g's walkabout

spain bonus fotos

 
 

just a few more random shots from my time in spain. gracias otra vez a patricia, eduardo y nacho. en verdad, mi familia en espana. viva madrid!

oh yeah, what i thought was food poisoning was actually giardia. picked it up in morocco along with some leather bags a few scarves and a rug. got the kill-everything meds and am at my dad's place in israel on my way to recovery.

shabat shalom,

g

morocco photos

 
 

didn't take the camera out much, so i don't feel like these shots do much justice for what i saw. anyway, hope you enjoy them....

g

harara

harara means very hot in arabic.  good word to know as it was about 90-110 my whole time there.

shortly after writing the last update i took a walk around essouira where i met a man named najib who is a musician and purse store owner.  we started talking about his instruments and within about a half hour we headed to his place for a jam session with a bunch of the local talent.  while i held my own, i was by far the least talented amongst the crew.  these guys were amazing got into all sorts of old sudanese spiritual songs as well as arabic and berber traditional music.  one guy did a cover of neil young´s harvest perfectly although he barely spoke a lick of english. 

the next day i left really early for fez where i spent a couple days before taking the train back to casablanca to catch my flight to madrid.  the medina in fez was by far the coolest yet as it has some 7000 winding halls and alleways.  the leather tannery within the medina was also pretty amazing (and smelled very powerful).   they soak the goat and camel hides in these deep pits filled with a mixture of water, lemon, sulfuric acid, pigeon shit and cow manure.  this gets the wool off the hides.  there are also a number of dye pits with local dyes made from a variety of different plants and minerals.  they asked me if i wanted a mint sprig to help with the smell but i declined as i didn´t want to seem soft.  i was very close to vomiting.  a british woman that was there ran out and threw up in the alley.  gross, huh?

anyway, besides a weird run in with some dude on the train that showed up to my hotel to try and be my tour guide, fez was a great place to visit.  the last four days included two 14+ hour trips on planes trains and automobiles and i got what i think was my second case of food poisoning on the way out of town.  so, being in madrid now to rest is just what the doctor ordered.

oh yeah, met this japanese kid named taro on the train to the casablanca airport.  he was carrying the same martin backpacker guitar as me which neither of us had seen our whole time travelling.  upon further discussion we realized that we were the same age, had both worked in the technology world for years and are both likely heading to south america after this jaunt.  taro is a very cool and funny guy.  he sometimes pretends he doesnt speak english (even though his english is amazing) to get out of a pinch.  he spent 16 hrs in the madrid airport last night.  he worked at pizza hut making pizzas in london from 20 to 22 without speaking any english.  this is only because they wouldn´t hire him at mcdonalds.  he made friends with a frenchman who worked at mcdonalds and they lived together subsisiting on pizza hut and big macs for 2 years.  when he finally spoke enough english to complain that his work conditions were shit they promoted him to manager. 

ok, that´s it for now.  headed back to israel on wednesday.  will post a bunch of pics from morocco and a few more shots from spain in the next few days.

salam.

jabril

salam from morocco

i write to you from essouira, a beautiful beach town on the western coast of morocco.  it's medina lies within stark white walls erected by the spanish in the 1800s.  i spent the day at the beach and the evening walking around the maze-like market ingesting kebab like it was my job.

to bring you up to speed, i landed in casablanca on saturday night and got on the first train to marrakech the next morning.   while on the 3hr train ride, i met a woman (khoutar) who is studying tourism there and her two cousins (naseema and mejda) visiting from paris and brussels.  khoutar was a great guide in marrakech and her and her cousins joined me on my trip to essouira.  they just left  an hour ago to visit family in fez. 

marrakech is an amazing city full the smells, tastes, colors and sights that you would imagine  it to have.  smoke billowing from outdoor grills, mosques, silk scarves of every color imaginable, snake charmers, poor monkeys on chains doing tricks for tourists without western social consiences, freezing cold fresh orange juice, calls for prayers from mosques with scratchy p.a. systems, coffee that will take the enamel off your teeth, whispering men selling hash....  a definite assault on the senses in a wonderful way. i will post pictures once i am able to access wifi. 

warning:  slightly incoherent, free flowing and somewhat political rant.  here we go.....

like you, i have been inundated with an enormous amount of negative imagery of the arab world via cnn and other such news organizations.  shots of peaceful times in countries who's leaders don't cry for the destruction of certain other countries don't sell mcdonald's ads.  negative imagery etched into one's subconcious affects one's filter (or at least mine) despite rational thought otherwise. 

all of this said, and taking into consideration where i have been recently and the two passports i carry i couldn't help but feel a bit on edge when i landed in morocco.  i'm not being paranoid when i say that the guy at customs repeated my last name back to me several times with a not so nice tone and took notice that my passport was issued in tel aviv.  the guy at customs is ostensibly a government extension/underling and this once again illustrates the major differences in opinions between country's governments and the general populace.  that has been the only negative experience for me thus far based on my nationality. that said, i haven't advertised that i was in israel before spain or that i carry a second passport.  this trip is not a political one. 

truth is, there are so few american tourists here now that even the expert eyes and ears of the shop owners at the suk (open air market) guess that i am spanish, italian or french before they guess american.  once they do, and i tell them i am from california their eyes light up and they sing their praises for the place in the world they would most like to visit.  i have yet to meet anyone that has had anything but a positive reaction to me being from the states. 

anyway, not sure what any of that means really.  merely a brain dump of some thoughts i have had along the way.  looking forward to further exploration of this very beautiful and hospitable country. 

salam habibis,

g