Portugese Mornings, Spanish Afternoons, and Moroccian Nights

Wow, certaintly a lot has happened since my last post. I'll try to provide a brief digest of what has happened in the past week.

Traveling to Lisbon was not too bad. Skipping the boring details, I was stuck in Munich at 10 pm until my flight that next morning at 6 to Lisbon. It was a Sunday night and so all of Munich's famous beer halls had closed early, so I uncerimoniously popped back a can of beer I had bought at a convience store at the metro station as I waited for the train to the airport. Sleeping in Munich's airport was about as uneventful as sleeping in an airport could be, I woke up at 4 am totally disoriented, and the whole flight to Lisbon is now kind of a haze.

When I arrived to Lisbon, I had only one night at the hostel booked, planning on spending one, maybe two days in Lisbon and head down south to the coast and explore southern Portugal/Spain until I had to meet Aaron, Hayley and Mariel in Madrid in three days. When I arrived, I was so exhausted from the flight and from Egypt I just decided to stay there and relax, rather than just check cities off a checklist. Best decision of my life. Lisbon may be one of my favorite eurpean cities I've visited this year. Part of it may have just been the amazing hostel I stayed at. Its called 'Traveler's House" and it is worth going to Lisbon just to stay there. They made us the best free scrambled egg breakfasts, had knit sheets, an amazing lounge with bean bag chairs (makes all the difference), a comfy TV room, and nightly activites including a pub crawl that lasted until 6 am. The city itself is amazing. Between some of the most beautiful, unique archetecture I've seen in Europe and pastry shops selling the best custard pastries EVER (fresh out of the oven with cinnamon and sugar) are old women hanging out the window yelling conversations to each other between hanging laundry amongst a labyrinth of ancient structures. The other amazing thing about the hostel was that it was perfect for me as a single traveler. Since the place only had about 40 beds and the common space was so condusive to chilling and conversation, everyone knew each other. Also rather than the wasted girls from some state school studying in Florence for the semester, my hostelmates were an interesting mix of Europeans on holiday in Lisbon for a week. I guess Lisbon is not exactly the list of the average student in Europe who has a week break off to travel. I ended up making many good friends ranging from Brits, Canadians, Austrailians, Germans, and Austrians. I spoke more German in Lisbon than some days in Innsbruck. On my last day, when I left, a group of my new friends actually walked me to the metro station. It was really sweet and sad that my time in Lisbon was over.

I took the overnight train from Lisbon to Madrid and decided to splurge on a couchette since we had such a sarcastically awesome experience in Egypt. It allowed me to randomly meet an Austrailian on month six of his year long around the world trip, something I can only dream of doing.


Madrid was lots of fun, like Lisbon I took it easy, a new travel philosopy which after trying it out in Lisbon I am really starting to enjoy. I love traveling alone since it allows one to meet new people so easily, it was nice traveling with friends again. Since the city is so much of a metropolis, we found ourselves spending most of our time in the large Retiro park, picnicing, boating, and wandering around. I overall found the city to be kind of forgettable; I enjoyed it but it seemed to me to be like any other large capital but without any specific character. After hearing of the 15 euro cover charges and 8 euro beers, we decided to opt out of trying the city's infamous clubs. But we did see an awesome Spanish cover band in the bar under our hostel.


After 2 relaxing days in Madrid, I boarded the plane for my second trip to Africa in the past week. Expecting the relentless touting and untrustworthy people I came across in Egypt, I was pleasantly suprised. When we first got here, it was a little stressful since our hostel is in the maze of the old city and small children kept trying to show us the way but we didn't have any money and didn't want to pay them so we spent most of our time swatting them away like annoying flies (who would then scream "Fuck you, sex!" at us and run away). Other than those first frantic minutes in the city, I've found the people here are always smiling, even when you decide not to go into their shop, they will smile and wish you a good day or joke with you. I still have the feeling like I am a walking wallet a little bit, but I am much more comfortable and I feel less like I am sticking out like a clown at a funeral. My favorite thing here that Egypt, in my opinion, was lacking is the food. It is unbelievable, I could just sit here and eat all day. Marrakesh is centered around a large square called "La Place" french for "the square" and there is always activity there. Marrakesh is proud of the fact that it is the largest African square. During the day its filled with snake charmers, acrobats, belly dancers, men with monkeys that will throw them on you if you get too close, musicians, and other street performers. On the outskirts are men selling nuts and dried fruit (I'm obsessed with dates now) as well as other carts selling glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice for the equivalent of 40 cents in large carts that will frantically try to get you to go buy their juice if you go within a 30 foot radius of their cart and since there are often 5 carts next to each other, it results in a quite amusing display of gestures and cat calls that we would either split up to multiple or pick our favorite performance and patron him. At, around dusk, the entire square turns into the most amazing food court ever. Entire open air restraunts are wheeled in and seem to pop up with the delicious smelling smoke that starts to rise around dusk. Between the smaller stalls selling Moroccan delacacies such as snail soup and boiled sheep head, giant displays of raw skewered chicken, beef and other meats lie atop a colorful selection of greens. Walking through the place is wonderful amusement as the waiters try everything to get you to eat there from highly amusing American and British catch phrases to tempting offers such as free mint tea (berber whiskey). Once we pick a place no sooner do we order is our food served, freshly cooked and all enfused with the wonderful rich yellow color of saffron. We feast and wobble away as our stomachs are uncomfortably full on only 5 euros. After dinner, I enjoyed walking around the square stopping at various storytellers or musicians, understanding nothing but just as amused as the locals at the crazy antics the man is performing. I also enjoy a post dinner spiced tea, so spicy with cinnamon and cloves that it hurt to swallow.


Our days here have been a mixture of wandering around lavish palaces of Marrakesh's glory days of being the capital of Morocco and their beautiful gardens, as well as walking and barganing at the many souqs here. Just steps from our very comfortable palace-turned-hostel are the many wonderful souqs, arabic for markets. They have everything here from tea to hookas to chickens to giant barrels full of colorful spices. Wandering around I was really wishing I had a lot of money, a need for half the things in the market, and room in my backpack to bring it back to IBK since I am seriously addicted to barganing. My favorite was when the guys would bargain with themselves. A great example that happened to me was that I just wanted to know the starting price for a pair of sweet linen pants an man had in his shop, here's how it went:


I was just looking at them, not even interested in buying them and the man swoops over and starts telling me about the amazing things about these pants. Not remotely interested in buying them, I ask him how much he wants for them
-300 dirham!
-okay, thanks, I'm not interested...
-Wait wait wait, 280 dirham! Special student price!
-Um, I dont even want them
-Gimme a starting price for you!
-I said I dont want them
-Just tell me how much you want for them
-Um, okay I probably wouldn't pay more than 80 for them, but I dont want them
-No no no! way too much, you need to be serious!
-Okay, bye!
-okay okay okay! 250!
-I said I dont want them!
-230!
-Look crazy man, stop bothering me with the stupid pants!

The conversation pretty much went on until finally he's bargained himself down to 100 dirham already has them wrapped up and handing them to me.

-I said I don't want them!
-Okay, 100 final price!
-No (and I walk away, after which he chases me down)
-Fine, 80!

And before I know it I have given him the money and am walking away with these pants I didnt really want in the first place. Half of me is like "shazam! I just unintentionally bargained these pants for a great price!" while the other half is kicking myself for even paying for the dumb things.


I could spend a month wandering the souqs and markets watching the people or coming across random ones such as the olive souq, where there are 10 different stands selling amazing looking olives after which I accidentally discovered that I could get about a pound of olives for the equivalent of 30 cents (wanting a small snack, I gave the man the change in my pocket and said this much worth of olives, expecting 10 or 20, he gave me a giant bag full of them). Or getting lost in the old, labyrintine, residential part of town during which the children kept following us trying to show us the right direction back. But since we didnt want to go back, we just kept ignoring them. Every dead end we hit, we would turn around and there would be one or two more in their gang, until about 10 were trying to lead us the way. Then one pushed the other one into Betsy, and it distracted them long enough for us to run away.


I am sad that I have to leave this wonderful country tomorrow, but I am excited since I have heard so many wonderful things about Barcelona, my final stop before Innsbruck. Since I have a late plane tomorrow, I think I am going to try out one of the traditional Hammams, a Moroccian bath. It involves a lot of abrasive soap and painful scrubbing but I have heard it leaves one feeling unbelievably clean and relaxed. Like an expensive spa treatment but at one tenth the price.


Time to pack it in for my final Arabian Night.