Pictures without words

...Because I don't have time, and because my voice-to-text program seems to have quit working.

Dad at Arrow Rock State Historic Site, Missouri

Japanese Garden at Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis

Part of the Lantern Festival at the Missouri Botanical Gardens

Birds inside the "Climatron" at the Missouri Botanical Gardens

Pineapples in the Climatron

More birds...I like birds...

Corpse flower

Greenhouse from the 1800s (somewhat remodeled, I'm assuming)

Hummingbird at Harmonie State Park, Indiana

Turtle at at Harmonie State Park, Indiana

Recent finds at the Bowling Green Farmers' Market

With several classmates after our tour of Mammoth Cave

Mammoth Cave photos are courtesy of my classmate Eve...

 

Ranger Rick...seriously!

On car breakdowns, father/daughter relationships, and being in Kentucky

There are a lot of things I didn't do that I should have done while I was in Nebraska. One thing I did, though, was spent time with my parents and with some of my friends. I only had one full day with my mom, and we spent that day doing things we don't normally do – like getting pedicures and shopping at the mall.

I didn't get nearly enough time with my mom, but I had a lot of time with my dad. In fact, weeks ago, we planned a camping road trip to get me from Nebraska to Bowling Green, Kentucky. (I'm here for five weeks doing a clinical internship as part of my Master's work in speech-language pathology.)

This was the plan: we would take my dad's truck and his new camper, and we would luxuriously spread out the approximately 16 hours of driving over a period of four days, arriving in Bowling Green on Saturday night or on Sunday morning, with plenty of time to get me settled before Monday morning (today).

As I've written before, though, planning is best thought of as a hobby than anything else. It isn't to be taken too seriously. Just about two hours out on our adventure, not far from Hamburg, Iowa, the engine of my dad's truck suddenly and quite seriously overheated. We got the truck and camper to the auto repair shop in Hamburg (the business name is "Risky Business"). Not long after that, it was clear that the truck wasn't gonna go anywhere unless it was pulled by a tow truck.

I have a tendency – or, at least, I used to have a tendency – to freak out in situations like that. Maybe it was the element of surprise (as my dad said, the truck was the one thing he wasn't worried about), maybe it was the stabilizing presence of my father, or maybe it was just the result of enough years of experience with things not going as planned, but I felt pretty calm at the same time that I genuinely had no idea how I was going to get to Kentucky.

We had the camper set up in Hamburg, but we decided that wouldn't be a very exciting camping location, and staying there wasn't going to get us any closer to Kentucky, so we had somebody tow the truck and take us back to my parents' house. It was sort of like starting over on a video game but with a pretty severe penalty (specifically, we now had no vehicle to get us to Kentucky and no obvious way to go camping).

I offered to try to buy a last-minute plane ticket, but my father, who had worked hard all week in preparation for his vacation, persevered with his dream. He promptly rented a van, and we loaded up all the supplies we could think of for car/tent camping.

I might write later about the actual camping, but the places we went to and the sights that we saw were really secondary to the experience for me. The truly unique part of the trip was having all of that time with my father. I felt that a camping trip of a father and his 33-year-old daughter was something unusual.

I'm writing about this on my blog because one of the things I feel I have gained during my time overseas is a deeper appreciation for and connection to my family, especially my parents. We talk about almost everything in my family, and while at times this can feel like an invasion of privacy, ultimately I am thankful for the closeness and openness we have with each other.

I'm also amazed by my father's dedication to the three women in his life. I realized after we got to Bowling Green that he has always been there when my sister and I have gone off to school (and in case you're wondering, between the two of us, we have now moved to a total of five different schools in five different states).

My dad was pretty exhausted by the time we got here on Saturday, so he stuck around on Saturday and Sunday nights and of course continue to help me by driving me around town to get groceries and other supplies. He was still here when I left this morning for my first day of "boot camp," and when I came back to my room late this afternoon, it felt suddenly very quiet and very empty.

It was at four o'clock this afternoon that it finally hit me: I'm in Bowling Green, Kentucky for the next five weeks. It's a place I've never been to before, and I'm here to learn something entirely new and difficult. I don't have a car and am dependent on people I just met for transportation. My husband is on another continent, and I don't know exactly when or where I'll see him next.

It's one of those experiences I'm sure you've had before, where a big, "future" event (at least, for a long, long time, you thought of it as "future") crashes suddenly and jarringly into the present. This happened on my wedding day (in a good way) and on the day I left for Morocco (in a, well, somewhat anxiety-provoking way).

So here I am--by myself for an extended period of time for the first time in my adult life. Wish me luck.

Al Hoceima

This coming Friday will mark the beginning of what will be the longest separation T and I will have experienced during our 10 years of marriage thus far. And in celebration of those 10 years as well as in preparation for my upcoming departure from Morocco, we recently spent four days near the city of Al Hoceima, on the Mediterranean coast.


I made the following video as a keepsake of our weekend. You are welcome to watch it; just keep in mind that it is a little, you know, sappy or whatever.

More on the Moroccan desert

What ideas did you have about Morocco before you started reading my blog? If you imagined deserts, sand, camels, and nomads and their tents, you weren't alone.

As I hope my blog has illustrated for you, though, Morocco is a geographically diverse country. I didn't see any camels until I had been here for a few months, and my recent trip to the desert was the first time I saw a landscape that I thought might be described as "stereotypically" Moroccan or North African.

The transition to a desert landscape really begins south of Midelt. The mountains are always close by, but the land slowly becomes dustier, and the vegetation becomes more sparse and scrubby.

There was an unexpected number of hotels along our route from Midelt to Merzouga. Some of them were shockingly (and, we all agreed, too optimistically) grand. As we drove by these hotels, we saw that the vast majority had virtually empty parking lots.

We had originally made reservations at such a hotel (although not nearly as new as the one pictured to the left) in Erfoud. It was such a depressingly outdated and empty place, though, that we quickly ditched it for a smaller and grubbier – yet less deserted and more comfortable  – hotel.

The way people look changes, too, as one approaches the desert. Skin gets darker, and by the time we got to Erfoud, we hardly saw the faces of any women, most of whom were covered from head to toe with abaya-like black garments, some with brightly colored embroidered patterns on them. The Rough Guide to Morocco says that Erfoud gives one "a first, powerful sense of proximity to the desert, with frequent sandblasts ripping through the streets." We arrived in this normally dusty town during a time of unusually strong winds, and the coating of grit that quickly accumulated on my body, along with a  constant sense of impending danger to my eyes, made me immediately understand the benefit of full body coverage.

Ways of looking at things

There are two ways to tell the story of our weekend trip to the desert (Erg Chebbi sand dunes) near Merzouga with our friends Brian and Sara.


View Larger Map

The first goes something like this:

It was a rough week leading up to the trip, and I wasn't feeling very enthusiastic about much of anything. People told us it was going to be horribly hot in the desert, and I wasn't looking forward to the eight (or more) hours in the black, non-air conditioned interior of Brian and Sara's Dacia. The trip got off to a bad start on Friday when we drove at least 20 kilometers in the wrong direction. When we got to Erfoud, where we had planned to spend our first night before heading for the desert, the hotel we had reserved was unacceptable, and we had to wander around town to find another hotel. After checking in to our new hotel, when we hoped to get showered and freshened up, the power went out.

The next day (Saturday), our guide was over two hours late in coming to get us for lunch, and we then discovered that we had to drive back toward Ifrane several kilometers. After lunch, we headed for the desert, which was hardly visible because of the strong windstorm blowing through the area. We were supposed to go spend Saturday night in the desert, but we cancelled that because of the winds.

Only camels could tolerate being out in that wind!

Instead, we went to the hotel where we had planned to spend Sunday night--Auberge du Sud. We had a delicious dinner there. Unfortunately, though, the next morning, two members of our group had mild food poisoning (either from lunch or dinner on Saturday, we weren't sure). We tried to cancel our trip to the desert, but the hotel manager had already arranged one for us and had no rooms available for that night.

Local wonders

In 2002, my mom and dad gave me a book. Inside the front cover, my dad wrote:

If you can 'bloom where you are planted,' then even Butler County Nebraska can be a wonder.

May you always love yourself, appreciate what you have, and grow where you are planted.

This was the year that I got married, moved farther away from home than I had ever lived (to New Orleans), and began graduate school in English. I didn't know it at the time, but this was the year that would begin the wanderings that eventually brought me to Ifrane, Morocco. At the time, although I was an adult, my feelings towards the place where I had grown up could be described as "ambivalent" at best. I grew up in a rural part of Nebraska known by locals as "the Bohemian Alps," and Butler County – location of the tiny village that I lived in from the time I was five until I left for college – was largely settled by Czech immigrants. My own lack of Czech heritage was just one of many ways in which I never quite fit into the community. I thought Butler County and the surrounding "Alps" lacked texture – whether of the cultural or geographical kind. When I left for New Orleans, I was sad in the general way in which one is sad when one moves away from friends and family, but I didn't have much of a sense of connection to place.

Therefore, when, in 2002, my parents gave me a book called Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps by local Ted Kooser (U.S. poet laureate at the time, as I remember my father proudly telling me), I politely accepted the book and then proceeded to drag it around the world with me for the next 10 years. But I didn't once open the cover.

Whether it was out of a sense of duty or because of a vague feeling that it was symbolic or poetic or meaningful somehow, I dragged the book all the way to Morocco with me. And it was only recently – just a few weeks ago – that I finally picked up the book and read it.

It wasn't what I thought it would be. It's essentially a published collection of short, reflective journal entries Ted Kooser wrote, but they are inspired by and centered around his land, his neighbors, and the culture of Seward County (Butler County's slightly more German next-door neighbor).

Maybe the book was just waiting for the right time to be read. I almost expected to recognize some of the people he wrote about (the community is that small), and while that didn't happen, I did find myself smiling at some of the things he wrote. For example:

People [in Seward County] don't lock the doors to their houses, and the only reason they lock their cars is, in August, to keep neighbors from putting zucchini in the backseat.

Reading the book didn't really change how I felt about Butler County. As an adult, I am much more tolerant and understanding of my parents' love for the place at the same time that I have trouble thinking of it as anything other than a childhood shoe my feet have long been too big to fit into. I admire the ability that Kooser and my parents have, to settle in like trees where they were planted, to slowly extend roots and branches, not afraid of being dug up or blown away by wind, not desiring a change of scenery.

I feel much more like a dandelion seed, and for me "growing where I am planted" means something very different from what it means for my parents. There is no deliberate and permanent planting, but rather I am frequently lifted, blown from one place to another. If I land, I will prepare to put down roots, but I also recognize that the wind may carry me up again before I can do so.

This is how I have come to understand my father's note in the front of the book he gave me. He is a tree, and I'm a dandelion seed. Someday, though, the wind will put me down in a place, and I will be there long enough to put down a small root. It won't be as long or deep or permanent as the roots my parents have put down, but I will try to grow where I am planted, and wherever that place might be, I will try to look at it and its people with an appreciative eye and a full heart.

Things I forgot to say in my previous post

I was in such a rush last night to get pictures of our trip to the Cascades d'Ouzoud up on my blog that only later did I realize I hadn't written about half of the things I had intended to. So here are some of those things, in no particular order:


- Even in places in Morocco where the landscape looks familiar (T and I have, on multiple occasions, been reminded of Wyoming and Montana), there are frequent reminders that I am in a foreign country. No matter how remote a road seems to be, there will always be pedestrians, hitchhikers, and people on donkeys traveling along that road. I often wonder where they're coming from and where they're going.

In remote locations, one is also likely to encounter people trying to sell things. When we got onto the mountain roads not far from Ouzoud, we started seeing people along the road holding up little bundles of fresh herbs and making a variety of mysterious gestures which we assume meant something like, "Please buy these herbs! I really need money. Don't you feel sorry for me?" And we did; we felt sorry for them.

Many of these people – many more than I would have guessed – were children, often very, very young children. As we drove, we discussed the pros and cons of stopping to buy some of the herb. (I think it was some kind of mountain thyme, but I'm not sure.) I imagine they couldn't have been selling the little bundles for more than one or two dirhams each, and I wonder what could possibly have been the maximum amount of money someone might bring home at the end of a long day of standing by the roadside. Seeing these people was a reminder both of how difficult the job situation is here (it's unimaginably worse than in the U.S., I guarantee) and of how hard people try to come up with ways of having even a tiny income.


- I should have taken the opportunity yesterday to spend a little more time explaining exactly what a riad is. Basically, a riad is a large, multilevel house with a central area that is open to the sky. Most of the riads I have stayed at (many have been converted into somewhat upscale bed and breakfasts) have had some form of covering on the rooftop terrace to provide some protection from the elements to the central patio/garden, but this is not always the case.

In the United States, indoor and outdoor spaces are usually carefully separated from each other; "indoor" and "outdoor" are mutually exclusive categories. This is not true in Morocco, and riads illustrate well the lack of a clear distinction between the two. As I mentioned in my previous post, the riad we stayed at has a full-sized orange tree growing in the middle of it. Above the orange tree, at the level of the rooftop terrace (another characteristic of a riad), a clear plastic tarp has been stretched to provide some protection from the rain (although there are a few inches on all sides that are not protected by the tarp, which means that one can get rained on while standing in certain places on the ground floor). At the center of the tarp is a large plastic tube that goes down to the base of the orange tree, so that when it rains the water follows the tube and waters the orange tree!

This lack of separation between indoor and outdoor means that, when the weather is nice, a riad is a lovely place for hanging out and relaxing. But when the weather is cold, the riad is also cold; many owners go to great lengths (and, I'm sure, expenses) to try to bring their riads up to Western standards of comfort regarding winter temperatures.

Cascades d'Ouzoud

In a typical move, the University announced just last week that it would be canceling classes on Monday, April 30 since Tuesday, May 1 was (and had always been scheduled to be) Labor Day. (This is the sort of thing that I don't think I will ever get used to.) There was a mad scramble to schedule last minute vacations over the four-day weekend, and T and I, never at our best when required to make a decision quickly, were relieved when a friend offered to plan a trip to Beni-Mellal. Unfortunately, that trip centered around skydiving, and when the skydiving wasn't an option, everyone but us backed out.

In the process, though, T and I eventually (after several failed attempts at planning a desert vacation for the weekend) realized that the town of Beni-Mellal is not far from the Cascades d'Ouzoud, which the Rough Guide to Morocco calls "the most spectacular in Morocco." Feeling in desperate need of some time in nature, we booked two nights at a beautiful riad just yards away from the waterfalls, and T arranged to rent a car.


View Larger Map

The Bin el Ouidane reservoir, along the drive

The gorgeous blue river behind me comes from the reservoir.

 We headed out for Ouzoud on Sunday morning. We didn't get as early of a start as we had intended because another last minute decision that had recently been made in Morocco was to enter daylight saving time that day!

After a beautiful and fairly relaxing drive, we arrived in the tiny village of Ouzoud. It was raining hard there the day that we arrived, but Monday was a beautiful day. We spent part of that day exploring the area and another part sitting on the rooftop terrace reading our books.

We got the usual questions about whether or not we wanted to hire a guide, and men at every restaurant that we walked by showed us their lovely tagines and bragged about their great prices, but overall everything was fairly low-key, and people were quite friendly. It seemed like everyone spoke English, so for once, communication wasn't really a problem.

It was a wonderful place to spend a couple of days, and I think you'll agree as you look at the photographs.

Six Moroccan cities

In response to popular demand (i.e. votes from two or three people), for your viewing enjoyment, I have put together a slideshow of photographs of six well-known Moroccan cities that I have visited.

As always, please to enjoy.

What I did on Easter

Zaouia d'Ifrane, revisited, this time with T and our friends Brian and Sara.

Rough start

Last Monday was a "little" eid, and T had the day off from teaching. Weeks before, we had decided that we wanted to go to Melilla or Ceuta for the long weekend. We asked our friends Sarah and Terry if they wanted to rent a car and go with us. We decided we would go to Ceuta since none of us had spent much time there before.

For a full week, I could think of almost nothing else. I was desperate to get out of Morocco at the same time that I had a very fuzzy sense of why or of what I wanted to do in Ceuta.

And so, as is too often the case when we want something very badly, it seemed that the forces of the universe were conspiring against our planned European getaway.

First, Sarah and Terry spent the entire week leading up to our trip making phone calls to a car rental agency, and each time, the exchange went something like this:

Terry: "We want to rent a car for Friday."
Car rental representative: "Okay, we'll call you back in 10 minutes."
(Sarah and Terry wait a few hours, then call the agency back.)

Terry: "We want to rent a car for Friday."
Car rental representative: "Okay, we'll call you back in 10 minutes."

This went on over and over again until Thursday night (the night before we were scheduled to leave) when our friends enlisted the help of a Moroccan friend, who finally lined up a car for us – at twice the price it should've been. At about 7:00 that night, then, we were desperately calling other car rental agencies to try to get ourselves a better deal.

We found a car at a better price, but the company required a 20,000 dirham deposit (that's "only" about $2500, an obscene amount of money here in Morocco that none of us would be able to get our hands on with such short notice).

About an hour later, we got in touch with a car rental company in Azrou (about 20 km away) that was willing to rent us a Kia Picanto for a good price. They even said they would deliver it to us here in Ifrane for a reasonable delivery fee.

It was a little stressful not knowing less than 24 hours before we were leaving how we would get to Ceuta, but I thought things were okay.

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.

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.


View Larger Map

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.)


View Larger Map
  

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!