Morocco Day Five: "Snail soup"

Last post was a long one.

So this will be short.

I just ate snail soup.  It's not what it sounds like.  That is, if what it sounds like is that they took snails out of their shell and mixed them with veggies and other stuff to make an interesting treat.

No.

There are snails.  In their shells.  Boiled in what looks like mud.

I ate it because I hate myself.  And snails.

Morocco Day Three and Four: "Been through the Desert, but the camel had a name"

So I smell like sand and camel shit.  It's truly second tier tourism.

Here's how I see it.

First tier tourism: Major cities and vacation resorts.  All the modern comforts, no street without a conveniently placed McDonalds or Starbucks.  There are signs, people tend to speak your language or have the capacity/motive to communicate with you, not so much traveling as it is spending lots of money to sleep somewhere else.

Second tier tourism: Out-of-the-way places and cities that, for one reason or another, are unattractive.  These reasons may include hot temperatures, pushy salespeople and a general feeling of desperation.  In these places, expect to have to wash your clothes by hand, trust that the chef is not taking a shit in your burger and communicate in a series of angry gestures to a half-asleep tourist police that you're lost and it's hot and you're tired.

This is traveling in the sense that you are seeing something different, which happens to be wholly uncomfortable and will make for great stories later when you're in a bar trying to impress someone who can't believe you're 26 and not successful or married.

Third tier tourism: Cities that people go to exclusively to drink penny beers and have sex with penny prostitutes.  You're lucky if you get a bucket of water to wash yourself with and even then that bucket of water is probably filled with Malaria.  You eat well, because you are a fat American tourist and can basically have people cook their pets for you if the price is right.

This desert trip was second-tier and edging on third-tier tourism.  I hop on a bus half-expecting to be surrounded by families and children and hating my life for two days.  Instead it's all young attractive women and everything's okay.  We get on the road and realize our bus driver only speaks French.  Okay, no problem, they wouldn't be this disorganized, there's probably a guide meeting us on the road.

No.  There isn't.

Cue a series of confusing stops where we vaguely understand (through the help of one girl's high school French) what we're supposed to do.  At each of these stops, there appears to be the same souvenir salespeople.  Like, the exact same.  They're even on the fucking mountaintops.  I've come to the conclusion that they grow out of the ground and bloom like flowers in the presence of tourists.

We arrive, finally, in the "desert" And by desert, I mean rocky wasteland dotted with bits of brush and powerlines.  Yes, I shit you now, our desert expedition took place in view of a highway.  And streetlights.  It existed in the limbo of second and third tier tourism, where hot showers were possible, but they were simply being denied to us.

The camel ride was not only not intolerable, it was a lot of fun.  Helped somewhat by the camel's faces themselves.  They manage to look both slightly bemused and completely idiotic.  Which is still one-up on how we all looked on top of them.  There was another group with three Mexican girls who looked like they were on the verge of being thrown off an animal moving a whole 2 miles per hour.

And me?

I had my hands so tight on the saddle that I think I fused my skin to it.

We got to the camp where we would be sleeping and were entertained by the "Berberes".  Now, I'm sure these guys authentically have been raised as Berberes, but the fact that they knew American TV shows and that a couple of them were wearing Guess jeans makes me doubt the authenticity of the whole thing.  The experience took on a feeling of them capering around for our entertainment, "Oh look at our ridiculous hats and how we play drums that look oddly similar even though we insist that they weren't made in a factory down the road."

The experience took a sharp turn towards what the fuck when the Berberes coaxed the women in the group away to play the drums in private while leaving the men alone by the fire.  It got even stranger when I decided to follow the women.  The berberes employed every trick they could to get me to go back to the fire "Oh, I need help with something by the fire, let's go!"

Now, men being sneaky about women is no big deal.  But these were men who were entirely in control of my chances of getting home alive.

So, yes, a little uncomfortable.

I did get home alive, in fact, in case you were wondering.  All in all, even though the trip seemed as though it had been organized according to the philosophy "Now that you've paid me, go to hell" the fact that the places we went were so beautiful overshadowed all poor planning.  So it was a great trip, I'd just advise they replace the Berberes with hot showers.

Morocco Day Two: "Welcome to Morocco!"

This hotel keeps being awesome.  My room is a beautiful little alcove with a window over the street and a huge double bed.  The hotel has a terrace that looks over the big square in the center of the city.  The guys who run it keep getting nicer.  One of them took me into the souks today and ran me around to the best shops in town, the ones down little streets where tourists fear to tread.

Like I'm so intrepid, I realized how walking around with someone to his family friend's store makes me essentially obligated to buy one thing or another.

And that brings me to "Welcome to Morocco".  It is, without a doubt, the phrase I have heard the most in my time here.  It's a close second to "Hello" or "Bonjour" or "Salaam".  It seems like whoever first translated this phrase meant it to replace "I have no idea what you're talking about" and "Fuck you".

I argued for twenty minutes with a guy over a price and finally got a somewhat reasonable price.  He gives me my change and says "Welcome to Morocco".  Which I think translates to "I just ripped you off, stupid tourist."

I got annoyed with a guy who wouldn't let go of my hand even though I didn't want a tour of the street I was walking down and he lets go and says "Welcome to Morocco".  Translation: "Suck it up"

I was trying desperately to explain that I wanted help buying a hat so I don't burn my face off in the desert and the guy at the hotel throws up his hands and says "Welcome to Morocco".  Translation: "I don't speak English."

So.

Desert tomorrow.  Involves a 1.5 hour camel ride.  When I have children, they're going to walk with a limp because of this.

Morroco Day One: Learning to say "No" in three languages

Wow.

Okay, so it might be I'm not cut out for long trips.  This might be because of any of the following reasons:
A) I end up living like a poor person (Example: Eating a cheese sandwich in front of the grocery because it costs money to sit down)
B) I don't sleep.  (Example: Twelve people in a room.  Odds are, at least one of them snores.  Loudly.)
C) I don't have a nail clipper one day.  Or shampoo another day.  Or a toothbrush another day.  Right now I don't understand why I'm being asked for money, beggars should be handing me dirhams.

Marrakech is incredible and so so different.  From anywhere I've visited I mean.  The people act differently, the back-and-forth of selling/buying rolls differently, the air smells differently (mostly donkey shit).  It's really exhausting just to keep my eyes open for all of it.

Also, Moroccans seem to live life on the edge.  That is, the edge of being run over by a moped.  There's all these motorcycles and things careening down the street.  And when I say street, I don't mean demarcated lanes for traffic in and out along with crosswalks and sidewalks.  No, by street I mean strip of dirt.  This ranges from the size of everyone passing comfortable to so narrow that a donkey and a moped are likely to cause pileup.

I think all the stress of travel has hit me because I'm exhausted and would like nothing more than a bed at home with a bottle of iced tea clearly marked with a price.  It didn't help I spent an hour or so today either convincing people I wanted to buy their shit or I didn't want to buy their shit.  Some people get pushy.  Like, aggressive pushy.  One guy actually put a fabric over my face and was surprised and upset when I was surprised and upset.

But this hotel has really been a saving grace.  It's 8 bucks a night and I have my own bed overlooking the street from a few stories up.  In other words, I can flop around, sleep and eat and nothing will bother me.  It helps that the guys that run it are super nice.  Within minutes of checking in they told me to come with them to the construction site of their new hotel and eat tagine.  The tagine, by the way, was incredible, zucchini, tomato and chicken.  After a week of eating ham and bread, this was manna.

So my plan is to spend a day here and then go on an overpriced trip to the desert.  We'll see.  Anyway, more to come, I'm sure, unless I get run over by a moped or garrotted by an angry scarf salesman (That's for you, mom).

Dia Cinco: Spanish Customs

There are three, all of which are completely new to me and have never been mentioned to me outside of the country. They strike me as slightly important, as they involve the way everyone greets everyone else, the way everyone eats and the way everyone talks. These, typically, are important parts of staying any length of time in a country. That is, unless your stay involves talking to no one, eating nothing and staying completely silent.

Anyway.

First. Greeting people. I've been calling it “los dos”. It's where whenever I am introduced to a girl, instead of shaking hands like normal people, I am to press my lips to a complete stranger's face not once, but twice, one on each cheek.

Having only recently gotten used to the one kiss, this is a bit nerve-wracking for me. This is because of the danger zone.

As you can see, a normal one-kiss greeting involves dodging the danger zone only once. “Los dos” on the other hand, involves dodging it once and then having to come in for another pass. The zone is dangerous because if you for any reason mess up your lip trajectory, you are now making out with a stranger. This is especially bad if you are in front of their significant other. This is even worse if you are in a country whose language you don't speak and that boyfriend is Spanish.

Not that it's happened. But I can't help but brace myself for impact every time I meet someone.

Second. Ham.

So. Much. Fucking. Ham. There are ham stores. Stores that sell exclusively ham and ham related products. Every convenience store has some variety of ham. Ham comes on bread. On salad. With eggs. And sometimes it just hangs out on a plate on its own. That's right, you go to a bar, order a nice beer and get a side of HAM.

There's a restaurant called “El Museo del Jamon”. The museum of ham. This is a real thing. It's also a real thing that has branches ALL over the city.

Third. “Vale”.

Every other word out of a Spanish person's mouth is “vale”. It means “okay”, essentially, and from what I can gather, it's the only way Spanish people can exhale. Inhale, silence, exhale: “Vale”.

I kind of love it.

Dia Quatro: Overheard in Madrid

Said angrily: "Siempre estas allegre!"
"You are always happy!"

This was said by a hipster boy (Yes, hipsterism is an international disease.  They are called "modernos" here.) to a hipster girl.  Which strikes me as weird.  Because hipster people aren't supposed to EVER be happy.

It's also a strange thing to say angrily.  "You're so happy, I can't stand it anymore!" I fantasized that the guy was breaking up with the girl, saying he just can't be with a girl that's going to ruin his carefully manicured sense of self-loathing with her "happiness" and "general good will towards things".

No, the world is awful and you're awful for being happy in it.

I went to the Museo Nacional de Anthropologia today.  It cost three euros and consisted of three small exhibits of the drums of various indigenous cultures.

Try as I might, I couldn't think of the polite way to say "I want my fucking money back."

Dia Dos y Tres: Realizations.

Couple new things struck me in the last two days:

Madrid is not a place to spend more than a week in.  Apparently this is well known to everyone except the people I spoke to about my trip.

Madrid is expensive.  Like four dollar cup of coffee expensive.

People do not speak English in Madrid.  This, again, another fact known to everyone except the people I spoke to about my trip.

Pork can be really expensive.  On the other hand, pork in Madrid is delicious.  Eggs are cheap.  Pork and eggs are delicious and cheap.  I haven't had vegetables in three days.

So everything is going really well, I've seen quite a bit of the city.  I'm realizing I've seen almost everything, save for the Prado museum and the casa de campo park.  I'm faced with the fact that coming back to Madrid will involve me running around the sites I've already seen.  So, now I get to rearrange a trip I'm in the middle of.  This sounds bad/irritating/confusing, but actually, it's kind of fun.

I travel the way I live.  By the skin of my teeth.