Morroco and Roll

Africa.

You hear about it. You see it on the world news. Most people have the idea of the Africa is what they see on the Discovery Channel or it's all the desert and the Serengetti and guys with spears chasing after you.

Oh yeah. Kenyan marathon runners.

However my thoughts of Africa were exactly like that, Muslim North Africa is there too, but you just don't happen to think of it like that. I think Egypt should be in the Middle East along with the rest of Muslim North Africa.

My perceptions changed greatly when I visited on Saturday. Even though, I went across the Straights of Gibraltar from Tarifa, Spain ( the southernmost point of mainland Europe.) to Tangiers, Morocco. Yeah, it's a seedy border town, but then again, what border town isn't?

Tangiers was occupied by the Spanish during the Spanish Civil War until the mid 1950's when Morocco gained dual independency from the French and the Spanish. Everything from Rabat down was French controlled. Tangiers was an international city during these times, with the publisher of Forbes magazine living in Tangiers. Now, Morocco is a 3rd world nation. You don't realize how lucky you have it, until you see how the other half lives. Tangiers makes Pleasant Grove or South Dallas look like Highland Park.

I left Tarifa, Spain, which is also the wind-capital of Spain as well, I went with my buddy Aaron and we caught a 35 min ferry to Tangiers. You can SEE Africa from Tarifa. Pretty surreal.

Stepping off the port, you are immediately hounded by guides run by the tourism office. The way they handles guides and the rest of the modern world handles tourism is a little bit more, ahem, official. The guide offered to show us around the very confusing city which they speak Berber, Arabic, and French. In terms of having a guide or walking around by ourselves, I'm glad we did the guide. The guide made sure we didn't get hounded by scores of people or possibly even robbed. We got offered and haggled with to buy all sorts of things.

I did however, get a silk rug from Morocco for 20 euro and some Moroccan spices to cook with. The guide did show us the Old Market, Medina, and places in between, the Mosque, this bakery. We had Moroccan Whiskey aka Mint Tea. Since Morocco is an Islamic country, alcohol is not allowed, but it's called whiskey because they drink so much of it. Drinking mint tea is a display of hospitality to foreigners. I tried on a traditional Moroccan "suit" looks like something from Star Wars and I stepped off the Planet Tatoonie.

Walking around on the very narrow streets, which are smaller than Sevilla's was confusing and glad we didn't do it alone. There are people on every turn, either trying to sell you something or going about their daily lives. They make traditional Moroccan clothes by hand and make the flat bread in an oven in a non descript building. Most of the streets still have the French names but are slowly turning into Arabic. When we first got there we heard the Muslim call to prayer coming from the Mosque and the minaret and then saw all the men, shift their mats, and pray to Mecca. I had never seen that done before in my life.

Yep, definitely a different country.

Morocco was interesting to see and I can always say I went to Africa for the day and experienced culture. I don't know if I would want to go back soon, but if I did it'd be too Casablanca or Marrakesh.

The rest of the trip consisted of a missed ferry, which turned into a missed bus, plus a crazy adventure of planning on how to get back to Sevilla. Aaron and I opted to take the bus to Cadiz and sleep their for 7 hours and then get up the next morning and go to Sevilla.

I got in at 8:30 am.


Last night, I went to take my host dad to see Real Betis, the other team in Sevilla as a gesture of my appreciation and thanks for everything over the past 4 months. We had pretty sweet seats, good view of the field and Puente de Almolillo. Betis beat Sporting Gijon from Asturias (northeast Spain) 2-0.

Mucho Betis!


The gaunlet is this week 4 exams and then to Berlin and Prague on Friday.

This is the only time that I have traveled that I felt like I was in a truly different environment and overly cautious and at times, nervous.