had to take the train from Zurich to Geneva, then fly back north to Frankfurt and after that, finally make it to Casablanca. Needless to say that I was pretty hammered when I arrived. Lucky I already had my (long distance) taxi driver that Christophe organized for me. He dropped me off at the hotel that was already organized for me as well. I have to say though, the room was pretty bad. It smelled of a mixture between smoke and a strong stench of mildew. But the worst part was that it was right beside the elevator and that you could hear the damn thing going up and down through the wall right where the head of my bed was. So even though it was two in the morning and I was dog tired, I had trouble going to sleep.

22.12.2011 - Casablanca, day 1

My first glance through the windows confirmed what I had already seen on my short taxi drive though the city. Most of the houses where white, and there were not an awful lot of trees in the city. Casablanca, I realized, is cold at night and can get pretty warm during the day. The difference is roughly 20 degrees Celsius, with it being around 5 at night and around 25 during the day, depending on the time of day.

The city has wide boulevards, reminiscent of Paris, hinting at the French influences. My first revelation is that my city map is pretty much rendered useless, since there are no street signs, except on said large boulevards. So I stealthily turned to my GPS, whenever I feel that no one is watching. There was much less traffic on the roads and on the route I choose, there were much more men on the streets than there are women. Men are mostly seen in groups and woman are often alone and walk swiftly. There are all kinds of ways woman dress in. Most of them are dressed in the traditional way, but the closer you come to the shopping districts of town, the more you see woman dress in the occidental fashion. There are still distinct differences (such as that the butt always has to be covered, and, even tough they wear miniskirts, the legs are always covered with stockings).

The first route I took, lead me to the Hassan II mosque, second largest in the world, as I learn on the tour I took there. Half built on water, a circumstance that is based on a verse in the Quran, it juts out majestically into the Atlantic Ocean. After a pizza I took a stroll through the old medina and learn that it and the area north of it, around the mosque do not have running water. I even spotted the man with the cart that brings canisters of water to the houses. As it is often the case with cities, there were a lot of feral cats and dogs in the streets.

If nothing else, the old Medina is a market. Chickens are sold directly from the cages and the chose specimen's jugular is cut right then and there, and it is bled dry according to the ways of halal meat preparation. I saw spices, clothes, music and video (all illegally copied in their cheap carton sliders), music vendors with their loudspeakers walking through the streets, blaring. Vendors selling mirrors, lamps and so much more things on pieces of cloth on the squares on the ground. Small kiosk-like stalls where the vendor disappears behind mountains of tissues, drinking water and Always ultra packets. Equipment for daily use, such as beauty products and tools. It's a place where not only tourists, but also the poorer come to buy their daily goods. And there is never fixed price. Even when I bought a bottle of water, I have to trust the vendor that he sells it to me at a fair price.

As I exited the market madness that is the old medina, an old man, all his teeth lost, started talking to me and up to this day I wondered if he just talked to me to tell me where I can find the best cream for the pimples on my skin or to direct me to a friend of his, who sold art. The outer rim of the medina was another microcosm of its own, consisting mostly of black people from the southern African states (mostly economic refugees, wanting to go to Europe), so sell small trinkets on cloths, and roofed stalls, run by Moroccans, selling more expensive things.
Another thing that added to flavour was the young boys, pulling after them boom boxes on wheels, blaring out mostly oriental, but sometimes also familiar music and selling black market CDs and cassettes. And there there were the carton gatherers, walking through the streets, calling for people to bring their cartons with a high pitched call.

After walking through the streets some more, mostly the large ones. I stumbled across a church, of all things. It was a strange place, completely white, made of concrete, empty but for an eerie echo, and over-infested with pigeons. A friendly man said I could climb the stairs for two dirham. The stairs were almost slippery with pigeon shit, but the view from the top was really worth the ordeal. The interesting thing was, you could even walk over the roof, even though there was no fence or anything preventing you from falling. So I just did that.

In the evening, I had dinner with Philip, a friend of Christophe's and he took me to a nice little restaurant where I tasted traditional Moroccan food for the first time. It wouldn't be the last.

23.12.2011 - Casablanca, day 2

I asked if I could change my room, because of the elevator sound, but the new one they gave me, was the one on the roof and you could hear pigeons cooing and walking around on it all night. I needed to remind myself to get something to plug my ears with. The day before Philip told me to go and see Les Habous and so I took off south along the streets, following my GPS, since the streets still were not named. I still think people watching is one of the most interesting things one can do when abroad. There were still mostly men on the street. Men standing around car parts on a plaza I passed, men wearing djellabas (a full body, hooded Berber clothing), a man walking with a cart full of cardboard, shouting to the people to bring out more for collection (I supposed). Another thing that I noticed was, people on foot had no rights. Even though there are marked crossings, there are to traffic lights for them, so you just have to observe and walk whenever no cars are coming. And pray no car will suddenly appear out of nowhere anyhow.

When I arrived in Les Habous it was a street with stores, slightly touristy perhaps, but very cute. You could buy slippers and books and bags, mostly. I arrived at the small park at the end just in time for the Friday prayer and rested there on a bench for a while to listen to the chanting. On the same bench sat a woman, traditionally clad, an her child and we smiled at each other.

For lunch I went to El Bahadia, a congregation of permanent tents where you could sit and eat. The host of the restaurant I chose was clearly a bit out of it, when he saw a tourist woman sitting there alone, but he did his best serve me the camel meat I ordered (which was delicious) and patted me on the back when I was done (which I was sure was not how he would have treated a Moroccan woman, but seemed to be how he thought I wanted to be treated, all in all a very strange and out of place moment). You eat with your hands and use the bread as cutlery. I also had tea, and observed others around me, how they prepared it: you got a full jar and a cup, then first poured a cup, then pour it back into the jar, to mix the sugar well and then finally you pour the first cup.

Wandering through the streets of Derb Ghalef nearby afterwards, I had a very strange episode when an elderly man suddenly darted out of the crowd and touched me, just to dart back again and leave me flabbergasted. I should have cried out in anger, but at that moment I was just too befuddled to do so. Up to this day I don't understand that gesture.

After I have had the feeling that I've seen everything, I took a taxi to the Avenue de la Croniche, a long street along the ocean. The beaches were full of people playing football and were fishing, and if you happen to walk on the sand, a lot of men try and talk to you. I avoided that after a while. There were also men with horses on the beach, Berbers, that sold horse rides to children. At the end of this avenue, I saw some sort of construction and it was my goal to reach it. I soon realized that it was a huge building and that I had underestimated the length of the walk, so I was pretty tired when I finally arrived at what was a huge mall with a Gallerie Lafayette, McDonalds and whatnot. In the IMAX there I watched “Mission Impossible — Ghost Protocol” there, which in itself gave me a funny episode, as one of the men there at the till was really overly helpful and almost protective as he tried to show me around the cinema and where everything was, even though I had only asked him where the entrance to the actual room was where the movie was shown (since this wasn't immediately clear).

The taxi ride home was also very nice. I had a good long conversation with the guy — but in the end I completely forgot to tip him...

24.12.2012 - Casablanca, day 3

Today was time to change hotels and to get to the hotel for the people of the tour I booked, so full of new hope and joy to finally get rid of this noisy room I packed my stuff and took a taxi to a small very touristy restaurant called La Squala, another tip from Philip, and a place where they serve a superb breakfast.

I took another walk through the old Medina and walked to the Boulevard Al Massira and Al Khadra, the ultra-modern high end shopping streets of Casablanca. To get some internet I had a slice of cake and a cup of tea at the there famous restaurant branch “Venician Ice”, which is somehow a mix between Starbucks and a Les Champs Elysée café.

After this small break I plunged into a side street towards the very close Maarif quarter, a set of narrow streets filled with stores, stands, music, cars and people everywhere and then, finally, I set out back north, through a residential area towards the hotel (which was called the Hotel Suisse, by the way).

It was early evening when I arrived there and soon also the first people from the tour arrived. The first person I met was Neera and I took a liking to her immediately. When everyone had arrived we had a small briefing in the meeting room of the hotel and also met our guide, Hamid, who would be a source for joy and laughter on our tour. After that, we went to eat in a fish restaurant at the Avenue de la Corniche.

25.12.2011 - Rabat

he first stop on our tour was Rabat, and on our journey, we had time to introduce ourselves. First of all there was Neera, who was a girl with Indian roots, living in Toronto, then there were Carmela and Valerie, two Australian girls from Melbourne. Hans and Lisette, a father and his daughter from the Netherlands. Bruce and Claire, a couple who are originally from South Africa, but live in London. Robert and Denise a very nice couple from Calgary. And an Austrian woman, who I bunked with in the hotels, but cannot for the life of me remember her name. On our journey Hamid taught us some Moroccan proverbs and one kind of stuck: “Don't take yourself so seriously, everybody else doesn't.”

So yes, our first stop was Rabat and it was just pure sightseeing. First we went to see Bab Oudaïa, the lovely little old town with the blue houses on Bou Regreg river, then, after a short food stop, we went to the Mausoleum of Mohammed V, more or less a congregation of pillars set on the ruins of an old mosque and a building where a lot of people paid homage to the old king.

For midday we had some food on the outskirts of the souk and then plunged into said souk for an hour or two. The market was a lot less aggressive than in Casa, and it seemed that there were a lot less tourists as well. As with every souk, you had an outer wall to it that separated the Medina from the modern section of this city and as in Casa, you also had a lot of black people, probably mostly fugitives from the south, trying to sell things. Another thing that caught my eye was that boys always seemed to appear in groups of three and most of the youths here seemed to wear black leather jackets.

After Rabat, we went straight on the Meknes, where we went to the hotel there. Dinner was at a nice little restaurant and I had a chicken tajine. It wouldn't be the last tajine of this vacation.

26.12.2011 - Meknes and Volubilis

For our sightseeing in Meknes we went to see the ruins of the royal granaries and stables Heri es-Souani, which were set near the beautiful artificial Agdal Basin. The granaries themselves where quite extraordinary from a architectural standpoint and made for some really nice pictures. We also took some pictures in some modern ruins, just behind the granaries — which displayed a lot of graffiti and drawings. I wonder what they are used for if the guards are not looking...

Then we went to see the Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail a rather large structure of buildings with all sorts of calligraphy such as the Iranian Kufic style, Moroccan, Andalusian and Ottoman. We were told the colours in the Islamic star decorations on the walls represented different Virtues. Yellow (saffron) was for fertility, black (mascara) for beauty, white for purity, blue (water) for life and green for the Islam. The horseshoes you could sometimes see in the designs represented luck and they were done with their open side pointing downwards, so the bad luck falls out. Another design is the hand of Fatima that wards off the evil eye. I also learned that the Mihrab was a niche in the mosque showing where Mecca is, and the Minbar is a sort of high seat where the iman sits to speak to and pray with the congregation.

After the mausoleum we went to a shop where they sold black wood inlayed with silver, bus since this was not to my taste, I walked around a bit. After that we went to Place Hedim and the souk there, which was again completely different from either the Casa or Rabat souk. First of all, a lot of food was sold and then there was also a meat part where, as a symbol that the meat was still fresh, they had cow heads on their stores that more often than not gathered a lot of flies. That, mixed with the scent of sweets attracting a lot of wasps and a lot of other food and the narrow set stands, and the dense crowd of people, all came together as quite intense and I have to admit that I got a little sick. Happily, we were soon out of the fray and went for refreshments in a restaurant the looked over the plaza.

Our time in Meknes was soon drawing to a close after that and our bus came to take us to the Roman ruins of Volubilis where we had a guide, leading us through the place. I soon was reminded again what Doric, Ionic and Corinthian capitals were told all about the layout of the old city. From the forum (the agra) to the basilica and the temple and even a brothel. I also hadn't known that most Romans had suffered from lead poisoning, because the plumbing was mostly lead pipes. Most mosaics that you could still discern were from Jupiter, Juno and Athena.

So what else did I learn these past days. Arabic words. Shukran = Thank you., la = no, bismilla = Cheers., shuf! = look!, kul! = eat!, harem = hidden (opposite of halal), mellah = salt, but also sallary (in the past you were sometimes paid in salt).

After Volubilis we went on to Fes and ate in a very kitchy restaurant there with belly dancers and a magician.

27.12.2011 - Being sick in Fes

In Fes I became weak and as I accompanied the group to a vantage point that overlooked the city, I realized that I was getting sick. So there was no guided tour to the medina, no pottery and no tannery for me. I stayed at home in the hotel and slept and watched a censored version of “Twilight — Eclipse”, which was really entertaining. In the evening some of the group came to me to see how I was. Hans offered me medication and Denise offered me a reiki session. I politely declined one and accepted the other. The reiki session with Denise was a very beautiful experience and I felt better, too.

28.12.2011 - Travelling to Erfoud

The next day consisted mainly of travelling. We passed a village where Hamid told us that it was traditional to have an apple feast every year, since the village was famous for its apples. He also explained that the dogs you sometimes saw at the side of the road were feral and were waiting for food. Sometimes people who were passing by in their cars fed them. We now reached the mountains and soon it got colder than it was in the low lands. We stopped in a small pine wood where Hamid told us we could photograph monkeys (much to the joy of our best photographer, Robert) , and there was also stand with fossils, but Hamid assured us that there would be more beautiful fossils later on (as per his favourite phrase: “The best is yet to come.”). We past the town that was called Switzerland town, since it was so clean, but was actually founded by the French for a Ski resort for rich people. Hamid also told us that there were three Berber dialects, one in the Middle Atlas, one in the Anti Atlas and one in the Rif Mountains in the north.

After a small coffee break in a town that consisted mostly of a few houses around the street we were travelling on, we went off again.

We bought lunch at another small village and then stopped for lunch at a small river with a wonderful view of the surrounding landscape.

Our next stop was a huge palm tree plantation at the foot of the Middle Atlas mountains. Hamid told us that the palm trees belonged to everyone equally. If someone of the community was poor then people would help this person to finance a house and buy them food until they were able to take care of themselves. They would even get a donkey for tilling the ground. Marriages in these parts lasted for 3 days and the woman had to wear black or else she would attract the evil eye. But what is the evil eye? Hamid tells us it's a sort of doppelganger, a djinn who can be found in natural things such as cats, dogs and waterways and he can possess you. It really seemed that he believed in this.

Next was Erfoud, and on our way there Hamid told us a bit of the kings of Morocco. The past king, Hassan II was a tyrant and people didn't like him. Whenever someone spoke up, he made people disappear. The new king Muhammed V was better. There still was no freedom of speech in the press, but he was much more modern than the old kind. He was for woman's rights, his own wife was shown in public with open hair. He taking measures against unemployment, and created better health care. His measures against poverty were of course not entirely altruistic, as less poverty also lessens dissensions among people and kills the seeds of religious fundamentalism. He also allowed divorce and passed the right that a man should now only have one woman instead of up to four (something that was not enforced though — and in the country, men still sometimes two women). The king is also the commander of the army and the believers and holds the ministry of foreign affairs.

We soon arrived in Erfoud, as we were told, a Bedouin town at the border of the Sahara desert. There we stayed over night in a house made entirely out of wood, straw and clay. We had a wonderful dinner and later, people would play the drums in the candle light.

29.12.2011 - A Jeep ride and a camel ride

In the morning Valerie, Neera, Bruce, Claire and me took a 4x4 Jeep ride into the black mascara desert. We first stopped at a house with some Senegalese who were singing and dancing for us. Then we just drove for a while passing military bases and fossils before we shortly stopped by some workers who were digging for mascara all day and had a very enlightening conversation. They told us that they had to work at least five days in a row and were digging for mascara, lead and any stone that would sell in Europe. Also their foreman was pretty cruel to them, it seemed, since he was lazy and didn't do the work he promised. I didn't know if they told us that to stir our sympathy or just because they knew that we wouldn't tell anyone anyway. We also stopped by a Bedouin house and where allowed to see what they lived like.

When we got back we had to get some lunch and then get ready for our camel ride. We were told how to bind a turban and then were brought to our camels. From there it was a very peaceful ride to a camp a few kilometres into the desert. People apparently lived there permanently and they had already prepared tea for us. Also dinner was soon to be served. Before dinner, however, we all climbed the highest dune nearby and all just sat there to have a sundowner.

Dinner was wonderful and after it, I suggested to the others that we just sat in the desert and saw if we saw animals. But the others (mostly the woman of the group) were so wound up and loud that this just didn't work. So, I dragged them up the dune again, even though when we finally arrived there, only Carmela and Denise had made it to the top. But up there we had one of the funniest moondowners I have had in years.

Back down I first tried to sleep outside with half a ton of blankets on top of me. But it was just too cold and Valerie's snoring didn't help either, so I finally moved to the tent.

30.12.2011 - Merzouga

When I woke up today, I set the alarm clock a little early, so I could still take a walk. I took my iPod with me and listened to the Minkata theme from Myst, since I thought that would be fitting. Even though it was very quiet, I realized that only this far into the desert you are never really alone and here the desert isn't as lifeless as it probably was further in. There crows, spurs of fox and mice, and bushels of grass, probably living off the dew that gathered during the night. All in all this little walk all by myself was pretty relaxing.

After we had tea, we were off with the camels again. We had a real breakfast back at the hotel. From here it we went on to Mezouga. Hamid told us more about his country on the way. The tribes of the Berber were tough ones. They were forced into the Middle Atlas by the French and has no schools, no electricity and only mule roads back then. Now it is of course better, but more often than not woman are still here to bear children and look after matters of the house. We passed a lot of half finished houses on the way and Hamid explained to us that it was a sign that someone had bought a piece of land and owned a house, but only built on it when they had money. Unlike here, people go to the Mosque on Fridays.

When we arrived in Merzouga, a small town nested between the walls of a narrow cliff, we first took a walk through the Alfalfa fields to visit a rug maker cooperative. There we drank tea and learned about rug making and the different colours used for colouring rugs (e.g. yellow is saffron, blue is indigo, green is mint, black is mascara, red is a red flower and brown is a red with vinegar). There are around 25 people working in the cooperative, all living off tourists visiting and buying their rugs.

In the evening we ate at the hotel, a tajine with mean once again.

31.12.2011 - Aït Benhaddou

In the morning we did another bit of driving. Amongst other things we came through the red town of Ouarzazate where we just took some pictures and moved on. Our next stop was Aït Benhaddou, a Unesco world heritage site, often used in movies. It was very touristy (only five families still live here) and a lot of people asked for money for a lot of things, even at the top of the mountain the city was built on, you had children sitting there asking for money to get into a small tower. There were also people selling movie pictures or paintings made with egg yolk and candle fire. But in spite of all of that, the city is a quiet and peaceful place and most of the tourists that come here distribute themselves very well.

We stayed overnight and in the evening we had a small cooking course, making a Berber Tajine ourselves in a restaurant nearby. I did mine together with Neera, and it was spicy, but also a good deal burnt. But it was still reasonably OK. Since it was New Years Eve, the restaurant also served us some really beautiful cake with new year wishes written in Arabic on it.

After this little excursion we came back to the hotel and played charades until midnight, and then, like good Europeans, we toasted.

01.01.2012 - The villages of Imlil and Armed

Our next stop was the High Atlas Mountains and the village of Imlil. Hamid told us that about 60% of the population of Morocco lived in the mountains and that they were more or less self-governed by the elders of the family clans. Similar as with the palm tree plantation, the poor get food, a house and cows.

He also told us what happened when a person died. The person's feet were placed towards Mekka as soon as one was sure that the person was dying, also the person was mostly placed in the first story of the house. As soon as the person had died, there would be no water in the house for at least 3 days and the neighbours would cook and bring the water to the family of the deceased. The body would be wrapped in linen, after 24 hours and the body was wrapped again in a bigger linnen towel and then removed from the house. The bigger linen would be removed from the body upon burying. The women are usually not allowed on the graveyards. They often cry and tear their faces in mourning.

From Imlil we had a hike up to the village of Armed. Since most people were not really of the hiking kind, we had donkeys carrying our luggage while we walked up the mountains, through small villages, terraced fields and up rocky paths. I soon realized that people did not like it if you took pictures of them at all, and so I didn't. The house we stayed in, belonged to another tour guide and a friend of Hamid's and we were introduced to him and his family. He had some very cute kids. In the evening we took a walk around the village and I had a nice long talk with Denise. Then, later, we played charades again and the other tour guide also helped playing. After dinner we sat around the hearth in the biggest room of the house. The house and our rooms were very sparse. Mainly just unadorned stone rooms with niches were the woolly covers were, we could take if we had too cold. Also, the only room that was heated was the one with the hearth. For this night I shared a room with Valerie and Neera.

02.01.2012 - Travelling to Essaouira

In the early morning, we went for a walk again, Neera, Valerie and me and came back just in time for a nice breakfast. Believe it or not, this was actually the first time that I had powdered milk.

Then, it was time to walk down again and, avoiding the old men, peddlers who tried to sell us cheep jewellery, we went back on our trusty bus to Marrakech. We just stopped on the rich outskirts of town to get some money and then later at a mall to get some lunch. The funny thing about this mall was that seeds were sold openly and that meant that a lot of birds were in this mall, picking those seeds from the barrels they were heaped in.

After a short stop literally in the middle of nowhere, we moved on to the argan oil cooperative, where we could see how argan oil and other products made from argan nuts, a nut that only grows in this area and only in Morocco, was produced. When we moved on to Essaouira, we passed a lot of argan trees and some of them had even goats in them, that were eating the leaves! We also said our good-byes to our ever smiling driver Mouhammed; he was to be replaced with a different driver for the rest of our journey.

We arrived in Essaouira in the early evening, and after we got settled in our hotel, Neera and me took a walk around and quickly visited the fort. We found a good restaurant for dinner it was on the roof of a building and overlooked all of the harbour area. It even had a band. The only downside to it was, that it was very windy, and even with my coat it was not very warm. But since this seemed to be a frequent this, the restaurant's service included the giving out of ponchos and so we were reasonably warm.

03.01.2012 - A day in Essaouira

We had the whole day to ourselves to explore Essaouira. The first thing I did today was getting a massage and visiting the hammam. Those two things were a bit away from our hotel within a net of narrow streets filled with touristy looking stores. The massage place was in a small house, up a very narrow stair and in something that looked like a refurbished apartment, but had every bit of the privacy and comfort of any such place I've been to. But before the massage, I embarked on the strange, but beautiful journey of my hammam visit. The hammam was again a bit further away and I was given a towel and a bucket and the lady at the parlour lead me towards the hammam place. We passed some men scrubbing the street on our way. I didn't know what I had expected, but certainly not this: the place looked like a mixture between an underground catacomb and a slaughterhouse. After a short walk through a dark arched tunnel, the ceilings of which was covered with fungi and the walls were nothing but rough, uncovered masonry, we came to the entrance area. Behind a high wooden table stood a woman and behind her were shelves upon shelves, up to the ceiling, filled with towels, scrubs, diapers, tampons and sanitary towels. There were wooden benches at the side of the room and I was told to undress to my underwears. Then I was lead, still with my bucket and my towel down another tunnel to a room of about 30 square meters that looked more like a place where you would slaughter something than an actual washing room. There were no windows and the only light source was in the tunnel. The only things in the room were a small trough-like basin in one corner and a sink hole in the other. I was sat on a small plastic woven mat near the sink hole and left alone to wait. Half-naked, in semi-darkness. And then in came a broad woman, naked but for a piece of cloth covering her nether regions. She carried a bucket of her own with scrubs, wash towels and all kinds of shampoos and soaps. She had a friendly, open face, and even though I was a bit intimidated, I did not object her touching me. First, she too a wash towel with a very rough surface and started to scrub me down, all the while parts of her naked body touched my own, something which I was not used to at all, but somehow did not object to either. The procedure was like some sort of skin peeling and I was astonished at how much dirty skin came off. At the end of it, I was hurting all over, and my skin was scraped and reddened, but it felt good. Then, she washed me with shampoo at least twice and filled her bucket with hot water to splash it over me to wash away the soap. And all the while she tried to adhere to my wishes, using sign language since she didn't speak French. After this experience, I was both roughed up and tired, but happy, and after the massage, I was positively relaxed.

When I went back to the hotel I found out that pretty much all the others had already left and so I decided to set out on my own and walk around town. It didn't take a genius to find out that Essaiouira was a town of surfer dudes, dreaddies and space cakes and that it depended on the tourists through and through. I took a stroll through the market and finally sat down at a pizza place looking over the harbour plaza and had a pizza. There were some children about and one of them asked me with a kind of sly impertinence if he could have a slice of my pizza. Since the pizza was too big for me anyway and since I appreciated his straight forward approach, I decided to give it to him and he bounded off with a grin, sharing it with his companions. On the more unpleasant side, about a few minutes later I was pooed on by a sea gull. I wonder what destiny meant by that. After I had finished my lunch I decided to go for a walk on the beach, barefoot in the water. This was great, up until the moment when a huge freak wave pretty much splashed all over my trousers. I decided to let them dry in a less windy area and walked back through the streets of the city and through some residential areas until I reached the medina again. I was in the middle of the souk and wandered around pretty much aimlessly and had some nice conversations with some people on the market. Interestingly, people here were more interested in talking to you, than in selling you things (even though the normal shout-outs and constant calls for attentions were abundant here as everywhere), and I talked to a merchant who told me that it was easier to sell things here than in Marrakesh, where competition wasn't as harsh, even though profit was also less. The conversation with him was so interesting and comfortable that I actually wanted to buy something off his store, but he refused to sell me anything, which struck me as amazing. I also talked to a Moroccan dreaddie who told me all about his education and to a French guy who just had this stand at the souk, but travelled to all different sort of places. When I finally got home, it was already evening.

We had crepes for dinner and actually just wanted to go to bed, but we stumbled upon a few guys at the hotel's reception, one of them working at the hotel, who just had had a huge chicken and plum tajine served for the for dinner (cooked by the wonderful deaf cooking lady of the hotel), and as per Moroccan custom they just invited everyone to have a share. I thought it would make for an interesting conversation and didn't refuse. It was a very interesting conversation. One of the guys there actually had been to Switzerland and regarded Swiss people as rather cold. Coming from a warm and open culture such as this, I couldn't blame him for this statement, but tried to explain that Swiss people needed some warming up and that once you get to know them, they are as friendly and forthcoming as everyone. Also the subject of European women cropped up and it really was the case that Moroccans believed that woman mainly came here for sex and that they were regarded as a bit slutty because of it. Again, something that I couldn't blame them for and I had a hard time trying to explain that this just wasn't the case. They didn't believe me, or thought that I was somehow the exception to the rule. It was a very rousing conversation, but interesting to have.

04.01.2012 - Sightseeing in Marrakech

It was time for our trip to Marrakech. We were driven directly to the city centre and had a guide from there that lead us through the gardens, then the souk and finally through Bahia Palace. After, we had some time to look through the souks and possibly buy things.

The city of Marrakech is beautiful, but the only problem is that there are a lot of mopeds, especially in the souks and that leads to a lot of smog and very bad air in the streets. A lot of mopeds also leads to a lot of traffic chaos in the streets. There was an incident where there was a woman on the moped and wasn't let through and things got quite aggressive when a man called her a whore, probably because she was dressed in vibrant pink and wore make-up. She got off the moped and started to hit him.

After our wanderings through the souk we came upon the Jemaa El-Fna. It is hard to describe the tumult and the life that is this place — I have never seen anything like it. There are food stalls, drummers, dancers, snake charmers, story tellers and people, so many people and cars and mopeds. It's a true assault on all senses. It is however not possible to take pictures on the plaza, as people will run to you with hats in their hands, demanding money, even checking the cameras to see if there is a picture of them if you deny them.

We soon found a café overlooking the plaza and watched the sunset there. You had to buy the drinks at the entrance at appropriately exorbitant prices, of course, but the view was worth it.

After, we ate something at the food stalls. I had a bowl of snails (mainly to see if I could eat them). There were also other meats as well as sheep brains. I gave the latter a pass. With our bellies full, we still walked through some souk streets for a while. We wanted to take a taxi to our hotel, but it took a while until we found one that wasn't terribly overpriced. Luckily Hamid told us not to take a taxi for more than 10 dirham.

05.01.2012 - Palm tree plantations and good-byes

I decided to book a premature return flight from Marrakech to Switzerland. I just didn't know what else to do in Marrakech and actually just wanted to get back home. It took a while to book a flight over Ryanair over my phone and even then I could not print the ticket, but at least I got a seat.

Neera, Val and I took a stroll through some of Marrakech today. We first walked around the area of our hotel and then further down the Rue Moulay Ismail. We found a small market there, where I bought some small candle holders. More out of chance and just because we passed one, we decided to rent a horse carriage that took us to the rich area of Marrakech full of houses with high walls and lush gardens and to the palm tree plantations. It was a long ride, but kind of relaxing.

When we got back to the hotel, Hamid took us all out to a nice little restaurant. We had a wonderful meat and plum tajine. This was our good-bye dinner. But even after we came back to the hotel, we sat by the pool for the longest time and were reminiscing our journey. There, Neera and Val also told me that they were going to Ourika valley tomorrow. Since I didn't have anything else to do, I asked them, if I could come along. They didn't know if this was possible, but Neera promised that she would ask tomorrow.

06.01.2012 - Ourika valley and a riad at the end

The next day, we asked the driver who would bring Neera and Val to Ourika valley and he was OK with it that I could accompany them. So we all took another drive to the Atlas mountains. It was very entertaining, especially, since Neera is an avid photographer and took pictures of just about everything. As soon as we were in the valley we had some lunch and then hiked to a waterfall and back. All in all it was very nice trip.

In the evening, we all went to the riad, Neera had booked for her final nights in Marrakech, and spent some time there with her while she marvelled at the luxury that was her room.

Then we went out for dinner and Val and I returned to our hotel to stay for a final night. The next day I would fly back home.