A poem

In German,
laundromats are called
Wascherei
and they are
hard to find
in Berlin.

It's almost
as hard
to find a
Wascherei
as it is
to find
a reason that
anything should be anywhere
in particular,
while it's not
as hard
to find smelly clothes
in my backpack.

Five Hours in Berlin

And I've already seen a poster advertising a Depeche Mode Party. I took a photograph. I had a sleepless night on two airplanes, and a five hour layover in the Madrid Airport, which is the worst major airport in the world. It feels like an elementary school that was built in 1956, but then someone decided to put people conveyer belts in maybe in February of 1986. The tiles on the floor are an ugly fake mica, and most are cracked. The entire place is dusty and dark. As far as hubs of mass transportation in Spain go, however, it's average. The Barcelona train station was just as bad. I barely recall the Madrid train station. But I'm in Berlin now, running on adrenaline and coffee, staying in the Green Eggs and Ham Hostel, right off Torsstrasse on Novalisstrasse. Tomorrow, I am apparently cat sitting, as Eric has a friend that needs a cat sitter for a convenient few days.

So my European journey begins again. I felt vigorous when I stepped out of the Berlin-Schoenfield Airport. In the sky were clouds. I hadn't seen clouds in eleven days. The air was refreshingly cold. All the prices for sandwiches were in Euros. There were sandwiches readily available. Berlin has almost too many sandwiches. I need to go eat some right now.

Morrocan Sunshine

I met a guy at the Oasis Hostel in Lisbon a few weeks ago who had just come from Morrocco. He spent about three weeks there, traveled up and down the country, was invited into a Berber mudhut, bought two rugs when he hadn't even planned on buying one, and all in all had a great time. So much happens in Morrocco, he told me, that you almost lose track of it all. "The entire time I was in Spain, and I was in Spain for a long time," he told me, "I filled twelve pages of my notebook up with stories. In Morrocco I wrote forty pages."
The most recent story I have? My face is probably sunburnt. It's going to hurt tomorrow, maybe even tonight while I try to sleep in my seven dollar room in the Ville Nouvelle. I was burnt when I walked about a half a kilometer from the Bab Bou Jeloud, one of the main entrances to the Fes El-Bali Medina to the Merenid tombs. The tombs are old and crumbling, like the dead dry snail shells I saw stuck to a lampost by the highway on the outskirts of Montpellier. You touched these shells and they cracked into dust. The tombs didn't fall apart when I touched them. Brick is stronger than snail shells. The sun is stronger than all of them, though. It lasts forever in the sky, longer than the smell of the tanneries, longer than the call to prayer I hear five times a day here in Morrocco. And it'll last on my face for a few days now, all the way to Marrakesh.

I uploaded a few more photographs. I included one photo of my new outfit. Oh and if anyone wants to spring for a flickr pro account for me, that'd be awesome of you! I reached my 200 photo limit. I can still add more photos, but old photos, mostly froù Santa fe, will be hidden from view. I don't want to apply for a pro account while I'm away, so some photos might go missing until I can get a pro account.

Morroccan Cyber Boutiques

In the Tangier bus station you have to check your luggage, have it weighed, and then pay a few dirham to have it tagged and carried to the bus. It's unusual, and obviously a way to give jobs to people in a country with a twenty percent unemployment rate. The only bad part about it is that I was confused at first, and wasted a few minutes speaking broken Spanish and Arabic to the bus driver after I tried to put my luggage on the bus myself. He eventually figured out that I'm new to Morroccan bus customs and pointed to the luggage counter, and I was promptly escorted by a wrinkled woman, her old eyes nonetheless very bright in the Tangerine noontime sun, in a burqha to the counter itself. Two Japanese girls were talking to the guy running the counter. They were more reluctant to go with the flow of the Morroccan bus system and timidly persisted in asking questions about where their baggage was going. The Morrocan man, in exasperated English, raised his voice and quieted the girls with this definitive statement: "All the Japanese that come here, they do not trust us Morrocans." Morrocan Postulate Number One. Well, I trust the Morroccans mostly, but I don't trust their internet boutiques. If there's a necklace in some back alley souk in the medina and the shopkeep claims it is made of amber and camelbone, you can still bargain him down, get a low price, and if it's not real qmber and camelbone you still have a cheap necklace from Morrocco. I tried to recharge my cell phone at a cyber cafe and I got an error message from the cell phone company claiming there's been fraudulant activity reported from my IP address, so they refused my credit card. who knows what's running on the computers here, but I had to buy a ticket from Madrid to Berlin before the prices jumped. I bought the last ticket at the low price, and I'm checking my accounts for any suspicious activity. Really though, this is the only danger I plan on meeting in Morrocco. Otherwise, I'm buying silver and camelbone necklaces for two euros and a half filled cigarette lighter. The guy wanted 15 euros for it. It's not even real camelbone and silver anyway.

In Morrocco

Three days in Morrocco and I've already:

Bought two Morroccan outfits
Seen too many donkeys, dogs, and cats to count
Received a lesson in Morroccan traditional pharmaceuticals(ASK ME ABOUT ORANGE BLOSSOM OIL SOMETIME)
Been married and divorced
Been led to the Kasbah in Tangier by a swarm of children
Drank so much Mint Tea
Been really confused by Arabic keyboards.

I really like it here.

Slight Change

There's little time to blog. I'v been going out, tasting port, listening to Fado, seeing castles, sneaking into huge Portugeuse rock festivals, and changing my travel plans. Morrocco isn't out of the itinerary, but it's being delayed while I visit Andalucia. So, Sevilla, Granada, and then Tangiers, Fes, Casablanca, and Marrakesh if I feel the time is right, then Lithuania. We'll see how it goes. There will be more blog in the future soon, but for now I'm still catching up. I'm still alive and kicking so don't fret until you become sore, and maybe look at some new pictures I'm uploading while I compose some awesome blogs to describe the past week. But for now, please consider the following Zen Koan. To ask if there's an Irish Pub in Lisbon is like asking HEY GUYS IS THERE A HARD ROCK CAFE ON THE MOON HUH? Or maybe HEY GUYS IS THERE AN ARCADE IN THIS LOURVE HERE BECAUSE I REALLY WANT TO PLAY TEKKEN 5 IN FRONT OF THE MONA LISA CAPS SLUT.