Friday, March 31, 2006
Morocco observation #17
Italian spaghetti ordered from a Mexican restaurant in southern Morocco is slightly above average.
Moroccan encounter #11
Morocco has these swell little rides called petit taxis (briefly mentioned in Marrakesh post), which are small Fiat Punto/Uno-like cabs that roam around the cities hunting for passengers. Charmingly, their colour varies from city to city: in Agadir they're a pale sun-dried rouge, in Marrakesh a sandy beige, in Fes a bright sports car red.
A Fes petit taxi
Me and Sarah are sitting in the back of a Fes petit taxi, on our way to the Ville Nouvelle part of the city to get a pizza (we're both sick of couscous and tajines, delicious as they are).
"Centre ville?" says the driver as we head out of the old Medina.
"Yes!" we say.
"In Spanish it is 'centro'!" he says, with much flair.
"Ah!" we exclaim, in French accents.
"How you say in English?" he asks, turning round in the seat, and swerving a little.
"'Centre of town'," we tell him. He really isn't looking at the road now.
"How you spell 'town'?" he babbles. I wonder if he is, perhaps, drunk. We tell him how to spell it. Alarmingly, while overtaking a slower car, he starts wildly writing the word in the air in with his finger.
I start to wonder whether it'll be the authorities or the scavengers who'll be the first to peel the passport from my bloody carcrashed corpse.
A Fes petit taxiMe and Sarah are sitting in the back of a Fes petit taxi, on our way to the Ville Nouvelle part of the city to get a pizza (we're both sick of couscous and tajines, delicious as they are).
"Centre ville?" says the driver as we head out of the old Medina.
"Yes!" we say.
"In Spanish it is 'centro'!" he says, with much flair.
"Ah!" we exclaim, in French accents.
"How you say in English?" he asks, turning round in the seat, and swerving a little.
"'Centre of town'," we tell him. He really isn't looking at the road now.
"How you spell 'town'?" he babbles. I wonder if he is, perhaps, drunk. We tell him how to spell it. Alarmingly, while overtaking a slower car, he starts wildly writing the word in the air in with his finger.
I start to wonder whether it'll be the authorities or the scavengers who'll be the first to peel the passport from my bloody carcrashed corpse.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Days 4 - 7: Marrakesh
In my previous post I was vaguely complimentary about Agadir. Excuse the crudity, but compared to Marrakesh it's shite.
It's hard to describe Marrakesh without resorting to a range of cliches, waxing on about the "maze of mysterious alleyways", the "droves of wily hustlers", the "hypnotic music of the snake charmers". But there's a reason they're cliches: having arrived in the city's Medina (the old bit), we quickly became lost in the maze of mysterious alleyways, only to be fished out by a hustler, who showed us to our hotel in a wily attempt earn a commission. Luckily it was full.
We eventually parked next door, the Hotel Zitoun, a place - gasp! - not mentioned in the Rough Guide. Those who know me well will be shocked at such rash anti-Rough behaviour; it would be wrong to say I consult the good book religiously - I'm more like a zealous lunatic. But such daredevilry paid off: the room was cheap, clean enough and allowed us to foil the aforementioned wily hustler.
The Zitoun, and our subsequent guesthouse, the ace Mogador Hotel-Riad, was just around the corner from the famous Djemma el Fna, a huge open space filled with crowds of people, gathered round an array of performers, including, yes, snake charmers.
Wandering round the djemma you see all sorts: a man with a live chicken on his head dances and plays his two-string ginbris to a manic Moroccan beat; hunched old men in long robes slowly cross the square; juice vendors seated behind rows of oranges desperately invite you closer when you glance their way; lonely herbalists sit looking gloomily at their spices; tourist couples wander hand in hand, cameras swinging; bicycles, motorbikes and petit taxis haphazardly weave through the sparser areas of crowd, displacing people on all sides.
When it gets to dusk, even more people arrive and smoke fills the square as the cooks light up the fires. Soon the constant drum beats will be accompanied by mad yodelling as the call to prayer screeches out from the loudspeakers of the surrounding minarets. You really don't get that in Agadir.
Days 1-3: Agadir
It's hard to describe Marrakesh without resorting to a range of cliches, waxing on about the "maze of mysterious alleyways", the "droves of wily hustlers", the "hypnotic music of the snake charmers". But there's a reason they're cliches: having arrived in the city's Medina (the old bit), we quickly became lost in the maze of mysterious alleyways, only to be fished out by a hustler, who showed us to our hotel in a wily attempt earn a commission. Luckily it was full.
We eventually parked next door, the Hotel Zitoun, a place - gasp! - not mentioned in the Rough Guide. Those who know me well will be shocked at such rash anti-Rough behaviour; it would be wrong to say I consult the good book religiously - I'm more like a zealous lunatic. But such daredevilry paid off: the room was cheap, clean enough and allowed us to foil the aforementioned wily hustler.
The Zitoun, and our subsequent guesthouse, the ace Mogador Hotel-Riad, was just around the corner from the famous Djemma el Fna, a huge open space filled with crowds of people, gathered round an array of performers, including, yes, snake charmers.
Wandering round the djemma you see all sorts: a man with a live chicken on his head dances and plays his two-string ginbris to a manic Moroccan beat; hunched old men in long robes slowly cross the square; juice vendors seated behind rows of oranges desperately invite you closer when you glance their way; lonely herbalists sit looking gloomily at their spices; tourist couples wander hand in hand, cameras swinging; bicycles, motorbikes and petit taxis haphazardly weave through the sparser areas of crowd, displacing people on all sides.
When it gets to dusk, even more people arrive and smoke fills the square as the cooks light up the fires. Soon the constant drum beats will be accompanied by mad yodelling as the call to prayer screeches out from the loudspeakers of the surrounding minarets. You really don't get that in Agadir.
Days 1-3: Agadir
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Morocco observation #7
You know how on MTV and the like, you get a tickertape at the bottom of the screen with mindless text messages like "Dave I luv u, Sandra x" scrolling from left to right? Well on Moroccan MTV, because the messages are mostly in Arabic which is read right to left, the mindless text messages scroll in the opposite direction (right to left). It's quite strange to see; even more so as you get the occasional one in English or French, and the tickertape has to change direction for a moment to accomodate it. When you see this happen, it's like a small earthquake inside your head.
An early example of an Arabic text message
An early example of an Arabic text messageTuesday, March 21, 2006
Morocco encounter #4
Yesterday, Sarah saw a ring she liked in the window of one of the touristy craft shops opposite our hotel and got persuaded inside to try it on. It turned out her fingers were too thin for it.
"You need to eat more," says the Moroccan shopkeeper. "When you are older, you will be fat."
"No I won't," says Sarah.
"You will be fat like your mother," says the man, with no apparent trace of malice.
"You need to eat more," says the Moroccan shopkeeper. "When you are older, you will be fat."
"No I won't," says Sarah.
"You will be fat like your mother," says the man, with no apparent trace of malice.
Days 1-3: Agadir
The new and different thing about this holiday is that we got a package tour, something which every bone in my body rebelled against. Except for my financial bone. So we get a hotel, for two weeks in south Moroccan beach resort Agadir, included in the price; we plan to cruelly ditch it tomorrow, and head north to Marrakesh. Our hotel, the ominously-named Tagadirt - is brilliantly eccentric, all blue and white art deco stripes, a maze of Whitereadesque white boxes, with swings and a mini-golf course bizarrely shoehorned into the middle.
Agadir being package central, there's a huge number of white tourists around town - initially, it seemed, far more than actual Moroccans. Most are older and fatter than us, and more inclined to wear tiny speedos below their large bronzed/very pale bellies.
Despite this, and despite the sudden stretches of scrub land (a result of the disastrous 1960 earthquake?), Agadir does have a certain charm - tree-lined avenues and a seaside town atmosphere, as well as an array of smiling waiters and scrawny chats with piercing yellow eyes.
The beach at Agadir
Tagadirt art deco
As part of the package, we also got a ridiculous in-flight video, which I was hoping would tell us a bit about Morocco. In fact it began something like, "Going to a different country can be just that - different. Different weather, different people, different food, different places. That's fine - but sometimes that difference can be dangerous." It then went on to warn that we could perish by falling over next to the pool, get confused by the different types of ovens that we may encounter and, my favourite, put our children's lives at risk by entering "lifts with no interior doors".Agadir being package central, there's a huge number of white tourists around town - initially, it seemed, far more than actual Moroccans. Most are older and fatter than us, and more inclined to wear tiny speedos below their large bronzed/very pale bellies.
Despite this, and despite the sudden stretches of scrub land (a result of the disastrous 1960 earthquake?), Agadir does have a certain charm - tree-lined avenues and a seaside town atmosphere, as well as an array of smiling waiters and scrawny chats with piercing yellow eyes.
The beach at AgadirSunday, March 19, 2006
Thursday, March 16, 2006
The Sun says... Phwoar!
I picked up a copy of The Sun newspaper on the tube yesterday. For any non-British readers out there, The Sun is Britain’s biggest selling newspaper, and despite its increasing interest in celebrity tittle-tattle and free DVD giveaways, it’s still hugely influential. But the best-known thing about the paper is its page 3, which always features a full-page shot of a pretty young female baring her breasts.
Rather wonderfully, the accompanying article often attributes the day’s Page 3 Girl with an unlikely comment on a topical news story, and coincidentally, this is always reflective of the paper’s editorial line. Yesterday’s was truly exceptional. The paper took their lead from the death last week of one-time War Minister John Profumo, whose scandalous affair with call girl Christine Keeler nearly brought down the Tory government back in 1963. Following the scandal, Keeler was famously photographed naked straddling a chair; The Sun managed to find a buxom blonde, called – yep – Keeley, and photographed her adopting a similar, though less modest, pose.
Bizarre stuff. But it was the final paragraph of the piece, with Keeley’s quote and subsequent devastating pun, that was truly brilliant:
Rather wonderfully, the accompanying article often attributes the day’s Page 3 Girl with an unlikely comment on a topical news story, and coincidentally, this is always reflective of the paper’s editorial line. Yesterday’s was truly exceptional. The paper took their lead from the death last week of one-time War Minister John Profumo, whose scandalous affair with call girl Christine Keeler nearly brought down the Tory government back in 1963. Following the scandal, Keeler was famously photographed naked straddling a chair; The Sun managed to find a buxom blonde, called – yep – Keeley, and photographed her adopting a similar, though less modest, pose.
Bizarre stuff. But it was the final paragraph of the piece, with Keeley’s quote and subsequent devastating pun, that was truly brilliant:
Keeley, 19, said: “I’ve always been fascinated by the Profumo scandal – all that intrigue, sex and Cold War paranoia.”
Cold War? Cold Phwoar, more like!
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Things we read today
The Guardian's new Comment is Free site is live. Rubbish title, but looks interesting.
Simon Clarke's geographically accurate London tube map. Bendy!
Google, bless them, have mapped Mars. No signs of life, but I'm sure there'll be a Starbucks there soon.
And finally, Laura Barton on the disgrace that is the new Marmite.
Simon Clarke's geographically accurate London tube map. Bendy!
Google, bless them, have mapped Mars. No signs of life, but I'm sure there'll be a Starbucks there soon.
And finally, Laura Barton on the disgrace that is the new Marmite.
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