Pink And Tent-like Marrakech

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Founded in 1070–72 by the Almoravids, the Medina of Marrakesh remained a political, economic and cultural centre for a long period. Its influence was felt throughout the western Muslim world, from North Africa to Andalusia. It has several impressive monuments dating from that period: the Koutoubiya Mosque, the Kasbah, the battlements, monumental doors, gardens, etc. Later architectural jewels include the Bandiâ Palace, the Ben Youssef Madrasa, the Saadian Tombs, several great residences and Place Jamaâ El Fna, a veritable open-air theatre. The area is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

There is no chance of an American avoiding his/her cultural filters in a country like Morocco-just as I suspected! “Lets Go” travel guide describes Marrakech as a city of immense beauty, low, pink and tent-like before a great shaft of mountains and the book is right on. Its an immediately exciting place especially around the central square, Djemaa el Fna, the stage for shifting circles of onlookers who gather around groups of acrobats, drummers, pipe musicians, dancers, story-tellers, snake charmers and comedians.
Read More

Night Train To Marrakech

Posted on by Laughingnomad

pjSwKsKjPzr5gOYYAx9PKM-2006172104421567.gif

The night train to Marrakech really gave us an opportunity to stretch our cultural boundaries! You have a 9 foot by 9 foot compartment with three “beds” or platforms on each side with about 18 inches in-between the two. You do not have enough room to sit up on your “bed.” In fact you almost do not have enough room to crawl into it-especially if you are in the middle or top bunks-which we were. We narrowly missed an opportunity to be in the same compartment as a crying child but Bob issued a request to the conductor and mercifully it was granted. It is 90-100 degrees F. in your compartment. A window out in the hall is open but someone slams shut the door of your compartment. Maybe the other window inside the compartment will open and maybe it won’t. If you manage to get it open one of your compartment mates will feel the draft and immediately close it. Then after awhile, in sheer desperation to be able to breath, you open it again only to have it slammed shut again.

We tumble gratefully out of the train in the morning to a warm sun and fresh morning air and the din of traffic and people everywhere. Bob and I have noticed all over Europe that people seem to make a big effort to avoid open windows and apparently “the draft.” Babies are wrapped unmercifully even on hot days!

Tangier $40 Taxi Ride

Posted on by Laughingnomad

pjSwKsKjPzr5gOYYAx9PKM-2006172104421567.gif

I think it is more difficult to ignore your own cultural filters when in a country similar to yours-for example-Europe as to America. There is a tendency to want to think that everything about a culture and a country is wonderful, which of course isn’t honest. If someone visiting the U.S. told me they thought every-thing was wonderful, I would think they were either dishonest with me or
they were a little stupid.

So with unfamiliar currency in Tangiers we were off our guard. We took a taxi to the train station to check on times/ tickets for the night train to Marrakech. Then took another taxi back into the city to use an ATM to get local currency. The taxi driver took us to a modest cafe near the wharf where we had a huge platter of delicious fried fish and shrimp with french fries. During dinner, however, Bob suddenly looked thunder-struck as he realized he had given the taxi driver $40 instead of $4…a mental miscalculation of the decimal point. We were amazed when the driver came back to pick us up! No problem, no problem he reassured us! We would get our change but would drive us around Tangier first.

That was the second mistake. It was night by this time and the tour was very nice. We saw all the other country’s embassy homes with very bored-looking armed guards standing outside the gates. The taxi driver took us to the highest part of the city with a wonderful view where he said we could get some special mint tea at a very special place. When he turned to go down a very dark and deserted dirt road I began to really panic. This is it, I thought, this is where we get knocked off and they steal our money belts! But in a couple minutes he drove onto an outcropping where there were many parked cars facing the lights of the city and indeed-there was a little shack where he took his dirty glass from under his seat, brushed it off and returned with the most delicious mint tea filled with mint leaves.

But when we returned to the train station the driver said he only had about $6 to reimburse Bob-the rest of the money was for the tour! I told Bob if that was the worst that would happen in the whole year we didn’t have anything to worry about. By the time we got on the train and he had to contend with the hot crowded compartment he forgot all about the taxi driver. This is part of the adventure we told ourselves!

Algeciras

Posted on by Laughingnomad

pjSwKsKjPzr5gOYYAx9PKM-2006172115844514.gif

From Seville we took a bus to Algeciras on the south coast of Spain and saw hundreds of windmills that reminded Bob of Don Quijote. In Algeciras we took the ferry to Tangier. The man next to me on the bus made the sign of the cross as we pulled out of the station (apparently to ensure his safety) which was strangely comforting to me.

There were dozens of black-robed Muslim women with their husbands and children debarking the ferry as we waited our turn to get on…unwelcome migrants to Spain.

Seville Spain

Posted on by Laughingnomad

pjSwKsKjPzr5gOYYAx9PKM-2006172115844514.gif

In Seville, found a charming pension-the Hospedaje Monreal at Calle Rodrigo Caro, in Barria de Santa Cruz-about a block from the cathedral right in the middle of maze-like Barrio Santa Cruz with its hundreds of tapas bars on narrow windy streets. The room was three flights up-no lift.

In European hotels, btw, the first floor starts on the second floor-the first foor being, I guess, the zero floor. The room was huge (relatively) with sink and french doors opening out onto a small patio overlooking the street action below-which was ok until early morning when young giggling girls, the bread delivery man and the cathedral bells all went off at once producing a cacaphony of early morning wake-up. The WC was across the hall and the shower was next to that-an interesting little cubbyhole where it took some maneuvering to figure out where to put your old clothes and your new clothes and the towel relative to your body and the water! All this on top of the fact that once you closed the door to the shower there was no light bulb/electricity.

The next day, I fired the tour guide in Seville and walked off…having a wonderful afternoon by myself…wanted to have my own experiences. (He will undoubedtly have his own version of this story but I am writing it so I get to give you my version!)

The Alcazar and the Cathedral
But we did finally get together the next day for a self guided tour with a cassette tape through the Alcazar. I want to go into some detail because it provides a backdrop for the discovery of America and because of what is happening in the world today. Sevilla was one of the earliest Moorish conquests of the Christians in 712AD. In the eleventh century it was the most powerful of the independent states to emerge and became the capitol of the last real Moorish empire in Spain from 1170 to 1212, according to Lonely Planet guidebook. The Almohads rebuilt the Alcazar, enlarged the principal mosque as an observatory so venerated that they wanted to destroy it before the Christian conquest of the city. Instead, when the Christians kicked the Moors out, the Giralda became the bell tower of what is now the Christian Cathedral. Originally the mosque was reconsecrated as the cathedral but in 1402 the cathedral was rebuilt as a new monument to Christian glory: �a building on so magnificent a scale that posterity will believe we were mad� said Pedro the Cruel. The cathedral was completed in just over a century and is the largest Gothic church in the world by cubic capacity-even the side chapels are tall enough to contain an ordinary church (that showed the Moors didn�t it!)

The Alcazar itself, used as an enormous citadel forming the heart of the town�s fortifications, was rebuilt in the Christian period by Pedro the Cruel in 1350 employing workmen from Granada (where our son Josh lived for a summer when he was in the 7th grade and where you can see other grand Moorish
structures) and utilizing fragments of earlier Moorish buildings! That work forms the nucleus of the Alcazar today-a combination of Moorish and Christian architectural elements (called Mudajar) that takes your breath away when you consider the political tenor of the world today.

A later addition includes a wing in which early expeditions to the Americas were planned. Gives you goose bumps! Seeing all this brought to memory our visit several years to Istanbul where the Blue Mosque and Saint Sophia Mosque were originally cathedrals built by Constantine before the conquest of the Christians by the Muslim Turks-even the stained glass windows with Christian motifs are still in place!

Together these three buildings form a remarkable monumental complex in the heart of Seville. The cathedral and the Alcázar – dating from the Reconquest of 1248 to the 16th century and imbued with Moorish influences – are an exceptional testimony to the civilization of the Almohads as well as that of Christian Andalusia. The Giralda minaret is the masterpiece of Almohad architecture. It stands next to the cathedral with its five naves; the largest Gothic building in Europe, it houses the tomb of Christopher Columbus. The ancient Lonja, which became the Archivo de Indias, contains valuable documents from the archives of the colonies in the Americas. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Today in Spain you can take an about right from the Alcazar and see thousands of the best jambones (hams) in the world hanging defiantly from the ceilings of the meat shops up and down the streets.

We left the city just before the Santa Semana (Holy Week) festivities when the streets become full of thousands of revelers! This phenomenon happens all over Spain but nowhere like Sevilla. Later we saw news reports of concerns about �hippies� (per the Herald Tribune) taking drugs and causing trouble. These kids seem to just roam Europe from one festival to another…hippie wannabes.

Lagos, Portugal

Posted on by Laughingnomad

pjSwKsKjPzr5gOYYAx9PKM-2006172115844514.gif

Bob was hell-bent on going to Lagos, a resort area on the south coast of Portugal thinking it would be a nice break from the cold wind and one and two star hotel rooms. I resisted-thinking it would take three precious days away from either Provence France or Italy both of which I was really looking forward to. But the tour boss-guide won out and we took the bus and spent two nights in a cold and windy tourist-town.

As we got off the bus a lady from the small town cornered Bob and off we went following her to her apartment house-Residential Samana-no breakfast but nice big room with WC, shower and bidet and french doors opening onto a large balcony and internet around the corner. I spent a whole day in a bar writing the last travelogue while Bob jogged up the coast to a lighthouse. Before we left we had our whole wardrobe laundered and bought bread, cheese, ham and apples at a market for the bus trip to Seville Spain.

European Popular Culture

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Most days in Europe you would see at least once a wonderful display of affection between two young people-playful and sensuous-mostly kissing-but never offensive. And then they walk on as if nothing had happened. Bob finds it uncomfortable…but no one else on the street seems to pay any attention to it at all. Portugal is a bit more restrained…the play, Vagina Monologues, advertised all over Britain and France but is no where to be seen in Spain and Portugal.

Fashions
In the urban centers you see beautiful people with beautiful clothes (and in Paris the women smelled wonderful as they passed you by on the street) so I caved in and made my first purchase-some perfume not exported by France. Women love sweaters. Fully 2-3 out of all people under 40 wear black leather jackets and often the women are in full length ones. Clothing is very expensive so you know these folks have a little money. In Salamanca, especially on the weekend, early evenings reveal mostly older couples strolling through the streets and in the town square dressed as if they were going to the opera-women in very expensive cloth coats and men in perfectly pressed slacks and jackets with tie-often pushing a stroller with what apparently is the grandchild. They eat dinner between 8pm and 11pm. Then the older folks disappear and the streets become filled with the young. I marveled at what appeared on the surface to be an ideal small village society focused around the family and at the center a cultural center (plaza) where everyone could go and socialize.

Many young women who have good figures seem to get up in the morning and pour themselves into their jeans (a la mons pubis) before they go out-the younger ones in faded ones with the hem rolled up six inches-jeans I mean. Levi Jeans are very popular as well as levi jackets. On the way from Paris to Bayonne we had a three hour layover in Bordeaux so we ate lunch at an outdoor cafe-four people had on levi jackets. Btw, levi material was invented by the Levi Strauss company in a small city nearby. American companies in San Francisco imported the strong material in the 1800’s to sell to workers in the gold mines and on the docks…and the material came to be associated with America.

The Proletariat
After a few days in the city centers, we go looking for the working class. In Paris, the Belleville section was the most colorful and interesting. There are also Muslim and African neighborhoods. In Paris there are no green men with green brooms in these neighborhoods. The subways are full of piss and the streets full of litter. Guess they dn’t expect the tourists to go to these
neighborhoods.

Lisbon reputedly is the gay-lesbian capital of Europe but don’t know why it would be Lisbon. People are generally very kind in Spain and Portugal. Lots of people of African extract in Portugal and they often flash big wonderful smiles!

Continuing saga of the internet: went searching for the internet in Lisbon. An Austrian woman was waiting her turn to pay a $12 deposit which gets returned to you when you are finished. I told her about my internet saga in France and she laughed and laughed. I mentioned that I thought that the French “attitude” was a big act because it was so exagerated. Surprisingly she agreed and said that the French were known all over Europe for it and that no one takes it seriously. So I guess I won’t either.

Spain and Portugal play movies with original language and add their own subtitles. Hilarious, is to see an American made movie in France with George Clooney speaking French!

United Colors of Benneton everywhere. Starbucks on every corner in London but not a one in France, Spain and Portugal-god love them! Actually it would devestate hundreds of local cafes that really are at the heart of the culture of these countries.

Even though most of the little shops and banks and restaurants close down in the afternoon 1-4 in Spain and 1-3 in Portugal, the modern shopping mall businesses stay open. Whole countries of people disappear off the streets during these hours!

Lisbon

Posted on by Laughingnomad

pjSwKsKjPzr5gOYYAx9PKM-2006172115844514.gif

Roosters are symbols of Portuguese culture so we felt that it was appropriate that after staying one night in a boring part of Lisbon, Portugal in a hotel room offered to us by a “tout” at a train station we woke to a rooster crowing at 5am.

The next day we moved to a small two star hotel-Residencial Santana Pensao at Rua Luciano Cordeiro-located up a steep narrow side street on a hill at the center of the city in the Bairro Alto district. (“Lets Go” travel book says “Bairro” is the hip name for Chiado-the Portuguese word for district.) The hotel can also be reached via the Ascensor Gloria from Pr. Restauradoes-like the cable cars in San Francisco. The hotel was up one flight of stairs off street-no lift.

We have learned more history on hop-on hop-off tour buses than we did in all of high school and college put together! In Portugal there is a law against killing the bull in bullfights-and the horse plays a very important role. In 1965 my traveling companion and I saw a bullfight in Pamplona Spain when we were there for the running of the bulls (that Hemingway made famous in the US). It was a sickening thing to watch and we left in the middle before the bull died.

As Bob says, Lisbon has some degree of decay but perhaps that is the charm-by its appearance we realize that it’s hey-day was 4-5 centuries ago. Amazing to think that at one time Portugal was one of the foremost powers of the world! One of the monuments of Lisbon is a huge building that was built as a seminary and church with 15% of the profits that came from the spice trade in India. It is now called the “pepper building.”

Next day, after a lunch of very good chicken and rice and a sandwich of beef slices cooked in broth, we strolled out into an empty square in the rain. I was offered contraband from a guy selling sun glasses…sunglasses in the rain?

Was helped at internet by young woman who was fluent in English. (Very difficult to find anyone over the age of 20 that knows English. This girl, however, had had 8 years of English and told us that all children from first grade on are now taught English in school.)

Ate dinner at restaurant around the corner with Fado Music. Fado is Portuguese old style blues which is a kind of high-pitched lamenting. I had heard that Fado was very beautiful and that the singing would break your heart but I didn’t like the classical version-very loud and harsh singing and then they want to sell you their CDs afterward. Have been told the contemporary Fado is better. The next day we took a train trip to Caicais on the outskirts of Lisbon.

On the last day we took the tram up to the Alfama district-old Moorish district of town-lots of Muslim shop owners. We visited a church that was displaying “Order of Malta” artifacts and we remembered reading about the order in a college history or religion class. We trekked up a steep hill in the rain to the Castile de Jorge, an old Roman fortification, and I took a pee into a little waterfall (urinal) against the fortification wall behind a copper shield with my stand-up peeing device used by women in the US Forest Service.

Sampled port wine (the indiginous favorite in Portugal) in a shop across from the wall with a young woman proprietor who spoke very good English. When my port was finished I told her thank you in Portuguese and she said “that is Portuguese for thank you.” I said, “yes, I know, I am thanking you for the port.” She laughed and said, “oh, sorry, many people say gracias (Spanish) and we find it very insulting!” Bob and I do seem to “get into trouble” on a pretty regular basis with the locals but we were lucky that time. Bob remarked to her that he noticed that she had an American accent. She said that yes, her English teacher from Britain gave her low marks in English class because of her American accent but that she didn’t care!

On the way down the hill, soaked wet and freezing cold, we looked into a small restaurant window and saw a huge pile of crab on the counter with a table full of people eating and laughing loudly-the entire scene pulling us uncontrollably in where we participated in the festivities.

Spanish Trains

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Spanish trains have compartments with room for six people. Luckily ours had two young Swiss girls that we recruited, a young guy from Japan that was studying Spanish in Salamanca for a few months but going to Portugal for a break, a guy from France and us.

I remembered that when my friend Barbara and I traveled on a second class train in 1965 in Spain (once was all it took) the train was full of drunk soldiers who kept bothering us so I crawled up into the luggage rack and fell asleep-I guess leaving Barb to fend for herself!

We, in our compartment, had a lengthy discussion about Spanish culture as we had observed it in Salamanca. The Japanese guy was genuinely shocked by the young kids that were running around the streets at 4:30 in the morning-which was funny because I had been thinking just the opposite-that the Spanish loved the young and made a place in society for them…well what do I know anyway!

Salamanca Spain

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I just walked out of the jaw-dropping Cathedral in the beautiful old city of Salamanca a few minutes ago. Made Notre Dame in Paris look pretty tame. And there are several cathedrals in Salamanca! The city, named Cultural City of Europe, feels like you woke up one morning in the medieval age. There is hardly a sign of the 21st century-no neon signs-few cars…mostly foot traffic. Got to remember to eat before 1:00pm in Spain otherwise everything is shut down until 4:00pm and you could starve to death before the restaurants opened again at 8pm.

During the medieval age the University of Salamanca, established in 1218, was grouped with those of Bologne, Paris and Oxford as one of the four “leading lights of the world.” The University, only one of hundreds of medieval buildings lining both sides of narrow winding cobbled streets, dominates the city. The old lecture halls are open to the public. Entering the cool stone foyer where a cough echoes through the building and the outdoor noise disappears, feels like stepping into another era. The 15th century classroom has been left in more or less in its original state;students in medieval times considered the hard benches too luxurious, so most students sat on the floor.

This ancient university town north-west of Madrid was first conquered by the Carthaginians in the 3rd century B.C. It then became a Roman settlement before being ruled by the Moors until the 11th century. The university, one of the oldest in Europe, reached its high point during Salamanca’s golden age. The city’s historic centre has important Romanesque, Gothic, Moorish, Renaissance and Baroque monuments. The Plaza Mayor, with its galleries and arcades, is particularly impressive. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Today, however, Salamanca harbors a modern student scene with over 60 internet cafes… a vibrant environment with a lot happening. I could live here…but our train to Lisbon leaves tomorrow morning at 4:30am.