Welcome to Morocco

I arrived at the Fez airport on Saturday afternoon, walked through Arrivals and ... didn't see a familiar face.  It is a really small, crummy airport.  When I walked outside, there were several sketchy looking men standing by the door offering taxi rides.  I have no idea what their vehicles looked like, and couldn't have gone with any of them anyway since I had no idea where I was going.  John was supposed to be there to pick me up.  Amazingly, the airport had free wi-fi so I was able to check my e-mail, but had no way to make a phone call.  Amazingly also, there was an information booth.  I asked the woman there if she would make a call for me on her cel phone, and amazingly once more, she did.  I called Kasey and she said the rental car showed up an hour late but John should be there momentarily.  That was all I needed.  I can sit and read for hours as long as I know someone is on the way.  And John did show up ten minutes later, very apologetic about the rental car.  Welcome to Morocco.

Kasey and John live in Ifrane, about an hour from Fez.  Since he had the car, John asked if I minded if we stopped at Marjane, the Walmart of Morocco.  So that was my first shopping experience in Morocco, not the casbah or medina.  And it does look like Walmart with clothes, toiletries, and groceries.  It looked like anything you can get in Walmart plus a few things that I did not recognize.

Kasey and John are both teachers at Al Akhawayn University and live in staff housing on campus.  They were able to get me an apartment in their building which is just perfect.  I spend most of my days with them and their cute one month old, Ruby.  Then I go upstairs to my apartment.

On Sunday morning, John stayed with Ruby while Kasey and I went to the Marche with their friends Lauren and Greg.  The Marche is the local market, with lots of fresh fruits vegetables, as well as cow, goat, and lamb meat hanging on big hooks.  But no pork.  Like John and Kasey, Lauren and Greg are a young couple who each teach at the University.  They are former Peace Corps, and have lived in four to six different countries over the last eight to ten years.  There is a very interesting group of young ex-pats here, as well as people from other countries.  They took me to a little cafe with no menu that served eggs and smoothies.  Communication is in a mix of French and Moroccan Arabic, with a little English thrown in.  Oh, it had snowed during the night and I took these pictures when we went out in the morning.  A lot of the snow had melted by the afternoon.

On Monday, Kasey gave me a walking tour of the university.  It was built with money from a trust fund set up by Saudi Arabia to pay for an oil tanker spill off the coast of Morocco.  The winds blew the spill away from Morocco, so they used the money to establish an English language, liberal arts college, designed to look like Swiss chalets.  Thus the A-frame architecture.  The name Al Ahkawayn means "two brothers" and refers to the kings of Saudi Arabia and Morocco.



The students need to demonstrate proficiency in French as well as English in order to go to the University.  So there is a language program for prospective students who cannot pass the tests.  Kasey and John both teach English in the pre-university program.  This is pretty much a (Moroccan) rich kid's college; the students' cars in the parking lots are newer and nicer than the teachers'.  It is a very walkable campus with dormitories, classroom and administrative buildings, a library, cafeteria, store, gym, and Olympic size pool.  Well, almost.  Someone screwed up and the Olympic size pool is a few centimeters off, so they cannot use it for official races.  Only one person was in the very large pool when we looked in.

At the Marche, one of the meat stalls had a rolled roast that looked like prime rib.  I was a bit dubious, but the butcher assured us that it could be roasted and was not so tough it needed braising.  So we had him cut off a few pounds and took it.  Before I left Sacramento, I made roast beef and yorkshire pudding for Scott and Carrie, and in Alexandria, I made it for Steve and Beth.  With some trepidation about the quality of the meat, I made it again for Kasey and John.  (Fortunately she has a copy of my cookbook.)  Surprisingly, the butcher was right and the roast beef was pretty good, but the yorkshire pudding did not puff up like it should have.  Then Kasey reminded me that we were at altitude.  Duh!  Tomorrow I am making challah so we can have challah French toast for breakfast the next day.  Have cookbook will travel.

Today, Kasey and I hired a driver to take us to Fez where we went to the medina, one of the largest in the world.  In a few hours we could hardly do justice to the thousands of stalls although we managed to make a few purchases.  We entered through the Blue Gate.  I will be going back here to spend more time.  It was really interesting.



Tomorrow I am back on babysitting duty so Kasey can get some things done.  Oh, darn.

Adios a espana

My two weeks in Sevilla just flew by.  I did learn a little more Spanish and if I go to school for two weeks every year for the next fifty years, I might get fluent.  Nah!  I am resigned to the fact that I will never master this language.  Every time I get put in a higher level, I realize how much subtlety and complexity I have yet to learn.  This week we learned several Spanish idioms.  The good news is that I can manage pretty well in Spanish for ordinary transactions.  The bad news is, I don't have enough vocabulary or range of expression to rant and rave in Spanish.  Think how tame your speech has to be if you can't rant and rave.

The students in my school were much more diverse than my classes in Central America, and were here for longer periods.  My class had two Japanese, one Korean, one French girl, an Albanian, a Russian, and four Americans.  We had to speak in Spanish among ourselves because that was our common language.  There are a few college students and a few people my age, but the average student is single and 30.  For the most part, they are ready for a change in their lives, so they quit their jobs, and go to Spanish school for half a year or more.  The Asians tend to come for up to a year.  For them, Spanish is much more difficult than Americans; a whole new alphabet with no common vocabulary.  If you speak English, you already know twenty percent or more of Spanish vocabulary.

I did two of the cultural activities this week:  a tour of the Museum of Bellas Artes, and a flamenco show in a chapel of the Museum of Contemporary Arts.  I didn't quite understand why the latter museum had a former monastery with a beautiful chapel, but really, there are churches on every block here.  The Museum of Bellas Artes also had a beautiful chapel in it, as well as centuries of church art.  Not until the nineteenth century is there anything besides Jesus, the Virgin, and the martyrdom of every saint I have never heard of.

Okay.  There are two futbol professional football teams in Sevilla.  The first two questions that you ask a Sevillano when you meet them are:  Which futbol team do you root for?  Which Virgin do you support?  Turns out there are two famous Virgins in Sevilla, and people choose sides.  You gotta know what team you are on.

I kept walking around different neighborhoods and even made it to the Cathedral one day.  It is impressive, and still has a courtyard of orange trees in it from when it was a mosque.



But the two most interesting things at the Cathedral:  One, the tomb of Christopher Columbus who traveled more after he died than in life.  They kept moving his body from Spain to the New World and back again.  The Sevilla Cathedral is his final resting place.



Two, there is a famous tower, the Giralda Tower, next to the cathedral.  Why?  It was the minaret for the mosque that the Christians tore down to build the cathedral.  People climb up it for a great view of the city, and I was able to go up even though there is no elevator.  No stairs either.  Ramps that go up on the four sides.  Since the muezzin had to climb the minaret five times a day to announce prayers, they build it with ramps so he could ride up on his donkey.  Those Moors were pretty smart builders.




It took me a week before I noticed that my apartment building was the prettiest on the block.  I was always on my side of the street, but one day I was across the street and saw it.

And that was Sevilla.  I am in Madrid overnight and will fly to Fez tomorrow and go stay with Kasey, John, and their new baby, Ruby.

Cordoba

I went to Cordoba for the weekend to do a little more sightseeing and also to see a futbol game in Cordoba - Real Madrid was coming to town.  Big game.  Real Madrid is like the New York Yankees with fans (and anti-fans) all over the country.

I took the train to Cordoba and when I got off, the station was full of police, was all roped off, and dozens of people were waiting behind the ropes.  I figured some star was coming so I asked someone what was going on.  Duh!  The team from Real Madrid was on the train from Madrid.  I decided to stick around to see them, but after half an hour I gave up and walked to my hotel.  About half a mile away, I came to a hotel with lots of police, roads blocked off, and dozen of people waiting behind the barricades.  You got it ... Real Madrid was staying at this hotel.  I kept walking.

Cordoba has an old walled city with narrow, twisty lanes.  Of course, there is a Jewish quarter (no matter that they kicked the Jews out over 500 years ago) and even a synagogue built in 1315.  It is in the moorish style - very interesting.  I believe it is one of only four synagogues in Spain today and, obviously, the oldest.



On Friday night I walked around the tourist section which was pretty empty at this time of year.  Then I walked around the rest of the city and found where the locals go:  to the mall.  It was packed.

The highlight of Cordoba is the Mezquita, which is the Spanish word for mosque.  Like the Alcazaba in Sevilla, I was not prepared for how incredible the Mezquita is and ... the Moors built it in the 900's. It is HUGE with rows and rows of red and white double arches, supposedly to look like tents in the desert.  The leader stands in a niche at one end with his back to the thousands of people praying but the rounded niche carries his voice out to everyone.







Those crazy Christian conquerors had the good sense not to tear this one down to build a church.  No, they built a cathedral inside the Mezquita.  That's how big it is.  The cathedral only takes a small part.  It is kind of the turducken of religious buildings.  All they need is a small synagogue inside the high altar.





I don't think I have ever been in a stranger building.  The organist was practicing almost the whole time I was there, so there was incredible music all around.

From the sublime to the ridiculous ... I was unable to buy a ticket to the futbol game online because I misunderstood when they went on sale and they sold out.  So I went to Cordoba with the intention of buying from a scalper.  I stopped at the mall again to grab lunch but so had a few thousand fans since the mall is right next to the stadium, so the lines were way too long everywhere.  I noticed an ATM and tried to take out euros, but the ATM was broken.  I walked through the neighborhood trying to find a bank but couldn't find one.  There were lots of bars and restaurants all packed with futbol fans.  Finally, I decided for some reason that I cannot explain, that dollars were as good as euros.  I went to the stadium an hour before game time and there were scalpers with tickets.  But guess what?  Scalpers in Spain don't take dollars!

I walked back to the neighborhood, asked someone where the closest bank was, and took out euros, but when I got back to the stadium fifteen minutes before game time, even the scalpers were sold out.  Oh, well.  My stupidity at least saved me a lot of money.  Then I noticed that I was not alone.  Hundreds of people were standing around the stadium.  There was a bar on the lower level with three TV's.  So I went to the bar and watched on TV with a hundred other ticketless people.  Two men about my age were standing next to me and at halftime they started talking to me.  I can't remember the last time I hung out at a bar with two strangers, one of whom was drunk.

So the bottom line ...  I didn't see Real Madrid at the train station.  I didn't see Real Madrid at their hotel.  I didn't see Real Madrid at the stadium.  And I had a great time.  The Real Madrid star, Ronaldo, got himself ejected with ten minutes left in the game and the score tied 1 - 1, but Real Madrid picked up the offensive even down a man, and won 2 - 1.  It was not a very inspired game on the field and all of the goals were scored on penalty kicks.  Guess I wasn't so dumb to not bring enough euros.

I took the train back to Seville on Sunday where it was a beautiful afternoon.  The mornings are still chilly, but the afternoons this weeks have been sunny and in the low 60's.  When I got back, the Alameda of Hercules was packed with people enjoying the warm day.