Destination: Morocco

This spring break FINALLY my dream of returning to Morocco came true. Last year I travelled to Tangiers, the northenmost city of Morocco and its city closest to Spain and the European mainland, getting only a glimpse of the marvelousness that is Moroccan culture. Since then I have been dreaming and planning and wondering how to return...but this time to the city of Fez. The medieval city that boasts the best preserved medina (meaning:city) in all of the arab world as well as one of the world's largerst vehicle-free urban areas.

Many people (most of whom have never been to Morocco) warn that one should never travel alone there- especially women. Because of this I thought I wasn't going to be able to go; I couldn't find anyone that could commit to the trip, most people lacking interest and those that wanted to had other spring break obligations here in Spain. So at the beginning of January I thought for sure I wasn't going to be able to go, that I would return to the US without having been able to take the one trip that I had really dreamed of taking. Thankfully, after talking to Adela, a teacher from my school last year who has been to Morocco many times and is certain that with common sense a woman can travel safely and confidently in Morocco, I was convinced that I would rather take the 'risk' of travelling sola than lose the opportunity altogether. In the end, a week before leaving, one of my Spanish roommates, Miguel, decided to come with me. I was happy to have the company since I was nervous thinking about navigating the medieval streets alone and I think that having a travel partner allowed me to see more hidden corners of the medina than I would have seen had I been alone.

I hope you enjoy the pictures that I have posted and that through them you can get a glimpse of what Fez is like. There are many more pictures I would have loved to post here, but I think this is a good start.

Here is the lobby and entrance to our hotel. We were in the Ville Nouvelle, the french-created, new section of Fez that gives you a brief escape from the chaos of the medina.


Day 1: The Moroccans could tell we were novices in the art of bargaining and used it to their advantage (for which I don't blame them). The minute we entered the zone around the entrance to the medina friendly shopkeepers and shopkeeper's friends begain offering us goodies: homemade sweets, bread, fruit, clothes, sunglasses, etc. We let one man take us to a restaurant (a literal hole in the wall), which wasn't even his, sit us down, and serve us several plates of whatever we pointed to. This is the picture of the kitchen/dining room/entire restaurant. Missing from the picture is the communal tin drinking cup that is used by all clients that come to eat. Funny thing is we didn't even care that it looked like this because 1)we were hungry, 2)the food was good, and 3)we were making friends with the locals.




Fez is known in all of Morocco for its high quality leather goods- purses, babuchas (slippers that men and women wear in the street and can be taken off easily when they enter the mosque to pray), jackets, wallets, etc. Here are the pits of a leather cooperative where the hides are died by hand in large vats of chemicals. The colors when we went seem to be white and black, but there are photos online and in guide books of the same pits filled with brightly colored dies.


This is a picture of the hides drying above the leather dying pits below. Impressive sight and smell: among other things, they use urine to cure the hide.


After visiting a fabric cooperative, where all fabrics are made on old looms worked by hand, we were taught how to tie a head wrap. The scarf I have isn't from the cooperative, rather it is a hard-earned good that I bargained for at about 5 or 6 different shops.


It took us 3 days to find the synagogue in the old Jewish Quarters of Fez and in the end we were successful only through the help of friendly neighbors. This picture was taken on the terrace of the synagogue. The children below were trying to call what I first thought was a cat and later realized was a pigeon down from the roof of the house next door. To do this they grab another pigeon like a football and toss it up in the air to catch the attention of the one on the roof. Our theory is that they were throwing the female to get the attention of the male but due to the huge language barrier we couldn't ask. In the picture I am asking the kids how old they are through the help of the 'Useful Phrases in Arabic' section of the guidebook. In the end, gestures and pointing was the most effective way of communicating but beyond names and ages it was difficult for us to converse.


Meat market. The big sausage-like rolls on the right are baked cow pancreases stuffed with ground camel meat, hard boiled egg, olives and spices. The meat man cuts a thick slice for you and cooks it on the skillet he has going right in front of the stand. After slicing it apart a bit on the skillet he puts it in a pita shaped bread, pours a spicy red sauce over the top, and wraps it in a napkin. Delicious! Perhaps the best meal we had.


In Morocco it is typical to see men lining the chair filled sidewalks, facing the street, relaxing and drinking tea. On the other hand, it is very infrequent that you see women partaking in this cafe culture, neither with men nor with other women. As we were eating our camel sandwiches, one by one women began sitting down across the street in front of us...perhaps this is their alternative to the cafe?

The Fallas!

In mid-March the Spanish city of Valencia, south of Barcelona on the Mediterranean, celebrates the coming of spring with The Fallas: a festival announcing the coming of Spring with fire, firecrackers, and gun powder.

Highlights:
The massive virgen, protector of the city, and her dress of carnations.
The daily 2pm firecracker noise 'show' that lasts 5-10 minutes. Each day a different group of people set up the firecrackers to have different rhythms and booms, echoes and whistles, hoping to win the prize for best firecracker display and converting the Main Square into a smoky maze of people. (The picture was taken on a partly-sunny day!)
The huge satirical works of art that paid groups of artists work on throughout the entire year.
The last day of the fallas, the 19th of March (Day of Saint Joseph, a carpenter) when all the work that went into creating the massive wooden figures (caricaturing events and people and general society), literally go up in flames and are burned to ashes to mark a literal and figurative new beginning.
Best of all was seeing Emily, who I had not seen since December, and being together again to celebrate, for a second time in a row, the coming of Spring and making a new-beginning wish upon the golden flames.

Volunteer Conference

Late in February I went with other volunteers from the organization where I was giving English classes (Asociacion Pro-Inmigrantes de Cordoba)to a conference for volunteers throughout Andalucia about Multicultural Integration Methods. The make-up of the conference was really interesting as many of us were from other countries (most with Spanish citizenship all currently living in Spain)- there was a Berber woman from Morocco, a man from Senagal who had lived 8 years in Italy and 2 in Spain, an English/Iranian woman, and the professor, a woman from Tunisia, who later studied in Morocco, moved to France and then to Spain where she has lived the past 20 years. It was such a diverse cultural mix that it was impossible not to be enthralled in the conversations and histories that we shared throughout the weekend.

Another plus was staying in this stunning 18th century Seminary on the outskirts of Malaga : )


Also at the conference I met and was roommate with a Spanish/Swiss girl named Emilie who has become one of my closest friends in Cordoba. Don't know what I would do without her! So even though I was nervous and at first questioned why I signed myself up, I am happy to have had the experience, I learned a lot about multiculturalism, and I proudly made it through my first weekend conference getaway in Spanish!

the rain in spain

There is a saying here in Spain that goes, "The rains in Spain fall only in the plains." I don't know where the saying comes from...but apparently Cordoba is a huge plain (which it actually isn't) because it has rained here ALL winter. (This is the excuse I will use to explain why I haven't updated this is so long...)

River and the Mezquita.
The pictures are of the River Guadalquivir that runs through the southern part of Cordoba all the way to Sevilla and the Atlantic Ocean. This year saw record rainfall and the river reached record heights, flooding many small towns and villages and ruining hundreds of homes along the way.

Sitting on the south side of the river with the Roman Bridge on the left.

When I got to Cordoba in October you could see the river bottom and the only water running through were a few small streams that gurgled along. As you will see in these pictures the river has grown tremendously and now the parks and walkways that bordered the river are flooded. Now the brown water rushes through with a furious current trying to get all the water under the old Roman Bridge and head down stream.

Old flour mill in the river. You can see that by the time I went to the river the water level had already dropped a few feet.

And then there were two…

So, starting at the beginning... changes in my apartment began to take place about two weeks ago when my roommate Miguel fell playing basketball. He was training for our roommate vs. roommate basketball challenge and fell chipping a bone in his elbow. He went that night to the hospital for surgery, stayed there three days, and then left with his parents to his hometown Murcia on the Mediterranean.

About three days later, on Thursday, my two girl roommates Pilar and Carmen told me they were going to move out…that coming weekend. The two unofficial roommates that had been living at my house had taken, right from under my nose, these girls to live with them in another apartment in Cordoba! Of couse they took all the good stuff from the apartment, the best pans, knives, and mugs from the kitchen, as well as the tv in the living room, but weren’t able to clear out their rooms until yesterday. In the mean time, the landlady has been hysteric about renting out the other rooms and finding new roommates to replace the others. On Sunday I got a call from Miguel letting me know that a friend of his happened to be looking for a place and wanted to move in. He came by the apartment on Monday, had a look, decided he wanted to stay and told the girls he would move in the next day. I wasn’t home when he visited so I still had never the person that was soon to be my one and only housemate (until Miguel returns in two weeks). He didn’t in fact move in on Tuesday, but on Wednesday as I was showering I heard some people enter the apartment. I thought it was the girls coming to get the rest of their stuff. But of course it wasn’t them. It was the newbie, Ivan, and his friend. Awesome.
After two days of living together I have the impression that we will be fine roommates, (he washes his dishes right after eating and has even washed my dishes two times! and today he invited me to join a baked chicken and potato lunch with him and his friends) but I am still wishing for Miguel to return so I wouldn’t feel like such a stranger in my own house.

But now, for the best part of the story...I get to move too! I am going all the way across the hall to Carmen’s old room, complete with a terrace that has a table and chair set and view of the plaza! A few days ago I started sweeping, mopping and rearranging, and just this morning I finished moving all my things over there. I am excited to finally have some real sunshine in my room, not the diluted stuff that comes down through the patio airshaft.


***My new room.

Saturday I will have some girls over for dinner and we will open the bottle of champagne that was gifted me by a student on the last day of my volunteer English class. So cheers to unexpected, but in the end, good changes, to new roommates, and to the speedy recovery and return of Miguel!!


***My terrace and the view below.

are you serious?!?!

As a Wisconsin girl I have, like most Wisconsinites, a love/hate relationship with the hard, cold, long winters that we willingly tolerate. We don't know what we would do without winter, sometimes we even think we love it, but in the end when it stays around for too long we just get so tired of it and wish it gone. Many of us often think that even though we wouldn't want to live elsewhere, that maybe it would be pleasant to have a break from the bitter cold wind, the piles of snow, the ice, the terrible driving conditions, etc., etc., at least for just one week, or one month, or one whole winter season (in my case 2) and we look for someplace to migrate.

One might think of Andalucia, Spain as the perfect place to go for a milder, shorter, more tolerable (although less endearing) winter. And usually this is true...but of course not last year when it rained almost every day (although temps were relatively high) and surely not this year...when it actually snowed!

Snow in Cordoba is incredibly rare. The last time any flakes fell around here was at least 5 or 6 years ago and none of it lasted an hour. Before that it had been 50 years ago that the Cordobeses saw a real (for Andalusian standards) snowfall. But as you will see from the following picture I was 'lucky' enough to be here for a true snow storm. When my roommates got home they all said that the minute they saw the snow they thought of me and how happy I must be to see it. Just like my home in Wisconsin they said. Yeah, I said, this is great. Here I am in Andalusia, known for its unrelenting sunshine and high temperatures, and its snowing. Awesome.

View from the living room window of my apartment- beautiful the snow on the orange trees.

Although later it was worth it when we all went to a movie and while we waited for it to start had a snowball fight in the theater parking lot. Hilarious watching people who have never made snowballs try to throw them. Overall a very memorable experience and soon enough the spring will be here bringing with it the sunshine that I love.

the post office

One of the most common questions that I get, from both Spanairds and Americans alike, is, "Are there big cultural difference between Spain and the US?" I always immediately say yes, but then find it hard to back that up with real examples that support this idea in an anecdotal way. So even though this happened in mid-december I have to share the experience because it is very indicative of cultural differences between the US and Spain.

I went to the post office around 1:30pm with one of my roommates to send a few holidays packages. I got my number and waited in the 20+ person line that I will admit, went relatively fast. Once I got to the window and handed over the boxes the friendly Spanish postal worker smiled when my roommate told him the packages were going right next door...one to Thailand and the other to the US. He thought this was amusing and began asking me questions about where I am from and why I am here in Spain. Slowly he gets to weighing the packages and telling me the different options that I have...although he does not know the expected arrival times for express, regular, air mail, nor shipping, and can not answer any of the other questions I ask, we finally decide on a method and he tells me the price. 33 Euro and 27 Euro or so. He then proceeds to take out hundreds of stamps to wet and put on the front of the packages. We ask whether or not they have the capability to just print out a little sticker with a bar code saying the price, and he says yes but that he prefers to use the stamps. Gives it a more personal feel.

This whole the postal worker next to us is listening in and asks me where I am from, why I speak with an accent, and if I like Spanish ham. This with a line of about 15 people waiting to be helped. I say that no, I am not too fond of Spanish ham, that yes I have tried it many times, and that it is something we are not used to and don't have a taste for. She thinks this is impossible and that I am such a silly foreigner...how could one not like Spanish ham?!?! So she says that her husband can get really great hams from a small town outside of Cordoba and writes down his name and number on a piece of paper for me. She then rummages through her purse and hands me a brochure for a bed and breakfast in the country where you can go hiking and see 'another side of spain'. I thanked the kind woman, pocketed the number and brochure and started asking the man that was helping me if he knew, more or less, when the packages would arrive. He had no idea, said that in a row boat they would take a long time to get there, and concluded by telling me that I should call about the Spanish ham. Meanwhile, the line of holiday package senders has grown to over 30 people, all of whom are glaring at my roommate and me for taking so long at the window. I quickly pay and ask for the receipt, check again if he can give me an ETA, to which he again answers that he has no idea, thank the woman for her 'help', smile and head past the frustrated mass of people waiting to be helped.

After leaving I couldn't help but walk down the street and look at my roomate wide eyed and mouth gaping. I told him that I don't think this would have ever happened in the United States. My roommate says this is part of the 'charm' of Spain, to which I replied that it is not charming if you are one of the other 30 people waiting in line to be helped and you are watching not just one, but two, workers talk about ham instead of send packages (and unfortunately, I am usually one of the ones in line). He continues to think it is great, that the Spanish are so nice and friendly, and that we Americans are so serious and impersonal. I don't know what you would call this difference, but it definitely impacts my daily experiences here and is one that I note perhaps more than all others. And maybe one I will miss when I get home. Then again, maybe not.