A Stone's Throw: September 2013

So I woke up with half a day to see the rest of Marrakech, then hop over to the train station to roll on over to Casablanca to see the famous Hassan II mosque, then hop back on the train to get to the medieval city of Fez. Sounds easy and smooth right? Not a chance man.

Rasta Pasta Mike from my Sahara trip and I decided to fid our way to see the famous Bahia Palace, renowned for its beauty. After making our way through the winding alleys of the medina, we finally stumbled up to the gates, where a less than happy soldier informed us that it was closed for renovation. We consulted our map, and decided to make our way to the slightly lesser known, Badi palace (apparently, its good to be the king, even in Morocco), which is famous for being slightly less beautiful than the Bahia palace.

With no other palace to compare it to, the Bahia palace satisfied our desire to see a beautiful Moroccan display of royal power. While not nearly as extravagant as the palaces in Europe, compared to the area and poverty surrounding it, it was extremely luxurious. The detail of the plasterwork, and the intense patterns were all beautiful but what we appreciated most was the calm that the palace provided from the crazy intensity of daily life in the medina just outside.

After the palace, Mike and I parted ways and I decided to kill some time by looking around the medina without a guide, just for 30 minutes or so. Well, after wandering through areas filled with chickens and rabbits ("Oh look babe, they sell bunnies here! They're so cute" I heard from an American girl walking by), I decided to pick up a traditional Moroccan linen shirt. I bargained hard for it, and I felt like I got a pretty good deal on it since the guy from my tour who had one paid double what I did. I was finally getting the hang of it!

I wandered further into this crazy warren of streets. I found my way to the blacksmith area where the workers were diligently crafting beautiful lanterns, bowls, and all manners of metal goods by hand. They allowed me to watch and take pictures for free (which was a big deal), as they turned pieces of steel into the most incredibly ornate pieces of art you could imagine. It was really cool to see that kind of talent at work. From there I let myself be led to the dyer's market, where they demonstrated some of their techniques, which was cool until they started pressuring me to buy stuff. Once again, people do nice things in Morocco because they see a dollar sign over your head.

I managed to talk my way out, and decided to strike for the center of the Medina, my hostel, and then the train. That plan lasted until the first turn, when I realized I had no idea where I was. I wandered aimlessly for a bit before I discovered signs overhead that pointed to the main square. Of course, like all things Moroccan, it led you on an indirect and winding path in order for you to pass by as many shop keepers as possible. Annoying, but at least I made it back without further incident.

I grabbed my stuff from the hostel and made it to the train station in time to catch the next train to Casablanca. I bought first class tickets because the lady at the counter assured me that there was no air conditioning in the regular coaches (and it was only a couple more bucks). Once I was on the train, I discovered that the regular area did in fact have air conditioning (which worked better than my first class A/C), not that it really mattered since about halfway to Casablanca, the train broke down in the middle of the desert. After about an hour of waiting outside the train, because without my piddly A/C the train soon turned into a greenhouse, we got back on track.

The train rolled into Casablanca without further incident, and I negotiated a quick little tour of the town with a cab driver, stopping at the Hassan II mosque. Its the 2nd largest mosque in the world, open to non-muslims, and only built because the king sat down one day and decided that Casablanca didn't have any important cultural sites, so he should build one. I gotta say, +1 for authoritarian rulers, cause this thing is beautiful and extremely impressive. I wasn't allowed in the normal areas due to Ramadan, but for a couple of Dirham, I was show the undersides of the mosque including the absolution rooms. It was still pretty cool.

After my whirlwind tour, I hopped back on the train to head to Fez for the night. It broke down again. During my journey, I shared a car (non-first class) with a young boy, an older man, and two beautiful Congolese girls about my age. we talked in psuedo-French with the help of my guidbook, and it turned out that the boy was headed to Fez as well because he lived there. The old man asked him to help me find my hostel and he agreed. After everyone else had departed, the boy and I played some cards and struggled to communicate. It wasn't a great friendship, but I was pretty sure he was a new Moroccan friend by the time the train stopped in Fez.

Here is where things got weird... We walked to the cabs together, and I had been advised to negotiate to nothing higher than 20 or 30 Dirham for the cab ride, which I did. The little boy hopped in the front seat, and I tossed my bag in the trunk. As I was about to get in the cab, the driver turns to me with a quizzical look on his face and asks, "Where is it that you wanna go again?"

"My hostel, Funky Fes Hostel."

"That's not where the kid wants to take you, he's trying to go somewhere else, you want to go somewhere else or no?" he asked me.

"No, its just a misunderstanding, I wanna go to Funky Fes," I replied.

At this point, the driver starts arguing with the kid in Arabic, and a larger man steps over and grabs the kid by the scruff of his neck and starts to drag him out of the cab. I interject on the kid's behalf and learned from another man who spoke english, that the large man was secret police. After squaring away the kid with a bit of cab fare, I hopped in my cab and finally made it to my hostel. There the owner greeted my by suspiciously asking, "did you talk to anyone out there? You can't trust any of them..." which made me feel just dandy. The people outside said the people inside were bad and couldn't be trusted while the ones inside said the same about them. Add this to my exhaustion and slight disorientation that accompanies a new city and it made for a really paranoid night haha.