Episode 7: Camping & Rain – Andorra (Days 15 to 17)

Previously on the trip:
Episode 1 – First Day in Marrakech – Marrakech (Days 1-2) Story Pics
Episode 2 – Church Music & Fish – The Rest of Morocco (2-4) Story Pics
Episode 3 – Stuck Between a Rock & a Spain Place – Gibraltar (5-6) Story
Episode 4 – Homeless in a Hostel – Granada (6-9) Story
Episode 5 – Getting the Hang of It – Madrid (9-11) Story
Episode 6 – New Friends & New Experiences – Barcalona (12-15) Story

The first half of this was written on the spot in the hostel in Andorra. I was in a bad mood, and it comes through in the narrative. After the “caio”, I pick up with the aftermath. Enjoy!

-Joshua

Traveling like this is not a vacation. A vacation implies hotels, rental cars, restaurants, itineraries… planned destinations. This way, on the other hand, includes waiting around for hours after a missed bus, being forced to choose between shelling out hard cash (at an exchange rate of $1.50 to the Euro) for a shitty hostel bed or sleeping at a train station, or sometimes it includes no choice other than the latter.

It’s about this time in the trip when I wonder why I’m out here at all. I haven’t spoken to most of my friends or family in two weeks, I’m behind on my writing which makes me feel like memories and stories are fading and are thus worthless, and specifically, today was rough. Finally at 22:00 (yea, I’m writing in EU time from now on… figure it out) I am sitting in a hostel back in Andorra La Vella after a failed excursion to Canillo this morning. I am three beers and a glass of wine deep, and typing while a television entertains Nate on the bed behind me. He is watching a live broadcast of a music festival going on ?00 miles away in Belgium tonight, and worse, I just learned that there is another one going on in Bordeaux, France tonight that one of our new friends is attending. If not for an alternate momentary decision (I suppose in another universe, we did go…) we too could have been there and enjoying the live music. Instead, Nate and I decided on a detour to Andorra after leaving Barcelona because: A) It’s a small country that most people haven’t heard of and I wanted to check it out; B) I’ve wanted to do some camping in the major mountains along our trip, the Pyrenees being one of them; and C) It was on the way to our next stop in France. I try to live my life with no regrets, and consider all “bad experiences” to be “eventually great stories”, but at the moment, I would rather be with friends at a music festival than sitting in a last minute hostel room watching TV after a failed attempt at hiking, biking, rappelling and camping today on a mountain in a new city in the Pyrenees.

Let’s go back for a moment…

After skipping Barcelona’s Placa del Rai, a Roman ruin excavation site that was closed on Mondays, and briefly but longer-than-expectedly stopping at Gaudi’s unfinished Sagrada Familia, we ran to the bus station to catch the 15:00 bus to Andorra and completely missed it. I have been getting mad, or frustrated, or either way bad tempered when things haven’t gone as planned. I try my hardest not to take it out on Nate, but I have such high expectations for myself that even the slightest perceived failure disappoints me. It’s a character flaw – one of a few major ones that I am constantly working on. Obviously, the point of this trip – and the reason that we don’t plan ahead – is to “take what comes” and “live for the Here and Now”, but when I miss a specific bus that I wanted to catch, I burn up for half an hour before I can think logically again.

The next bus was two hours later, arriving in Andorra at 19:00, and leaving us minimal time to check into the campsite that we had researched. Once we boarded the bus, things started to turn around. A lightly filled bus at first was down to me and Nate by the last leg of the trip to Andorra’s capital city, Andorra La Vella. Our campsite was a little more than a kilometer away from the bus stop, but Nate was able to woo the bus driver in Spanish into extending his route to drop us off immediately outside our final destination at Camping Valira.

 

Camping Valira

Campsites are generally hit or miss. Either they are fun, equipped with pools and social gathering areas where other youths hang out, drinking and playing guitar like on my last trip in Venice and Rome, or they are boring like this one in Andorra. At reception slash the convenience store, we bought an instant grill and hot dogs for dinner as we checked in. We were given our plot, a 12’ by 12’ gravel slot with electrical outlets in between two RV campers. With a few hours or so to go before sunset, we erected our tent (for the first time – making carrying it around for two weeks finally worthwhile). I set up a clothing line between two trees to Fabreze my sleeping bag (the last of the items that had been fish-affected) and to dry my towel.

As sunset set in, we grew hungry and sparked the “grill”… or at least tried. It was a tin tray prepackaged with coal and a metal grating on top on which to cook. I lit a coal with my lighter… nothing. I lit some cardboard to heat up the coals… nothing. Nate gathered some brush and twigs to build a fire around the coals to heat them up… nothing. I honestly don’t understand how house or forest fires start when I can’t even deliberately build one. After trying all options and virtually draining my lighter, we were forced to give up. I hate giving up.

Luckily, all of our food was edible at room temperature, so we feasted on franks and beans, canned corn, bread and wine. The wine opened us up to discuss some of our interpersonal interactions along the trip, but that will stay between us. Two bottles later, and we made our way back to the tent to sleep. My sleeping bag had been revitalized, eliminating all final traces of fishiness from my journey, and was placed in the tent for slumber-time. Nate had a thin inflatable mattress pad to use while I was left to lie on the gravel floor. It was warm enough that all I needed for a cover was my sheet, so my sleeping bag served as a mattress while my ruck and laundry bag within a pillow case served as a pillow.

When sleeping on a hard surface, you never get a good sleep. Every few hours, you keep waking up and turning from the bottom side that hurts to another that doesn’t yet. When your left shoulder gets sore, you move to the right. When the right gets sore, you lie on your back. This continues every few hours or so… some consciously, some automatically. Yet somehow, in the morning everything feels fine and refreshed.

Camping food

Camping in Andorra

Over the next few hours, I sat on a bench using the campsite’s Wi-Fi to upload my second post to my site (“The Rest of Morocco”), and to check mail. I have only been communicating with a few special people, and need to make an effort to reach out to more of my close friends. We checked out around 14:30 and trekked to the center city to inquire about busses to Toulouse, but first to another Andorran city called Canillo which hosted outdoor adventures like mountain biking and rappelling which we intended to try. We had already missed the second of two busses to France (05:00 and 15:00), so we planned on staying in Canillo for the night. Before we left, we booked the 05:00 bus to Toulouse for the morning.

Pyrenees in Andorra

Pyrenees in Andorra

Nate and the mountains

We arrived in Canillo and had our choice of campsites. One was rated poorly yet located close to the chairlift to the top of the mountain from which to bike down, and the other was a ten minute walk away but better rated and included Wi-Fi. Nate and I chose the latter. But by the time we arrived, we discovered two disheartening facts: First, everything we wanted to do didn’t open until this weekend which was still a few days away. And second, the sky was flipping between drizzling, haze and showers. Camping, a €10 endeavor, was impossible without a bottom tarp to keep ground moisture from making our night miserable, and roofed bungalows were an impossible €70 a pop.

This left us with a rather large predicament. We only went to this city for the outdoor activities which didn’t exist and wouldn’t be possible if they did because of the rain, so to the disdain of the campsite owner, we sat in the campsite bar and in exchange for buying two beers, he allowed us to use his Wi-Fi to search for other options but there were none to be found. All campsites were out of the question, and this Aspen-like town was full of four-star hotels and virtually no hostels. It looked like tonight would be our first street-sleep. The 04:00 wake up time to catch the 05:00 bus wasn’t the problem, but finding a place warm enough to sleep, and how to kill the twelve hours until then, was.

I suggested that we set up shop at the bus stop (a simple covered bench) and just wait out the night, but it was getting pretty cold up in the mountain. I left the decision up to Nate, but we eventually mutually decided to return to Andorra La Velle, the larger city, which might provide more options. After walking around the small town looking for local options, we sat at the bus stop waiting for a bus back, and ate our leftover hotdogs in our leftover baguettes, with our malicious Heinz BBQ sauce.

Canillo fog

As the bus showed up, Nate and I fought sleep while we worked our way to the center of town which was a surprisingly ritzy shopping district that we had missed during our camping endeavor, and found an internet café to search for possible hostels for the night. With a €15 camping expectation in my head, the significantly greater hostel expense really bothered me. I finally found a rather cheap one that was a twenty-minute walk away from our location with a final check-in time that closed in – you got it – twenty minutes. I sent Nate to rush ahead lightly packed to see if we could book a last minute room. Meanwhile, I packed up my netbook and the bags, paid for the Wi-Fi time, then followed Nate to the hostel across town.

Ritzy Andorra

While I was walking, Nate had reached the hostel and found the door locked. He rang the doorbell and banged on the door. Ready to give up, he leaned on the door in exhaustion, and in an Indiana Jones moment, pushed the door open. With minutes to spare, he secured us a room, where I find myself now.

Nate in the Andorra Hostel

The TV is still playing, and it is still raining heavily right now. Camping would have been miserable. Sleeping at a bus stop would have been awful. In the long run, this worked out best given our general situation. Three beers and half a bottle of wine deep, but more importantly having gotten this all out, I am feeling better. I would still love to have been at a music festival tonight, but there will be many more adventures to come…

-Ciao

* * *

The next day in Andorra was nice. We slept late, ate a real-meat-sandwich in a park, and made half a Euro busking by Dali’s 1977 statue “La noblesse du temps”. A cop made eye contact with me, walked away, and then when she was far enough, blew her whistle at me.

Busking in front of Dali

Dali's "La noblesse du temps"

The bus/van to France was small, shaky and should not have cost €32 each. With eight people they made €256?! Seems exorbitant.

It rained the way through the farms going north. The forecast says there will be rain the next few days, then it should be sunny midweek through the weekend. I wasn’t counting on this. Nate and I sent home our ponchos and I literally threw out my new bag’s rain cover. I forgot that my last Eurotrip started in July… not June.

Left, France... Right, Spain

Episode 6: New Friends & New Experiences – Barcelona, Spain (Days 12 to 15)

Previously on the trip:
Episode 1 – First Day in Marrakech – Marrakech (Days 1-2) Link
Episode 2 – Church Music & Fish – The Rest of Morocco (2-4) Link
Episode 3 – Stuck Between a Rock & a Spain Place – Gibraltar (5-6) Link
Episode 4 – Homeless in a Hostel – Granada (6-9) Link
Episode 5 – Getting the Hang of It – Madrid (9-11) Link

Writing Barcelona was interesting. We really didn’t do much touristy stuff because we were staying with friends and spent most of the weekend partying and absorbing local culture. So… check out some pretty pictures and get ready because a very emotional Episode 7 is coming in a few days.

-Joshua

After an all night bus ride from Madrid where we both got little sleep, Nate and I had all day before meeting Domingo, my friend of a friend who was hosting us for the weekend. We gained our bearings outside the Metro by the Arc de Triumph stop, and made our way to what we thought would be a good place to start – the main street – La Rambla. It turned out to be the Times Square of Barcelona, crammed with tourists and vendors selling the most useless and annoying noise making crap. It was awful. We were sweaty, overtired and were bumping into everyone as we passed by; sometimes by accident.

We needed internet to prep for the city as usual: where to go, what to see, how to get out, etc. We didn’t know how long we would be able to stay, and hostels didn’t feel like an option, so we decided to start planning the next stop already. We knew it would be France, but hadn’t yet chosen between Toulouse, Bordeaux or Marseille. There was a McDonald’s advertising free Wi-Fi, and we hopped on with no problems but after half an hour or so we lost the connection. We figured that they kicked you off after a certain point so we tried another McDonald’s with no luck. They must be in cahoots.

Sitting there, too tired to hitch our bags again, we met another backpacker. It’s cool if you don’t get the reference, but he looked like the actor DJ Qualls (imdb him – you’ll recognize him). Like the star, he was kind of a weird kid. But he was alone and we had nothing to do so we said that we would chill with him for the day while waiting for our friend to get out of work. As we left Mickey D’s #2, DJ Backpacker said that he had an errand to run so we told him that we’d meet him at the third McDonald’s. We would end up waiting for him for about an hour, but we would never reconnect (there were, expectedly, a lot of McDonald’s on the main stretch).

Nate and I walked further south to where the tourists thinned out until we reached the docks. I was looking for a park. I was exhausted and needed to sleep so I began to take a nap under a tree while resting up against my bag. Nate needed sleep also, but couldn’t connect his irritability with tiredness. He scolded me that we always do what I wanted to do, to which I replied, “Do whatever you want. I need to sleep. And if you’re not going anywhere, can you watch the guitar?” I slept for about an hour on the grass. It was a surprisingly good nap and I woke up feeling much better. Nate was sitting on the other side of the tree playing the guitar, so at least he wasn’t just sitting around.

By the docks

I had left Domingo a message a few hours ago but hadn’t heard back from him yet. We knew he wasn’t going to be free until the afternoon, but as the hours went by, the question of whether we’d hear from him at all started to plague us. The phone’s battery was dying, and as our McDonald’s experiment played out, we had no access to internet. This is the kind of situation that either just works out, or to nobody’s fault goes horribly wrong. But around 5PM, we got a call from Domingo telling us a place to meet him in 15 minutes. We couldn’t really hear him on the phone, and random directions like “make a left on Ferran and a right on Av. Drassanes or something” didn’t mean much to us, so we asked him to meet us at one of the Metro stops. This was the moment of truth. All he knew was that I had red hair and a guitar (my “go to” description when meeting up with someone new) and all we knew was that some unidentified dude was looking for us.

After a few minutes waiting, hoping that we had the right exit of the station, a guy showed up.

“Joshua?”

“Yea. Domingo?” Bingo. We man-hugged hello and he grabbed the guitar to help us on the 15 minute walk to his apartment across town. We didn’t mind the walk; we were just happy to be moving away from the tourist area. Domingo told us that he was in the process of moving out of the apartment to get a place with his girlfriend and we offered to help him move but he said it was cool and that we should just chill.

After setting down our stuff, we showered and used the bathroom. When travelling, each shower and toilet has its own special quirks. Yassine’s had that “earthquake-like” quality, and this one had no flusher. Nate and I both on separate occasions looked around – even in weird places like in the cabinets and outside the door – but couldn’t find anything to flush the toilet. Hoping we didn’t use an unusable throne, we had to ask. As it turned out, there was no flusher. After use, you had to use a bucket full of water from the shower to force-flush the toilet. So now we knew. After I showered, I hung my travel towel on the clothes line out the window. More on that later. We met Fredrico and Leonardo, the other roommates, and since they barely spoke English, we jammed for a while in the common language.

View from Domingo’s apartment

Over the weekend, Nate and I would experience the Barcelona nightlife. The guys took us around their part of the city to local places including street parties, a live music club, and the alleys of Barri Gòtic at 5AM. One night, we stopped at Plaça del Catalunya where a student rally was going on. It was a protest against mainstream political parties, high unemployment, corruption and welfare cuts. It was the second potentially violent rally that we expected to run into after the post-terrorist attack in Marrakech, but adventurely speaking, it was another let down. Don’t get me wrong; run-ins-with-police-or-not, the sit in was fun and we met some cool people while walking through severely inebriated.

The rally

Nate speaks some Spanish, but the most in-common language that I had with the roommates was French. Luckily, the drunker I got, the better at French I became (or at least that’s my recollection of what happened). Maybe I accessed a deeply buried part of my subconscious that recalled all the work I put in a decade ago in high school, or maybe we both just spoke gibberish and pretended to understand each other. But for the purpose of this story, and backed by my Moroccan experience utilizing French, I’m gonna go with the simple fact that I rock. We all stayed out for a while longer and walked around the hidden parts of Barcelona all while talking French like I never thought I could.

In the morning we woke up with a vacation hangover which is a real world nothing. Between heightened substance tolerance, superhero-like language recollection, and a near-iron clad stomach capable of eating “meat” twice a day, our bodies had adapted to the necessities of life on the road.

I was about to shower when I found out that my towel had dropped from the drying line. I hadn’t considered that I needed to pin it to the string when hanging it last night. I’m just a spoiled dryer user. I wallowed for a few minutes, and then came to terms that my mistake would cost me a new towel. Then out of the blue, a downstairs neighbor brought up the very same towel! The Island takes and the Island gives.

While the guys relaxed, Nate and I went out to the Jaron recommended Parc Güell, Antoni Gaudi’s mountaintop Dr. Seuss themed park with gingerbread houses and colorful stone-like sculptures. Up the many sets of stairs to reach the top, we passed mosaic sculptures, stucco caves and a pillared sub-lookout cutaway where kids were playing. At the top, we stopped to eat our normal meal of pot-luck sandwiches. The bottle of barbeque sauce that we carried around to mask all other flavors was a trickster and would tend to squirt indirectly and indiscriminately. As usual, it misfired and sprayed all over my shorts. When an item is forced to retire early, it affects the whole laundry paradigm. Nate and I each had two pairs of shorts, a tan cargo set and a pair of plaid board shorts. We had to coordinate days on and off between us so as not to look ridiculous, and now that my plaid shorts were prematurely dirty, I would be the man-in-cargo until our next opportunity to do a wash. This story isn’t so much significant in itself; rather it just explains more of the travel life.

Parc Güell

Parc Güell

View of BCN from Parc Güell

The rest of the weekend continued in the same manner, partying at night and wandering during the day. We spent more time with our hosts than touristing, and didn’t make up for it after the weekend since museums were closed on Mondays when they returned to work and we decided to leave for France anyway. At the last minute, we decided instead to go to Andorra, a small landlocked country in the Pyrenees between Spain and France, because who knew that there was a small landlocked country in the Pyrenees called Andorra?

Rushing to catch the train that would get us out of the country, Nate and I stopped at Barcelona’s most famous landmark, Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia, better known as his “Unfinished Cathedral”. Started in 1882, the cathedral has been under construction on and off through his death in 1926 all the way until today. It is expected to be completed in 2026 on the centennial of Gaudi’s death, but there are skeptics. Like the Alhambra, there were intricate carvings on the outside walls of the cathedral. I’m sure the inside was nice too, but we didn’t have enough time, money or desire to tour it.

Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia

Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia

Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia

By the end of our time in Barcelona, Nate and I felt like we had overstayed our welcome at the apartment, especially with one of the roommates. We tried to be good guests by doing the dishes, replacing food we ate, and buying alcohol, but we kept getting feelings of “so you’re staying another night?” Maybe I’m over thinking it, or maybe three nights was too much for two guests to stay at friends of a friend. Either way, Barcelona would be remembered as one of the wilder experiences we would have in Europe, and a lot of what went on there… will stay there.

What happens in Barcelona, stays in Barcelona

Episode 5: Getting the Hang of It – Madrid, Spain (Days 9 to 11)

Previously on the trip:
Episode 1 – First Day in Marrakech – Marrakech (Days 1-2) Link
Episode 2 – Church Music & Fish – The Rest of Morocco (2-4) Link
Episode 3 – Stuck Between a Rock & a Spain Place – Gibraltar (5-6) Link
Episode 4 – Homeless in a Hostel – Granada (6-9) Link

After a long delay of getting settled back in the States with a new job, new apartment, new car, new girlfriend and new life, here is the highly anticipated followup to the critically acclaimed Granada story.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Madrid…

My first impression of a city is often made based on its Subway/Metro/Underground/Unter-Bahn system. I look for its expanse (Berlin’s U and S-Bahn systems cover nearly 300 miles), timeliness (Munich’s U-Bahn trains run nearly every two minutes) and ease of use (even in an alien language, Beijing’s Subway system was incredibly easy to navigate). I don’t care about cleanliness (love ya New York, who by the way has a world record 422 stations, transports 1.6 billion people a year, and runs 24/365); I just need to get from A to B as quickly and easy as possible. When our train arrived in Madrid, we had to connect with the Metro (299 stations, 181 miles) to get to our hostel. After the lack of public transport in southern Spain and Morocco, I was excited to finally encounter a good subway system!

The Metro quickly and easily took us to Cat’s Hostel, which was the highest ranked hostel in Madrid according to the top booking sites. And we could see why: the two story atrium, with a chill common area at the bottom, dimly lit and decorated with dark maroon and plush black drapes and couches, looked like a cool hang out spot. Unfortunately, that was really the nicest part of the hostel. Everything else inside felt very…cheap; the shower knobs were push-for-water and the timers lasted barely a minute, there was a €5 deposit for a towel, we couldn’t bring in outside alcohol so we’d have to drink at the basement bar, and we were strictly only allowed one croissant or donut for breakfast… they wouldn’t even give us spare utensils. Oh, and that chill common area? It closes at midnight.

Cat's Hostel

Cat's Hostel

Still sweaty and carrying our rucks, two girls stopped us outside our room.

“Hey! We have the same tent!” one said as she recognized the green pouch extending six to eight inches off each side of my bag – something that makes boarding trains particularly “fun”. Before we sent them away so we could finally take a shower, we discovered that we were both taking the night train to Barcelona in two days. It seemed like we had traveling buddies for the next leg, and situationally-in-common-friends for this city.

So we took our push-for-water showers, dried with our €5 towels and went out for dinner with the girls and for some reason some French guy who said he was at our Granada hostel. After ten minutes of conversation over kababs in Plaza Mayor, Nate and I deduced that these girls weren’t very interesting, but companions are companions.

“We should go out tonight after this,” said one of the girls (I didn’t care to remember their names).

“Sure,” I or Nate said, “We’ll find some bars that seem cool.”

“No, we’re thinking clubs. We just wanna dance and have guys buy us free drinks.” I hate girls like this, so Nate and I bailed on the group and went back to the hostel. Since it was already late, we couldn’t hang out in the chill common area, and since we couldn’t bring in alcohol, we had to go downstairs to the hostel bar. As a pleasant surprise, they had pretty good specials including €2 large beers and €3 mojitos. And as a second surprise, Granada Dee was two tables over, and was already in the midst of creating a ten-person group of international strangers (this girl’s got talent!). We joined the circle of Brits, Aussies and a Japanese kid who was already trashed (this isn’t a stereotype… they just can’t hold their liquor) as they began playing the great ice-breaking game, Spin-the-Bottle!

Cat's Bar Area - Imagine it full of drunken strangers

The first spin resulted in the only real kiss of the night. I think it was Aussi Guy #2 with Canadian Girl #1, but it might have been Aussi Guy #3. On both my turns and the turn after, I ended up paired up with this dude from California. For the first spin, we hugged it out; for the second, to be good sports, we cheek-kissed. After that, the game kind of deteriorated as separate conversations broke out amongst the circle. Eventually, Dee rallied the troops and we made a move for the outside.

Although they’ve been offered in almost every city I’ve been to and I’ve heard good things about them, I’ve never gone on an “official” bar crawl. I always tell myself that I can make my way from bar to bar without being attached to a group and locked into their schedule which favors the bars over the guests (“come for a free shot, stay for the $10 cocktails for an hour after”). I was especially happy to be on an unofficial crawl when we became more and more harassed by offers of “free shots” by local bars and clubs along the main drag.

There was nothing – no specific bar – that we were trying to find, so we followed the first guy to his bar. Why not? Our “free shot” was about 5% vodka and the rest fruit punch. After that, each drink returned to its previously published price. So we left…and another guy on the street offered us a “free shot” at his bar. Why not? Drink and repeat.

At the second or third bar, we got jammed in the back room trying to get to our free shots. There were ten of us by that point, and half of them didn’t care as much as we did and held back from the crowd. The only people up at the bar with Nate and me were three British drunks, and by the time we all finished our “free shot [of lemonade]”, the rear of the group had dissipated and the only remainders were the Americans and the Brits. We stayed out for hours, and followed at least a dozen shot pushers. That’s right, twelve. And after twelve “shots”, we could only be described as ‘moderately tipsy”… far from drunk.

The Brits were some intense kids. They were eighteen or so, and acted accordingly. It’s strange hanging out with people eight years younger than me. Even the four year stretch between them and Nate was noticeable. Essentially giving up on getting drunk as it got later, their youthful exuberance surpassed us as Nate and I headed back to Cat’s to pass out leaving the kids to explore Madrid for a while longer.

Bar crawl with the Brits

Breakfast would have been good, but we were strictly only allowed one croissant or donut. And as Nate and I finished packing for the day beginning with a Free Walking Tour, they wouldn’t even give us spare utensils to use with our daily sandwich process. Cheapos.

Luckily, the walking tour wouldn’t last long. The guide was uninformed and a poor speaker, barely saying anything for the first ten minutes. And with three individually strange girls and an older strange Asian guy in the group, the entire tour had already earned a red flag. Walking Tours are half meant to teach about the history and significance of the local city, and half meant to instigate quick friendships between travelers. This tour offered neither. The most significant places the guide showed us were the “oldest restaurant in Europe” (a title that three other restaurants we’d see along the trip would claim), and the central indoor market place. That’s right, she took us to a grocery store.

Nate and I decided to cut our losses and held back to “take a picture” as the group moved on, and when they were out of sight, we bailed. We backtracked to another grocery store that she had shown us. Apparently grocery shopping is the most significant part of Madrid, but after the excitement that was Granada, we weren’t terribly interested in exploring the city that much anyway. Just a museum or two would suffice.

We went right to the can aisle and picked up some tuna (for Nate…I HATE FISH!!!) and a jar of peanut butter (for me…he’s allergic to nuts). Top it off with our daily baguette, a tomato and an investment of BBQ sauce to cover the taste of the “meat” we bought for sandwiches for the day. After a week and a half of frivolous food spending and daily kababs, it was about time that we started eating like backpackers. To make things more “travelistic”, on our way back to the hostel we passed by an outdoor restaurant and swiped a bowl of chips off a table that was done with them. I think the waitress saw, and she was probably thinking more along the lines of “seriously?” than “thieves!” Oh well, now we had a side dish.

Later in the day, after lunch, we went off to our first museum with the Tent Girls and our French friend who tagged along again. The Museo del Prado art museum was not my first choice but it was free from 6-8PM so it became the consensus. I would have rather gone to the Thyssen art museum which hosted paintings from my favorite artists Monet and Renoir, as well as famous works from Rembrandt, Picasso, Matisse, Degas, Van Gogh and Dali. But as a real “Madrid museum”, the Prado had very distinct local pieces from Goya as well as interesting classics like “Saturn eating children” and a few paintings of fat babies which I always enjoy.

The museum was nice even though we were rushed as the security staff started pushing us out at half past seven. But before we were finally kicked out, after reuniting with the other three after they went off on their own, Nate and I found ourselves outmatched by our fifth wheel’s “French charm”. Our approaches at talking to the girls were just polar opposites. Staring at a picture of Jesus on a cross in the shape of an “X” as opposed to the standard “T”, he commented on how “the light off the water symbolizes the anguish of the painter over the crucifixion”… Swoon. I, on the other hand, made a joke that “the ‘X’ must have been an upgraded model”… Silence. Screw people who don’t get my humor; they’re not worth my time.

Museo del Prado Art Museum

Happy to get out of there, we all walked back to the hostel via a street that advertised live music at night. Though we wouldn’t end up going back, we made a point of marking it on the map. Speaking of which, I have been awful with directions on the trip so far, and it would only get worse. Every right I thought turned out to be a left and every time I said “this way is north”, it was south. For now, it was annoying; later, it would really start to piss me off. Nate, on the other hand, was kicking ass. He was money with maps, directions and intuition. At least one of us was.

At night I busked in Puerta del SOL, the main square. But first, a back-story: On Jaron and my 2008 Eurotrip of Eastern Europe, busking became a primary means of funding our trip. In countries like Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia, the locals ate it up and paid generously for our efforts. We made enough to eat and drink each day, and the money was even able to contribute to travel and lodging. Not to mention the emotional boost we received when people stopped to watch us play.

On this trip, the results were much different. It started in Morocco, when all I earned was a swarm of kids that didn’t recognize a single song I knew attacking me trying to strum my guitar, let alone any money. I had assumed that the more different the country, the more “interesting” an American busker would be to the locals. I was wrong about that. Then, when we got to Europe, I had little faith in earning much in the western countries such as France and Germany, who I figured would treat a street performer with the same neglect of New York. But Jaron had told me that Spain was accommodating to buskers, especially his previous hometown of Barcelona. So when my efforts earned me barely €2 after half an hour playing while Nate hung out and watched from the center of the plaza, I became discouraged.

Busking in Plaza del Sol (Photo credit: Nate Kratchman)

The worst part was that busking in general was effective –mine just wasn’t. Around the plaza, there were three sets of performers who, unlike me, were each surrounded by a crowd. The first was my biggest peev: a man standing wearing a costume. You know the kind – they stand still and wait for you to put a coin in their box, at which point they wave or some simple shit. Then you “get to” take a picture with them. I fucking hate that no-talent bullshit. His talent was literally just his ability to buy a Darth Vader costume.

The second group was a mariachi band. They were talented, dressed in traditional costume and I had no problem with their success. The third group was an even more interesting hammer-dulcimer (look it up) and upright bass band. They were making some interesting tunes, and Nate and I actually stood to watch for a bit after my own failure. I’m not sure if I had too tough competition, if my genre wasn’t right for the area, if my location was bad or if I just sucked, but this would be the trend for the few other times that I would decide to busk over the trip. Either way, I’m glad that I tried.

Better Busking - Mariachi Band

Better Busking - Dulcimer Band

A bit defeated, Nate and I went back to Cat’s and he went to bed. If I couldn’t play music, I wanted to substitute writing. But the bed was uncomfortable, that chill common area was closed, and the bar was packed; I was S.O.L. for a quiet place to sit with my Netbook. I ended up in the quietest place I could find – the hallway-to-the-basement-bar breakfast area. With not much to do, it’s a social place to go if you want less excitement than the bar and more than the closed chill common areas. With only standing tables there was nowhere to sit, but there were power outlets… it’s better than just sitting in the park. Besides for the discomfort of the room (I need to be comfortable to write well), there was a very strange girl from Bruges trying to talk to me. Nothing against her, but her English wasn’t great, and I wasn’t in the mood to chit-chat. After not too long, I gave up and excused myself to begin an early night’s sleep.

On our third day in Madrid, we did not go the Placio Real, an 18^th Century royal palace. We did not go see the Amería Real, an armory museum. We didn’t see the Thyssen for a second day, and they didn’t let us into the Archaeological Museum because of my guitar that I was carrying around. We did, however, run into Mel from Granada. It’s always fun to see a new friend in a different country. In fact, I only have a handful of real-life-friends with whom I’ve explored more than one country.

Now a three-set, we decided to go to the Naval Museum, which has artifacts from the history of Spain’s exploration and naval supremacy. After walking through a metal detector at the security checkpoint by the entrance, the man at the ticket booth upstairs offered to watch my guitar since neither of us wanted me to knock over some invaluable mast or something.

It was an interesting museum with cool paintings of voyages such as the meeting of Conquistadors and Native Americans, very cool old-world maps from the exploration period including half-explored areas of what would be the United States, and awesomely cool models and miniatures of Spanish ships such as the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria. It was strange how until now I had only known them by name – I had never even contemplated what these famous ships actually looked like. Well, now I know.

After the museum, the three of us walked westward in the hot June sun to Parque de la Montaña to check out the Temple of Debod, which was built in 2^nd Century BC Egypt as a shrine for the gods Amon and Isis. WARNING: History Ahead. In 1960, the construction of the Aswan Dam on the Nile caused concern for the monuments and archaeological sites nearby. Spain, via UNESCO, contributed to help save the sites, and as a thank you from Egypt, was given the Templo de Debod as a gift in 1968. And that’s why there is a two-thousand-year-old Egyptian Temple in the middle of Madrid.

On its own it was very minimalist, sporting no more than three closet sized rooms. But its presentation, surrounded by a moat on an impressive hill that overlooked Madrid’s Royal Palace and Almudena Cathedral as well as the rest of the city below.

Temple of Debod

View of the Royal Palace and Almudena Cathedral from the Temple Mount

Afterwards, we needed to cool off so we walked aimlessly to a bar and grabbed a beer and tapas and played foosball to get out of the heat. We had a few hours to kill before our 11PM night bus out of Madrid, and had nothing left on our checklist, so we continued to wander our way back to the hostel to pick up our bags and grab a final meal with Mel before parting ways again.

Madrid had been relaxing, and after Granada, we needed it to be. Next up was Barcelona, and we would need all the energy we could get.

Map & Table of Contents

We are one week away from the end of the trip. My posts have been non-existent due to no internet, no power, and no time to sit and write, but I will soon be home and working diligently on each episode.

In the meantime, I am presenting both the table of contents of all episodes, as well as a completed map of the trip. As the episodes are published, I will update this page with links to them.

Hope you enjoy!

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Episode 1 – First Day in Marrakech – Marrakech (Days 1-2) Link
Episode 2 – Church Music & Fish – The Rest of Morocco (2-4) Link
Episode 3 – Stuck Between a Rock & a Spain Place – Gibraltar (5-6) Link
Episode 4 – Homeless in a Hostel – Granada (6-9) Link
Episode 5 – Getting the Hang of It – Madrid (9-11) Link
Episode 6 – New Friends & New Experiences – Barcelona (12-15) Link
Episode 7 – Camping & Rain – Andorra (15-17) Link
Episode 8 – France, Goddamn France – South France (17-19)
Episode 9 – Money for Adventure and Nothing for Free – Switzerland (19-23)
Episode 10 – Computers Are Evil – Munich (23-28)
Episode 11 – Time for a Break – Nuremberg (28-32)
Episode 12 – Rock & Roll All Night and Party Everyday – Berlin (32-38)
Episode 13 – Local Culture – Göttingen & Dortmund (38-44)
Episode 14 – MOC7854 – Belgium (44-48)
Episode 15 – Winding Down – Amsterdam (48-55)
Episode 16 – Afterthoughts Back Home

 

Since a useful version didn’t fit on this page, follow the link below to view the final map of our trip. Click on any of the city bubbles to see what chapter it is in, as well as the city’s name and country:

EurBROtrip Final Map

Episode 4: Homeless in a Hostel – Granada, Spain (Days 6 to 9)

Previously on the trip:
Episode 1 – First Day in Marrakech – Marrakech (Days 1-2) Link
Episode 2 – Church Music & Fish – The Rest of Morocco (2-4) Link
Episode 3 – Stuck Between a Rock & a Spain Place – Gibraltar (5-6) Link

Working as hard as I can to get these out with some form of expediacy. We took a few days in Nuremberg to recover from Munich and prepare for Berlin, so I got some writing done. Anyway, this is the story of Granada…

-Joshua

As usual, the directions given from the bus stop to the hostel were atrocious, but we followed the White Rabbit (posted signs on corners of the winding roads and alleys of a typical European Old City) and quickly found it at an alley apex. Right off the bat, the Oasis Granada was nothing like the sketchy Riad Dar Nawfal “hostel” in Salé. Greeted first by a medieval castle-sized wooden door with an eye level handle, and second by the friendly reception staff, we knew that we were off to a good start.

I first spoke with the receptionist who was so gracious to me on the phone the night before in Gibraltar. She is a cute Italian girl made of smiles. She chatted me up for longer than needed for registration, and though it never happened, over my stay she kept asking me to play her a song as I promised her I would from Gibraltar. Was she very friendly or very flirty?

The next sign that this was going to be a good stay were the posters on the bulletin board opposite the reception desk offering free daily walking tours of the city (the best thing a traveler can do for true exploration and for people meeting), a tapas tour (I’ll get to that in a bit), and a six-hour nature hike to a waterfall (it wouldn’t work out… also more on that later).

Along with our room keys, Nate and I each received a free drink ticket at the hostel bar. After dropping off our bags (Nate’s only and both of my old and new ones) in our room, we walked through the crowded common area with people chatting on the couches and others on the computers against the wall, passed the active kitchen where some girls were whipping up pasta and a few guys were on their laptops, and out to the back patio area where even more people were sitting around on a half dozen tables, drinking and eating the BBQ dinner that was being prepared by the house chef. For the first real time in our trip, we were finally in a good place to start meeting other like-minded travelers and new friends, and to begin to experience the true essence of what this form of backpacking travel is all about. It felt earned. It felt good.

Nate and I had arrived late after our long trip from Gibraltar, and intended to simply grab some food, take a shower and go to bed. I think you know where I’m going with this… at 1:30AM, these two girls came up to me as I was sitting at a lobby computer, and “Dee”, the more outspoken and social-gatheringly one, insisted that Nate and I join her and her friend Mel and go to this “cave bar”. We said no… we were exhausted… but regardless of Nate’s firm decision, I knew that I would eventually say yes. As Jaron and I discovered on our first night in Sarajevo in 2008, the best times happen late the first night you arrive in a city. Either way, I was going to make her convince me. She brought down some whiskey and poured me sets of triple shots with a Sprite chaser. Twenty minutes later I conceded and the three of us left.

As a continuation of the trend, the club turned out to be very cool. The €7 cover also included a drink so we started with mixed vodka drinks at the basement bar. The basement was a wide rock-walled hallway spotted with a series of cave alcoves containing black leather couches surrounding coffee tables. You could not tell if the hallway looped because it branched out sporadically and we made too many turns to understand the layout. The strange part was that it was nearly empty. So when I suggested that we sit down and chill, the seating options were limitless. But Dee wanted to dance, so we went up two flights of stairs to the modernly laid out club where more people were located. A DJ was mixing club music, and put on this song that apparently is famous though, unsurprisingly, I’d never heard about it. It was a loop with the lyrics “Bin Laden, is Dead” repeated over and over. Then after the fourth or fifth repetition, the song sang: “Barbara Streisand”. Apparently this was normal to club music listeners… or European frequenters of this or other clubs, but this was new and notably weird to me.

I was tipsy enough to shuffle (not yet to dance), so I moved around to the song until it was suggested that we get some shots. They were €1 each, so why not?  The three of us did a round of tequila shots, and then Dee left Mel and I at the bar, where I did another couple shots. Mel held back a bit, which boosted my drunkenness to a greater level via my theory of relativity. We stood and talked for a while before realizing that we had lost Dee to the crowd. Mel and I really had not wanted to go to a club in the first place, so we went looking for Dee to convince her to call it a night. We found her, dancing with some dude, and told her that we’d meet her in the lobby in ten minutes to head out.

By the time we left at 4:30AM, there was still a line at the door with people flocking in. Does this city every sleep? Either way, we were drunk enough to leave, and took a taxi back to the hostel. The night didn’t end for another hour or so as we stayed up on the roof lounge talking. I almost fell asleep on a beanbag chair, but managed to make it down four flights of stairs to my room on the ground floor.

Hangovers are funny things. They appear unexpectedly the moment after you awake, and are the only reminders of the time you had the night before. Like the regretful reaction you get when a check comes after a meal, you instantly wonder why you decided to go out in the first place. As it all came rushing back to me, I found myself not on the top bunk designated to me, but on the lower and much easier to access one where I had collapsed the night before. Nate told me that some guy had walked in during the night, saw me in what I assume was his bed, and walked out; but nothing ever came of that.

Jumping ahead, the hostel was full tonight and Nate and I didn’t technically have a room booked for ourselves. As of 10AM, we were officially ‘“checked out” but hanging around’ (in Radiohead melody for fellow fans), though Nate retained his key. It no longer worked on our former room, but it still opened the main door to the hostel. We couldn’t be sure how it would play out tonight, but that was a while away.

Focusing on the here and now, Nate and I got ready for the walking tour around the city. It took us a few extra minutes to get ready since we had to pack up and leave our bags in the storage room, so by the time we were ready to go, the tour had already left. Luckily, we chased them down the street as I held my guitar bag’s straps tightly to my back to avoid it banging around on every leap, and quickly caught up with them before their first stopping point. (Besides never knowing when it will come in handy, my guitar’s case also contains my netbook, journal and all of my camera gear – basically everything that I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving in an unattended hostel locker room).

Ranking among one of the better walking tours that I had been on over my travels, our guide Erik taught us a lot about Granada, including the history of the grand Alhambra castle overlooking the city, the 1492 Torquemada led Inquisition, and the concurrent royal decree from Ferdinand and Isabella to fund Columbus’ voyage off to the New World. (Apparently, Columbus and Isabella had a little side thing going on, and ole’ Collie wasn’t one of Ferdinand’s favorite people). That said – and be ready for further examples in nearly every upcoming chapter – most things Europeans say are lies. Today’s example: Erik claimed that Ferdinand had originated the phrase during a Spanish civil conflict that “a city divided cannot stand” (really it was Lincoln about the split of the American Union). Sorry… but I’m a history geek and to me this was important. Either way, I learned a lot about Spain and specifically Granada’s interesting history, and more importantly, about what makes a good walking tour guide.

When I return to New York in August, one of the things that I plan on doing is organizing Europeanesque free walking tours, spread around the various sections of the city. After being on some really great tours (Amsterdam, Granada, Munich – explained later) and some really poor tours (Prague, Madrid – also explained later), I learned a few things about what makes a tour guide effective and interesting. A lot has to do with being interactive like our Granada guide, interesting like my previous Amsterdam guide, and decisive like the Munich guide I would have in a few weeks.

From the walking tour with the Alhambra in the background

When the walking tour ended, a brief tapas tour followed. Granada is one of the last cities that gives away free tapas with each drink at most bars. ‘Tapas’ is a word for “any food that the bar decides to serve”. The first bar gave us plates of fried squid (I would have no part in that… I can’t stand the spider-like tentacles and the suckers protruding out of them…gross). Later bars served small sandwiches and beef and potatoes platters (those, of course, I ate my share of).

Squid tapas

Before Erik left us to explore the city further, he recommended a local place for lunch. His description was, “for some cheap yet crappy food, walk down this road until you see a large gypsy woman. Eat there.” Somehow, he was actually right… this guy was great.

Big Gypsy Momma sat the ten of us who stuck around at a long table outside her restaurant in one of the town’s medium sized squares. She went around the table taking everyone’s orders except for mine. For me, for some reason, she said, “I’ll bring you something special.” I’m not sure what I got or why, but it was exactly as described by Erik – cheap and crappy.

Over lunch, I explained to the Canadians on my side of the table my thoughts on and desires for a hunger, tiredness and sex-drive depleting pill that would allow me to bucket list it up by increasing my daily efficiency by hundreds of percents. Basically, while everyone else was wasting time eating, sleeping and trying to get laid, I could be learning languages, drawing, writing, practicing clarinet, etc. The conversation spread to the other end of the table, where my radical statements were met with shock (why is everyone so obsessed with food?) and challenge (would I really want to give up sex?). I conceded that occasionally, each of those physical pleasures are satisfying, but the big picture is that I like having odd thoughts and provoking comments – I seem to successfully balance the scale between odd and unique; I think it works for me.

Back at the hostel, I went up to the roof lounge to write. But the outlet was too far from the chair in the shade and it was too hot to think anyway, so I just sat there hanging out with new friends. They kept asking what Nate and I were going to do about sleeping tonight, but I told them not to worry… “We’ll figure it out.” When we needed to change or shave, for example, we did it in the common area bathrooms. Just hanging around the hostel, people assumed that we were still staying there. Why shouldn’t they? We’ve made an impression on everyone we’d met including the staff.

That night, Nate and I went out with a small group of people. Either for the purpose of changing their names or just because I forgot them, the group consisted of Andrea from Berkeley & Belgium, Mel from Oregon, Brittney from Melbourne, and just plain “Mexico”. We walked around trying to find last night’s Cave Club but were completely unsuccessful (did it really exist?). In the process we had good times joking about funny things that we saw along the way including a potential cave for Nate and I to sleep in tonight, and an alleyway with a sign posted that said, no joke, “Access is Physically Impossible”. So when we crossed the barrier, I’m not sure if we simply proved the sign wrong, or somehow altered the space-time continuum. Either way, it was a fun exploration of the city.

It got late, and we said goodbye to our departing friends. As Nate chilled on the roof of the hostel, I went with the remaining night owls to one of the many hookah bars in the Arab alleyways near the hostel. We concocted a mix of coconut and pineapple tea making a piña colada mix (®2011 Joshua Sigmund) and continued to get to know each other. Then, since I truly had nowhere to go, we went to sit on some steps in one of the larger squares outside a church and I played guitar until 5AM, showing off my better known Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, Buckley, Fleetwood Mac and U2 covers, as well as some of my originals. I never like playing my originals for people, but when I do, and they appreciate it, I really feel… understood.

By 6:30, there was really nothing to do besides going back to the hostel to see how the night would play out. We could have moved into a different hostel, but I figured that either some beds would open up or that things would just work out. But here we were. I joined Nate who had been on the roof lounge for the last few hours, and while he rested on a couch, I curled up in the same beanbag chair where I almost drunkenly slept the night before, and blocked my view with some beach chairs.

Half an hour later, Fernando, the night time security Nazi, either on his rounds or on a Gestapo tipoff, came up to the roof and confronted the more visible Nate. Not letting a comrade go down alone, I rose from my more secluded domicile and attempted to split his focus on both of us rather than focused on just Nate. He approached me, shoving away the chairs that were concealing me and came down on me with protruding shoulders and a murderous look on his face.

“What room are you in?” he demanded.

“We had a room last night, and have one tomorrow night… the hostel didn’t have one for us tonight so we were just relaxing up here for a few hours… it’s no big deal,” I replied. Long story short, he kicked us out of the building.

Our third day in Granada began with us sitting in the cold morning in front of a coffee shop a few blocks away from the hostel, exhaustedly waiting for it to open. It was barely 7AM. Will this turn of events affect tonight? I really thought we could have pulled off a few hours of unquestioned sleep on the roof lounge. I really don’t want to leave Grenada on a bad note after all the fun we’ve had. But at this point it didn’t seem in our control.

It was surprisingly cold out. When the coffee shop opened, we entered and bought as little as we could to earn ourselves shelter without seeming like tramps. The coffees (plural) and croissant (singular) took about an hour to eat… it was too cold out for them to be consumed any faster. We used the bathrooms to brush our teeth and change, and I’m sure the staff knew what we were doing, but they didn’t say anything. Dirty looks were the worst that we suffered sitting there.

Tired and edgy, we began to talk about money and its potential effect on the trip. It has been just over a week, and we hadn’t camped once, never ate a meal out of a can, and were having little discretion on general spending. At this rate, we would run out of money after a month – half the time allotted for this trip – and might have to cut it down to six weeks instead of the full eight. If we were going to discuss this at any time, it might as well have been at the first low point of the trip. We agreed to keep a tighter grasp on spending and to gauge where we were after a month. If things were going better, we’d stay the full time. Otherwise, money versus fun would dictate our future itinerary.

Around 8:30, it seemed to have warmed up a little so we headed outside. Also, we had far overstayed our welcome at the coffee shop. Across the street, one of the city’s main squares began to bustle with real people on their way to work. For us, it presented a clear distinction between transient homeless people and… them. I expected that a night like this would happen eventually along this trip, but I didn’t expect it within the first week. To try to capture the moment I attempted to write but only came up with this:

It’s funny how sleep is only a semi-necessary part of traveling; you take what you can get, where you can get it. That said, my brain is only at 34% capacity… much like my laptop’s battery right now…

Nights like this are trying experiences for seasoned travelers, let alone new ones. But Nate didn’t complain once. He rode the wave, sitting next to me on a bench playing my guitar as I dozed off for a few minutes at a time. I had taken only the guitar case with my netbook when we were booted from the hostel, and was thinking that we should have taken our rucks too, in case we weren’t allowed back in the hostel later. I’d hate to have to buy a third bag.

But you know what? Fuck it. We had a reservation for tonight, and decided to go back to the hostel around 10AM, an hour or so from now, instead of arriving at the designated noon check-in time. Besides resettling in and getting out of the cold, there was an 11AM hiking tour of the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains to a waterfall that I had wanted to join this morning. Just getting back in the game will make me feel better… also, it’s really starting to warm up.

The morning after homelessness

We re-checked in, but were way too tired to go on the six-hour hike. It was too early to check in to our room, but a friend allowed me to nap in her bed until mine was ready. As it turned out, I would be in the same room anyway. I spent the next three hours in a more comatose state than I had been in recent memory. When I woke up in the early afternoon, I was greeted by one of the other six roommates that Nate and I would share our room with tonight. This abrasive and outspoken Israeli girl (not bad character traits, but she was more annoying than passionate) decided to skip the getting-to-know-you phase and jump right into traveler friendship. She started chatting me up and somehow it led to discussing sewing, so I mentioned my possession of both a sewing kit and a pair of deteriorating shorts hinting at their possible interaction. So while she talked and sewed the holes in my shorts for me, I began a process that I had been looking forward to for days…

THE BAG TRANSFER!!!!

I emptied and thoroughly washed EVERYTHING from the fish bag. I washed mouthwash bottles, toothpaste tubes and soap itself. After that process, each item had to pass through a two-person smell test, since I was biased towards, and had ingrained in my nasal passages, that fish smell. Once it got the Freshness Guarantee©, each item was replaced into freshly purchased Ziploc and garbage bags to be reassimilated into the new backpack. I surprisingly lost very little in the process (a tube of moisturizer and Q-Tips somehow retained the fish smell and had to be trashed). When I was finally done, I left the old bag on the small balcony behind the window in the room. I didn’t burn it or destroy it as planned; I just left it. Anticlimactic, maybe. But finally, I was completely refreshed!

Between my revitalized stuff after the transfer and my revitalized self after the nap, I was in a good spot to have a good rest of the day and night. Nate and I planned on checking out some flamenco clubs and exploring the Capilla Real, but the Oasis was too much fun, and much more convenient. At night, there was an excursion to a hot springs in Santa Fe. It was described as a hole in the ground secluded in the middle of the woods under a star-filled sky almost an hour from the hostel… and you could bring alcohol. I was extremely motivated to go until I learned that the trip would cost €15 and worse, that the water would exceed 40^oC. I’m the guy who has been told by every partner that I shower in cold water when I consider it hot; that can’t join my friends in a normal hot tub; and that obviously burns like bacon in the sun. There is something about my skin that cannot take extreme (for me) heat. I feel like I’m boiling. Anyway, none of us went out for that either.

Instead, I excluded myself for a while sitting adjacent to a dozen people connecting over dinner and worked on updating the Google Map of our trip so far and answering emails while polishing off a cheap bottle of wine. Eventually, people began to surround me and I could no longer sit in self-imposed solitary confinement. After a full day within the walls of the hostel, I breached the barrier and walked along the river-hugging walls of Granada with a friend for a while before finally sleeping for our last night in the city.

By the time Nate and I woke up, got dressed, brushed our teeth, packed our bags (I only have one now!!!) and left them in the storage area and checked out, we were running late for our reserved tour of the main building of the Alhambra castle, the Palacio Nazaríes. This 13^th Century palace, famous for its intricate wood carvings and central multi-lion fountain, was apparently the thing to see in Granada. Everyone who had gone already said it was amazing… the greatest thing they’d ever seen. There were only morning and afternoon slots available each day, and tickets had to be booked and paid for days in advance. By the time we had booked the night before, the only slot we could get was a 30 minute window starting at 9:30AM on our check out day.

It was already 9:20 when we arrived at our homeless square to catch the bus up the mountain to the Alhambra. We would never make it waiting for the bus, so we hopped in a cab. When it got stuck in traffic five minutes later, we exited and began to hoof it up the hill.

I was mad. I yelled at Nate for taking too long to get ready. It was past 9:30, and I just said “fuck it”… I don’t even care about some stupid fucking palace. I’ve seen a hundred palaces before and I’ll see a hundred more of them on this trip. We missed it… we wasted our time and money, and now I’m stressed out. Even if we made it, I’d be too pissed to enjoy it.

But we kept on trekking anyway, and halfway up the hill caught a bus the rest of the way. At 9:42 we arrived at the ticket office to retrieve our pre-booked passes for the palace. Of course, it was on the complete other side of the castle hill, and by the time we got to the entrance, it was 9:55. There was a crowd of people, assumedly waiting for the 10AM entrance to the palace, but for the hell of it we walked up to the front and told the gatekeeper that we were extremely late for our 9:30 reservation. We expected to be turned away being 25 minutes late, but as luck would have it, he let us in. After all that, we actually got to skip the line that would have built up at 9:30 and jump in right ahead of the 10AM group.

Still wondering if they would kick us out five minutes later, we walked inside and blended in with the crowd walking through the palace. In the end, everything worked out better than expected. We made it through the palace at our own pace, taking allowed pictures of the hand-carved doorframes and window sills as well as restricted pictures of the famous lions that made up the old central fountain.

All Hail the Great Alhambra

Nate and the Alhambra door - Intricacies of the craftsmanship

After the main palace, we continued around the grounds of the castle and climbed to the top of the 11^th Century Alcazaba (fortress) which gave us amazing views of Granada below.

View of Granada from the Alhambra (photo credit - Nate Kratchman)

The whole thing was cool but had really been overhyped by everyone who had gone before us. The buildup somewhat overshadowed the effect of the exhibit and I was left with a mere “well, I did it” feeling afterwards.

Granada had been my favorite city of the trip so far. The stress of having nowhere to sleep the second night and of rushing to catch an early tour that I was lukewarm about in the first place was completely surpassed by the memories and friends that I had met at the Oasis. Just as the boringness of Venice during my last Eurotrip in ’08 was negated by the awesome time I had at the campsite justifying spending an entire week there, Granada was made special by the people I met and the times we had. And that’s how these trips go. A city could speak for itself, or it could be made or broken through the filters of experiences had. As Nate and I returned calmly to the hostel to retrieve our bags and say our goodbyes to our new friends who hadn’t already moved on to other places, I felt like I was leaving home. But there was more to see. Our train for Madrid left in a few hours.

Episode 3: Stuck Between a Rock and a Spain Place – Gibraltar, UK (Days 5 to 6)

Previously on the trip:
Episode 1 – First Day in Marrakech – Marrakech (Days 1-2) Link
Episode 2 – Church Music & Fish – The Rest of Morocco (2-4) Link

This no internet thing is killing my flow! I’m posting about events from 2 weeks ago – I feel like I’ve filmed a season of a show and though it’s mostly done, only earlier episodes are airing, and I’m so excited to show you later ones, but I guess you’ll just have to anticipate the next story until it happens! Another hint: I’m posting this one from the Swiss Alps. Jealous?

Anyway, here is Story 3:

-Joshua

Exiting the bus stop at La Linea initiated a five minute walk to the border between Spain and UK controlled Gibraltar. On the way, we met three girls who were on their way out and who spoke English! They were from Long Island and called me out when my “New York” answer to the “where are you from” question was challenged by further clarification. As I did now, and over the rest of the trip, I will be arguing my philosophy that Hoboken is not only a great non-Manhattan suburb, but is a better town than Williamsburg and Astoria and should be granted at least honorary New York status if not full annexation!

We exchanged stories about Morocco versus Gibraltar. Recommendations were opposite, so it seemed we were going in the right direction. They briefly explained to us how to get to the top of the rock, but more importantly, showed me and Nate that we could hold solid conversations with other backpackers, get to the point of exchanging emails and exit before it gets awkward.

Nate and I in front of the Rock of Gibraltar

Nate and I passed through “immigration”, flashing a US passport and instantly entering the UK! A quick stop at the information booth set us on the number 5 bus to the number 3 bus to the cable car leading to the top of the rock. The busses took at least ten minutes to get from Point A to Point C, which was an indication, later confirmed, that Gibraltar was larger than anticipated. Not just a large strategic mountain overlooking the straight that bears its name, Gibraltar is a full city of about 30,000 people with schools, a financial district, malls, restaurants and bars, and a full tourism industry, according to a local man we met.

Still carrying our full gear, guitar, send-home-bag and all, we paid the steep price for the ride up to the top of the rock to explore the views as well as the caves, WWII tunnels and indigenous wild Barbary Apes that inhabit the top of the mountain. At the top, the admission fee was surpassed by its value. I took panoramic pictures of Africa and the Mediterranean to the south, crappy Algeciras to the west and the rest of Spain to the north.

Gibraltar view from the top - The Peak

Gibralter View 2 - Africa and Spain (photo credit - Nate Kratchman)

The monkeys (yes, technically they are monkeys) were also interesting to watch in action. They were obviously very used to and comfortable with humans, but still needed their space and respect. There were many postings warning not to feed or touch the animals as they might attack.

Nate and the monkey

Joshua and the monkey (photo credit - Nate Kratchman)

Nate and I were under time pressure to catch an 8:50PM bus to Granada, our final stop for the night, and had to choose between heading to the south point of the island to get better views of Africa, or to go north and see the caves and the other exhibits. We chose to go north; the pictures and videos we’d taken from the midpoint were beautiful enough.

BEGIN ADVENTURE….now.

Our first snag came in finding the right trail that led to the exhibits. After asking a few people (and making a foolish comment to an Irish woman that I’d love to visit the rest of the UK… bad American!), we found out that the way to go to get to the caves on the north side of the rock was to take the trail south where it loops around… how intuitive. The first stage was descending a three story staircase which led down to the walking trail heading north. After the first few steps, my bad knee kicked in and it became tough for me to continue to attack the stairs in a normal left foot right foot manner. Instead, I had to slowly take each step two feet at a time. When we reached the landing at the bottom of the staircase, I told Nate to wait up to give me some time to get ahead. He took my camera as I slowly made my way down a second massive flight of stairs. I finally and painfully made it to the landing at the bottom of the second set and took a breather.

When I turned around to see how far behind me Nate was, he wasn’t. What the fuck… where is he? He was just at the previous landing, and by now should have been close to the bottom of the second set where I was. Did he turn around and go back up? I cupped my hands and called out for him a few times… no answer. Pissed and worried, I had no choice but to walk back up the two sets of stairs to the top to look for him. Angrily muttering to myself and pondering whether I was gonna punch him in the chest or in the face for making me do this, I started to climb. With my pack, guitar and bad knee, it reminded me of my stint in the Rutgers ROTC where I was forced to march and run in full army gear; a great workout, but straight torture. I was panting and sweating and had no water since Nate was carrying it. I had to stop every few steps to catch my breath since my bag’s upper straps were compressing my chest and making it difficult to adequately breathe.

By the time I reached the halfway point between the two sets of stairs, I felt like my legs were going to give out. Then what would I have done? I looked around – over the edges of the staircase (had he fallen?!) and downhill for a bird’s eye view of where I came from. To my left was a wooden fence but it just narrowed into some bushes and looked like a dead end. So I set my sights on the last staircase ahead of me, and prepared for another challenge. Putting mind over matter, I gave myself small goals: “just ten more stairs till a rest… just get to the next landing, then I’ll sit for ten seconds…etc”.

Finally, I reached the top but Nate was still nowhere to be found. I asked around but nobody had seen the black haired man with glasses wearing khaki cargo shorts, an orange shirt and a large green bag. There was a van waiting to carry some old people down to the bottom of the mountain. I told the driver what had happened and asked if he could take me down to the base where Nate might have gone. We had planned to have a beer at a specific British pub after the hike… maybe he was there. Or maybe he went back to the border since we’d have to end up there at some point anyway. Either way, I needed to get off this mountain. The driver said the van was full.

I asked everyone I passed by. Finally, I found some mountain ranger “cops” and told them what had happened. I asked them for a ride to the bottom and they told me to get in their car. Two minutes later, one of them turned around and said that I was full of shit and just wanted a free ride down to the bottom.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said, “Look at this,” I showed him two cable car tickets. “Why would I buy two?” They still didn’t believe me, and said they’d send out a radio about it (they didn’t), and then literally kicked me out at the lowest spot that I had reached on the stairs, essentially only wiping clean my walk back up. Complete douche bags. From there, I had no option but to walk the rest of the way down the mountain by myself. I was parched and weighted, and asked everyone along the way if they had seen him. Various thoughts ran through my head: Is he okay? When I find him do I punch him or hug him? The one hour descent was ripe with hills, steps, unpaved rocky paths, and choices of directions to go. At one odd fork, the right road sloped uphill while the left sloped downwards. I had a strange intuition to take the right path, but two men who knew I was trying to reach the bottom told me to take the left route… down is down, right?

Finally, I arrived at a small shop toward the bottom of the hill and used most of my last few Euro cents to buy a small thing of water which I immediately chugged. Walking through a quaint British street at the bottom that would have been a pleasant place to end our mountain experience, I hustled through it on the way to the bus stop to take a ride back to the border.

When he wasn’t there either, I thought that maybe he would have gone to the bus station since that would be our ultimate destination. But when immigration asked for my passport and all I had was a photocopy since the real one was also with Nate in the money pouch that he was carrying, they wouldn’t let me out. Instead, they referred me to the real police. I found one, a British bobby that spoke English, and he really didn’t have any advice for me besides to wait by the border for him to show up. He radioed in but nobody had heard about any missing persons and he told me that he couldn’t write up a report unless Nate was missing for over 24 hours.

So that was that. I was out of options and forced to sit and wait in the heat by the border hoping that Nate might show up at some point. I sat there in a tense fear and anger as people leisurely walked in and out of Gibraltar, so I decided to occupy my mind and use the time to write a song. The first thing that came to mind was the title: “Stuck Between a Rock and a Spain Place.” I got four chords in when Nate walked up.

REWIND…

When we reached the landing at the bottom of the staircase, Joshua told me to wait up to give him some time to get ahead. I asked for the camera as he continued to walk towards the exhibits. I waited at the landing and took a few more panoramic shots to make the best use of my buffer time, and finally decided to catch up to him. To my right, there was a path hugging a wooden fence. There were no posts marking the way to the exhibits, but it seemed the natural way to go. With my backpack on, I had to squeeze through a few bushes to where the path continued on the other side. I didn’t see Joshua and assumed that he had pushed on faster than he had expected.

After a few minutes, I still hadn’t caught up to him so I kept walking figuring that I would catch up with him soon enough. A few days ago, Joshua had given me shit about me walking too slowly for him. He’s probably proving a point and rushing ahead… dick. But seriously, how is he that far ahead? I cupped my hands and called out for him a few times… no answer. When I hit a fork in the road, the left side sloped downwards while the right went uphill towards the north. The obvious choice was to go right to get to the exhibits.

Even with my backpack on, I hustled for a solid 15-20 minutes to hit the checkpoint to the tunnels. I stopped occasionally to sip the water I had, and considered that Joshua had none and was most likely feeling the effects. At the tunnels, I still hadn’t found him. If he wasn’t ahead of me, maybe I had missed him along the way? Strangely, a customs security officer flagged me down and with a smirk told me that they ran into Joshua and he was looking for me.

“He’s at the top of the mountain and should be coming down in a bit,” they said. So I waited for over thirty minutes for him to come down as they said. When he didn’t, I asked another security guard who assured me that there was only a single path down the mountain, so we would have to cross paths eventually.

People kept walking by me, and random strangers stopped me to tell me that, “your brother was looking for you”. A foreign couple said, “Josh went left (at the fork when I went right and uphill) towards the bottom of the mountain.” I realized that Josh wouldn’t be coming through the checkpoint after all and that I had been waiting in vain all this time, I frantically began to weigh my options for how best to get down the remainder of the mountain and to somehow intercept Joshua having. In a stroke of luck, I was able to convince the security guard, with whom I had become friendly with at this point, to give me a ride down the mountain. After half-begrudgingly taking me as far as he would, I started to trek across town to the cable cars. He must be there waiting.

He wasn’t; this was getting serious. In a second stroke of luck, a friendly pedestrian I had stopped to ask directions offered to give me a ride, on the back of his scooter, to the police station where I reported my situation. The “police report” was most likely a mere formality since I’m pretty sure that they didn’t put out any word about a missing person. Either way, one of the cops gave me a ride to the border. Realistically, I had the passports so he couldn’t be at the bus station back in Spain. If he was anywhere, he was at the border. As I walked up to the customs checkpoint, there he was, sitting and playing guitar.

“What the fuck man?” Joshua asked as Nate cut him off, saying,
“Dude, I’m just as pissed as you are.”

We continued through immigration into Spain with our reunited passports and their supporting identities, but figured that we still had time for that beer we wanted. Almost just to say we did, we crossed an international border for the third time in 24 hours and reentered the UK for a beer. We decided not to talk along the way… not until we were sitting at a bar.

On the way, walking through Casemates Square, we saw a stage being erected and tents set up for some festivities tonight. It looked like something not to be missed, or at least something definitely more fun than leaving immediately, so we decided to stay in Gibraltar for the night, even if it meant forfeiting our hostel deposit in Granada. Since that was a non-ideal situation, we stopped at a red British phone booth to try to call the Oasis Granada Hostel. After the initial trouble of finding someone who would convert a few Euro to GBP to use at the payphone, I got through to the receptionist and told her that we had missed our bus to Granada and wouldn’t be able to make the reservation tonight. The receptionist said that they have a strict 24 hour cancellation policy, but after promising to play her a song, and asking the manager, they agreed to postpone my reservation for a night. Things were already beginning to look up.

Actually using the UK phone booth... not a pose (photo credit - Nate Kratchman)

Nate scouted out the local hostels and found one a few blocks off the main square which was pretty reasonable, so we walked over and checked in, finally able to put down our bags and shower. It felt good to be clean and free of our weight, and better to be wearing jeans and a polo… our “nice” clothing for the trip.

“Clippers” was recommended to us by both Lonely Planet and a British dude on the rock as an authentic British pub, so that’s where we started our night. We drank pints of flat warm beer and I ate a burger with bacon and a fried egg, and Nate got fish and chips. I tried a bite, but it made me nauseated. I still can’t get the smell of my fishy bag out of my mind and worse, the bag itself. Uch…

Dehydrated, we had a second beer, then a shot of Irish whiskey, but the food kept the effects to a minimum. By the time we left the bar to go to the square, the fireworks had already begun. Crowds of people were gathered watching the light show which was encased by green lasers surrounding the fireworks in the sky.

Gibraltar Fireworks

It was mostly a family event, and after the fireworks ended, swarms of kids got on the stage and were dancing to standard Bar Mitzvah songs like “YMCA”. It was a little strange… the whole street party scene with so many kids around. To try to act a little more “our age” we went to the bars. Nate and I tried to be social and had a few conversations with random people, even going into some clubs (one had a Madonna themed night and was playing only her and related 80s female pop), but by the end of the night, we couldn’t find anyone worth sticking with. On our way back to the hostel, we passed by the tents surrounding the square that we had seen earlier. They had been serving food from around the world and were now trying to get rid of their remainders. So we munched on international treats on our walk home, and for the second night in a row I fell asleep while trying to write on my computer.

The alarm went off at 9AM, but we slept until 10, almost missing breakfast. The best one so far, it consisted of fried eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, toast, OJ and coffee. I continued to take pictures of unique meals as requested, and will hand deliver them to the requesting parties as opposed to posting them here since I, personally, don’t find them all that interesting. But who am I to displease my fans!

After breakfast, we repacked our bags again. Even my sleeping bag smells like fish. FUCKING FISH!!! WHY WAS HE CARRYING FISH JUICE??? I’ll never know, but I hope he gets eaten by a shark, or dies of a smell related death. SERIOUSLY, it has overpowered most of my days since then. I feel like I have really been downplaying how much this has constantly sucked since it happened back in Morocco.

We were able to leave our bags at reception after checking out so that we could finally see the sights around Gibraltar, but first we left on a mission: It was time to rid ourselves of our surplus supplies. Post office ahoy! After finding one, our first challenge arose – we had to find a box in which to ship our stuff to the States. We wandered around the back alleys and convenient stores asking if they had refuse boxes that they needed to get rid of. We finally found the perfect one, and began to pack it. Most of the stuff that we had grouped back in Salé was ready to go, but there were a few wildcards. First off, I wanted to keep my melodica, but the case was excessively bulky. Decision: keep the instrument, ship the case. Second, my art supplies (an artist’s notebook and a pack of pastels). Did I really need these? Would I ever have time to use them? Was I even good enough to justify carrying them around? I quickly sketched the alley that we were sitting in with our garbage box, and then drew a random beach scene. Whether it was that I don’t like the timbre of the pastel crayons or if I’m really just not as talented an artist as I was slash used to be, I decided that they could go home and added them to our State-bound-box.

On our way back to the post office, we needed to exchange some Euros for British (or Gibraltar) Pounds since they did not accept Euros, US$ or credit. On the way, we got distracted by a sporting goods store! Finally, I bought a new bag, and can now begin the slow process of destinkifying my stuff before making the transfer to the new bag. Until then, I will carry around both bags (nothing even remotely fishy can enter my new virgin bag). In the long run, that cab ride to Khemisset turned out to cost me about US$85 (plus a bottle of Febreze and the dry cleaning that I would need to do). But that’s just how these trips go, and now I am refreshed.

We finally made it back to the post office, five minutes before they closed. They weren’t happy to stay late to help us, but we got the job done and sent the package out. Hopefully it makes it to New Jersey, otherwise a bunch of random crap will be returned to Gibraltar where it will be unclaimed and rubbishified.

With our main mission complete, Nate and I wanted to finally see some of the sights that Gibraltar had to offer, including the 100 lbs gun, and the Trinity Lighthouse at Europa Point, the furthest southern point on the peninsula. First, however, I wanted to confirm our bus to Granada for tonight, and needed to find some Wi-Fi to do so. Nate and I stopped at a pizza place for some two bird action, but with terrible connection, pizza, service and price, it was a full-on failure.
Instead, we went back to Clippers, where the hostess from last night remembered us and allowed us to use their Wi-Fi, which told us an extremely valuable piece of information: the 8:50 bus that we were counting on, was 8:50AM. Otherwise, it would have said 20:50. So our “lie” yesterday to the Granada hostel about missing our bus was actually accurate, and worse, we had made the same mistake today!

No time for sights… we had only one option to get to Granada tonight. A rush to the bus terminal (back to Spain) to catch the last train to Málaga would put us on schedule for a transfer to a Granada-bound train that would arrive early enough to check in to our hostel tonight. We made it within ten minutes of the bus’ departure, and over the next several hours were treated to one of the most gorgeous scenic rides I’ve ever been on. The bus hugged a coastal road so closely that at times we were less than a meter from the Atlantic.

After reading up on Málaga, Nate commented on how cool it was that a random series of events caused us to be on our way there where we’ll see Picasso’s birthplace and museum. He was excited by the characteristics of this type of travel. To me, often they’re hassles. Like when you walk through Times Square twice a day on the way to work and think more about the annoyance of all the tourists blocking your walk than on the magnificence of this world attraction, to me, the excitement is just frustrating… or at least, “just is”.

Unfortunately, our stopover in Málaga was not long enough for a beach outing to take advantage of another sun drenched day or even for a quick trip into town to see the Picasso stuff…an ironic twist on Nate’s realization… So we continued on to Granada.

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And just so you know where we are now, here is an updated map of our trip so far, also found on the Travel page:

Episode 2: Church Music & Fish – The Rest of Morocco, Morocco (Days 2 to 4)

Previously on the trip:
Episode 1 – First Day in Marrakech – Marrakech (Days 1-2) Link

Finally! Internet + time = a new post. Yes it’s old (I’m currently in a campsite in Andorra), but I should be able to post another story (about Gibraltar) within a few days! Here’s what’s ahead: 5 cities in 2 days, a near-police issue with a cabbie in Casa, and a near-driven-into-a-back-alley-in-a-hostile-arab-neighborhood-and-got-stabbed issue in Rabat (or technically, Salé, the “Harlem” of Rabat… last time I book a hostel just because it’s the cheapest… actually that’s not true… I’ll most definitely do that again and often), some tunes with new friends, and fish… oh god, the fish. Enjoy…

-Joshua

Marrakech – Day 2

We met Max during breakfast on the roof lounge. All she told us was that she had taken a major trip in 1980, so that was our only clue to her age. But for someone who spent her life traveling as much as possible, she looked great. Natively from Sydney, she had been through Central America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and even spent a year on a Kibbutz in Israel (the 1980 trip – fascinating because it was the year that Israel sympathetically gave the Sinai back to Egypt). She works half the year then travels the rest. She never had kids herself, but is the “cool aunt” to her straight edge (read: non-traveler) siblings’ kids. Over delicious mint tea, coffee and breads, we shared travel stories with Nate listening on to his first traveler-on-traveler conversation. Max has never written about her travels except for emails sent out to her friends from the road. I told her that she should put them together into a book called “Sent Mail”, and I hope she considers it because I would read it! She is spending another few weeks in Morocco before moving on to I-Forget-Where, so we told each other “bon voyage” before parting ways.

Casablanca – Day 2

Nate and I packed up and left Marrakech on a train to Casablanca. Before we left, I tried to give Nabil a tip for his helpfulness and generosity, but the 50dh I gave him was less than the amount he expected for the sheesha and tea from last night, so his tip turned into payment for what I thought was a complementary service. Sucks for him.

The train was swelteringly hot, and we passed in and out of heat and tired related unconsciousness along the three hour long route. Upon arrival, the Marrakechian street vendor hasslers were replaced by cab hasslers. “Where are you going, my friend? Ah, no problem. No problem. You get in cab with me, no problem.” If it weren’t for the hassle, I wouldn’t mind the cab rides. But because they’re such scumbags, I go into counter-haggle mode.

Nate and I wanted two things: to see the main site in Casablanca – the big mosque on the shore – and to get some lunch. I negotiated the cabbie to take us downtown for 30dh. We had a pretty uneventful lunch of schwarma and frites supported by a cool jazz version of Phil Collins’ “Another Day in Paradise”, and then hopped in a Grand Taxi to take us to the mosque. Not knowing that a “Grand” taxi costs five-times the price of a “Petit” Taxi even after confirming the price beforehand, when we arrived the driver wanted 50dh… we expected to pay 7. He held us back and argued and insisted that we either pay or go talk to the police. I told him to talk to the police since it was his problem. I wanted to just walk away, since I’m pretty sure that Morocco (and thus their police) cares more about tourism then their cabbies, but after being hassled for a good 15 minutes and not wanting to start something big, I handed the guy a 20dh and he stormed off angrily. Fuck him.

Casablanca - Mosque Hassan II

The mosque itself was quite nice – tall and beige framed by the Atlantic behind it. We took a few pictures and sat for a few moments on the immense raised platform on which the mosque stands. I didn’t want to stay too long since we had to be moving on to Rabat and Moroccoan “hospitality” was quickly becoming unpleasant. Forced to choose between taking another cab and making the mile or so walk back to the train station, we decided to hoof it. We took the wrong route along the shore instead of walking down the main road, and ran into some teens who started chatting us up about Metallica (the whole world loves Metallica) and my guitar. Being on defense mode since we arrived, we weren’t sure if they were being friendly at best, to setting us up for a stealing/beating at worst, or anything in between. I kept it friendly, and then asked them the best way to the station. We left incident free… I guess I was worried for nothing. On the almost-too-long walk back (it’s only day 2 and the bags are almost devastatingly heavy), we stopped for a moment at Rick’s Bar to see the location from the movie, slash the real reason I wanted to go to Casablanca in the first place. They wouldn’t let us in without buying a drink, but we were in too much of a rush to do so. I asked a British guy coming out if it looked like the movie set. He said that there was a piano, but “Sam was not playing it again.” Witty. As we parted, he said “God save the king.” I replied with “say hello to the Queen for me.” I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic, in which case I replied in kind. If he was serious for some reason, then I guess I was kind of a dick. Fifteen minutes later we hopped a 9:30PM train to Rabat… or so we thought…

Salé – Day 2-3

Elaine sat across from us and we started talking about things to do after we arrive in Spain via the ferry from Tangier. She recommended that we check out Tarifa where an African Film Festival was going on 11-19 June, but that’s a bit late for us to stick around southern Spain…but we’ll see. She also said that the ferry to Spain will probably land in Algeciras, a port town east of Tarifa. Either way, she recommended Granada afterwards.

Someone asked where we were going, and we gave the location of the hostel. Turns out, the hostel that we booked, Riad Dar Nawfal, “in” Rabat was actually a residential suburb north of the city called Salé, and apparently it’s a relatively bad area, especially at night.

CRASH!!!

The window across the aisle and one row back shattered, shooting glass into the cabin. It startled everyone, thinking it was an explosion of some kind. In reality, it was most likely some kids throwing rocks at passing trains; another high point for Morocco. (That said, it was a pretty good throw.)

Looking at a map, it appeared as if we could walk from the train station to the hostel which was a few blocks away. But when we arrived, the area didn’t look like we expected, and based on our new information about Salé, we decided to take a cab. More haggling, then a destinationless drive through a walled old city as the driver kept asking people where our street was. He kept getting out and looking at our map in the light of the headlights, and each passerby got us a step farther. Where were we going?

Finally, someone said that we were right here, and pointed down a narrow dark alley. A small sign said the name of the street concurrent with that of the hostel, so this was everyone’s best guess. I was uncomfortable with the whole thing, but didn’t want to show it. I asked Nate if he was good, and he gave a solid “yea”. So we continued “on plan”, grabbed our bags from the car and walked to the end of the alley to a door.

Surprisingly, it was opened by a young girl who was expecting us. She brought us into the foyer, which opened up into a beautiful two story open-center house, lined with Moroccan rugs, couches and tiles. An older woman – presumably her mom – greeted us went to get our key. I asked her if she had any food, and she took us into her kitchen (this was their house), and pulled some leftovers out of the fridge. There was chicken, rice, and a tomato and pepper dish. She told us to sit on the couches as she warmed it up for us. It turned out to be the best meal we’d had in Morocco, the most comfortable hostel we’d stayed at, the friendliest and most helpful staff, and gave us a refreshing sleep. It’s funny how quickly situations change.

Salé - The Hostel

In the morning, they served us breakfast of tea and breads on the roof patio before we checked out and paid. The man who served us breakfast and checked us out also showed us what to see and do in Rabat and how to get there from Salé. He also let me use the phone to call Yassine, my Moroccan musician pen pal. He lives in Khemisset, an hour or so east of Rabat, and when I told him our plan to go into town, he told me to call him in a few hours to plan when and where to meet up.

Afterwards, we stuck around in the house for over an hour, repacking our bags and organizing overkill that we intended to send home. We decided to lose a few shirts, underwear and socks, useless toiletries, towels, and other bulky items that were making our bags unbearable. We have so far only stayed in hostels, so the tent and sleeping bags were pointlessly weighing us down. They better get some use in Europe.

Rabat – Day 3

Walking out of Salé was completely un-scary, if not pleasant. It was a real Moroccan, completely non-touristy city. A ten minute walk outside the main wall’s gate brought us to the new tram line, only up and running for a month now. Broken French led us to the station stop outside of the Hassan V Tower and Palace, one of the main sites in Rabat. After taking an hour to pack up back at the hostel, we didn’t have time to see the palace and the city’s Medina, but we’d seen enough Medina’s already. The palace was pretty spectacular, combining old palace ruins with a more recently built mausoleum. Upon first approach, the stairs leading up to the main platform were gated off, but some local kids told us to just climb over the fence. They were there, so we figured the interior was not off limits. We could have walked around to the main entrance, but we were already there so we tossed our bags over the fence and scaled the stone wall.

Nate and I got some good pictures of the building and the Medina with the Atlantic in the background, and when we’d seen enough, walked out to an adjacent park. It was time to call Yassine back anyway. I was hoping to borrow someone’s phone, but few people seemed to have one, and fewer would consider lending it to me. We found a payphone, and I finally got through to him. He said he was on his way with a friend of his, and that they would meet us in the park we were near.

While waiting under the shade of a tree, we were hassled by no less than three different “salespeople” selling cheap jewelry and trinkets, and wouldn’t take the first two “no’s” for an answer. I pretty much told them to fuck off in order to get them to leave us alone. Half an hour later, I had to poo. I ran down to the bathrooms by the mausoleum, only to find my worst nightmare: stalls with holes in the ground and buckets of water alongside. Looks like I was going to experience my first squatting #2, but I’ll be damned if I was going to use the scoop and bucket wiping technique; and that is why we carry TP around with us. I’ll spare you the details, but my first “local experience” was about a B+ in success… “aiming” isn’t the easiest thing. Alright… next topic.

Nate and I waited twenty minutes past when Yassine said he’d arrive, and considered just leaving on another train right up to Tangier and leave Morocco behind. But soon enough, he and his friend walked up to us, recognizing us by my guitar I presume. We shook hands, finally meeting after three months of talking via email, and went off with him and his friend on their way back to Khemisset. Very few people in Morocco have cars, and taxis are the primary route of intra and inter-city travel. The difference is that inter-city taxis wait until they are full before departing. Full, by the way, means six passengers plus the driver; that’s four in the back, and two in the front passenger seat.

With obviously no room for my guitar in the main cab, I put it with both bags in the trunk as we waited around for two more people who wanted to go to the same place. One came and I heard the trunk open and then slam shut. “There goes my guitar,” I said. Yassine said it would be fine. Finally full, we set off for Khemisset, forced to get closely comfortable with our new friends. Yassine spoke impressive English – a result, he said, of watching the Simpsons. Since his friend was not as versed, I spoke mostly to Yassine along the way as more vocal-less Phil Collins played on the radio.

Khemisset – Days 3-4

Tonight was the band’s weekly practice. Since we first started speaking months ago, Yassine told me that his band has played festivals and other high profile shows. In the taxi, he said that they had recently been featured on a television show similar to our morning talk shows. I was and had been worried that I would not be able to keep up with them on guitar, and would disappoint them and make things awkward, like an audition I once had for a band in Hoboken. I tried not to think about it.

When we arrived in Yassine’s off-the-beaten-trail hometown, we walked a bit to his street to meet up with the other six or seven members of the band. Their practice space was in a converted church which was now a theater, a walk away from where we were. Yassine offered Nate and I to leave our bags in his house while we went to the church, but I still wasn’t sure of how this would end up, so after saying we would just keep them on us, one of the guys offered to give us a ride while the others walked over.

The converted church was everything I had expected: a curtained stage overlooking a lower level and balcony seating areas. A crappy drum kit was set up in the middle of the stage alongside a small mixing board patched to two or three monitors around the playing area. I tuned my guitar to the piano and checked volume levels. So that as the guys set up the keyboards, mics and guitar amps, I could unpack all my stuff and drench it in Axe spray to try to mask the fish smell that had ruined my bag. It didn’t work.

All ready to play, Yassine told me the chords for the first song they were going to play to warm up, and I joined in just fine. Nate occasionally swapped in for the drummer and blew away the entire band, even giving their drummer a lesson or two. I also held my own on guitar and even suggested things they should play or change in their songs to make them better. All in all, we represented ourselves and our country as musically talented.

Over a few hours we played almost a dozen songs including some jams, one or two of their originals and a few covers including Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and, you guessed it, Phil Collins. Apparently Morocco is his biggest fan. It was amusing that the song’s lyrics were being repeated by the band, verse after verse, not understanding their meaning or flow but just repeating the sounds that they had heard on the radio.

Practice ended late – around 1AM – and we were all hungry. We drove into town to the main street with the band and some more of their friends – around ten in total – and sat at a meat stand. Over tough communication ranging from charades with the Arab-only speakers, terribly tired French with those who knew it, and translated comments through Yassine, we still managed to have a great time. The butcher served us kefta, a ground beef and spices platter, kotbane, which are essentially kababs, maakouda, fried potato pancakes made with egg, flour, saffron and cumin, and of course khoebz, the thick pita bread to eat it all with. The sweet atay, mint tea, and the endless supply of delicious food really complimented the warm company of our new friends. As much as strangers with heavy language barriers could, we even managed to tell jokes back and forth, though I’m sure most were misunderstood, or the joke itself was the misunderstanding. For example, we had a quick laugh over the confusion between the words “pita” and “pizza”, which by the way, they had never had. When they refused to allow us to chip in for the meal, I told them I’d buy them all a pizza if they ever came to New York… offer still stands, guys!

Nate became part of an awkward moment when Yassine mentioned in English that he was the best drummer that they’d ever played with. Nate made eye contact with their drummer who looked away. We’re not sure if it was because he was offended or just didn’t understand what was being said, in which case the head turn was unrelated. Another act of miscommunication of customs came when the guys started leaving and shook hands with each other. They shook, kissed their hand, then touched their heart. It was kind of like how kids will do the opposite order with a final point at god for granting them a successful three-point shot on the basketball court. They laughed when they did it, and some didn’t. So we weren’t sure if they were messing with us or if the laughing was unrelated and it was a sign of level of friendship. Either way, Nate and I partook in the possible custom. Maybe we’ll bring it back home with us.

Khemisset - The Band

As everyone left, Nate and I returned to Yassine’s house for the night. He lives alone in his parents’ old house after they moved into Rabat. The gate was rusty, the yard was more like untamed brush, the house was a mess, and the toilet was horrendous. It was great. Already close to 3AM, we sat up talking about a few things such as TV and music and our plans for tomorrow, which included another Crammed Taxi to Meknès (a city an hour farther east of Khemisset) to a train to Tangier to catch a ferry to Spain.

I asked Yassine about the recent protests in Morocco that have been such huge news in the States. According to him, they haven’t affected him at all short of a five-day teachers’ strike which gave him a long weekend – since he is a PhD student. The protests weren’t a concern for him in the slightest; he doesn’t care about political stuff like that and stays uninvolved. “I just care about music,” he said. I knew, as usual, that American elaboration and storytelling that is justified by calling it “news” has completely misguiding us on the reality of world politics and their affect on their people.

Nate and I slept comfortably in his parents’ old room while Yassine rocked the couch slash bed in the living room in front of the TV and computer… dorm style. Regardless of the deflated political turmoil that Yassine dismissed from my mom’s voice in my head, I still had a weird dream where I was in Moroccan custody trying to reach the American Embassy in an escape attempt during a cell transfer…

In the morning, I was safely in bed as Yassine woke us at 10AM to get us ready to go. Nate and I dressed, brushed and packed and Yassine took us down the block for a traditional Moroccan breakfast of harsha (strong “h”), a crispy pizza-slice-shaped bread with honey, and brewat, a more isoscelesian shaped pastry similar to baklava made with almonds.

Yassine walked us back to the parking lot where the Grand Taxis sit waiting for six people to all choose the same destination, but we quickly found a group that wanted to go to Meknès. Getting there first, Nate and I called the first ever “double shotgun” and took the front seat together. This time around, none of our gear was fished along the way.

Meknès – Day 4

The cab ride was as expected, and dropped us off in front of the Tangier bus station. The plan was to take the train in an hour or so, but with the station being another cab ride away, we checked to see if there was a bus leaving sooner for cheaper. There was one leaving immediately, so we bought tickets. The fare did not include the 10dh that an English speaking man “suggested” we each give the young boy who loaded our bags under the bus (we gave him 10dh total), or the 20dh he “suggested” we then give him for the courtesy of showing us the bus and speaking English to us (I happily gave him nothing).

Yassine had warned us not to take the bus, and we soon understood why. The hot and sweat draining body odor bus (not even the bad part yet), was supposed to take four hours to get to Tangier (not the worst part yet), but took closer to eight hours (…getting there), because it would stop every ten to thirty minutes to either pick up someone on the side of the street while allowing local vendors to walk up and down the aisle trying to pawn off their knock-off watches, sunglasses and bags of peanuts (…almost). But the worst part was that the stops sometimes took five minutes, while others were closer to thirty, and we never knew which it would be. Nobody on the bus spoke English, or even French for that matter. We were aliens. One stop, which happened to be a 30 minuter at a gas station six hours into the ride, was the peak of awfulness. After sitting in the bus for the first 20 minutes, basking in the heat and suffering the influx of CO₂ fumes flowing in from the running engine, we wondered if there was enough time to go to the bathroom. Five minutes later, Nate went for it, and two minutes in, the bus started to leave. I shouted out “STOP STOP”, and the passengers helped to tell the driver in Arabic. I walked up to the front and held the door open, waiting until Nate returned. For an awkward five or so minutes, I waiting for Nate to walk up, and then tried to mimic what I thought would have been animosity toward the white foreigner holding up the bus to prove that we weren’t “do-what-we-want Americans”, but nobody really seemed to care.

About an hour before we arrived in Tangier, Nate and I had gone into near delirium. We were dehydrated and our sentences were spotty and nonsensical. We would initiate topics of discussion then immediately retract them after realizing that we couldn’t verbalize the thought strings dangling in our overtired crowded and oxygen deprived minds. Instead, we played Dots twice before it got boring. As we drove north, we passed miles and miles of street stands, all selling the same brown plaster bowls and junk. The same bowls and junk. Tens of thousands of them. This raised many questions: who is making all these bowls? They are so similar that they must be mass produced. But then why make so many? Why set them up side by side by side on a randomly travelled road, the one place where our bus did not stop? Even if some wealthy American collector decided he wanted to buy 500 bowls, that would barely dent their inventory. I just don’t get it.

At long last, we stopped at another random roadside lot, and this time I ran off to buy a water bottle. After being so parched for over nine hours, it was strange that my body only needed a few sips rather than a chug to return to normal. It was a slow process of recovery.

Tangier – Day 4

Walking around Tangier was no different than any other place I had been to, especially in the truthlessness of the locals. Nate and I asked where to go for the ferries to Spain and received five different answers. Some said the new port, some said the old port; some said there was no overnight ferry, some said there was. We finally picked one direction and got another cab (our last one in Morocco!) to take us to the main port. Arriving, we received bad and worse news: first, the price was twice what I expected it would be; second, my assumption of a ten-hour ferry ride (like the one I took from Italy to Croatia) which would have landed us in Spain in the morning only took 45 minutes (hence the obscene price), landing us in Tarifa at 9:30PM.

Breezing through customs, Nate and I had finally escaped Africa and were on European soil. But there was no time to revel in that thought as we had a decision to make: stay in Tarifa, which was described as beautiful but small and difficult to find lodging this late, or hop on the free shuttle bus to Algeciras, which was a “more metropolitan city” where lodging will be easy to come by. Given the fact that it was farther east – the direction that we were inevitably heading – we took the bus.

Tangier - Our Last View of Africa

Algeciras – Day 4

This was a huge mistake. Algeciras is little more than a port city, with a main street polluted by young adults who seemed up to no good. We walked up and down a street or two comparing hostel prices. Long story short, we picked the cheapest one that said it had internet. That was a lie. It did, however, have two beds and a communal shower that produced four minutes of hot water. To make matters worse, I can´t get the smell of fish out of my bag. All my stuff stinks. I tried bathing the bag in the cold communal shower, and nothing… I literally need a new bag. Everything smells like fish. My tent smells. My sleeping bag smells. I hate fish! I’m never eating fish again, and now I have a story why. That cab ride might have cost me hundreds of dollars by the time I replace and wash everything. It has really been overshadowing all the good times I´m having. FUCKING FISH BAG!!!!

Back in the room, we read Lonely Planet’s review of Algeciras which in paraphrase, said, “Don’t go! If you’re stuck there for some unfortunate reason, good luck and get out quickly. We devised a plan to place the heavy coffee table a foot away from the door with a water bottle upside down supporting a few coins which if tipped would fall on the glass table and floor, waking us for battle.

The really all there is to say about Algeciras … in the morning we bought bread and fruit from the grocery store, found an internet place to book a room in the Oasis Hostel in Granada for the night and to research which bus we’d need to take to get there. I did, however, want to stop in the UK territory of Gibraltar first since it was on the way, so we planned a quick stop over via a short bus to La Linea de la Conception (the last stop in Spain before reaching the UK border).

Morocco, a review:

Culture: B+
Food: A-
Hospitality of friends: A+
Hospitality of local vendors/cabbies: D-

Overall: C
(Wouldn’t return though glad we went… would recommend for the experience that you’d never want to have again)

Episode 1: First Day in Marrakech – Marrakech, Morocco (Day 1)

A heiku:

My bag is heavy
I have not slept in hou-rs
Next stop – Marrakech

Sometimes I do my best writing in a hung-over or over-tired state, but now I can’t seem to keep a straight thought in my head. The last three months have been leading up to today – or what I have to call “today” because there’s no better way to describe the multi-day seamless span of packing through landing. And even this feels like a mere extension of the most hectic final week that I can remember. Over the last week I had my last day of work, saw to the end of my lease including the recovery of my security deposit, sold and donated as much of my stuff as I could, and packed up and moved the rest into a storage unit in Hoboken. All of this was in addition to spending time with my various groups of friends, and putting as much time as I could into writing posts and editing pages for my website and the others that I am writing for, including filming and editing two videos (that I hope have gone viral).

I met Sarah at a party two weeks ago – a party that I was almost too busy to go to – and we were drawn to each other. Since then, we have spent as much time together as possible. The way we intuitively understand each other has made it feel as if we’ve known each other for months or longer. I barely need to finish expressing a sentence before she fully grasps the complete context and conclusion of my thoughts. I tell you this for two reasons: First, I had been waiting for the predictably unpredictable surprise that would arise immediately before my departure and cause me to rethink my trip. I expected that it would be some negative world crisis or personal emergency, but surprisingly, two great things happened! I found a very exciting occupational opportunity in the writing and editing field, and I met Sarah. Second, our amazing time together, and the mutual feeling of desire to constantly be in each others’ presence (finally I’m not the only one) did have the side effect of condensing my pre-departure responsibilities from a full ten or so days to a very hectic two.

Long story short, I spent six hours of the day before my flight finishing a video, three hours sleeping, ten minutes eating, and the rest with her. The day I left (let’s call it “yesterday”), I left myself only an hour or so to pack and to choose which tent would be most practical to bring. I made a lot of hasty decisions including bringing my melodica and ipod – two items that will either come in very handy or will be a burden until they are stolen or lost. As the parents were already rolling the car out of the garage to take us to the airport, I was still cramming things into my over-packed ruck in a last minute effort to form a balance between what I wanted and what I could carry.

Forgetting how little sleep I (or we, being Sarah and I) got over the days leading up to the flight, “today” began after three hours of sleep followed by the aforementioned rush-to-ruck marathon. We (which from here on out is Nate and I) left West Orange at 6PM for an 8:20 flight out of Newark. After discovering that TAP Airlines was a partner of Continental leaving from Terminal C, we had to discover and recover our way there from the initially listed Terminal B. I can’t remember the worst, but this had to have ranked in my top 3 most difficult flights. Seven sleepless hours later, we landed in Lisbon at 8AM for a five-hour layover. Hungry, tired, and weighed down by our bags (not to mention, the $1.7:€ exchange shock), our initial attempt to leave the airport to explore the city proved to be a redundant adventure in passing back and forth through airport security and customs.

We are now sitting in the “First Class Café” in Terminal 2 of the Portugal Aeroporto with an hour and a half left until we board for Marrakech at 1:05PM. We both have ways of dealing with our tiredness: Nate said he wants gefilta fish and matzah, and then fell asleep; I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to capture fleeting thoughts to write them down. My right eye hurts for some reason… but I’m probably being sensitive. To cut down on weight, we decided to tear up the Lonely Planet Western Europe book I bought, and dispense with the countries outside of our travel realm such as the UK, Italy, and now Portugal.

I woke up to our names being called on the intercom; we were holding up the flight. It was a small (rows of two and one seat) and empty plane, and I slept most of the two hours from Lisbon to Marrakech. The moments that I was awake and looking out the window provided amazing views of rural Morocco below. Shanty towns surrounded by fields of unknown bushes were scattered among the desert, separated by untamed rivers and vast open spaces. When Marrakech came into view as the plane descended for its final approach, the density comparison was obvious. By no means a “large city”, it was still a distinct cluster of modern and centuries-old buildings.

Customs went smoothly but we ran into a minor situation when our single checked bag did not show up on the conveyer belt. But luckily, after twenty minutes or so it arrived, and we were off to the downtown Medina of the Old City. Like a seasoned pro, I found the bus from the airport to the city, and then navigated the “roads” to our hostel. The building is amazing, with Middle Eastern garb lining the walls and comfortable couches and curtains on each floor including the roof. Our room had a clean bathroom and though reserved for parties of four, Nate and I had it all to ourselves.

Still tired, we spent some time repacking our bags to try to reduce space and weight, but they still remain to be potentially restrictively heavy. The rest of the day was spent exploring the Old City, focusing on the open air market and side-street shuks which are populated by tourists and the pushy locals hassling us to eat at their tent. Nate and I chose one arbitrarily and had a quick set of kababs and some potato pancakes (all in all 50dr or about US$7).

With my guitar on my back, yellow on my shirt, tattoo on my leg and red on my hair, I was constantly stared at and approached by people wondering what the fuck I was. I felt like a hot girl… now I get how it kinda sucks. Nate and I walked back and forth in and around the market place, central mosque, park and shuk side-streets, taking pictures of the sights, snake charmers, and the monkeys on our shoulders!

I had two instances to play guitar – one was on some stone ruins when a Spanish hippy walked by with a hand drum; we played Dylan’s “Watchtower” as a crowd of children surrounded us to listen to and watch the strangely colorful alien in their midst. After Spippy left, the children remained, asking to play the guitar. Not a chance. All I need is for eight of them to block me as one ran off with it. Plus after about a hundred “non, mercies”, a few more at some Moroccan children just seemed natural. Speaking of which, I was about a dozen useful words short, but otherwise my French was sufficient to get by, even prompting people to respond to me in French, which was pretty unhelpful.

As the sun set, the mosque lit up like “a candle in the city” (not my words), and the square lit up with drum circles, performers, and even more aggressive food pushers (my words). Standing in the audience of a drum and banjo circle (surprising, no?), I was literally pushed into the mix and told to play guitar (my second opportunity). I started by finding the banjo’s key and playing some basic 1-4-5 chords, then led a song with some D-A-G progressions. The crowd of fifty or so was cheering and throwing in change to the group’s hat (of which I received none…). Nate joined in on a bongo set, but as the crowd got louder, our input was overpowered by the group’s louder instruments. For the last fifteen minutes I really only pretended to play, strumming blindly and moving my fingers around to pretend that I was an impressive guitarist. Nobody could tell.

It was only 9PM when we ran out of places to go, and so decided to try to find some wine or something to put us into sleeping mode. But when a series of events including finding a restaurant that sold alcohol, finding a bank to take out more money to buy said alcohol, and the restaurant closing minutes before we returned, led to us coming up empty handed. The restaurant owner felt bad and offered us hash, but I’d been scammed with strange drugs before… I mean, we didn’t want any… so we passed.

Instead, we returned to the hostel where Nabil, the very friendly concierge, set us up with a hookah (called sheesha here) and tea on the roof lounge. We hadn’t met anybody interesting today, but we ended the day relaxed and pleased with our decision to explore Morocco rather than sticking exclusively within Europe. That said, we’ve seen all that Marrakech has to offer (in our opinion), so we decided to boost our departure north to tomorrow rather than staying another night in Marrakech. It’s 1AM now, and I’m falling asleep as I’m writing this. In the morning after our free breakfast, we’ll hop a train or bus to Fes (less likely since it’s a nine-hour trip) or Rabat via Casablanca (two to four hours, depending on method of travel). So as the trip continues tomorrow, I’ll sign off after a great first day.

Cheers and salaam

Coming soon…