Marruecos part 1: Madrid - Granada - Chefchaouen

Viva España: Madrid to Grenada to Algeciras

The whole point of taking the evening bus was so that A. could go to class, but she didn’t and we were still almost late. We had enough food to feed a small village in Africa plus the first day of a moderately-sized Indian wedding party. We proceeded to Granada without incident, except for the part of not being able to locate the Bolsilla de Santa Paula: particularly because it was a street and not actually a saint’s pocket.

Still rubbing the sleep from our eyes and arguing cantankerously about stopping for breakfast, we find a bus stop well populated by Asian tourists that we assumed it would take us to the Alhambra, but we and they were wrong, and it didn’t. I clutched my coffee like a dying person clutches the last piece of chocolate cake thinking happy coffee thoughts as we joined the ticket lines after the short ride up the hill. At 8h20 the lady sold us tickets for the 8h30 entry to the palace, and we galloped off over the cobblestones, dodging elderly tourists like walker-wielding obstacles.


View over Granada from the Alhambra

In barely two and a half hours we’d finished the Alhambra complex, palaces, gardens and all. It helped we were early, it helped we’d declined the audio guides, and it helped that the weather wasn’t too inviting, and that we were also not trailing small children. Still the Alhambra is gorgeous. It’s Moorish architecture, full of vaulted ceilings, mosaics, carvings and the beautiful arches that swept gracefully over fountained courtyards. If I’m ever rich and famous I’ll buy me a castle like that. Somehow, we imagined it would be huge instead of just big. It could have been Tuscany, for all we could tell. Perhaps we took the wrong bus?

Confronted with hedges the size of moving trucks, it’s easy to see the appeal. It’s like being a kid again, playing hide and seek among the labyrinthian trees. Imagine a hundred years ago, these hedges, these gardens. Orange trees and pomegranate trees are interspersed with flowers and hedges. A lumbering tour group of the newly wed, overfed and nearly dead obstruct the path, and we duck around the corner, and I admire a handsome Italian framed against the foliage – and soon we are free. There is a window in the gardens, set high in one of the many terraces and flanked by columns. From here, as from many places in the Alhambra, you can see the city spread gently across the hilltops. In the distance, the Sierra Nevadas; on the hill, a church; in between, pueblos blancos and new, ugly apartment blocks.

We spent the afternoon staggering from tapas bar to tapas bar. At one point, lost, looking the map, the stranger who stopped to help turned out to be none other than a childhood acquaintance. Small frigging world.

We sat on the bench in the sun. We’d just received complete and through advice on “Au Maroc” from the energetic Frenchman at the creperie on plaza de la universitad. The other half of the bench was occupied by a young Spanish guy, a future teacher looking (as of yet unsuccessfully) for a job, with friendly eyes and floppy hair, who wanted to know just why one needed the interrogative ‘do’ for the question ‘do you understand?’ and not just ‘you understand?’

I wonder how much a tapas bar represents the normal population – or what demographic thereof – in Grenada or elsewhere. It’s an undeniably social outing, but one which doesn’t perforce replace family togetherness.

Our attempt to get to Algeciras was doomed from the start. Direct bus, full. So we had tostadas and went for Málaga. Next bus was full, so we whiled away the time in an internet café where A. made friends with the shaved-headed Serbian involved in shady business in Barcelona. Finally, after a brief but notable delay near Algecrias, caused by the apparent but un-evident breakdown of our bus five minutes from the bus station, during which one grandmother complained incessantly, we followed a Moroccan couple and three Walesian hitchhikers (…into the bar, and the bartender asked, “what is this, some kind of a joke?”) to find all the ferries delayed. Thus: a nice night in the enchanting and beautiful little port town of Algeciras (read: it’s a shoddy dump with sketchy people. We stayed in.)


Entrée au Maroc

We decided to head to and through Ceuta—the Spanish enclave—rather than Tangiers, to save ourselves some time and the hassle. The ferry embarkment proceeded without problem, and we spent much of the ride taking the micky out of other passengers, with the desperate hope that none of them spoke German – but these were Americans, so I doubt it. Americans, as is widely known, do not learn foreign languages.

“The bus to the border is the Number 7. It costs 75 cents.” With our packs on our backs, looking somewhat muddled and confused, a man standing behind us interrupted our thoughts. Not only did this man know everyting there was to know about the bus and the border, he even took us to a money changer and deposited us at the bus station. “Remember: Number 7. You see number 9, you don’t go. You see number 7, you go.”

Ceuta, the Spanish enclave carved out of Morocco, is understandably a mixture of Spain/Europe and Morocco/North Africa. Distinctly Mediterranean, rougher around the edges, but with far more flair than Algeciras. The people look north African, the cars are Spanish., and across from the bus stop are the remnants of the old fortress: imposing battlements jutting out of the blue water. A construction worker dangling into the canal waved as he saw me taking pictures.

The border: the end of the line and we all pile out. Everyone’s on foot, most people don’t have baggage and anyways we’re pretty much the only northern European-looking people there It’s several hundred yards/meters to and through the border. A tall fence blocks off the ocean; to our right, the hillside. Cars and lorries are variously parked along rough lanes of concrete barriers. A chain link fence sometimes cordons off the pedestrians from the cars, and we trudge along behind large headscarved women and packs of young men. As our “guide” from before described it, we were “walking from Europe to Africa.”

Apparently pedestrians and cars were checked at the same guardposts, but there didn’t seem to be anything approaching a queue or any kind of order. Only once we were forced to go through a little gate to the side. The actual stampring process was uncomplicated but took awhile, seeing as how they were likely using the same computer system for the last hundred and twenty years. Two bored-looking functionaries with large moustaches like small furry animals and some kind of stinky incence typed mysterious numbers into a computer system apparently running DOS. Stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp, and ma salaama! A further bored-looking guard wanted to see in my bag, but came disinterested after he heard I spoke French. “Vouz avez des armes?” he asked me. Do I have weapons? Do they ask this question to everyone, or only 20-something female white backpackers?

Taxi to Tétouan cost 120 DH, prix fixé. Our driver had blue eyes and spoke Spanish, but wore the Arab striped kaftan and deposited us at the bus station with little commentary. Tétouan was not the sleepy little town I’d imagined, but rather a big, sprawling thing, outgrowing its borders like a giant jam smear. As soon as we entered the station, we were accosted by an ostensible employee with no teeth who pretended to be insulted that we were anything but thrilled with him forcing his ‘help’ on us, and helpfully interrupting our consultation in every possible language he knew. Anyways, it was noon, and apparently the next bus was at three (a likely storey, but okay), but he disappeared and magically reappeared with three Frenchies (were they on special, buy one get two free?) with whom we shared the taxi.

They negotiated the fare (40 DH per person, and we split the cost of the sixth seat), and squeezed into the back. “En effet, la sixième place, où est-elle?” I asked, as A. was practically sitting in my lap. Our “guide” wanted backsheesh, but I let the French guy argue with him and contented myself with sucking my gut in and trying to make my hips smaller to accommodate everyone. The ride was spectacular: rolling hillsides, farms, fields and animals, and with a chain of fog-covered mountains to our perpetual left. Little villages dotted the landscape here and there, and it was all as pastoral and bucolic as a 16th century Dutch painting. The driver drove like his car was on fire AND someone was trying to steal his bobblehead, dodging lorries and busses as if in a slalom. I contemplated the screw—what remained of the door lock—the missing door latch and the screwdriver jammed in apparently to keep the window from falling down, and wandered if anything was keeping the door shut as we were thrown around the corners and I against the door.

Chefchaouen is apparently the weed capital of Morocco, and as soon as we get out of the cab someone was already pushing. We declined and trotted off after the Frenchies. Their hotel was nice but full; the one next door was confusingly priced: 50 DH/person for a shared private room or 70 DH per person for a bed in a dorm, and had only one room for one night but could maybe let us sleep on the roof. No, thank you. So we ended up at the hotel we had wanted to go anyways, where the quixotic owner insisted on his broken German and we on our respective Spanish and French, which he spoke considerably better.


A doorway in Chefchaouen

Apparently the square around the castle thing is a giant tourist trap. We’d heard about a couple of recommended restaurants, but the directios were useless so we wandered out of the square to find something, anything – and ended up at the recommended restaurant anyways! There we met three girls from the Basque country in Spain, and after lunch we migrated for tea and coffee, with a mixed Spanish/English/German discussion on pretty much everything.

Besides the marijuana, Chefchaouen is renowned for its beautiful blue medina. The walls, the stairs, everything is painted a stunning and varying shade of cobalt and azure blue, so after sending off Las Españolas we wandered about until we found some shoes and some picnic snacks for dinner.

I guess you could say I didn’t get much out of the first / only full day in Chefchaouen: right away I was hit with a fantastic bout of Funny Tummy / Touristas / whatever you want to call it, and was as feeble as your grandmother without her walker. It didn’t help that someone yelling in Russian, which subsided briefly after I pounded on the wall with my fist, interrupted both the night before and the early morning. Honestly.

Anyways, the whole “being sick” thing resulted in me looking as if someone were pulling my teeth without anesthetic while I turned a lovely shade of green. It was like high school biology all over again. I got to schlep myself up and down the medina, culminating in the crowning moment when I “redecorated” the pavestones in front of the café. Being sick, at least this kind of sick, is like walking around with a very heavy blanket. Everything is a huge effort, and sometimes the edges get fuzzy. It could have been the dates, or the olives, or more likely just a random fluke. I’d made it through most of Asia with no problem, so I guess it was my turn.

We met Las Españolas for lunch and tea, which means they had lunch and I had nothing, looking about as green as my mint tea. We took our tea at the smaller plaza within the medina. From somewhere, loud Arabic pop music was blaring, and somewhere behind us, a backgammon or cards game progressed loudly, eagerly followed by a crowd of young men. We sat outside on the square in the sun with the other tourists (as a side note, that’s a good way to spot a tourist at a hundred yards: tourists sit in the sun, locals in the shade), including a pack of Argentineans who communicated with walkie talkie and insisted on filming strange things. Everywhere young men. The plaza was picturesque and almost empty. The young guy seated on the step stood out starkly against the whitewashed walls, and we sipped our over-sweetened mint tea.

As expected, I slept away the afternoon, and the evening, and well into the next day like a drugged puppy at the pet store. How to tell I’m sick: I sleep for fifteen hours straight. However, this is a poor diagnostic tool as this feat is nothing special for your average university student. Because Las Españolas had helpfully fetched our bus tickets the night before, we had time to meet for breakfast before heading to the gare routière.

Up behind the medina, through twisting alleys where the day before we had seen three tiny newborn kittens, carefully watched over by several respectively tiny children (“ils sont nos chats!”), up behind the tourist shops I suppose the residents live, though it’s hard to tell if the place isn’t simply one giant tourist bazaar. Signs of inhabitants exist; there are alleys with no tourists, some smelling of dank water, but most or all as lovely; and by the river, a dozen women stand bent over buckets doing their laundry at the metal stands built for this purpose on the banks. They ostensibly have washing machines at home, but as water is so expensive, they prefer to do the washing there.


Another typical Chefchaouen shot

Viva Espana

A friend of mine once ran away to Spain. I was kind of hoping she would stay there, because she had caused or been involved in quite a bit of trouble in Germany, but she came back. And stood on my doorstep. And rung my bell, to ask if she could stay. And I had to take her in, but she had to leave the next morning. It was awkward. Anyways…
I wasn’t running away to Spain, but going on vacation—I’d been invited by a friend of mine from the States, who is half Spanish and spends her summer with her European relations, of whom there are many. So I flew to Madrid—my second time ever—and my friend picked me up at the airport. I’ve been in quite a few European cities and capitals, as well as those few American cities graced with subways and undergrounds, and I must say I was quite impressed with the Madrid metro. Clean, smooth, fast—no clattering carriages or perpetual line closures of the London Underground, no endless connecting tunnels as in Paris, making you feel more a hamster than a passenger. If only there were wheels….



I was welcomed into a spacious apartment in Western Madrid, full of maiden aunts (four) and their expatriate relations (also four). And me. I had a bit of trouble keeping the aunts separate, but there was one who was a nun in Paris forever and spoke French, one with salmon-colored hair, one with curly hair and an incorrigible smile who asked me, slowly and smiling, “how…. do…you….do?”, and one other with curly hair, neither Spanish nor English, and less of a smile but a dry sense of humor. I’m no longer used to grandmothers and not used to masses of relations (my friend’s mum has four sisters and two brothers), particularly ones with whom I have no common language, so our connection is somewhat limited. And since we have no common language, and borne of my inability to understand even the simplest instructions given regarding someone else’s belongings in a different culture of which I have no foreknowledge, it is inevitable that I will, eventually, screw something up unwittingly (as I did this morning, as one of my ‘translators’ smilingly informed me on behalf of one of the many aunts as I happily munched on cherries for breakfast that the fruit available for breakfast included basically every possible fruit out there except cherries, which were for lunch). It is the stuff of nightmares—mine, at least—to be chased by an elderly lady in a floral dress (possibly a hairnet, but I don’t know the ladies in question well enough to assert this one), brandishing a toaster (not the electric kind) railing at me in a language I don’t understand. But before you get the wrong impression, no one has been anything but nice to me. Still, hairnets and floral dresses and and and and…




The bus came for us at 8 Am, but first we had to get there, across Madrid towing luggage and bearing lunch like a string of sleep-deprived, slightly lost and directionally challenged ducklings. Bus terminals are bus terminals, busses are busses, and ours distinguished itself in no feature whatsoever, perhaps only in its lack of TVs every eighteen inches. And lack of bathroom. Six hours, six hours, six hours turn into a long stretch followed by a desperate wish for a bathroom, a picnic lunch, and a repeat of the above, excepting the picnic lunch. Finally, after our music and our tempers were exhausted, we made it to Peniscola on the coast between Valencia and Barca. Our house, somehow made available to us due to the fact that the French-speaking aunt is also a nun and somehow has access to such things (apparently she has really the highest connections, or even nuns need weeks at the beach to better commune with God), had a living room larger than most student apartments in Germany and enough beds to house an army and somehow not enough for us. A tiny kitchen and one bathroom were to be shared among us seven, and a polish nun was occupying the downstairs mother-in-law apartment. A slightly musty smell pervaded the courtyard, provided by a mess of cats and kittens who had taken up residence there between the pool and the Chinese restaurant. And then two more aunts arrived, and we started stowing people on any halfway-comfortable horizontal surface available, which were few as the place was tiled and the couches musty.

A week of lather, rinse, repeat: breakfast mid-morning, when people get up, consisting of toasted baguette with olive oil and blackberry jam, perhaps a piece of fruit and coffee. Beach time until lunch. Lunch, served at three in the afternoon, is the main meal of the day and may contain several courses and for me, the vegetarian compromising for Spanish standards and eating fish, the meal invariably contained some kind of seafood. And baguette. After lunch: siesta. Considering how blistering hot it gets in the afternoon, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea to sleep off your big meal before heading back to… the beach. Then dinner, which may be hot or cold, usually includes a salad, perhaps some fish or tortilla and finished off with fruit and cheese. And baguette. We had calamari pasta, omelette, tuna fish potato salad, fish steaks, normal steaks, chicken breast and other things, and chocolate or marzipan for desert sometimes.

After dinner we take a walk down the beach or up to the castle, to the jewelry-sellers. Spain doesn’t seem to come to life until 10 or 11 at night, when everyone heads for the promenade. Clean, well-dressed and well-styled families stroll along the beachfront promenade, past the caricaturists and painters, past the grandiose sand statues and castles lit with candles, the puppet theatre and the comedian, past the jewelry stands and restaurants and ubiquitous Africans selling knockoff handbags and sunglasses; music drones from one or many bars. The possibilities for evening entertainment are endless:

My friend’s little sister and cousin, both nineteen, had met some guys here on vacation four years previous, and these guys were still here. Like many small towns with locals with small dreams, a job that pays halfway well is reason enough to stay. (Here I must qualify my comment—this is coming from someone who sees no reason to stay put in any one country for more than a year or three, much less one town: therefore, take with a grain of salt). So they stayed. And the girls recognized them, which was reason enough to meet up again for a drink. My friend and I left, giving the sister the house key. The ladies left for their night on the town and we went home, but we unfortunately threw the extra bolt on the door, meaning that regardless of them having the key, there was no way they were getting in. So they had to scale the awning to get on to the second-floor balcony and its attendant door at five in the morning, possibly (though I have no verification and do not wish to make undue accusations) inebriated. Still, no fractures and no harm done…

…and even more fun when it was our turn a few nights later. Less inebriated but still without keys, it was up to my friend’s brother to scale the wall from the downstairs window, hoist himself onto the neighboring balcony and clamber onto ours.

I am the only person present who doesn’t speak Spanish. Even the polish nun, holed up in her downstairs apartment against the deluge of our delegation, even she speaks Spanish. It’s a giant game for me, to see whether and how much and what I can understand of the conversation. To make it more difficult, the conversation topics change as often as a fifteen-year-old going on her first date. What is yeast, whether Russia is next to Southern Germany (the French-speaking nun is known for her inane questions and questionable grasp of geography. And of card playing. And of history—she claimed Germany still forced-sterilized the mentally handicapped), cooking tips, latex allergies, vegetarianism, you name it. Sometimes I get the drift, much of the time I have no idea whatsoever, and the complete lack of logical connection confounds the foreigner. Watching TV is even better, because at least there I have pictures to help me out on the contextual clues. I can sometimes even follow the news, though of course I miss all the (important) details. It’s not the first time I have sat at a dinner table in someone’s house in some country and understood nothing. It doesn’t bother me to not understand. Personally, I thrive on mixed-language conversations. I don’t know any Spanish myself, though, which while reducing my opportunities for causing hilarity / humiliation, also limits my ability to contribute to the conversation without explicit translation. Sometimes, when I make a wrong guess, it’s like watching a movie with the wrong subtitles on, as if the picture were from one film and the subtitles from another.



One of the aunts—I am not sure which one, but I am pretty sure it’s not the one who speaks French—argued that this is not Spain, this shows me (the real tourist) nothing of Spanish life, of Spanish people. So many French tourists, some Danes and Swedes, there is no authenticity, no culture. I am aware of this. This visit is not like my visit to Seville, filled with ancient courtyards and reeking of slightly musty tradition and orange blossoms. Awash in light and sound, filled with browned and tanned tourists, the impression I have is of a picture come to life—everything perfectly designed for description on a postcard: “hi Mom, we’re in Spain, the weather is great, the water’s great, we’re having a blast. Lots of love!” Little variation, much enjoyment, and a sun tan to make anyone jealous. Unless you burn. In awkward places. Like I did. This is vacation, this is beach, this is Florida and Ibizia and SoCal and Cote d’Azur. This is sand and sun and brown little children eating sticky sandy chocolate and sand-filled SANDwiches. This is my grandparents’, this is many things, many vacations, many places.

Paris, je t'aime...

Ohje... well, I am happy to report that I survived Spain with all limbs and my sanity intact.

When I last left you, dear reader, our conference was going to hell in a handbasket, at least as far as I could tell. As far as the office was concerned, nothing worked, no one wanted to fix it, and we were all hanging on by the skin of our teeth and trying not to get into the weeds. The registration team had no materials left to give out and were fending off angry participants deprived of their bags and complementary 50mL of olive oil. Apparently the first lunch was a disaster, with long queues and no vegetarian food, and things were just not working out.

There was a meeting. The kind of meeting that involves all the highups of both parties, and their respective translators, and it is a meeting-to-the-death, the mother of all meetings, where decisions are made that affect the lives of us minions in a very tangible way.

It resolved to be a bit of a clash of cultures--aside from the obvious differences between Germany and Spain, there are the linguistical problems: not only can the heads of the organisations not speak untranslated with one another (though the need for translation provides the opportunity for possible faux pas to be moderated through the mediator/interpreter), it is not possible for those of us working in the office to talk to the other parties for materials, problems, issues, or vice versa. There were also different understandings of 'on time' and vegetarian (in Spain, fish is vegetarian. I had to eat fish or starve. I was so happy to find something neither fish nor fried that I was eating salad for breakfast.)

There are some people who worked until 2 AM compiling the exact lists required by our partners before any material was reordered, but in the end we managed to get more bags, more programs, more badges, more everything. There wasn't enough, but it worked out.

After that it got better. Aside from perpetual uncertainty as to whether or not lunch required a ticket, and because of the negotiation, the conception of vegetarian was narrowed somewhat to better reflect the expectation of us northern Europeans.

The sessions ran well. Aside from minor difficulties, everyone's presentations more or less ended up where they were supposed to be and we were able to actually work and not constantly have to solve everyone's small problems (print new badges, fix mistakes in the participant's list, etc).

We didn't sleep much, though for Thursday and Friday that was because we went into town for Tapas, an adventure that managed to have three taxis deposit their respective cargo at two different restaurants of the same name on the same street, and only after excessive calling did we manage to meet up.

Tapas.... man, I love the culture and I love the lifestyle, but southern Spain is the definite birthplace of fried fish. Small fried fish, large fried fish, tater tots of fish, croquettes, fried calamaris, fried shrimp, and for variety gazpacho, tortilla with potatos and usually fish, and spinach or mushrooms, usually swimming in oil. If I get offered a fish in the next two weeks I will beat the person with it.

And it is impossible to hail a cab in Sevilla. After tapas one night, the group split up. One group left at about midnight, but couldn't find a cab and ended up hanging out in a bar waiting for the proprieter to close because he offered to personally drive them. The rest went for a slightly inebriated walking tour of Sevilla at night, passing a procession practicing for Easter. Ariving at some dodgy looking disko-like bar, some people decided to stay and others, myself included, wanted to go back. We were five people, though the one guy split off to go have a pizza, and we stood on the street corner like executive prostitutes without a trick. Trying to try our luck at another spot we recollected our fifth companion whom we left after finally landing our elusive green-lighted prey. The first group got home at 2 AM, we got home at 2 AM, and the third group at 3.

Saturday morning we collected those of us were conscious and clean at 10 AM and headed by bus into town. We wandered the streets, bought ceramics and stamps, and generally just soaked in the atmosphere and the sun, me with my idiotic backpack, erasing whatever doubt may have yet existed that I was a stranger to this land. And upon driving off in my taxi for the airport, I realized I had left a bag behind, and had to spend 20 minutes driving through one-way streets to retrieve it. Enter airport, check bag, wander, eat an apple, wander, drink my water before security, go through security, get felt up by first guard, get questioned in Spanish, get felt up by second guard, wander, board, fly, sleep, disembark, wander, retireve bag, eat, check bag, wander, go through security, sleep, drink coffee, wander, shop, drink more caffe con leche, sleep, board, fly disembark, retrieve bag, fend off the advances of the handsome french taxi driver, and....find my mother.

It had been eight months since we'd seen each other, a wonderful meeting. The friends with whom we would be staying were picking me off, and on the way home we did a nighttime tour of L'arc du Triomphe and le tour d'Eiffel.

Et j'ai parlé français.... je comprends beaucoup, j'éxplique de ma vie, je peux répondre aux questions qu'on m'a posé. Demain, je vais écrire plus longue....