So I thought it might be time to bring you folks up to speed on my goings-on here over the drink. In the interest of most people not wanting to read for an hour right now, I hereby present you with my condensed, abridged and dehydrated-for-shipping version of where I’ve been. Last we spoke, I ran away to Scotland. Since then, I finished classes in mid-March and decided it was adventure time.
I left my apartment on the morning of March 19 with a full rucksack, a plane ticket to Barcelona and not much else other than ideas and a Spanish rail pass. I spent my first two days in the city wandering around the modern and gothic neighborhoods, remembering that it was warm and sunny in this part of the world, as opposed to rather dreary London, to which I have become a little jaded. On my second night, I was offered hospitality with a local guy who lives a little ways outside the city, so I went to stay with him for two nights. Sam lives in a little village by the sea, San Pol de Mar, with his basset hound, Boston. He had another traveler staying with him, Aletta, who comes from Christchurch, NZ. Aletta and I hung out for a few days and went hiking in the hills above San Pol and could see straight down to the Mediterranean. The night before Easter, Sam took us into the village center to see one of the Holy Week processions that are so common in all Spanish towns and cities. The next day, Sam, Aletta and I went into Barcelona and saw La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s famous cathedral, designed by Antoni Gaudi, and has been under continuous construction for the past 100 years, expected to be completed around 2020. That night, I said my good byes and hopped on a sleeper train to Seville.
I arrived in Seville on Easter morning to find the city, not surprisingly, very quiet. I wandered around the neighborhood and toured the royal palace as well as the city’s cathedral, apparently the largest gothic building in world, according to its literature, although I’d believe it, that thing was BIG. I remember noticing that the entire city smelled like jasmine. Either that or I was really over-tired from not sleeping on the train. I’ll go with the former. I ended up relaxing on the beachfront for a while, working on my tan and my Spanish. It was the first day of the bull-fighting season, although long, drawn out animal murders for show are not really my thing. I took a bus that evening to the town of Cabra, where I would be staying for the next few nights with a couple of American girls who had agreed to put me up.
I spent a few days in Cabra and the surrounding region. The two girls hosting me, Jen and Michelle, were a lot of fun. Michelle, her friend David, and I made a trip to a nearby village of Priego to see what was to be seen, which turned out to be a castle, rolling hills of olive trees, and a cute little village. No complaints. The next day, I took a day trip on my own north to Cordoba. The city was the capital of the country when the majority of what is now Spain and Portugal was under Arab control for hundreds of years and therefore has a very heavy Arab and Moorish influence. I got severely lost wandering the Old City and found myself in the Jewish quarter in front of Maimonedes’ house and up the street from his synagogue. Cool. If I had planned my trip better, I would have made reservations for the Arab bathhouse in the city, a trip to which gets you a chance to bathe in the traditional, communal baths, warm, hot and cool, in that order, followed by a massage and some green tea on the roof of the building. I made my way back to Cabra, and in the morning bid my farewells to my hosts. Next stop, Morocco.
I spent the majority of the following day on the road, needing to take a bus to Malaga, followed by two trains to get to the port city at the bottom of Spain, Algeciras. I took the earliest boat I could find out the next morning to ferry myself to Africa. On the boat to Morocco, I ended up meeting a family from New Jersey, we hit it off and I ended up spending most of that day with them in Morocco’s gateway city to Europe, Tangier. A private tour guide offered to show us around as soon as we got off the boat, which we accepted and he took us for a few hours into the winding streets of the old city. He took us to many shops (designed for tourists, of course, but I dealt with it) selling an incredible variety of things: silk rugs, oil lamps, jewelry, decorative gun powder cases, and more spices than I’ve ever seen. We ended at a restaurant that offered some of the most delicious vegan food I’ve ever come across, whoo! In the evening, the family went back to the port to go back to Spain and I made my way to the train station to make my way to Marrakech, the capital of the south.
On the train that night, I met a number of Brits who had been hitchhiking for charity from Manchester, UK to either Prague or Marrakech. I ended up spending most of my first day in Marrakech with this lively bunch. We came into the city, dropped our bags and went exploring. The city center, Djar al Fna, is a massive square packed with more characters than I could explain. There were snake charmers, fortune tellers, tarot card readers, monkeys on leashes, men selling fresh fruit and spices, a hot sun, and a general aura of magic. We walked through the sprawling market place, winding through streets with no names, until we were certain we were far from where we wanted to be (not that we knew where that was, either) but we knew we were very lost. The fact that the streets were so narrow and the walls that rose so high from them meant we couldn’t find the tower of the city mosque, our one orientating landmark. We ended up being offered help by a local man who would, for a fee of course, show us the way back to Djar al Fna. He kept his word, without first walking us all over the place and showing us the Berber camel skin tannery operation, which, although smelly, was still pretty cool to see first hand. We finally got back to the main square, and my new friends went to their hostel and I went out to find the man who had agreed to host me in his village outside the city. After some odd circumstances involving my phone getting stolen, I was fortunately able to find Adil, my host, and we made our way by taxi from Marrakech to his village of Sidi Rahal.
Sidi Rahal is a small, poor village about an hour east of Marrakech, in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. I stayed with Adil in his parents’ home with one of his sisters and one of his brothers. Adil is 26 and had worked teaching English at a nearby school but his contract had run out, so now he has plenty of time on his hands. None of his family speaks English. We spent time walking around the village and he introduced me to some of his friends, who wanted very much to talk to me, although only some of them spoke English. There was not another tourist for many, many miles and many of the villagers often would not leave the area very frequently, as they had little need to; their life was simple there. We went to the edge of the village where some of Adil’s friends played some traditional music that is said to be very trance-like. They play the gambe (GOM-beh), a guitar-like instrument, made of a wooden box with camel skin stretched over the top and a rod coming out one side which holds the ends of the 3 camel skin strings, and the krikshat (creek-SHOT), large brass finger cymbals that can be tapped with sticks or struck together. Adil’s friend Abdullah loved to hear me talk English, as he was learning English in high school and insisted I tell him as many jokes and proverbs as I could remember. I did my best.
The next day, Adil, a number of his friends, and I went hiking through a beautiful valley beyond Sidi Rahal. On the way, we passed an ancient and abandoned Jewish neighborhood, with a walled cemetery still standing on the hilltop. We went over to scout around and Adil said there was a caretaker who lived here to keep people from vandalizing the area or stealing headstones. On our way back down the hill, we spotted the caretaker and some other men sitting on the ground, and they invited us over for tea. Some of the men had pickaxes and hammers and they told Adil they were prospectors looking in the area for gold or gems. Back at the bottom of the hill Adil told me they may have just been prospectors or they may have paid the caretaker to let them dig in the cemetery, as some people believe that where you can find Jewish bones, you can find gold or, slightly more creepy, some people believe you actually need Jewish bones themselves for certain superstitious practices. We met up with his friends and continued hiking, until we stopped in a small grassy knoll and set up camp were we would stay for the afternoon. There were seven of us camping, Chelid, Bougama, Lahsen, Abdallali, Heshem, Adil and myself. We spent the whole afternoon there, climbing the rocky hills and playing music. For a long time, half of us had an operation going of preparing the meal, and the other half of the boys prepared the kif. A number of the guys had brought tons of food, which we washed in the river and prepared and cooked over an open fire, to finally make a huge portion of traditional tagine (tah-ZHEEN) to feed all seven of us. By the time it all came together, there was plenty to eat and plenty to smoke. So we feasted on tagine (I did my best to dodge the chicken), and the boys all got high. When the sun went down, we packed it in and made our way back to the village.
On my third and final day in Sidi Rahal, Adil and I went walking to a nearby Berber village and he showed me where the Berbers come into the hills to mine by hand for amethyst and other gems which are common in the earth here. We went into the village and man brought us into his house where his children were sorting stones he had pulled from the hills, and he showed me precious stones he wanted to sell to me. I ended up buying a fossil from him that he had pulled from the rock. I make for a nice souvenir/paperweight and plus, it has a cool back story. That afternoon, we went back to Marrakech, with six passengers stuffed into a 1980 Mercedes with pink fuzzy dice on the rear-view, so that the trip would be economical and worthwhile for the driver. Adil and I were walking together through a garden and were stopped by the notably corrupt police who began questioning Adil for guiding me, a tourist, around the city without proper guide papers. Our waterproof story and the fact that Adil was most certainly not a scam artist trying to steal my money did not matter to them, as once they had reason to have stopped us, they weren’t going to let him go unless “something could be worked out” a.k.a. cash-money. Adil unsuccessfully argued his case, and I yelled at the one cop who spoke Spanish, following threats that “when the city police arrived, Adil could go to jail for 3 days for not having guide papers”. Of course the city police weren’t coming and they just wanted the two of us to sweat it out in their little holding area in the middle of a park. After a while, we gave up and, Adil having no money, I shoved at the cop in charge whatever money I had (which wasn’t much, but fortunately was enough) we stormed out and they didn’t stop us. Once we were about 100 feet away, I turned around and saw the cop pleasantly smiling and waving good-bye to us, wishing me a good day in broken English. The fact that I no longer had any cash to bribe myself out of further trouble was the only thing stopping me from returning his greeting in a less-than-friendly manner. In other news, we continued on to the train station where I was to make for Tangier for the following morning. I went to pay for my journey, for which the ticket man responded “cash payment only”. You have GOT to be kidding me. Fortunately for me, the nearest cash machine was actually working this time, as opposed to when I arrived here days earlier, and I was able to hop on board.
Over the next 33 hours I took three trains, a taxi, a boat and a bus, through six cities (Marrakesh, Tangier, Tarifa, Seville, Madrid, Lisbon) in an effort to make it to Portugal’s capital, which I did after my made dash through three countries and stopping once in a while to breathe.
If I wasn’t weary enough by this point, ALL of Lisbon is on a hill, I tell ya. I spent two days trekking around the city, admiring the Atlantic for the first time from the other side, and laying in the sun and climbing hills and trees. My flight left from Madrid in two days, so I took my fifth overnight train back to Madrid after two days in Lisbon, and arrived so exhausted, I didn’t want to do a thing. I didn’t. All I remember of my one day in Madrid is that I fell asleep in a park and woke up at one point without a clue in the world where I was. I couldn’t pull city names, country names, dates, or anything from my memory as I just sat in the grass for a few minutes in wonder. The next morning, I packed my bag and dragged myself to the airport and flew back to London.
Okay so it has occurred to me that this is nowhere near as condensed as I thought it would be, but now you’re here so, good job. Maybe another time, I’ll remember to tell you that after only 2 days back in London I went to Italy for a week with my dad and one of my sister’s. So now I’m in jolly old England and NOT GOING ANYWHERE…for the next 4 weeks. I’ve got a whole pile of enormous final exams coming up that I don’t really want anything to do with, although I think I deserved it after almost a month on the road.
Next time: Belgium and Germany! (But seriously, I’m going next month) All for now.
Hasta luego, Salaam Alekuum, Adeus, Ciao and lots of love,
Dan
p.s. I’ll be writing this story in full this summer if any of you want the really really long and juicy version.
