On being pampered

My birthday was last week, and T gave me the extravagant and excessive gift of a visit to the spa at the Michlifen Hotel (you can get some sense of the extravagance of the hotel and spa by visiting the Web site).

This hotel has always been a bit of an enigma to me. Like some medieval European castle, the Michlifen Hotel is situated on top of a hill so it can easily condescend to the village of Ifrane – and its inhabitants – below. The rooms are unbelievably expensive. Just out of curiosity, I looked at Booking.com to see the costs of the rooms that are available right now. They range in price from the equivalent of US $315 to $1207 per night. For perspective, I'm pretty sure the cost of one night in a standard room is close to the cost of our rent per month. I have friends who looked at some of the rooms there, and they said that, while the beds looked comfortable, the rooms were quite small and not particularly remarkable in any way.

The view and unusual plushness of the hotel sometimes cause bored University employees to go there for a tea or hot chocolate. In exchange for a heated room in which to have drinks, a nice view, and clean bathrooms with soft toilet paper, soap, and working hand dryers, we pay almost four times for a hot beverage what we would pay at a typical café. Alcoholic beverages are even more expensive, with the average cost of a cocktail being the equivalent of almost US $22. One can also splurge on a nice French meal at the restaurant there if one wishes.

There is no other place in Ifrane remotely like the Michlifen Hotel. When you walk into this hotel, you are no longer in Morocco. I suppose that is part of its appeal. But the greatest mystery about the Michlifen is…how many people is it really appealing to? The spa seems to be representative of the hotel at large. I have gone there twice (once for a pedicure with my friend LW, and then last week for my special birthday treatment), and both times I had the sense that I had the place – and its many employees – all to myself. I am not the only one puzzled by the existence of this excessively plush hotel in a small Moroccan town.

At the same time, though, the Michlifen Hotel represents a puzzling Moroccan business model that strikes me (in my admitted ignorance of business) as being entirely based on optimism. While this hotel sat virtually empty, on the other end of town, someone built an enormous Best Western complex. The University is housing students there (because of a lack of ability to plan, which I will not get into here), but otherwise, I imagine that the hundreds of rooms and chalets sit empty, as do the dozens of spaces built for hanuts, or small shops (something I can't imagine any Moroccan town needing more of).

The Michlifen Hotel also highlights the difficult-to-characterize nature of being an expat in Morocco. T and I are living quite comfortably on a salary that would probably qualify us for welfare in the United States (if anyone is getting welfare there these days). We can't go on European vacations or drink 40 dirham tea or go to the spa on a regular basis, but if we want to do these things once in a while as a treat, we can. We can hire a maid. We can stay in nice riads when we travel in Morocco.

Am I entirely comfortable with that? Absolutely not. The fact that I can spoil myself once in a while just serves as a reminder that most Moroccans are living on far, far less than I am. And living in a developing country means there are some things nobody has access to, regardless of how much money they have. Adequate medical care (especially access to alternative and complementary medicine) is one example (although to be fair, I should add the disclaimer that not everyone here would agree with me that the medical care is inadequate).

Did I enjoy my two hours at the Michlifen Hotel spa? Indeed, ultimately, I did. I knew it would be a once in a lifetime experience, like many of my experiences here in Morocco, and I tried to make the most of it.

The most popular souvenir

Earlier this week, we had our first snow of the season. I predicted the snow would be melted by the following day, and I was essentially correct. A day after the snow fell, warm sunshine melted much of it, leaving unattractive clumps of dirty ice or snow in a few places.

One of my friends told me that snowfall in Ifrane is reported on the national news. So I also predicted that, this weekend, Ifrane would be packed with Moroccan tourists coming to see the unusual sight of snow. And yesterday, when T and I were going for a walk along the road to Fez, we saw many cars coming into town. We also saw a number of cars heading out of town, toward Fez. Every third car or so leaving town had one or two large clumps of snow carefully placed on its hood. I imagined a caravan of slow-moving cars from Ifrane to Fez, the drivers smiling, happily displaying evidence that they had visited the beautiful, cold town of Ifrane, and hoping the snow will somehow remain on their hoods until they arrive home so they can show the exotic substance to their family members, friends, and neighbors.

The thought made me smile.

This is Africa, too

Ifrane early yesterday afternoon...

The Chellah in Rabat

T, Terry, and Sarah outside the entrance

Our trip to Rabat earlier this week was mostly a repeat of previous visits to the city (plus a visit to a Moroccan dentist that was much more comfortable and successful than my last visit to one). However, we did have time for one new sight –  the Chellah. According to my near-constant companion The Rough Guide to Morocco, the Chellah is "the most beautiful of Moroccan ruins." It is an ancient walled necropolis, or burial ground, containing Roman ruins, Islamic ruins, and koubbas (tombs of marabouts, or saints). It was abandoned by inhabitants back in 1154 and is now visited by tourists from other countries and Muslim Moroccans alike.

It was a gloriously beautiful day, warm and sunny, and inside the walls of the Chellah, it was quiet, peaceful, and surprisingly beautiful. Much of the space that is not taken up by ruins or tombs hosts lush, well-maintained gardens.

On (temporarily) having a car (plus random photos of Rabat)

Andalusian Garden doors

Our friends Brian and Sara decided to go back to the United States for the holiday/semester break, and while they've been gone, we have had their car.

Since we moved here, several people have told us, "What you need is a car! Things would be so much better/easier/more fun/more convenient/etc. for you if you had a car!" I was not so sure. Soon after moving here, I decided I would never drive in Morocco. I have virtually no experience driving stick shift cars, and those are really the only option here. I also find the roads in Morocco to be dangerous and confusing, and I very easily get lost in Moroccan cities.

I started driving when I was 14 years old. However, I never liked driving, and I have used moving here as an excuse to give it up. I have been pretty content with only going places I can reach without driving myself there. Not having a car also fits with my new, more frugal lifestyle.

On the other hand, I will admit that it has been nice to temporarily have a car. T has also enjoyed it, although trying to find our way around cities like Meknes and Rabat – which we have only before explored on foot, via taxi, or as passengers in cars being driven by people who actually knew where they were going – has been rather interesting at times.

In any case, tonight we pick up Brian and Sara at the airport, and we will return their car. Knowing this day was coming, earlier this week we took a three-day, two-night trip to Rabat with two other friends, Sarah and Terry. They were very patient with us as we tried to find some of the places we had previously visited with other friends. We even had time to visit a new place, the Chellah, which I will write about in a separate blog entry.

Boat on the Bou Regreg River

Saalburg and Frankfurt

On our final full day in Germany last week, AC and IC took us to Saalburg, a museum built on the grounds of an old Roman fort. Close to 2000 years ago, the Romans built these forts every few kilometers along the wall that they built to keep the "barbarian" Germans out of their civilized empire. This museum is just a few kilometers from AC's home in Rosbach.

The buildings of the museum were built to re-create the structure of the Fort, which looked like this:

Most of the buildings were packed with various ancient artifacts, which aren't very photogenic, so the only good pictures I have are of some of the structures outside of the buildings.

Entrance to the fort

Ruins of Roman bath found on the site

 

The Romans baked their bread in these ovens by first heating them with firewood. After the fire went out, the thick clay walls of the ovens held enough heat for baking bread. AC told me the museum has special events for children which include giving them an opportunity to bake bread in these ovens.

Heidelberg

On New Year's Eve, AC's mother brought us fortune cookies. AC and IC had typical fortunes, bland and vague statements, not specific about the future, which I have completely forgotten.

But my fortune made me nervous. It said something like, "An adventure is coming." I got even more nervous when T read his fortune, something about "you will know the right way." I read these in combination to indicate that T was going to lead me on some crazy adventure, and I wasn't quite feeling up to an adventure at the time. Maybe it had something to do with the cold I had developed on our second day in Germany, or maybe it was related to Africa fatigue… I don't know.

The next day, T and I started to feel like our hosts needed a break from us, so we suggested that, on January 3, they could send us off somewhere on our own via public transportation. Instead, though, they loaded us into IC's car along with her TomTom and sent us off to Heidelberg. After a bit of a rough start (the TomTom led us to the center of town, where without a real map or any tourism information, we were a bit disoriented), we had an enjoyable day on our own.


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View of the town and the Neckar River from the castle

I went to Heidelberg knowing exactly two things about it: An American military base is located there, and the city hosts a colony of wild ringnecked parrots (and if you know me, you know which of these two things I was most excited about).


The town is very popular with tourists (but not, I think, due to its military or psittacine residents). When we first got there, I was hearing more English than German around me. I was happy to see a lot of Asian people (who don't often come to Morocco) and Asian restaurants. Thai food for lunch was an unexpected treat.

Rüdesheim and Eisenach

On our first day in Germany, after picking us up at the Frankfurt-Hahn Airport, AC took us to the town of Rüdesheim, a popular tourist destination and UNESCO World Heritage Site along the Rhine River. (On the map below, point A is the airport, point B is Rüdesheim, and point C is AC's house.)


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Famous "narrow" street in Rüdesheim (which doesn't really compare to the narrow, winding streets of the Fez medina!)

We didn't spend much time in Rüdesheim, but it was a good introduction to Germany, as we just walked leisurely around the town and then sat in a café with a view of the river and the sunset, drinking the biggest lattes I'd ever seen in my life.

Fondue, glass pickles, fire bowls, and other German things

During my senior year of high school, I was friends with a German exchange student, AC. After that year, I always thought it would be neat to visit him in Germany. This was a casual wish, though, with Germany on a long list of other places I "wanted" to visit, including Australia, India, and Hawaii. I don't think I ever really thought it would be possible for me to visit him, and I never had a strong sense of why I wanted to go to Germany or what I would even do there.

That was until I moved to Morocco. Now Frankfurt is just a 3 1/2 hour plane ride away (plus a couple of hours in a car). So at the end of December, T and I finally visited my friend AC in Rosbach, Germany. We spent close to a week with him and his wife IC and their two young children MC (boy) and MC (girl).

MC is just about ready to go to bed.

One of the great things about staying with a German family is that we got to learn some details of German culture we may not have been aware of otherwise. For example, because they took us to a New Year's Eve party with several of their friends, I now know that fondue is a fairly common New Year's Eve meal. It also seems that virtually everyone in the entire country sets off fireworks at midnight– a lot of fireworks. And while I thought staying at a New Year's Eve party until 3:00 AM was quite late, when we said good-bye at that time, we were the first ones to leave the party – probably because AC and IC's little girl had refused to be cared for by her grandparents and ended up accompanying us and thus needed to get home at a "reasonable" time. (Don't worry, she slept for a good portion of the party.)

SingStar fun

Another wonderful thing about visiting Germany (for English-speaking people, anyway) is that many Germans, especially those in the younger generations, are very comfortable with English and can easily switch back and forth between it and German. Virtually everyone at the New Year's Eve party knew English. At first, though, people seemed reluctant to speak to us, perhaps because we were strangers and because everyone (I think) is more comfortable speaking in his or her native language. As the night went on, though, more people were kind enough to talk to us. They were surprised to learn that we were not visiting from America, so the topic of how one ends up living in Morocco helped keep up the conversation.

It also helped when my friend AC broke out the PlayStation game SingStar. By the end of the night, even I had come out of my shell, and I was belting out Abba songs with IC as my teammate. Champagne seemed to loosen peoples tongues, and almost everyone was making comments about the game using English for our benefit.

A week in Germany

Yesterday, T and I returned to Ifrane after nearly a week in Germany. I'm currently organizing my photographs, so in the meantime, please enjoy this short video providing a view of Heidelberg...

More later!