Stockholm - Reindeer and a soccer riot

I've never been to Scandanavia and several flights to Berlin had layovers in Sweden or Finland. I decided to create a 48 hour layover to see a new city!

SAS wasn't my favorite airline to be honest. I've had better coach experiences, but I've had worse I guess.  It wasn't packed, though so I was happy about that. Dinner was only one choice - meat stew. No fun local touches. Small seats. KLM last year was better. I alternated between reading and watching the are-we-there-yet channel:

One of the movie choices was Sideways. I forgot how absolutely hilarious that movie is! 

I took the cheap bus into the city and walked a mile to the hotel. 

I researched this weekend forever. I booked the Story hotel months ago, which is kind of an edgy hotel with a cool bar and restaurant. Sweden is crazy expensive but I paid for the room months ago so it wasn't as painful. 

Art in the hotel. I felt like this little girl was judging me for taking a two-hour nap. 

I got up and explored my neighborhood. It was so cold - in the 40s and many places had people sitting outside! I liked the concept of these fuzzy chairs for keeping warm in the cold:

I explored Sauhall, close to the hotel. 

It only got up to 52 that day. Being from Chicago where people wear shorts as soon as it hits 55, I appreciated that the Swedes didn't wimp out on the outdoor seating. They sometimes provided blankets! 

I loved this sign:

I explored Gamla Stan, the old historic touristy part of the city:

I was jet-lagged and loopy! But extremely happy to be traveling sonewhere new:

At 4PM I gave up walking and sat with a glass of wine while icy blasts of wind came out of the harbor. I kept telling myself "I am not cold I am not cold I am not cold this is great not cold"

I had been looking forward to this dinner for a month! I went to Kryp In so that I could try reindeer:

I had an incredible three-course meal! Fantastic way to tell my stomach that we are in Sweden: 

I walked home through beautiful streets back up to the main commercial part of town where I was staying. 

I bought the iPad mini a few days before the trip. It was a great decision. I used to travel with no phone, I would just go to Internet cafés once in awhile that always had filthy keyboards and students in them.  This trip I took my iPhone,iPad and garmin GPS watch for the marathon. I feel like a total sell-out from my old more spontaneous days. I just don't understand at all how people can be afraid to travel when there's so much technology to help you. Going to Europe can be as easy as going anywhere at home: 

I used the Stockholm metro a lot to save my legs for the marathon. The metro was clean and easy to understand. A monkey could take the metro by himself, it was that easy. Unlike the CTA that might have chicken bones or an empty bottle of wild Irish rose rattling around on the floor, there were spotless seats and vegetable/flower markets in the Stockholm underground stations.  I still walked for miles because it was so much fun, I couldn't help it. And still wore myself into the ground.  My favorite thing to do is explore a new city. 

Stockholm residents were for the most part beautiful people. There are tall, beautiful people everywhere! Nobody was all done up and a lot of the guys wore cute ski hats and sported scruffy faces. Hipster dads everywhere pushing their babies in strollers.  Everything was sleek, modern or vintagey mid-century Swedish-modern (like the furniture shops). Everybody spoke near-perfect English.  Stockholm was like this magic little cheerful city where everything seems perfect. 

The second day I explored sodermalm, the more Progressive neighborhood. It reminded me of nicer parts of Brooklyn or Chicago. 

I was walking to dinner when there was a crazy ruckus on the street. I noticed that a lot of guys in black and yellow scarves had been drinking all day at a big outdoor bar. The were pre-gaming for a big soccer match. The team on the north side of Stockholm was about to play the south side team and they all walked to the game en masse, breaking bottles, singing, chanting and setting up smoke bombs along the way. They marched up the street, then street sweepers came and cleaned it all up as if nothing had happened! I'm glad somebody in this town caused some trouble, I was starting to think things were a little too perfect around here!

I had dinner at Pelikan, where a table of old men were dining together next to me and broke out into song. 

I took the metro home and went to 7-11 to buy yogurt and a banana for my 4AM wakeup before my flight to Berlin. I saw this bin of Swedish fish, which just said "pastellfisk"

I used my restaurant coupon to get a beer in the bar area of the hotel (this is the restaurant, below) where models were groping eachother to dance music,  it was that kind of place. I downloaded some photos from my day in the corner and went to bed. 

Fez - learning to make Bastilla and over-the counter surprise medicine

10 months later I am finally getting around to writing my last Morocco post - about Fez. 

My hotel, Dar Seffarine, was down a tiny alley about 4 twists and turns away from a small square.  I tried to wander outside in the rain to find some dinner, but gave up quickly because I felt like I had the flu and got lost within 5 minutes.  I planned to just sleep it off and had a full day to recover before my cooking class at cafe Clock. Normally, I would be upset to be sick on vacation - but it always seems to happen.  I know I push myself too hard, too far and always catch some stomach bug. But with a room like this, I was actually excited to be sick all day.  My three-room upgrade was STUNNING.  This was the sitting room (my bedroom through the doors: 

Ornate tile in the doorway:

Once again, I was queen of the castle.  For a price that would get you a Holiday Inn in America, or less.  I love Morocco for this. If you were into design or boutique hotels, it is the best place I have ever been for both.  Here I am laying in my bed, being sick and loving it:

I met Andres at breakfast, an older Belgian man who was living in New York.  Like every other tourist I met in Morocco, he was extremely well-travelled and a little "been there, seen that" in demeanor.  I described my symptoms and he wrote down the name of an over the counter antibiotic I could get at the pharmacy.  Just because getting a prescription from another guest in the hotel who was not a doctor seemed like a fine thing to do, I went around the corner for some of this!

While I was walking home from the pharmacy, I was offered a big Moroccan cock from a young 20-something man.  After a week in the country, and emailing with my sister who let me know that it was OK to stand up to these guys (she lived in Egypt for a year) - and being sick and not really feeling like my polite self, I told him to fuck off, and that his Moroccan cock was likely small, and would he talk to a moroccan woman like that?  No, he wouldn't.  I was in a public square during the day and I half-expected another argument like I had in Marrakech.  As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I kind of felt like it was a mistake.  I really don't think that was what my sister meant when she said that it was OK to stand up to them.  But he just put his hands up and said "no problem" and scurried off.  Amazing. And - maybe I was lucky.  But don't mess with me when I'm sick, Morocco!

By dinnertime, I felt much better.  The cipro had carpet-bombed whatever was ailing me out of my stomach. I had dinner with Andres and another Belgian couple who had that adorable, low-maintenance breezy way about them that northern european couples seem to have when they travel together.  The hotel staff gave me special vegetarian options.  I had enough sketchy meat on this trip and my stomach told me in a very strong way that it wanted bland, vegetarian food tonight. We all had a nice conversation about being tourists in Morocco and the funny things that happened to us.  The Belgian woman had a 12 year old boy try to french kiss her after helping them with directions back to the hotel one night (the boyfriend had slipped through the door first).  I told them about the family that took me in for Eid Al Adha.  It was wonderful to end the day with some good company.

Rather than be offered more cock and have more arguments with men on the street, I sucked it up and hired a guide the next day, Idriss.  For about 20 dollars, he took me to all the sights in town and let me shop as much as I wanted.  Walking around with Idriss was like night and day.  Nobody looked at me, nobody made any comments to me, followed me or tried to get me to come into their shop.  I could feel my blood pressure going down to a normal level being with Idriss.

Here was a religious school's square we saw on our walk:

The tannery, which smelled horrible:

The rooftop of a museum I wandered up to:

Some old men just chilling on the street:

A sign displaying adorable rabbits and pigeons for sale.. for eating.. 

Fez was magical.  Usually I like to do things by myself, but I'm learning that I can only do so much.  I cannot stand up to Moroccan culture alone in every situation.  Morocco and me are just too different and as tough as I think I am, I can't just expect to not be harassed.  It's not Morocco's fault.  Africa is all about going with the flow.  Hiring a guide felt a little bit like a failure to my independent, backpacking self but it was a wonderful decision.  Later that afternoon, Idriss dropped me off at Riad Laroussa, where I had scheduled a 45 minute hammam and massage.

Riad Laroussa was like a little oasis in Fez - beautiful flowers growing in the courtyard and I could sit and sip mint tea as long as I liked.  I was taken into a steamy room that smelled like orange flowers with a fire burning in the corner.  I had to strip naked and lay down on a marble slab.  A woman came in and scrubbed me and threw buckets of hot water on me.  She showed me on the mitt how much grime and skin came off.  It was a little bit painful but I felt like a new person at the end.  After that I had a half hour massage.  I wish they had hammams in America.  Usually the Hammam is a social affair - women in a family might go together, or with friends to a public community hammam with a bar of soap and gossip to tell. I figured for my first hammam, I would go to a spa version where I could be naked around the least number of people as possible. 

The next morning, I allowed myself a good hour to find Cafe Clock, which was maybe a half mile away from the hotel.  Like Marrakech, every street was a maze and no map in the world would help me get where I was going.  It was trial and error. 

Cafe Clock was another place that tourists could escape the intensity of the Fez medina.  It's a cooking school, restaurant and concert venue all in one, started by a friendly British man.  I saw other travel-weary tourists decompressing on ipads and laptops. 

I was in a class with a free-spirited couple from the Florida keys, Paul and Heidi.  It was nice to be around other Americans.  They get your jokes.  After not being around any for awhile, I could feel myself relaxing just being around them.  I could not have had better company for my class, they owned a pot-bellied pig that played a little piano.  Heidi was a former stewardess who had also been on an "Oprah's favorite things" episode and won a car.  We had lots to talk about.  Together we picked a menu that we would cook:

chicken bastilla

b'sara soup

eggplant and pepper dip

coconut-orange water macaroons

Our teacher, Souad - who was fantastic!

Paul and Heidi:

Souad took us to the market where we picked out the ingredients and picked out a live chicken for our bastilla.  We got to look the little guy in the eyes before the butcher wrung his neck.  I have really mixed feelings about this, but like Anthony Bourdain says - if you are going to eat meat, be able to see the process through beginning to end.   We are really sheltered from where our food comes from in the USA.  Going to the market and meeting the farmer who grew your vegetables and meeting your chicken before he goes into your bastilla is the more honest way to live - and your food is fresh.   And you know where it came from.  

Heidi and I also bought some magical beauty potions from a stall - I have a magic powder that turns into a mask and some orange flower water that reminds me of Morocco. 

The eggplant dip and soup:

The bastilla with honey drizzled on top:

Coconut macaroons.  After I came home I made both the bastilla and macaroons.  They turned out great!

My hotel lobby:

The next morning before I left, I had breakfast with a couple I had never seen before at the hotel, an older British couple.  We were both going to take the same train to Casablanca so they invited me to ride in their hired car with them that afternoon.  So nice!  

We had different cars on the train, I was in a car with a Moroccan business man and an older lady.  The ride to Casablanca was uneventful.  Here is my coke:

I only had a few hours to wander Casablanca before nightfall and I was starting to really look forward to being in Paris. This was the one and only photo I took of downtown Casablanca:

I stayed at a non-descript hotel downtown and ate at the hotel restaurant.  Leaving Morocco was sad, I was just starting to get to know it.  It was difficult but rewarding.  My time in the Atlas mountains was really unforgettable.  Being invited into a family's home (see Eid Al Adha entry) for Eid Al Adha was one of the most special days I'd ever had in all of my travels, if not my life.  I believe that people are good everywhere you go.  Even my overnight Sahara desert "date" with my slightly-creepy guide was something that I will never forget and always cherish. 

I landed in Paris, one of my favorite places on earth.  I stayed in my favorite neighborhood, the St German area near Rue St Michel:

I've been to Paris a few times and coming from Morocco, I just wanted comfort.  I created this overnight layover on purpose.  I wandered and ate in the same one mile radius that I already knew and loved.  I stayed in the same hotel I was in 10 years before with Kathy and ate at a restaurant that Jen, Jeff and Regis had visited one week before - Au Terminus du Chatelet, which was everything I ever wanted in a friendly French bistro:

I told the waiter to surprise me with a cheese and wine to start.  I left it in his hands, and he did a great job. I ate my bourginon with mushrooms and had the best french wine.  I sat near a man who was also travelling solo, a wine importer, and we talked about wine and travel.  After he left,  a couple from Chicago who lived in boystown sat at the table next to me.  One of them was a runner.  Chicago and running - we had a nice conversation. 

I walked home over the Seine and marvelled at the Eiffel Tower in the distance with that sad, "I'm going home tomorrow" feeling. 

It was a perfect trip.

Next up - September 2013 Sweden, Germany, Croatia and Poland!

Hypnotized by Berber music

October 29 2012

I love to sample different kinds of music when I travel.  I thoroughly enjoy latin, arabic pop music, any sort of eurotrash dance, thai pop, east African - I love it all. When a taxi driver takes me somewhere new and blasts his favorite radio station, I'm in 100%, humming along in the back seat.  I even enjoyed and wrote about the deafening salsa music in Panama.

2 days ago back in Tamtattouchte, Karim and Abdul #2 were playing Berber music videos in their car.  Groups of women in colorful robes sang in warbly, high voices for 30 seconds, then a group of men would answer.  Call and respond, repeat, repeat, drums, flute, repeat, repeat.  That was when I realized how much Berber culture was its own thing.  It was odd to see young guys getting so into the local village music. But that was what they liked!

My new driver, Mubarak (above), picked me up from Merzouga and we set off for Fez - after he ran a few of his personal errands.   We paid his electric bill and I had one of my biggest regrets of the whole vacation - we went past a hilarious billboard of someone milking a camel and I didn't stop to take a photo of it.

I was pleased to see this sweet interior car door design! Ha!

Another taxi with just a bar to hold onto and no seatbelt.  I put my backpack-airbag on my lap again.  

We headed over the east side of the Atlas mountains, which weren't as steep or scary as the route between Marrakech and Merzouga.  Merzouga to Fez was much less sickening.  There was rain and we did witness a recent car accident, which scared me but I was starting to feel flu-like and didn't think about it so much.

Here is the beautiful Ziz valley - another Oasis-type landscape.  Mubarak insisted that I go out and take a photo.  I felt so sick and sleepy and didn't feel like it but looking back, I'm glad he made me:

Mubarak was another enthusiastic fan of Berber music.  I thought every song sounded exactly the same.  I asked him "what is this song about?" and he would say "love, and village life".  Another hour went by and I asked him what THIS song was about.  "Oh.. I think it's about love.. and life". 

After 4 hours we stopped in a town so that Mubarak could get something to eat.  I thought that meant "5 minutes out and we are back on the road".  He asked if I wanted to eat, too but I just felt like staying in the car.  I didn't eat, pee or drink anything all day.  I was too tired.  I just locked myself in the car and watched it rain on a small, muddy town.  45 minutes later, Mubarak came back to the car.   And turned on more identical, warbly loud repetitive Berber music. 

I was not enjoying it at all but it was keeping me awake.  I recorded a voice clip on my iphone of one of the 5,000 identical songs we listened to that day:

https://sites.google.com/site/berbermusic1/song1

you may have to click on the arrow to play it. I hope it works so that you can feel my pain. 

Later I looked up a little more information about Berber music.  Thanks, wikipedia!

_______________

Berber vocal styles in Morocco consist of two main types. The first, called Ahwash, is exclusively village music, probably unchanged for centuries or longer. Ahwash texts emphasize the submission of the individual to the community. Typically, it consists of two large choruses engaging in call-and-response vocals, accompanied by instrumentalists and dancers. Since this music requires anywhere from 20 to 150 participants, it is not easily portable and so rarely heard in the cities.

Much of the most interesting Berber music is not pop at all, but rather village and urban folk music. It is important to understand^[ that the whole subject of Berber music and culture is inevitably colored by Berber people’s longstanding struggle to achieve basic language rights and identity recognition in modern North African societies.^[2

___________

And I hope that I never have to spend an entire day listening to it, ever again.  But it gave me some local flavor!

We arrived in Fez during rush hour.  Mubarak spent an hour and a half circling the city and using trial and error to get to my hotel.  I kept asking him if he wanted me to pull out a map and show him where it was.  Just like every boyfriend I've ever had, he did not want to use a map and much preferred to get us very lost until I got angry.

Eventually, we called my hotel and between the hotel, my map and more trial + error, we found the gate to the old part of town where the friendly hotel night manager of Dar Seffarine was waiting for me with an umbrella.

Something was broken in my original hotel room and they upgraded me to the most beautiful suite I have ever seen.  This is one of my three rooms! 

I decided to enjoy being sick in my nice room and tackle confusing Fez the next day. 

Midnight at the Oasis

The ENTIRE point of my counter-clockwise trip around Morocco was to spend the night in the Sahara, 450 miles and on the far side of a mountain range from Marrakech.  The Sahara in Morocco (Erg Chebbi) is really just a tiny offshoot of the "real" Sahara.  Because I am a map nerd, I could see that it doesn't flow directly into the same Sahara of Libya, Sudan and Algeria as I had previously thought.  Since going to Libya for vacation is completely out of the question (unless they had a half marathon), this would have to do!

It was still Eid Al Adha week and buses weren't running to Merzouga, the Sahara border town that I chose.  I hired a driver, Aziz, who reminded me of a friendly mobster and looked just like a fat Moroccan Nicolas Cage.  We made many stops so that he could say hello to his friends.  I didn't mind, we had all day and I found it kind of entertaining.  Moroccan men are really touchy-feely with each other.  Aziz spoke no english so I was happy that I got use out of my arabic translation book.  I pointed to the words "toilet" and "water" so that I could stop in a town on the way.

When you say "hire a driver", in Morocco, that isn't a Lincoln Town car.  To my horror, it means a beat up taxi with NO SEATBELT.  There was a bar to hold on to between the backseat and driver.  When I asked about the seatbelt and searched for it, Aziz pointed to the bar and gave me a DUH! look.  I imagined all the ways I would be flying through the windshield and decided to fashion an airbag out of my giant backpack, putting it on my lap and cutting off my leg circulation.  Not flying through windshield > leg amputation from lack of circulation.

We stopped for some gasoline at a pump that still had spinning numbers:

Me not flying through the windshield.  I like how you can see the cheesy decals on the window and the desert landscape through it.  

After 4 hours, there it was. You could see the beginnings of the Sahara far in the distance.  This was a WOW moment for me.  I don't have a lot of those anymore.  I'm getting jaded.  This literally took my breath away.  There it is, the actual (close enough) Sahara!!

I checked into my hotel in the dusty little town.  My hotel was really nice.  The owner was away and I was the ONLY guest besides a group of 4 italian motorcyclists who liked to hang out on their balcony wearing little towels after their many showers.  Every time I saw them, one of them was in a towel and somebody had taken a shower.  They were very clean.  Much cleaner than I. 

I had a nice room with two beds.  I chose the smaller bed to sleep in and spread all my stuff over the bigger bed.  

I went out to explore the town.  It was incredibly, incredibly dull.  There was nothing to do.  There were two or three shops that sold old dirty, bent, sun-faded postcards.  I kept thinking I was missing the downtown.  Nope!  This IS the downtown!

I had a nice dinner on the patio and ate while the staff stared at me.  The owner's assistant, Mustafa, stared at me like a deer in the headlights every time he saw me.  I could not figure out what was so fascinating about me.  Have you ever seen a dirty American backpacker before, jackass?  After dinner I did a little google search "staring men morocco" and learned that I am not fascinating after all, staring is just totally OK for them.  They ask a lot of personal questions and stare.  I tried to tell myself this was just a cultural thing (besides the obvious "unmarried woman traveling by herself" thing that provoked shock or pity and often both from nearly every Moroccan I talked to.)  The French hotel owners in Marrakech got a lot of solo travelers and thought it was wonderful that I was in Morocco by myself and were impressed by all the solo travel I had done.   Again, this didn't happen in Egypt at all.  I think Egypt just gets more visitors.  But the staring and the questions were wearing me down a little bit every day.  I was trying to be patient but I am a person who needs her space.  It was a challenge, for sure.  

OK, I just adore the moroccan salad that you see everywhere:

The next day, I used an internet cafe run by a 10 year old boy that had several letters on the keyboard that would get stuck.  I hung out on the hotel patio and read my book while being stared at by Mustafa.  At one point, he actually came over to my table while I was reading, sat down and watched me read.  I was killing time before the evening/overnight camel trek and I was counting the seconds until I could be rid of Mustafa.  

My camel guide was Ahmar, who was Mustafa's friend.  I had the feeling I was being discussed and would be discussed at length when we returned from the overnight trip.  I am fascinating!

Outside the hotel, my fly-covered camel Joey was waiting.  I am not comfortable with large animals.  I was never one to want a horse or pony.  I hated every second of the two horse rides I have gone on in my life.  I wanted to do the classic "ride a camel in the desert thing" so I sucked it up and got on.  Joey was lounging on the ground, I got on the saddle, Ahmar smacked him with a stick and I shot up 6 feet in the air.  The camel was actually cute.  He had long eyelashes and a mild manner, so I bonded with him.  

We set off over some tiny bushes that quickly became pure orange sand.

I was really expecting some other tourists on this trip with me.  In fact, I had picked what seemed like the busiest hotel and asked them specifically "I won't be alone with just the camel, will I?" The assured me that it was a busy week.  But it wasn't, and I was alone with my guide.  I made small talk with him. He was fairly interesting - He had grown up in a nomadic family near the Algerian border.  I just wished that some other tourists had been there with me.  It was a little uncomfortable, like an awkward OVERNIGHT blind date.  We talked a little bit about my trip.  Then I made a joke - I laughed some story off by saying "that's because I am a crazy girl!"

That was a mistake.  A very large mistake.  He took that literally.  I mean, I am crazy, we all know that - but not in the way that he probably wanted me to be.  Kareem and Abdul would have gotten the joke, but Ahmar was a more serious guy.  Somehow that comment opened the door for some very odd flirtation from him.

While I was busy being super uncomfortable and deflecting the very one-sided sexual tension, I was in absolute awe of how beautiful this desert was.  It was completely mind-blowing. 

I got a wet, smelly smack to the back of my shirt.  Joey had peed all over his tail and was now swatting flies (and the back of my shirt - the only shirt I had on this overnight trip).  Thanks Joey!  You are adorable.

One interesting thing about Joey and his flies  - there is nowhere for flies to go when you shoo them off.  They literally will not fly away, they just go to a different spot on the camel.  We travelled out to the desert camp and returned the next day with the same 200 flies stuck to us.  

We started talking about Americans.  I asked him "are Americans ever too fat to ride the camel".  Yes, they are.  They have a closer camp to take them.  He pointed it out to me on the way.  And then he said "Not you.  You have a good body"

UH OH

Joey taking a break and feeling the awkwardness:

I chose to take that comment to mean "you have a good, non-camel-breaking body", and not what I thought it meant.  Ah, crap.  This was going to be a long night.

I watched the most beautiful sunset of my whole life with a man who had brown teeth from many years of drinking sweet mint tea and no dental care and could vouch for my solid, BMI-appropriate, non-camel-injuring body:

I was promised "romantic light" when we got to the camp.  I stressed my preference for light to be very strong and unromantic.  I needed very utilitarian light.  I wanted the harshest, least romantic light available and made sure that Ahmar knew of my light preferences.  Instead, I got romantic light made from a soda bottle candle. 

The candle in the bottle was held in place by sand.  I asked him "where did you get that sand?!", which was a really stupid joke, but Ahmar thought it was hilarious.  He laughed for minutes.  It actually made me laugh, too.  Ok this was good.  Now I am the "funny" girl, not the crazy, whorish girl.  

He left me alone while he went to cook dinner and I read my book by flashlight.  

Dinner wasn't as awkward as I thought it would be.  I just asked him questions about his life.  How often do you get to dine with an Algerian-border nomad who grew up in a camel hair tent?  It was interesting.  And his veggie tagine was really, honestly good.  It was a nice dinner.  There were other people about 200 yards away, and some people drumming.  I enjoyed the faint drum music and the comforting presence of people within screaming distance.

Until he asked me to take a moonlight stroll with him.  F*ck no.  I explained very nicely that I am very much like a grandma who likes to read books and go to bed by 9:30PM.  Sadly, this is the truth.  But it worked out nicely.  I took two sleeping pills and retired to my own camel hair tent.  He seemed really disappointed in me.  I didn't really care.  

The next morning, I climbed a dune and watched the sun rise over the camp:

We made the two hour trip back to Merzouga, I took the best shower of my life and I left for Fez so that Mustafa and Ahmar could discuss me for the rest of the day,  I'm sure.