Harlem

I met three different people in Morocco who mentioned wanting to see Harlem.  Usually this was in the context of the basic convo, "you're american, here are a lot of random facts I know about your country".  But it struck me as so odd that Harlem seems to have this international appeal.

I live about 10 blocks from east Harlem and am wondering what exactly people want to see?  Blighted neighborhoods?  Boarded up buildings?  Gross income disparities between heavily guarded apartment buildings and city projects? Drug deals in broad daylight?

Maybe there is the idea that Langston Hughes is on every corner writing poetry or that there are jazz musicians in the street, I just don't know.  If anyone has insight, comment it up.

You're American...

So in every cab ride there comes a point when I can no longer adequately express myself in Moroccan Arabic and have to switch to French, at which point it becomes clear that I'm not Moroccan.  So the driver always asks where I'm from and when I tell them here's a few of the reactions:

"You're American!  OBAMA!"

"You're American! Washington, New York, Texas!"

"You're American, Billy the Kid!  Bam Bam!"

"You're American, American, Moroccan, Same same!"

Casa cab drivers are still terrible, Rabat cab drivers are still delightful.

Casa Cabbies:
1) It's pretty amazing how picky they are about who they will pick up.  Maybe this is a super lucrative business and they can just be super selective and only take people they want who are going in the direction they like best. I went through 5 cabs until I found one that would take me to the train station the first day.  They don't even say no, they just ask you where you're going and if you say someplace they don't like, they drive away immediately.
2) Oh the meter.  Getting them to turn on the meter is just such a battle.  I have never successfully gotten someone to do it.  I either got lucky and they had it running when I got in, or they would just drive away when I suggested the idea of using it to determine the fare.  One guy left the meter on but after we got to my hotel and it read 6DH, he asked me for 40.  When I pointed out the meter he quickly shut it off and said "oh that doesn't work".
3) On my taxi back to the airport we had to leave at 6am.  The driver was doing 60 km/h straight through these giant intersections even when there were big glaring red lights.  His response "oh don't worry, nobody stops at red lights in the morning... the police men are all sleeping!".  Totally made me feel better.

Rabat Cabbies
1) Always metered, no questions
2) Made friends with Mustapha who had once upon a time studied English at the British Council and delighted in trying out some phrases on me
3) Had an intense discussion about Clint Eastwood movies with a driver once he learned I was American

Street Harassment Remarkably Lower

I only got noticeably 'commented to' twice.  Once by some stupid business man in a hotel and once by a group of dudes in the Old City.  The latter group (one of whom was pushing a stroller BTWs) yelled "I like your ass!" even though they were in front of me and couldn't see said body part.  He probably had no idea what an ass was and was essentially just yelling "WORDS I KNOW IN ENGLISH!".  Anyway, a measly two harassments (down from minimum 2 a day back in 2005) is a pretty big improvement.  I'm going to choose my own reasoning for this which is that with all the modernization of the infrastructure of Rabat there has been some changes in attitudes too.  My husband's response "maybe you're just older now".  

Rabat Got So Nice!

And it was already a super easy city to live in.  The train station is new with a food court, there is a tram that runs through the city, the buses are new and don't spew black smoke everywhere, there's a new bridge to Sale, and a whole new area of development by the shore.  It still retains all it's charm- super walkable streets, clean public spaces, quick and cheap transpo, and the occasional protest in front of parliament.

We stayed in a Riad in the old city (which to the best of my knowledge is a pretty new thing as well).  It was perfectly lovely--  zelige walls, a grand courtyard with a fountain, big drapes and carved wooden doors, a classic Moroccan home except with the fantastic additions of WiFi and heating :)

I'd honestly say after New York, Rabat would be my #2.

In brief

Lost a lot of momentum on the blogging front once I arrived in Rabat since I was working 12 hour days with no let up, but a look back on the few things I had a chance to notice:

*Rabat got so nice!

*Street harassment was remarkably lower.

*Casa cab drivers are still terrible, Rabat cab drivers are still delightful.

More to come soon.

Like herding cats

There was this poor man at the train station whose only job was to try to enforce some sort of line at the ticket counter-- a cultural warrior of sorts.

He mostly was a physical barrier, constantly running from one post to another to defend against a breech of the borders.

I did my best to respect his authority, to follow what I learned in Kindergarten about lining up.  But so many people budged me from behind or infiltrated by ducking under the barriers that eventually it became clear that I was going to miss my train so I boarded without a ticket and paid the extra fee.

Deported

Outside the departures hall at JFK a man was wailing in handcuffs on his knees outside an armored van.  I was a little perplexed but my Guinean taxi driver knew exactly what that scene way-- he was being deported.

It was just heartbreaking.  :(

Back to the b-trip grind

It's been a few months since I've traveled but I'm back to the business trip grind.  I'm eating dinner by myself (and my new kindle), losing a minimum of 3 pens in the covers as I work in bed in strange hotels, chatting up taxi drivers, working on perfecting my culture-specific charm...

This evening my biggest challenge was staying dressed long enough for Room Service to bring me a lovely chicken Pastilla.

This is not a bad life.

Take that Kenny G

Any place you are accustomed to hearing Kenny G in the US: grocery stores, elevators, airports etc. in Morocco you hear the theme song from Godfather or the themesong from Lovestory.  It's pretty incredible.

I'm back

I'm back in the land of 90 second commercials and 20 minute songs...

Where the customs agents are more interested in your marital status than your terrorist tendencies...

Where meals are 3 hours and 3000 calories (and impossibly delicious)...

I'm back in Morocco for the first time in 6 years!

[lived there for a year, blogged about it here] [[rhyme!]]

My new kindle

I'll admit to being a bit of a laggard when it comes to reading.

I really really like books.  You know how people sometimes ask you what you do in your spare time and you're supposed to say something quirky and exciting like "I'm an amateur pole vaulter" or "I'm a saxophonist in a jazz band" or "I make my own clothes".  My honest answer is "I read".

In contrast my husband doesn't even own any paper.  So he's been really into me getting a kindle, my friend who is also a big traveler (and who has an awesome blog here) is a total advocate, and then for Christmas I got one from my in-laws.  So it was time to give it a shot.

First step was buying a cover because I really really like to open a book.  Second step was to turn off the wi-fi because I want my book to give me all its attention, not to be scanning for signals.  So then I had what I thought was a reasonable device to take on this trip.

Features I love:

Percentage completed tracker: I'm a little bit competitive and a little bit of a numbers nerd (like I spend the whole time on the treadmill calculating what fraction of my workout is complete) so the little bar at the bottom that tells you how much of the book you have read is just awesome.

Weight: I bring a minimum of three paperbacks with me on every trip and that can really weigh a girl down.  I have dozens of books on my kindle and it weighs less than a regular book.

Things I'm not so into:

The airlines make you shut your kindle off during take off and landing!  THIS IS PRIME READING TIME.  Before they give you your headsets to watch bad movies, there is nothing to do BUT read.  And I"m sorry but international flights are going to have to carry English publications other than Time magazine if I'm every going to be convinced to take something when the flight attendant comes around.

Anyway, we'll see if this becomes a travel necessity.

"You wanna go to Queens?" vs. "You only want to go 8 km?"

It's getting a little disturbing how many of my blog posts are about taxi drivers, but here's another one.

I was fascinated by the different tenor of taxi driver complaints in the US and Portugal.  In New York, it's the long 12-hour shifts, the afternoon rides to the airport, or destinations in the outer boroughs.  In Lisbon, the complaint was that my hotel was too near the airport.  Apparently the driver had waited for 2 hours in line to pick someone up at the airport only to get me who's hotel was 8 km away.  According to him, taxi drivers in Portugal are only allowed to make 5 pick ups a day, so it sucked for my driver to use up one of his on such a short haul.

I'm prone to feeling terrible about this kind of thing and compensating with absurd tips (which I did) and I know I'm easily manipulated by the plight of the service industry but I'm sort of okay with that.

No Phrasebook

I always feel like I need to try to speak a local language to endear myself to people but it turns out that in Portugal, at least among the small subset of people I interacted with ( namingly: airport information desk, cabbie, receptionist, room service) English is the way to go!

I forgot to pack my Portuguese phrasebook for my 9 hour layover in Lisbon.  I was so good last time about studying it and figuring out exactly how to say the 7 things I needed for the lay over (1. where is the taxi stand  2. please take me to the Radisson 3. How much for the ride  4. Can I have a receipt  5.  I have a reservation  6. non-smoking room please 7. may I please have the bacalao in room XXX.)  Yet despite all that studying, I was at a complete loss for re-forming those same sentences this time around.  So I had to resort to English... and everyone (see above) LOVED it.

I totally recognized the glee on the face of someone who has just delivered a carefully constructed sentence in a foreign language to a native speaker.  I feel like the room service guy and I could have gone back and forth, him in broken English, and me in broken Portuguese just getting more and more proud of ourselves until our little happiness readers (here I'm picturing the energy meter in Rock Band) maxed out!

Gun Check

Let me preface this by stating that I am completely ignorant of gun culture.  I was the kind of kid whose parents would call a friend's parents before a play date to see if they had a gun in the house and if so, the play date would be chez moi.  I don't totally understand the appeal of having a gun, would never want to shoot one, and frankly am not that into being in the general vicinity of one.

The guy checking in in front of me at the airline counter was checking a shotgun.  Can you seriously do that?  Apparently you can, but just to verify, I asked the desk agent who went on to give me a really long lecture about why I shouldn't be concerned and how it will be specially inspected and then kept in a separate holding area etc. Except I wasn't so concerned for my own safety, but more curious about why on earth you would ever fly to Portugal with a shotgun?  Is he going on vacation to kill things?  Is he attached to his gun like a child to his security blanket?  Are there mechanisms for gun rental if you really needed one while traveling?

Flight attendants

I am just fascinated by flight attendants.  I would love to get my hands on their guidebooks.  I'm sure there are crazy variations by airline and so many protocols for weird situations.  Is it written somewhere how many times they need to change their outfit during a flight?  How much of their tolerance for absurdities is related to the class of the seat the passenger bought and is that codified somewhere?  And while I'm sure this part isn't written in the book, I'd like to know who are the worst passengers and what are all the tiny mechanisms for taking revenge on them.

The lovely lovely day room

This is just a little ode to the lovely lovely day room

When I'm destroyed after a transatlantic flight
And arrive when it's day but it feels like the night
And my layover lasts not just minutes but hours
And airports are short on both beds and then showers
I just need a place to lay down my jet-lagged head
Maybe take a shower but mostly lie in bed
But who wants to pay a full night's rate for this place?
Enter the day room, the lovely, loveliest space

May I never again see any of the people who were behind me in line

I’m all about optimizing my travel procedures- in fact I give it an embarrassing amount of thought.  One thing I have not yet found the solution to is the perfect  travel-day outfit.  In my mind, the elements of a perfect travel outfit are:

#1  Appropriate for culture and weather in country of departure

#2  Appropriate for culture and weather in country of arrival

#3  Comfortable for sleeping on the plane

#4  Fancy enough that I don’t stick out in the business class lounge

#5  Not so fancy that if it gets lost/stolen/destroyed that I will be devastated

#6  Not requiring ironing/hand washing/ any sort of delicate care 


It’s a little bit of a tall order for a single outfit and I honestly haven’t made it work yet. 

I often ignore criterion 4 and rock the hoodie and yoga pants in the business class lounge.

In the summer when going from NY to West Africa, my go-to outfit is an empire-waist maxi dress.  It meets most of the above criteria assuming I throw a scarf over my shoulders when I get off the plane to satisfy #2.  It’s ideal for sleeping because the giant billowing skirt allows for all sorts of shifting and tossing and turning without the chance of a wardrobe malfunction.  However, a really important downside of the maxi dress is that you pretty much have to wear it with sandals, which means you have to walk barefoot through security.  And that is really, really gross.

Winter’s trickier because coats take up so much space they are best avoided unless they match every outfit and will never have to be packed in the suitcase.  Ergo no coats when departure city weather is cold and arrival city weather is hot (ie everywhere I go).

So I went a different direction for this trip, and it was pretty much a total fail.  I have this great wrap sweater that is jersey-ish so it’s comfy but sorta fancy looking so #3 and #4 are satisfied.  It works in NY and is warm enough to replace a real winter jacket for the two minutes I’m outside between my door and flagging down a taxi.  It can also be balled up and will never wrinkle.  I thought I was on to something here.  Yet again, this one failed hard at the security check.

I learned definitively that if your outer-layer looks at all like it is possible to remove, you will be asked to, regardless of how little you are wearing beneath.  “You’re going to have to take that off”  “Yeah, I’d rather not, I’m only wearing a little white camisole underneath”…[pause]… “you’re going to have to take that off”.

I think it’s supposed to be less creepy when they narrate exactly what they’re doing as you are being molested in a body search but that’s not really the effect when you’re standing in very little clothing with your arms and legs spread out and the angry woman says “now I’m touching the breasts with the back of my hand… now I’m going inside the rim of the pants” “I will keep going up your thigh until I meet resistance”. 

May I never again see any of the people who were behind me in line.

So add criterion 7- Easy for security checks- and the search for the perfect outfit continues.