Journal Entry 46

March 17th, 2005

"Bogart & Co."

 

Greetings from Casablanca. I feel like I spent the last four days on spin cycle. A night on the plane, a night of Amsterdam and its excesses, then an early morning prelude to a 39-hour bus ride across Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, and the Strait of Gibraltar, which...

...spat me out in Rabat, the capital of Morocco, at 2am, always a wonderful time to arrive in a strange city. Well, actually it spat me out 5km outside of Rabat at 2am...even better. And then, I take a taxi to the youth hostel. It's closed. So the driver decides to help me out by holding down the doorbell until someone answers, waking the whole place up. They let me stay the night, but I got booted this morning. Which turns out fine 'cause the reason I was in Rabat was to get a visa which you apparently can't get there anymore.

So again, I'm in Casablanca. The first thing that hit me were the smells. Last night, we stopped at a restaurant and I about died: mint tea, plates heaped with couscous, roast chicken and lamb, and amazing spices. And today, walking through the medina [old town] and along the ocean with the smell of the sea in 70deg weather and a cool breeze...

Other than that, things slowly take off again...I've had to readjust to the life of scam aversion. I've realized that I need to learn some French. I know what time the sun sets and whether it's waxing or waning [why do I never notice this at home?]. I've read 2.5 books. I've had an offer to trade my guitar for a Moroccan lute. If all goes well, I move on again tomorrow.

'I can't make head or tail out of him. When he was young, he went in for mathematics, which implies a sedentary life. And now, suddenly, he deserts his meditations and takes up the active, difficult, wandering, dissipated life of an explorer.' [Denis Diderot]

 

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