Long arduous journey, or arduous long journey?
Not exactly sure which construction is more dramatic, or if they are equivalent—one of those word play things that would require more brain cells to compute than I have functioning at the moment. The trip from Needham, Massachusetts to Casablanca Morocco was quite literally one of planes, trains, and automobiles. It began with an automobile leg—driving my father’s Mini Cooper S from Needham to Cambridge. There I met up with my ex-brother-in-law so we could descend upon the Lehigh-Harvard football game. Given that I have degrees from both institutions, I couldn’t really lose the game—although my loyalty in a head-to-head contest runs to my undergrad institution. How could I not be loyal to the only institution of higher learning that was willing to take my (well, my dad’s) money after high school. Sadly, Harvard proved the better team on this day. We took off after halftime and wandered through the throngs of Head of the Charles disciples on the back to Central Square. From there I motored the Mini downtown and parked it in a prime spot in the parking garage my father uses. I dropped off the key at the office, and hopped a cab to Logan—my second vehicle of the trip. Thanks to the online check-in system, my actual check-in with Air France took only a matter of minutes as I traded my bag for a boarding pass and proceeded to breeze through security. In an act of both desperation and stupidity, I downed some airport Chinese food while waiting to board the 747. I’m sure that didn’t help the cause. Undaunted, I boarded the jumbo jet, and for the first time in my life actually had an assigned seat upstairs. I have to admit, I like the upper deck f the 747—it kind of reminds me of being in a homemade fort as a kid, or being in some sort of exclusive club. Unable to sleep, I watched Get Smart and The Hulk, which were both perfect airplane films. I also watched the better part of some typically existentialist French film that wasn’t all that interesting, but like many French movies I had to keep watching to see if there was actually a point—unfortunately, I did not find one before we landed and the movie cut off. I disembarked and did the usual routine—wander through the terminal following the connecting flights signs, went through security, and parked in a café near my departure gate. I spent an hour online, catching up on news and emails. When my watch told me it was time to board, I walked to the gate, but along the way noticed something disconcerting—the display was listing flights taking off in an hour, but nothing between the time my watch said and then. Strange sinking feeling started to set in… I arrived at the gate, and there was no attendant, no plane, and on the board the flight listed was taking off in two hours. I went to the Air France counter and found out that my high-tech world time watch was wrong. When I boarded the flight in Boston, I changed my watch to the Paris time zone preset—I didn’t verify at that moment that the hands moved six hours ahead, I just watched them start to move and then turned my attention elsewhere. It turns out, they only moved five hours ahead, for reasons I could not determine, but the result was that I was an hour late to the gate, even though I had been sitting at a café exactly one floor below it. Fortunately, the next flight to Casablanca was departing in five hours, so all I had to do was kill five hours at Charles de Gaulle airport—joy. I managed to half sleep for a little while in one of the lounge chairs at the end of the terminal, then had a bite to eat, and paid way to much for one of those 20-minute chair massages—which was thoroughly unimpressive. Finally I boarded the plane and took off for Casablanca. Next to me on the flight was a young (and attractive) Moroccan woman. We got into a deep conversation about Morocco, and my story, and she offered to help me around the airport to get a phone card and find the train. After we cleared customs, she led me to an ATM that proceeded to rip me off. I requested 1,000 Dirhams (something like $120) and it gave me 800—even though the receipt said 1000. She spoke to the man at the bank counter for me, who of course said he was too busy and I had to come back tomorrow—knowing full well that would be impossible. So, I had to eat that loss. I made it to the train without incident, and an hour later (well, I had to wait an hour for the train, and the ride was an hour, so really I mean two hours later) I arrived in Casablanca, and met with the taxi mafia. I tried to bargain for a ride to my hotel, and they all gave me the fixed price of 30 Dirhams and refused to use a meter. I knew the real cost was probably about 8 Dirhams, but at that point it was going to take too long to walk the streets with my suitcase looking for a taxi with a meter, and it wasn’t worth fighting over $3—which is how these guys make their rip-offs, I mean, livings… When I went to check in, of course my prepaid Internet reservation didn’t show up in the system. It took 20 minutes of them looking, and then looking at my confirmation email on my laptop before we got everything squared away and I made it to my lovely ocean view room. Of course, I can’t see any trace of ocean out my window… I took a shower, made a few calls, and started wandering the streets. I of course managed to stumble into the Medina and immediately fulfilled the souk requirement of the trip. I was surprised by the fact that only two vendors tried to stop me to look at their wares—it was pleasantly hands-off for a market in the Middle East. I stopped off in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant for some local food. I was drawn to it by the giant rotisserie out front with some tasty-looking chickens slowly pirouetting next to the gas flames. I sat and ordered poullet, and the waiter opened the rotisserie and started plating some chicken. After a minute, he dumped the chicken back into a bowl in the bottom of the rotisserie and said there was no chicken. I asked if it wasn’t cooked yet, and was unable to find a combination of languages to communicate with him. Bottom line—no chicken. This was despite the fact that four birds were rotating on the spit and they looked fine to me, let alone the bowl full of carved up bits of chicken. So I ordered a tagine, and watched while a party that sat down five minutes after I did ordered and received a plate of chicken… Not sure what all of that was about—maybe the waiter felt it wasn’t good enough to serve to a foreigner—I’ll just assume that was the case and move on with my life. Afterwards I walked around taking in the streets at night—a decent number of people out, going to restaurants and cafes while all the stores were pretty much shut—with the exception of convenience stores. I did pass one building where music was blasting and I could see open windows on the upper floors. A young girl was leaning out one window and I could see a disco ball in another room showered in multi-colored light. It did not look like a club—more like a private home, and despite my purely professional curiosity, I chose to pass and head back to my hotel to make up for the lack of sleep in the last couple of days.
