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Showing posts tagged food
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…make your way to Marrakesh.
Again with the ‘impressionistic’ updates (to borrow a term from my AP US history teacher). I have two essays due in the upcoming week and a friend flying in to visit from Dublin on Wednesday, but I don’t want to forget the things I wanted to say about Marrakesh before then!
It would be a stretch to say that being there was like being in another world (anyplace that has a McDonald’s is obviously Earth — other planets would likely have more sense), but it was definitely like being on another continent. That fact hit home before the airplane even landed; when I looked below me as we began our descent, instead of streets, towns, and city lights, there was red dirt, green fields, sunlight reflecting off thin streams of water used for irrigation, and slate-blue mountains in the hazy distance.
We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel — yes, not a hostel, a legitimate hotel, complete with TVs in the rooms, our own showers that we didn’t have to pay extra for, and continental breakfast each morning. The exchange rate being what it is (roughly 7 Moroccan dirhams to an American dollar), we could afford a little more class than usual. The taxi ride was an entertaining ordeal in itself: there being, apparently, no such thing as traffic police in Marrakesh, the five of us plus our driver managed to fit (along with our hand baggage) inside a car only designed to seat five. I was probably the smallest person there. Four girls shared the back seat — I didn’t even notice if the car was equipped with seatbelts, but I’m inclined to think they didn’t even bother.
Although Marrakesh is pretty touristy in its own right — and the government is doing a lot to promote that aspect of it — it has its rough edges, especially if you’re a white female. We weren’t there during the normal tourist season, so except in the marketplace, we ran into very few tourists on the streets. We weren’t actively hassled (except by vendors trying to sell us things, who referred to one or more of the girls at some time or another as “Hannah Montana” and “the Spice Girls”; we also got asked if we were looking for fish and chips, and whether we were on facebook) but something just seemed different. It wasn’t until one of my friends pointed it out that I saw practically no women (tourists excluded) in the city. There was the odd woman (some in full wrists-to-ankles covering, plus head scarf) doing her shopping at the local market, or speeding along the street on a bicycle/motorcycle hybrid (there are both pedals and a motor; these were surprisingly common), but even they disappeared when the sun went down. Outside the tourist center of the walled city of Morocco, 95% of the people I saw in restaurants were men. I hadn’t realized the kind of inherent menace there is in that until this trip. I was never hassled (and I’m also very good at ignoring what people say and just walking by — the ability to navigate Sproul Plaza at lunchtime without being inundated with flyers and appeals apparently has uses outside of Berkeley), but on the first day especially, something felt a little not right.
This being said, as soon as I had a map in my hand and a general feel for the city’s arrangement (as well as the promise of vigilance from the one male member of our group, God bless him), the feeling went away pretty quickly — and in a way it was something I’d been prepared for, having done enough googling on the subject to get an idea of how conservatively to dress. (Despite approximately 80 degree weather, I spent my time in jeans and t-shirts.)
I am now going to admit to something that, in any other city, would feel like a bit of a cop-out. You know those big red sightseeing buses? Well, there’s one that runs in Marrakesh, and my friends and I took it. It was a great way to figure out where everything was in relation to everything else without having to get lost on the way, and a great way not to walk around in the heat but still get a feel for the place.
My favorite part of being in Marrakesh was visiting the marketplace they’re famous for. I’ve seen its name transliterated in about a billion different ways, but the back of one of the postcards I bought calls it “Jamaa El Fna,” as do the signs in Marrakesh itself, so that’s the one I’m going with. You can get lost in there — in fact, my friends and I almost did. They sell everything imaginable — leather goods, home herbal remedies, ceramics, dried fruit and nuts, scarves, jewelry, live chickens, pig’s heads (freshly removed from the pigs in question) — and you are expected to bargain with them for what you buy. I came home with a hand-made leather purse with an intricate openwork design on the front flap which cost me the equivalent of $25. Other things that came home with my friends included dried apricots, carved and inlaid wooden boxes, and small ornamental daggers.
The market by night is radically different from the market by day. Around the time the sun begins to set, stalls and canopies start appearing in the plaza in front of the market, and soon enough there are a hundred little tent-restaurants ready and willing to serve you everything from traditional Moroccan food to french fries. We ate at one of these restaurants on our last night (ours was #89, I think — the menus are all basically the same, and they use their stall numbers as differentiation). I had kebabs, couscous, really good bread — and, it must be said, really good french fries. Apparently, they’re universal.
The last day of our stay, we took an excursion through some of the Berber villages situated in the High Atlas Mountains. Along with other tourists, we got in a great big van driven by a local tour guide who navigated the windy mountain roads and explained the scenery that rolled past as we gained altitude. In concept the trip was pretty touristy — the van stopped in several locations so that we could get out and snap the obligatory photos — but behind the tourist motivation were vestiges (small, but there) of a more authentic Moroccan experience. To some of the “natives,” we were obviously a way to make money through the sale of traditional arts and crafts. But to some of them we were just a blip on the radar, a small disturbance in a daily routine that (for them) probably hasn’t changed too much over the last few decades. It’s probable that a lot of them had never even been as far from home as Marrakesh.
That day, we ate lunch in a small former hotel, high up in the mountains, which served a very traditional multi-course Marrakeshi meal: bread, salad, vegetable tagine, roasted chicken, finished off with a small glass of mint tea, something Morocco’s known for (and which lives up to the hype — but granted, I was a mint tea fan to begin with).
There are some places that you go to once, just to say that you’ve been there, and to know for yourself what that means. And there are some places you go to and know you’ll come back to. While preparing for this trip, I sort of suspected that Marrakesh would fall under the first category, but after having been, I’m not so sure. There are, of course, plenty of places I plan to go to for a first time before I make a return trip to Marrakesh (or even to Morocco), but in some future where I am obscenely wealthy and can travel wherever and whenever I like, I can see myself ending up back there — even if only to share the experience of the place with a different set of people.
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London's best hot chocolate?
Well, I guess that just means I’ll need to visit every single one of these in turn and figure out which one really is the best, although frankly, at the moment there’s nothing better than a giant mint hot chocolate at the cafe called Roastars which is a 5-minute walk from my dorm.
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…picture Vienna.
What with papers and exams and related nuisances keeping me busy throughout the next two and a half weeks, it’ll probably be a while before I can properly write about my spring break trip or post the (hundreds and hundreds of) pictures I took while I was away. But for now, before I forget (and as a method of procrastination) I’m going to put up some of my favorite pictures from each city, along with a bit of narrative text about each one.
It is perfectly fitting that the first picture here is of coffee, because after spending three days in Vienna I am convinced it is one of the things that the Viennese do best (possibly even better than psychoanalysis and opera and waltzing). Viennese coffee is smooth, rich, and strong as hell — in any cafe you go to, even if it’s not one of the higher-end places Vienna is famous for, you will be given a glass of water along with every coffee you order. You will need the water after you have had the coffee. This is simple fact. This picture is of my first Viennese coffee, consumed in the famous Cafe Central, which is right down the street from where I stayed.
There’s nothing terribly Viennese about this lion. I just really like him. He’s outside the front entrance to the Austrian National Library — the branch that is still in use as a functioning research library. But that’s not the library I am most interested in…
…this one is. This is the Prunksaal (formerly known as the Hofbibliotek), part of the Hofburg Palace complex, and it’s the most beautiful library I’ve ever seen. I don’t have photographs to do it justice. It’s a cross between the Beast’s library from the Disney movie of Beauty and the Beast (which has been my ideal library since a young age — Belle was always my favorite princess because she was a reader), and the ideal (fictional) library I constructed for a wealthy but reclusive 18th-century French nobleman in one of my novels-in-progress. Except it’s even better. It has secret passageways. Disguised as bookshelves. That lead to rooms full of even more books.
My face cannot possibly express how happy this space makes me. I spent at least 45 minutes just sitting and looking at it (and coveting it very, very much). It was hands-down the coolest thing I saw in all of Vienna (yes, this says a lot about me, especially when you consider all of the other cool things that I saw).
Okay, enough of the library geeking, and on to the heights geeking! I am one of those people who loves to climb things (though in this instance, “ascend” might be a more accurate word, since elevator was the only option) and so I didn’t just go into Stephansdom (the big church — there is always a big church), I went up the bell tower! This is the view down from there to Stephansplatz. Even more awesome than this (though not captured on photograph since we weren’t allowed) was the catacombs tour I went on before ascending the bell tower. There were underground ossuaries. Piles and piles of bones! Some left over from when Stephansplatz was a plague pit! (Yes, I am a strange human being: I find this fascinating.)
But enough of dead bodies: food! This beautiful creation is a Sachertorte, 99% chocolate and 100% awesome. It is another one of those things you have to try when you’re in Vienna, but I ate it in style at Cafe Sacher, which as you can probably tell from the name is where the thing originated. But this also provides another chance to talk about cafes, and more specifically, Viennese cafe etiquette. I could probably spend the rest of my life in Viennese cafes, because no one ever expects you to leave your table. Once you come in and sit down, that spot is yours for as long as you want it. No one will rush you. No one will give you funny looks if you’re sitting there for hours after you’ve finished your drink (well, some people might, but not all of them). No one will try to bring you your bill to speed up your departure (in fact, at almost every restaurant or sit-down foodlike establishment I visited on this trip, I had to ask for the check to be delivered). I feel like Vienna would be a fabulous city in which to write a novel in November — although it’s probably so freezing and rainy that people don’t want to venture out to cafes.
Look, a picture with me in it! (And for those of you who don’t already know her, the girl with me is Reno, my steadfast traveling companion, who rather compassionately did not murder me or cause other bodily injury despite possessing 16 days’ worth of completely valid reasons for doing so.) But this is more than just a picture with me in it. This is a picture with me and Reno in the Vienna Opera House, about to watch a ballet performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream — that cost us only €4! (That’s about $6.) The only catch? We had to stand through it. But as I’ve stood through several Shakespeare plays at the Globe in order to achieve similarly low prices, it seemed entirely worth it, and it was. We lined up early and therefore got one of the few “standing seats” located on the orchestra level, center stage but behind all the people in the seats. Frankly, I’d say we had the best view in the house, especially considering what we paid for it! The other standers were relegated to the third-level galleries with mostly side views, stashed away above the boxes (and yes, you can still rent out a box to see the opera — and apparently lots of people do!). It was actually a really fantastic ballet, and the kind of experience you don’t get very often.
On the last full day in Vienna, we took the metro to the city’s suburbs and toured Schonbrunn Palace, the seat of Hapsburg emperors and enlightened despots. I geeked out on European history, had some fabulous flashbacks to Mr. Koger’s class, and got to climb more tall things! The yellow building you can see in the background of this picture is Schonbrunn, as seen from the top of the Gloriette, a monument to Empress Maria Theresa which is atop a hill behind the palace grounds. I’ve seen a lot of castles and palaces since September, and based on interiors alone, Schonbrunn is up there with Versailles in levels of awesome (Versailles does eventually win, but only because the gardens are so spectacular). I wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside.
