Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Fez: The good, the bad and the smelly

About once a day, I find myself saying, "Why on earth am I in Morocco?" This usually happens around 2-4 pm during the heat of the day. On Sunday, we were at the end of our harrowing taxi ride and walking through the crowded streets of the medina with 30lb backpacks on. On Monday, we were trudging up an impossibly steep hill on the way back from the bus station. (They said the walk was 15 minutes. It took us an hour and a half to go both ways.) Today, we were at the end of a long half day tour through a lot of really cool places, but we had gotten to the point where we were just going to all the shops that were buddies of our tour guide.
Paradoxically, the one day we had a nice time around the middle of the day was yesterday, when I spent the whole day being done with Morocco.
Scam of the day was this guy, who showed us a "museum" full of all sorts of "artifacts" collected by his grandfather, including all the items left behind by the Jews who emigrated in 1948, and who was having a liquidation sale because now he lives in France and doesn't want the collection. He told us he's Jewish; the tour guide who brought us there (and probably got a cut) told us that he has a gambling problem and spent all of his mother's money. Sara bought something, and we don't know what is its provenance really is. I am most upset that our tour guide was probably in on the scam.
Cafe Clock's owner told us precisely how to deal with sketchy Moroccan men: Basically, the F word is a universal sign for "go away". And the Cafe rocked.
Kosher meat for dinner? One can only dream.

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