Amster-ham

I don't think I can continue with the long winded blogs in which I try to tell you every detail of my adventure... there's always a ton left out anyways so this blog attempt will be presented as a "best of" list. and here we go.

Amsterdam:

Riding bikes to the city:  Despite the bitter cold, it was exhilarating to ride bikes around Amsterdam.   Half of Amsterdam is below sea level so the roads are as flat as possible.  Amsterdam also has the luxury of going one  step further from a bike lane and has constructed little roads just for bikes. One must only be aware of hurried dutch bikers zipping by and the occasional tourist that mistakes the bike road for a sidewalk :).

Music venues:   There were two fantastic spots that I visited during my stay and I had the great fortune of knowing the right people and getting to go to both for free.  All I did was ask a person about a tour because I saw a post of his about a tour the previous week.  I asked  if he was available the following weekend to show me around.  He was more than happy to show me around the city, go to dinner with my host and me and take us to two different music venues (one which he happened to work at).   We spent the evening drinking 1 euro Heinekens and trying to "one up" each other on best live shows... he totally beat me, but of course I held my ground.

Cheese: yes.  Dutch cheese is simply fantastic.  Every store that sells cheese has at least 20 samples to try and I would say over 5 days I had consumed at least a pound of cheese.  oops


oliballen:  aka oily balls ...  These delicious pastries are the predecessor to the beloved American donut. They are fluffier and oilier and they give you a bag of powdered sugar to shake on them.  I won't tell you how many I ate :)

FEBO:  This food section is a good place to mention this wild concept:  There's a little store with a wall lit up.  It's like a vending machine wall lit up with rows of "fast food" displayed in little windows.  You insert your coins and then open the window to retrieve your piping hot food item.  The food is, well  I don't know.  There was some kind of sandwich but more importantly,  these fried "croquettes" that I chose to refer to as "fried gravy sticks"  inside it's like Thanksgiving gravy with meat bits.   I don't know whether to tell you it was a heart attack tube or a sheer delight.

The Van Gough Museum:  Always  a treat to see famous works of art up close and personal.  This was the only museum I visited in Amsterdam although there are literally hundreds.  I couldn't imagine spending the entire time inside of museums so I went for best.

THe Brewery:  No, not Heineken because I'm a beer snob.  Although now I have forgotten the name of the brewery.  The most important thing to note is that all of the beers were fantastic and the brewery also had a fine selection of sausages (which were pretty much raw and undoubtedly fantastic).  The best part of the brewery is that it is beside a lovely windmill.  There may be more to this story, so next time you talk to me, ask me about it :)

American Beer:  My added tourguide, Erick happened to care that I like good beer and took me to a store that carries almost every good beer known.  It was 3 times the size of Bruis n' ales.  It.was.beautiful!  Later we visited a bar dedicated to American beer.  It was decorated with beer labels and decor from all of my favorite breweries.  They even had duckrabbit ( an NC microbrew), but since it wasn't on tap, I opted for a good ol' Rogue.  Which of course brought back fond memories of Portland.  I'm going to sneak in another American thing I did here... Dr. Pepper.  It was the first time I had seen it in Europe, so I had to walk the streets with a Dr. Pepper in hand (Twice hehe).

The DapperMarkt:  Something that got pushed back to the last day, but was outstanding.  The market, much like the rastro in Madrid was full of stands on either side of the walk selling clothes, food and anything you would expect in a flea market.  I like this one better than the Rastro because it was a lot less crowded.  The main attraction there for me was the fish maket where they sold raw herring.  I figured it would be best sampled as a sandwhich versus straight up.  My god, it was fantastic.  AND CHEAP.  only 1 euro, for godsake that much herring in sushi form would cost 12-14 dollars in the states.  So for once Europe cut me a break on the steep prices :).   The only downer was the seagull hate crime.  yes, Anmar got pooped on : /  I promise I'm not smiling as I write this.  hehe

my host:  yes, the best part of a trip is usually the company, and I was in great company.  Anmar knew the city well and was willing to help me cover everything on the check list.  He even served as a tour guide when I got together with my mom's friend and her friend who had stopped into Amsterdam on their crazy European tour (and trust me, it required a great deal of patience to accompany those two ladies).   He also cooked me traditional Iraqi food and one morning he made crepes.   He is amazing, and there will be more to tell in the future.

to sum it up, Amsterdam is beautiful.  Walking and biking through the city provided endless entertainment.  The architecture is unique and outstanding and I loved the hundreds (actually there are over 1,000) of canals and bridges.   I'm not saying that it was better than Berlin, because Berlin is quite rad BUT I will say that under my particular circumstances, I enjoyed Amsterdam more.  I had 5 days there versus the 3 in Berlin so there wasn't a sense of urgency when exploring.  I also had loving and fun friends with me the whole time so I never felt lonely or lost.  It was actually the closest I felt to being in Asheville.  The mentality there is certainly similar.  If everyone spoke Spanish there, and it was warmer, I would have already packed up my life and moved there.  

Marrakech, Muerrcos

Given its proximity to Spain, Morocco was definitely on my list of countries to visit from day one.  I wasn't sure exactly if it would happen or not, because it is certainly NOT the place to travel solo, especially for women.   With this time off, I was originally planning to rally troops for a visit to Granada in the south of Spain.  I asked my friend Raul (who lives in Valencia) if he would like to go, and he told me he already had a trip planned to Morocco, but that I should hop on the wagon.... and I dove right in.

The plan was to meet in the big Plaza in front of the post office at 1pm.  I arrived at the airport at 12, took an easy bus ride to the city center and walked to the plaza... that was easy, I thought.  But I had 20 minutes or so before the guys were going to meet me.  The plaza was alive and thriving... full of fruit stands, vendors, snake charmers, guys with monkeys, other guys with toys... hundreds of  hundreds of people basically saying "buy this sh**!!!"  I'm thinking, ok just keep walking around, and as long as you don't stop, you can't get into any trouble.  So I'm walking, saying "no thank you" "no gracias" and "no merci" over and over and I almost got away without stopping until this one guy got suckered me with his free date samples... oh ok, I thought... I could buy some dates, no big deal.  So I'm just trying to buy my dates when a young woman grabs my hand and starts to cover it with henna.  "No, no thank you" I said.  But she says, "no, no it's free, it's for good luck".  Here en lies my biggest fault in life... the inability to say NO.  "Ok fine, whatever.. she's obviously not going to let go of my hand without a fight".  So she pulls me over to a box to sit on a few feet away and I'm telling her "look, I gotta go meet my friends, thanks, this is good enough" but no... she had to "write my name in Arabic" and tell me about the good luck and babies I was going to have (ps lady, those two things aren't synonymous in my world right now).  So I'm pulling away and smearing Henna everywhere including my trusty fannypack ( :) ).  So she says, ok you pay now.. you student, I give you good deal 350 dirhams (haha that is 35 euros!)  I tell her, listen you're crazy, 5 minutes of henna, no way.  I offer her 50 (you can do the math) and she freaks out and starts calling out to her scary posse which is lurking around, busy selling whatever is they're selling.  As she's calling lots of attention to us, I'm starting to get more and more nervous... I said efff it and gave her 100 dirhams and ran, haha.   After reflecting upon this moment I realize that they probably couldn't have done a damn thing  to me and I shouldn't have paid a dime... but these guys thrive from the power of intimidation and harassment and they do a mighty fine job.  

So I make it to where I'm supposed to meet my friends and just sit, hoping to be left alone for a second. Finally at what I thought was 1:30, Raul and his friend Sergio meet up.  It is then that I learn that is is 12:30 in Morocco ( one hour time change) and that cheap pre-paid phones don't have clocks that run on satellites and therefore do not automatically change... thank god they were early.  So we make the trek to find my Riad, which is supposedly right next to their Riad.  We head down an alley-way like street with high walls... both sides lined with people selling everything you could possibly imagine.  There is kind of an indoor feel as most of the alley ways are covered with scrap metal or thatching.  You would think you were walking down a sidewalk given the fact that it's a market, but then you realize it's a free for all street as motorbikes fly through, seemingly paying no regard to the hoards of pedestrians.   The smell of gasoline (reaaaalllly cheap there by the way, of course) has a way of lingering and settling in to the Medina.  It didn't take long for me to get a sharp headache from the fumes.Along the way we saw lots of little children around, and I couldn't help but offer 3 of them dates... the fruit.  Within seconds there's like 10 children, so I hand out dates as quickly as possible and say "that's it no more, sorry!"  One precious child walks along with us for a bit grabs my hand and kisses it repeatedly.   Despite the fact that there's a line of drool from his mouth to his hand, I find this motion absolutely endearing. 15-20 minutes later, and after many dodgy turns down the maze of the Medina, we find the Riad.  All I know is that I have absolutely no idea where I am.

The Riad is beautiful!  One thing that defines a Riad is the fact that the building is built around a garden and pool/bath.  There are several open lounging spaces filled  with tropical colors, plants and an overall luxurious feel.  My habitation included a base floor which was an empty room with a sink, and a bathroom.   The spiral staircase led to a charming bedroom, which was simple, but well decorated.  It was, well, ghetto but precious.  The roof top terrace is by far the highlight of the Riad... but I'll move on to that in a bit.  

Raul and Sergio wait for me as I drop off my stuff and wash the gooey henna off my hand...it was like having poop on my hands, if you've ever had henna, you know what I mean.  In my Riad we met a couple from Brazil who had actually been on the same flight as me.  They basically have a grant from a phd program to travel around the world for year, interviewing people about motivation... um, best idea ever?  So the five us head to back to the plaza to get some lunch.   During the trek we're ignoring the hoards of people yelling out in every language that we think we could possibly speak "big plaza, are you looking for the big plaza, go this way, no go this way, blah blah blah.  We just smile and continue on our way".  The restaurant, like many of the other restaurants and cafes, is placed high above ground level and filled with windows offering a lovely view of the square, palm trees, and snow covered mountains.  Here's the view:

I have pictures of the food as well, please refer to the facebook album as it takes a hot minute to get pictures on here and there's 70-80 pictures available to you there. 

During our lunch, a parade, protest of sorts came through the streets cheering, singing, and throwing papers in the air.  It was the day before the big election.  Unlike most governments, there are apparently 32 parties to chose from. And if you're lucky, people will pay you to vote for certain people :).  Again, see FB for photos.  

What on earth did we do after lunch? Walked around the medina for a spell, sampled foods, products and tried not to get suckered into anything.  One of my favorite spots was an herbal store.  This spot actually had a store/space inside of a building.  A young gentlemen fluent in 6 languages stopped us to show us all his wonderful products.  As I'm perusing through the variety  of goods I turn around and the guy is holding some mentholated type remedy up to Sergio's nose, plugging one of his nostrils and telling him to breath deeply... this cracks me up and I stand there laughing until they get me to do it too. So at first the smell is just like a nice eucalyptus smell, then all of sudden, BAM there's this peppery intense smell.  It did a great job of clearing my sinuses... got some of that diesel smell out at least.  Then the guy puts some lotion on Luha and me and lures us into the little shop.  Which is lovely.. and yes see FB for the photo.  The walls are lined with herbs, spices, and jars of colored water for dye.  They had soooo much cool stuff there.  Unfortunately for the store owners we spent only 4 euros between the five us ....sorry.   I was rather impressed by the salesmanship of many of the folk.  It's amazing that so many of them spoke not only arabic and french, but english, spanish... and sometimes german, italian, and portuguese... or enough phrases to impress the tourists.  

Eventually we head to a cafe to join a weekly Couch Surfing meeting... my initial thought was, wow this could be really lame, or really cool.  Thankfully we were surrounded by locals.  Everyone was interested in learning pieces of different languages and I learned a good 10 phrases of Arabic, practiced writing a little and learned that Brenna... although pronounced slightly different I'm sure, means "we want"... there were some fun jokes with that.  The other fun joke was the henna on my hand, i informed them that it is my friendly reminder to learn to say no (still working on that one).   

After the meeting, 3 or 4 of the locals offered to take us to a good spot for dinner.  We ended up back at the "big square" where at night they set up tables under tents and have numerous booths with food cooked to order.  We decided everyone would pick something off the list and we would play share-sies.  I'm so glad people are into that, because it's really the  best way to try everything.  In no time, our table was line with couscous, tajin (a bubling hot dish in a clay pot which contains a rich red sauce, meat and egg), shrimp, olives, steak, little meat balls, chicken, salad, and more than I can remember.  We made a huge mess and I loved every minute of it.   Danilo took a picture of Luha and I pretending to savagely fight over what was left of the chicken in the couscous, it was a priceless moment in Barbarianism.

So after an 11:00 pm dinner we call it a night and make our way to our respective Riad's... the nice boy on the right, Mohamed left us with a phone card so that we could call him the next day.  He offered to be our day and night time tour guide, so wonderful!  

The next morning I woke up for the sunrise which I watched from the rooftop terrace.  It was a very chilly morning, although no where near as cold as the snow topped mountains in the background.  After snapping some photos and admiring the beautiful plants on the roof, I crawled back in my bed for another hour.  I woke up before my Brazillian friends and headed back up to the terrace for breakfast.  This was where I encountered a lovely Italian couple. who ended up joining our raucous  band of travelers.  I loved the fact that during breakfast the Italians, Brazilians and American spoke in Spanish to each other, a language that no party spoke natively.  

So before we called our friends we explored the museums and historical sites around our area.  At one point we tried calling our friend, but didn't get an answer.   We later found a nice spot for lunch and tried to call our friend once again.  This time he picked up and told us he'd be there in 10 minutes... what an available guide!  15 minutes later we call him again because we were super hungry and not sure if he was going to eat with us or not, as I'm talking to him I hear a double voice (as does Mohamed) because he's whizzing by on the back on a moped while talking to me. We eat lunch in the same manner as the previous nights dinner and head on a beautifully long walk to a monument.  Along the way "Mo" (only for the sake of typing, not a real nickname) and I share his headphones and listen to ridiculous top 40 songs, 50's rock, and 60 other things.  

Mo  friend joins us, along with 3 eastern european boys who are currently studying in Valencia.  The walk back was long as well, but one of the most gorgeous walks I've ever had in my life.  The sunset that day was like catching a glimpse into heaven.  There was an incredibly complex layering of various clouds with perfect pink, oranges and yellows.  It still melts my heart to think about it.(Again, see photos, but no that they cannot even begin to do that moment in time a bit of justice)  Ok, so we meander later for some roof top coffees and mint tea. Mo offers to run down to the plaza real quick and haggle for a scarf... it was the only thing I managed to buy the whole time there.. frankly the whole deal  is rather overwhelming and I always felt like we were in a hurry... but thanks to the insider scoop I got a great bargain.  We eat dinner at the coffee shop from the night before, and it just wasn't very good.  Most of the dinner conversation revolved around how we were going to buy me more time in Morocco...  What would I tell my bosses? lost passport?  Tap water gave me the runs?  the truth?  As tempting as the option was, I knew I had to get back, and that I had to make this last night count : ).

So, some we all go back to the Riads, some stay and others of us head off to the new side of town where the clubs are.  I didn't really pack club clothes because I had no idea that there were night club options.  so .. I looked pretty cool in my denim skirt and tennis shoes, no really.  

The new Medina (Town) is the only area that actually sells alcohol.  I had money enough for one Mojito.. it costs the equivalent of 8 euro, which on a local salary is probably like paying over $20... plus it was really, really sweet and quite possibly had no alcohol what so ever.  Really though, not important to me.  I had a fantastic time dancing to the traditional club type music along with Moroccan dance music  ... watching everyone's sweet dance moves and hand claps was a real treat.  

At about the hour of "so late, it's early" we decide to leave.  I also realize that Mohamed really doesn't  exactly where  my Riad is, and that it would be rather risky to even try this late at night.  So we go to his apt in the new town I crashed out in the living room and 3 hours later we begin our morning hunt for my Riad.

I know I can be really careless sometimes, but this one takes the cake.  I didn't bring my notebook with the Riad's address, I had no money, and no minutes on my phone to call the others.  In my defense, Mo had assured me that he knew his way around because he was a local... oops.  Well after running through the old Medina maze walls and alley ways for over an hour.... and asking quite possibly 50 people every 10 meters ("Where is Hadika Maria") , and even paying some little children who told us they knew the way( liiiiaaaars) we finally, finally made back.  What really helped was a nice gentlemen who let us into his friend's Riad to look up the address.  After the fiasco, we decided we would never forget the name "Hadika Maria" for the rest of our lives.  And when my grandchildren are sitting with their pre-programemd GPS's gadgets installed into their wrists I will tell them... "back in my day... lost for hours, days, in the desert...." I can't wait : )

So the trip had to end, as all vacations do.  Mo and I had a delicious breakfast of this fried bread like stuff with cheese in it ( we also tried the same snack as a group the previous day during our long walk... I really don't know how to describe the stuff, but it's delicious).  Mo gave me some traditional jewelry from the Western Sahara where he grew up which was incredibly kind of him.  He even took the bus with me to the airport and waited in line with me for my boarding ticket.  

Once I sat in the plane I realized I made it!  Despite all my absent minded actions, I made it out alive!

As I know I'm leaving a lot out of this story, I want one thing to stick.  For me, the most important part of this trip was the friendships I made with people... from the tourists to the locals I was incredibly privileged to be in the company that I had.    The locals especially, from telling us to try their famous dish of "snail's pee"  too offering to find me jobs teaching english, and every step of hospitality along the way was a true gift that I shall cherish for a lifetime.   I laughed until I cried, and cried when I left. 

Thanks to all who made it possible!  I love you dearly : )