Morocco Part 1 - Casablanca & Marrakesh

Wanna smell my Moroccan

spices? Um... yes!

Four months of hard work and it was time for a little vacation... there are few direct flights from Ouagadougou to anywhere, but luckily, there is one to Morocco. Many of you have probably heard Josh's famous pick-up line from when we first met, "Want to come over to my dorm room and smell my Moroccan spices?" Needless to say it worked... and wow, those spices smelled good! Ever since, Josh has been promising to take me to this magical place where he bought all those delicious spices and finally we made it. We started our journey in Casablanca where we got to visit Max and Brooke, some friends who work at the Consulate. They were kind enough to offer for us to stay with them, and hanging out with them was one of the highlights of the trip. We didn't know them that well before we went, and as it turns out, they are two of the coolest people we know. We didn't stop laughing the whole time, but I'll have to save the story about the sconce salesman from Wisconsin for another post...

Mint tea, so goooood... until your teeth
 start to feel like they're going to fall out from
 all the sugar (but that takes a few days).

My first impression of Casablanca was "we are in Europe." This may have something to do with perspective, coming from Ouagadougou, but seriously, Casablanca is a very modern, very clean, quite bustling city. Max and Brooke's neighborhood is filled with cute cafes, trendy boutiques, and fashionable people.

We spent our first full day in Casablanca hanging out at the beach and reading. Then on Saturday Josh went to Temple for Yom Kippur services (I'll let him blog on that), and I went to the hammam. The hammam is not something I would recommend for the modest. That being said, I've heard there are tourist oriented hammams that offer a bit more privacy. But for really traditional hammaming, its a giant public bath - men and women are in separate rooms - where you go in and scrub down whoever's sitting next to you... I wasn't that hard core, but I did go to a very Moroccan hammam all the same, since I was the only non-Moroccan there. At the hammam I went to, a women was assigned to "hammam"-me, and I didn't even have to scrub her in return!  The receptionist spoke French, but once I got back into the bath area, I had to make do with hand gestures and interpretive dance. Kadija  (or at least that's as close as I got to understanding her name) was assigned to be my hammam lady. Which means she motioned for me to put all my clothes in a bag which she then took away from me, and then she led me down to the washing room. It was an all marble steam room with about 6 beds lined up and women lying down and being scrubbed up and down. At different parts of the process Kadija would splash me with buckets of water, fold me into different positions on the marble table and exfoliate the bejesus out of my skin. Kadija had no mercy on a bit of runner's rash I had suffered; it got scrubbed all the same. At one point she had me turned over and was pointing at my lower back and yelling something across the room in Arabic. Somehow, I don't think she was saying, "look how sweet, a little snowflake tattoo." When she was done, she proudly motioned for me to look at all the skin, dead or alive, she had extirpated from my body. The experience felt good the way a dental cleaning does. Would I do it again? Absolutely!

The winding little alley that led down to our riad. Following our adventures in Casablanca, we continued on to Marrakesh.  We took the train, it's roughly a 3-5 hour trip... during which one man in our cabin spent half the time watching muslim prayers aloud (no headphones) on his laptop. There were boys running up and down the hall way the entire trip, mostly singing, sometimes fighting. Upon arriving in Marrakesh, we learned that it was the vesper of a national soccer match, Morocco-Tanzania. The city, usually a bustling tourist hotspot, was taken over by patriotic Moroccans.  Rooftop terrace at Riad Reves d'Orient - this is where we had breakfast everyday We stayed at a riad (Arabic for bed and breakfast) in the medina (within the old city walls). The riad we stayed at was run by a team of young Moroccans, all in their twenties. We spent one afternoon hanging out in the kitchen for an impromptu cooking class. Couscous, Tagine, Salade Morocaine... Basically, Josh helped cook the dinner that was served to all the guests in the riad that night.  After the class we enjoyed a wonderful meal (prepared by Josh of course) on the rooftop and then were treated to a belly dancing show downstairs by our cooking buddies/hotel staff!  Needless to say, after an evening of cooking and belly dancing together, it's hard not to become close, so we were delighted when, after a week of trekking in the desert, we were greated back in Marrakesh like old friends.  Marrakesh by night - the main square. The main square in the old medina is a bustling place with all kinds of wonders happening at every step. The stands right in the center are filled with fresh squeezed orange juice, fresh picked dates, almonds, sweets and a myriad of other foods. Around the center are shops selling a sampling of trinkets, but the real goods are found deeper in the medina alleyways in the souks (each market, or souk, is dedicated to a different good: leather, pottery, silver, etc.). And mixed in with the food and stands are story-tellers, snake charmers, drum circles, and clowns. It's hard to explain how much is all going on at once in the square. It's glorious madness. We sat up on a rooftop restaurant eating pastilla (meat filled pastry deliciousness), tagine, and couscous as the snakes danced below us and thousands of Moroccans celebrated their victory over Tanzania.   Of course we bought a tagine, for more of Josh's famous "volcano chicken."   Don't worry, we took an empty suitcase on the trip just for pottery! The culinary delights were almost overwhelming. Marrakesh by day was as much of a party as by night, which was in large part due to it being game day. Soccer fans paraded through the street, dancing, singing and getting ready for the big night. We spent the day wandering through the souks and scoping out the goods before we dove head first into Moroccan bargaining - an adventure more daunting than the hammam. Merchants will start out with a outrageously high price for any item and you are expected to respond in kind with an offer offensively low. From there you work your way to a middle point that is supposed to be the closest thing to reasonable possible.   If you've never been, the best way to describe Marrakesh is like this...close your eyes, channel your inner Aladdin, and imagine the busy streets of Agrabah, Princess Jasmin flying her magic carpet, and a precocious monkey attempting to steal whatever is in your pocket! From Marrakesh off we went to the desert, so stay tuned for our next post, Morocco part deux...