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.

Footnote to a Spanish Keyboard

I don't know if I hate the French Keyboard or the Spanish keyboard more. In France (and Belgium and likely countless places), they use keyboards that don't folow Qwerty. It's awerty or something. Like the old keyboards from elementary school kids would switch the keys around on, except the A in the wrong position actually types and glory be you're doing important stuff on the internet and not programming infinite loops in basic for kicks. So half the time we paid for WORLD WIDE WEBBIN on this continent was spent deleting the typo that would not be so on were we graced with an American keyboard. But we got used to it after awhile, and by the time we were in Spain we were pressing the wrong keys all over again, because you see, in Spain, keyboards make sense again. Except for how awesomely in reach these characters are: ñ ªº€Ç?¡. Some don't even require the shift button! But the Spanish keyboard is devious because the apostrophe key, while in the same place as on the American keyboard, is a different, uglier apostrope, the ´ instead of the ', and i've been using it all along and I hate the way it looks on my blog. At least it's completely obvious that I have to be careful with a French keyboard. Spanish keyboards have a false sense of security because if you squint hard enough, they look just like American keyboards. And my fingers respond by thinking the vertical apostrophe, straight and ferocious as an attacking ferret, is in the place it should be, but it's not, it's by the zero in the number row, all the way up there near keyboard heaven(which is where the blessed function keys live their eternal lives peacefully and idly), and just far enough that it hurts my ring finger to reach for it, but not physically, only emotionally, because my finger knows that this friend of mine, my friend that is always there to help me when I need some contraction, is in someplace unfamiliar, tricked out of its proper place by this Spanish keyboard, a keyboard that only knows deceit and treachery.

SCOTT´S CULINARY ROMP THROUGH EUROPE, MADRID EDITION

I admit I get a little enthusiastic sometimes, and sure it might be embarassing, but I mean it when I´m enthusiastic. Sometimes, I think my enthusiasm is warranted, like, for example, when I´m sort of pissed that I ate so much meat on this trip in a country that has so much meat in it that I like to imagine half the country has scurvy, despite obvious empirical knowledge that scurvy is not plaguing the fair people of Spain and knowing that there is no correlation between eating too much meat and having scurvy . . . FOR NOW. So I´m enthusiastic because I´ve been craving me some delicious vegetarian cuisine, and knowing that imagine how happy I was when walking around my new digs in Madrid(Cats´s Hostel! I know, it´s perfect right?) post-Sean and Scott Roughest and Toughest European Tour 2007, sponsored by Maoz Vegetarian, I saw a green sign with the outline of a woman in black holding a platter, and the words Vegetariano, Macrobiotico rigth beside her. This place is ´La Biotika,´ right at the corner of Amor Del Dios and C. St. Maria, and it´s a place to get enthusiastic about. Like most restaurants in Europe, there´s a menu of the day at La Biotika, and when I had lunch there today, this menu consisted of the starters of vegetable soup and salad, the latter of which was topped with walnuts, almonds, and a sesame sauce. The soup was mild, with a little spice at the end, and so hearty it was almost creamy. I saw the chef, a very friendly dude, cut the parsley fresh and top the soup with it. The platter was Bulghar wheat, creamed pumpkin, and green beans with tofu, arranged in a trinity in the center of the plate. At first, I thought the portions were somewhat small, but they were actually quite filling, so much so that I barely had room for desert, which was red tea and honey with an orange cake topped with kiwi and coconut shavings. Every part of it was delicious, and at the excellent price of €8.60, I felt like I was getting a really good deal. Besides the food, the dining space itself was refreshingly modest. Most of the vegetarian restaurants I´ve been to, including some in America and one in Montpellier called Tipti Khali, have eastern themed decor or some style that reminds you you´re having an alternative food experience, and frankly, it´s kind of tiring. La Biotika looks like any cafe, even having an easily visible window to the kitchen where the chef lays plates for the waitress to take. There´s nothing in the decor reminding you that you´re wise and possibly Asian(I´m looking at you, Great Sage) for eating vegetarian, leaving the focus entirely on the food. And you know, food tastes better when you´re not feeling patronized by the room.

Oh yes, Sean left, and he´s long safe in Baltimore by now, and I´m here across the Atlantic for another six weeks. I´ve gone nearly 36 hours on my own in Europe, but I´m still composing the Official Blog of my Thoughts on what the next six weeks will bring, and how the past five weeks have changed me(hint:only somewhat) so, stay tuned. For now though, I´m split between reflecting and planning for the hectic month ahead. I bought a round trip ticket to Lisbon today. I´m riding the night train tomorrow and I´ll wake up on Sunday to a new city, a new country, and a new month. I´m still trying to figure out how I´ll get to Morrocco, and I´m not evening worrying about Lithuania for now. And that feels great. I feel unrushed. Not less nervous about everything, not less awkward, just not in a hurry, not anxious about where I´ll sleep or how I´ll get places. Those questions always get answered, and nothing will be ruined no matter how they´re answered.

In Madrid

I broke my vegetarianism accidentally for the first time, for a total of maybe seven times I have broken my vegetarianism on this trip. Sean often buys meat from supermarkets, and I´ll occasionally have a little taste, mostly out of curiousity for what European meat tastes like (It´s unsurprisingly familiar). I broke my vegetarianism in Carcassone to try a regional speciality called Cassoulet, which is a casserole dish composed of a hunk of duck, a gratuitous sasusage, and white beans. It was hella medieval, served in a heavy clay bowl, but it was a taste of France. Today, the restaurant we went to near the Reina Sofia museum had a good menu del dia, and we entered this placed called ´la sede´despite some apprehension I had for the slick industrial chic design. Think decadent ikea catalogue. The meat snuck into the dish I ate, though I´m sure it wouldn´t have seemed so sneaky to someone who read Spanish, but I ate it, becauseÍ´m on vacation, and hey, it´s european cusine.
Also, I slept in my first bed last night, after five weeks of camping.