Voices along the way

originally posted on March 18th

I couldn' sleep all night and today in this heat and fighting with the hordes of tourists I couldn't stop thinking about Mark. I heard German being spoken all the time. And I had over all this weird background, the calm, soothing tune of " Just a Perfect Day", that so calmly projects simple images of little pieces of happiness in shady parks. And I searched a place to pray. Somewhere where I am actually allowed. Sometimes this ban of entrance becomes terribly infurianting. We are all the same facing death, we are all the same humans, prone to the same feelings and downtimes.

++++

So many things have happenned in this couple of days, and when I arrived yesterday at the net café I was eager to put some of them here. Yesterday when I tried to call the States and the phone card didn't work, when I was lost in my confusion, and people kept coming to me and giving me Marlboro or hotel offers, I was afraid I will burst into an angry state of mind. But the contrary, I walked back the streets of Marrakesh not only being dettached, but being aware that Morocco has nothing to do with it, and I shouldn't redirect my negative energy towards it.

To escape this negative energy, I will do a catharthic overview of the last days.

The last time I wrote, it was about the train to Meknes, the imperial capital of the Alaouites. Less harrassed, I discovered a very silent answer to Fes, with large squares, very large, with people selling random merchandise, basking in the ardent sun. It is hot, but I wear long sleaves and long jeans, as doing otherwise is seen as a proof of disrespect to the culture. Somebody should tell that to the (much too many) tourists on the streets of Marrakesh, that seem to be on the beach with their very summerish outfits. I found this reflection of one the guidebooks I read ( and I have to confess, I got so much from the Routard and Lonely Planet, so many inside scoops, they even indicating the presence of some menacing individuals in Salé, who appeared at the exact spot as said, which is pretty funny) that I found excellent: The Western European countries ( and the mayor of Rotterdam is a good example) speak sometimes of the need to limit immigration as the European cultural model may be threatened. And there are indeed visas, regulations, etc. that block the access to the paradise-seen above mentioned countries. But what about the Moroccan cultural model and its permanent exposure to this huge masses of tourists in skimpy outfits, exposed shoulders and legs, things that make an orthodox Muslim very uncomfortable. I am really thinking whether a certain "official recommendation" about dress would be needed. Of course, there is the freedom of expression, and dress is a form of expression ( not to get into the very fascinating Cartoons discussion), but as the French government made the UN admit, there is and should be an exception to liberalism: the cultural exception. France has made the international organisms accept its quotas on French music ( considered before as anti free trade regulations, thus against international regulations), and has institionalized the cultural exception, claiming that this should be the place where free trade shouldn't be allowed, as there are forms of culture vanished to perish in a globalizing world, being "not rentable", but very culturally relevant. Could the traditional way of dress in Morocco be considered a form of cultural good in need to be protected? Most European countries have placed their traditional folk costumes into museums and have uniformicized the dress style. Should governments be allowed to defend the cultural exception on the model of French music?

But going back to Meknes, after purposefully getting myself lost in a cavernous labyrinth of cave-style housing with kids playing football under the medieval walls that let almost no fresh air nor light infiltrate, three kids offered to let me out of the labyrinth and took me out to the light. I told them about the existence of a country called Romania ( Rumania as they say it here) in the exotic, snowy North.

I got to eat into this family kept place, on a side street, a really nicely restored house, with mosaics and all. The server , this guy about my age, had a perfect French accent and told me as to this French couple that arrived at the same time with me that is our home and we should feel free to move around the indeed homelike furniture. Eating this great "Moroccan salad" ( and I've eaten by now in Morocco three totally distinct "salade marocane", with totally different ingredients and raisons de vivre, talk about consistency..), I started talking to the French couple, who were two very nice 50 year old from Nantes. " Yes, Morocco is nice, but oh , there are things here so backward that we feel we're in the sixteents century"; " we've been here and saw that, and oh, it was so poor... the poverty here is fragrant... not to mention the garbage everywhere. I suddenly felt so, so uncomfortable, as they were talking very loud and everybody in this house probably understood French. I tried to contracarate, saying " But what a great culture one can find here, what spectacular artistic things one can see", at which, I couldn't believe it, the lady made this face and said " Hmm... It's not that.. It is so backward here". I felt like I'm turning red, and at this time, suddenly there was loud music coming from the place our waiter was. I got the hint. We talked about Sciences Po, Paris, about their future travel plans. I ate my tagine, and when the couple left, and then a very arrogant Italian man left as well, behaving very impolitely with the waiter, I felt like I really wanted to say something.

And I did, in my traditional, never shut up tradition.

I said " Please excuse me for the conversation". He answered " There is no problem, you are here like in our own home". I added " No, I mean the content of the conversation. We seem to have had very distinct ideas of Morocco, the couple and I..."

" Yes, this happens so very soon. They notice only the bad sides of Morocco; And this type of discourse, yeah, it is especially the French that have it." And we started talking, " You know sir, I also study political sciences and...", and we talked until I had to run catch a train, him occasionally going arounf to serve other people ( !) . We talked about colonianism and the French's always present cultural superiority complex, and how Morocco has shown increasing pro-American support as a method to respond to the French continuation of nearly colonial looks on Morocco. The King supported the American actions in the Middle East, for the outcry of France and the Arab world. But this king traves his lineage to the prophet... A surprising pro-Americanism. Then we passed to Western Sahara, about which, he bluntly said " This shouldn't be in Morocco. We speak a different language, we are different people, it is a mere occupation". unfortunately I had to run...

Morocco is not a good place to look out to the landscape in trains or buses, as people invariably initiate a conversation with you. So, in the train to Rabat, this man sits next to me and , of course, starts talking, asking my CV and telling me he is going to his job in Sidi Kacem. I asked him, I don't remember how we got to this, which memory is darker, of the French or of the Spaniards ( who had the region of Rif, Ceuta and Mellila, and ruled from Tetuan, now to be found as major square in most Spanish cities I've been...). And he said " the Spaniards came in and left, leaving nothing. Nothing. No schools, no doctors, no roads." " With the French is another story.". And this is the truth- the modern cities of Fes, Meknes, Rabat are all French affairs, luckily built far away from the Medina to let it be preserved today ( only the one in Rabat is a continuation of the medina, by an actually very ingenious, flowing plan). Schools, hospitals, railroads. The French protectorate has both destroyed the Moroccan classical structures, undermining its economy with the influx of French goods and the death of artisanat ( later resucitated by tourism), and created modern Morocco, with post offices and French high schools, railroads and tree lined avenues.

Rabat is a wonderful case study of this, and I have to confess I absolutely loved this interesting city, that very few tourists (compared to Marrakesh) choose to see. A very elegant French period center, a bustling medina, a splendid mausoleum for authoritarian kings Mohamed V and Hassan II , the first two kings of a post French Morocco, the complete opposite , conservative and time unffected twin city of Salé ( capital of the only pirate state in history...), an amazing, Greek Island style kasbah, and a great beach, full with youth coming back from school, me being the only alien among them, and feeling bad I was intruding. Some kids were playing the guitar with English lyrics, some others were surfing, this was all very Rabat, very modern capital like.

In Rabat I had this weird urge- I said I really wanted to check it. To see it. To feel it. The ultimate postmodern Moroccan experience. The end of all things. The but, the goal. It was standing there, with its golden arches. It's called McArabia.

So I entered the establishment, full of people, with a smile, very outsized, on my face. I took it, I smiled again at the surprised server, I took photos of it with the backround of this old woman in traditional dress savoring a fresh cheeseburger.

Leaving Rabat meant another train ride, this time in a full compartment consisting of the old woman who doesn't speak French, the 40 year old smiling worker, the 40 year old elegant woman whose cell was ringing every 5 minutes and she spoke with this curious mix of French and Arabic " Oui, je suis dans le train. Je vais *** à Marrakesh à 8 heur. µµùù$$ù**ù Oui, je te dit! Mais il n'a pas àç_ç_mùù ? oh, et moi, qui j'ai crus que mùpççè_è-è_ Ah, quel horreur! Il faut décidément qu'on *ù*^$_è!!", the 25 year old suit dressed, freshly out of job interview very funny guy who was convinced that my real goal to visit Morocco is to please my Moroccan girlfriend in Paris, and two young women, one veiled, one not. The young guy broke the ice, but the elegant woman said something in Arabic, everybody laughed, and then he took his gul out saying " You see, she said I am disgusting. Yeah, women, what can you do with them... You know, the king changed the Mudawana, to make women equal in rights with men. They were always the masters, anyway...". The conversation the followed, dotted with outbursts of fights between the woman and the young guy, all in French, was explosive, , rather esoteric at times, with passionate interventions from one of the young women, who said " What kind of image do you create to our friend here about Morocco, with all the crap you say..."? He got off the train, making the elegant woman start talking about how she is sure he is not going to get the job, as he is so misbehaved, and all that matters in life are good matters. Educated at a liberal arts college in Colorado (!), with her daughter now in classes prepa in paris, she said that there are so many opportunities in Morocco and doesn't understand the young people's desires to leave the country. In fact, the young guy just came from Canada where he finished a masters in engineering, but he wanted to give it a try in Morocco. The conversation turned in a whole compartment affair, even with the old woman interfering in Arabic, very passionate.

And then I got to Marrakesh by night, finding a fairy tale landscape of dancers , cobras, bbq smoke, hordes of people, and a sad, sad email.

aaaargh

I came here to write about earth shattering experiences that have so rapidly came over me.

But I cannot as I am in shock and I cannot breathe- I just read the announcement of the sudden death of a professor and friend.

God help his soul

Wakha

It may be the shouts on the phone of the man in front of me or the very small space of this Rabat Internet Café, but I feel I won't be able to put here the complexity of today's conversations... Today I felt Morocco in a very intimate away and I was reminded the blessings of travlelling alone. Cause travelling alone, as alienating , lonely, and sometimes difficult it may be, opens so many ways that could have never existed when part of a somewhat closed system of a "travel unit"...I was asked several times why in the name of God I am going to Morocco by myself, wouldn't it be dangerous and so on, but a day like today proved to be a good answer.

I said goodbye to Gérome in the morning ( and I have to write soon about my Quebecois experiences in Morocco- Quebec kept creeping into this trip, with all the flavors it could get...) and I ran to take a taxi ( I guess this is my first taxi enthusiastic period of my life, after making the record of not using the taxi in Paris a single time) to the station. And of to Meknes, the second imperial city on the way.

In my train compartment, this 25-28 year old lady, her hair with red reflexions ( an old Moroccan habit of putting some natural substance when washing to make your hair red) comes in, heavy luggage and all. I offer to help, put my hand on the luggage, but then he comes. He looks rather nastily towards me, puts the bag. Then another she arrives. She is shy and has a veil, her hands being covered in Henné tatoos. Another Moroccan beloved fashion. The two start talking, I put my headphones on and occasionally smile back towards the first lady. When the seemingly married couple dissappears for a moment, the innate curiosity and gregarioussness that I ( unfortunately?) possess make me seize the moment and take the headphones off, curious about her life and all. In fact, i haven't talked yet to any woman in Morocco. I will be subtle. The guide book, the needed wise man of the village, says after all that there are three taboos that we, the outsiders, are not allowed to talk about: Western Sahara ( that the Moroccans occupied in 1975, a very controversial move), Israel and Palestine, and the women's position in society.

I smile, she smiles, and she asks me where am I going. I say to Meknes. And then the line that made me freeze for a second "Je prefère si tu viens à Rabat. Je suis de Rabat." ( I would prefer for you to come to Rabat. i'm from there". She launches into a praise of Rabat and saying that Fes and Meknes are so insignifiant compared to the great Rabat. And then we talk about her studies in private law ( apparently Moroccan law is French law with some Egyptian rules here and there. I wasn' able to get what these Egyptian mutations were...), as the man comes back. This is my brother Ahmed ( was it Ahmed?) and his wife Etwas.Enchanté. He still doesn't seem very enchanté. The landscape is verdant and dotted with villages and the conversation is stumbling. So how about the Moroccan economy, eh? " Oh, things are going not bad and not well". "The rich are rich and then, there are the poor". Her phrases in French are both splendid examples of Pythia and truisms as esoterical initiations into what probably is Arabic syntactic structure...

oh, you studied in France... And you got into Spain with no visa? Romanians need no visa, eh? Her eyes sparkle, she talks with her sister in law in Arabic and they all start looking at me insistently. For us, Moroccans, it is impossible to get anywhere. We need visas partout. And if we are tolerant with all races and din ( and here a 2 minute break to unveil the meaning of din- religion), there are some countries in Europe that are very racist towards Moroccans. She names three in accusatory tone and she says she was subjected too that: Germany, Italy, and Spain. What about Britain oor France, I ask. Britain stays unnoticed, but France gets " No, No, France gives very hardly a visa, but they are not racist".
America... America is the land of all dreams, and she talks about the visa lottery and how many Moroccans would be so happy to get that, everybody is hoping.

She sighs - do you know how much I tried to get out and how many obstacles I had...

And then the whole landscape changes in front of my eyes. The image of the lost youth of Tanger waiting to get illegally into a boat to Spain comes back to my mind. The image of visa restrictions, of the humiliations in lines and the blunt no-s that affected not very long time ago Romania made me sigh as well. As beautiful and complex a country may be, the feeling that you cannot leave it ever is overwhelming. Being imprisoned by visas like people lived in a prison in communist Romania, with no right to go beyond Hungary...

We arrived at Meknes and she asked if I really wanted to go. I said I have to. Then she turned her face away.

The English teacher in the bus to Asilah ( or maybe it was the guide book, I don't know...) told me that a lot of Moroccans dream to marry a foreigner and leave beyond the obstacle of the sea at Gibraltar... I have to confess this came to my mind during our conversation, as crazy as it may seem :-)

Meknes - later

Feeling Fes

Today I've made more use of my senses as maybe in any other day of my life. Seeing delicate mosaics with elegant color combinations in Fes' mosques and medresas, the most colorful market I have ever seen, extending on most of the medina streets, with almonds and dates, live chicken making desperate noises and donkeys carying boxes of Coca Cola, Berber carpets and bags, lettuce and olives, slippers that come from like One Thousand Nights with intricate ornaments and warm colors, white tombs with blue tiles, green mosque roofs, reminding us all that Islam's color is green and surprisingly green hills and white, snowcapped mountains surrounding the medina of Fes.

Hearing the calls from prayer starting from early in the morning, the ondulating tunes of Moroccan music, kids shouting while playing football in the street, vendors adverstising their merchandise, merchants announcing the passing of yet another donkey, the incessant demands for money from what they see as another rich Western tourist, tambourines and cats miawing.

Smelling refined spices, fish being fried, the tanneries that occupy a whole sector of the medina and produce an odour so hard to escape from, dead animals on the mountain I hiked, garbage slowly decomposing, olives, soap, sweat, cinnamon and oranges.

Tasting watery orange juice in the morning and rich mint tea in the afternoon, garlicky fish and the best use of potatoes that anybody can imagine in a spiced samosa kind of thing, chickpeas and lentilles, oranges and almonds, nuga with sesame, and above all, pastilla, the queen of all things I've eaten, a delicious and surprising kind of meat pie covered in cinnamon and sweet spices. And yes, I ate a lot. I totally shocked my Quebecois partner in crime.

Touching woolen covers in the morning, fresh grass on the mountain, bread and fish in the cheap eatery on the way where an old veiled lady that was eating there gave me beans and I gave her and a nearby worker fish, all of us eating with our bare hands, silk and leather, a shining Dacia car standing in the center of the Fes-new city, earth and sunloving cats, so many hands that were shaken, dirty banknotes, a German style keyboard in this Internet cafe...

..............
Fes is something like I have never seen, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched before. It s being transported in time to when donkeys and artisans ruled in walled cities. A kilometer away from this medina, beyond a green field where thousands lay in the meadows, young and unemployed, product of huge birth rates and incessant rural migration, there is the "new town", built in XIIIth century. Quite new... It became in time the Jewish quarter and looks remarkably distinct, its streets wider, its houses all with galeries and balconies, its synagogue with an old man at the door that speaks a language understood by noone, where words like femme, interdit, Shabbat, Muslim, photos, up the stairs, caridad, or caro appear interwoven. Two kilometers away from the walls of the new city, separated by a verdant valley and a rocky slope, there is the "modern city", built during the French protectorate. Reaching there was a total shock, as everything I have seen yet about Morocco, from the decaying and rather disparing Tanger to the sterlized Asilah, poverty stricken towns on the road from Asilah to Meknes, and almost surreal medina in Fes, got to be challenged yet again.

Not only that the architecture changed, to Nimes meets Genoa kind of one, but the people were like from another planet. Youth that looked worlds apart from the ones in the Medina, being almost the same as their Granada counterparts. Pedestrian malls full of men in costumes, hyperelegant women veiled or not , so stylish and assorted, not a single "fake guide", Dacia representatives, sophisticated restaurants, and a central McDonalds...

I had so many feelings today; I got so many offers of everything, from carpets to almonds, and slippers to hotels, but there was one moment that made me freeze for that second. Gerome tried to find directions for a place and went to ask this girl and her grandma- I said no, they are two women, this is not very well seen around here... And he asked, the girl walked by almost with fear in her eyes but silent as nothing was heard or said, and her grandmother gave us a look full of contempt saying something accusing. But the glance on that girl's face, so frozen and frightened, that I cannot take out of my mind.

I played so much today in the bargaining game- the problem is I am enjoying it too much- I play the card of being Romanian every time- either to send away unwanted offers by speaking only Romanian to them or playing the Romania is like Morocco moneywise card every time. I got some good reductions and I have some good stories...

As I was walking peasibly to the northern fort, I feel something, with my paranoid, tram 16 in Bucharest educated abilities. I turn and a man was very close to my back. He looks angrily and asks "What? What?" I walk forward and quickly notice the zipper from my first backpack pocket open. I realize that; from all things, my paper with some addresses was missing. I run, I catch him; he says something about cigarettes, I get angry, I show him the backpack open zipper, there are people around, he takes from his pocket the paper and a marker I had in my pocket and gives it back,still with a annoyed look on his face. I was so angry, and i just shouted looking him in the eyes " Voler??? Et ca.... Honte!! Allah!!! Allah!! Allah!!!" I didn't realize how everybody was looking at this seen, I invoked the God of fairness for one last time and left, realizing later how weird this all was...

Bessalama for now!

Talk

Other than being a very well done Coldplay single that marked both my melancholic depart from France and the same weepy one from Spain, talk is a verb of much glory and signification. And you know me, I talk. A lot. In conditions like the ones here, where being approached by someone means usually you are not a talk buddy but walking money, I got myself reduced to contemplative silence and giving up the languages I can handle for a safer vow of silence or mumbling into Moldavian style Romanian.

Contemplating the restaurants where I had my eating experiences by now ( not very happy gastronomic events) is increasingly becoming a mute man's favorite pastime. First, there are the paintings on the wall, ranging from neoclassical looking ones into very heavily sculpted encadrations to some modern variations on Islamic geometrical art. Then, the customers. There is always the couple table, with them sharing the food, him waiting for her to order as she is going to the washroom first. Then there is the defying couple, with her unveiled, displaying long legs and a very tiny skirt, and both drinking and smoking heavily. Then there is the women's table, with women in traditional clothes sipping Coke or Fanta over some intense conversation. And there is the lonely man, frozen in a praying style position, with his eyes inexpressive and just a coffee in front, waiting for the unknown.

There is also the frustration of not understanding anything, especially in the bus station; where everybopdy was running around, filling some papers, taking luggage, bringing luggage, labelling luggage, shouting at the people next to the luggage. Luckily there was a middle aged man that explained the simple procedure: one buys ticket, goes with ticket at counter, puts bag at counter, gets ticket from the counter, goes with second ticket at first counter and pays for luggage, gets on bus. I love suppressing articles. ( and no, he didn't speak like this, he spoke a perfect French, it's just my articleless mood right now)

We got to sit together on the bus and that proved to be great. Romania? I worked with Romanians before. They were math teachers. Mrs Demsorean i asked, thinking what were the odds ( my math teacher in high school worked in Morocco for two years in the dark communist ages; It was a fierce battle to get there, a lot of competition, but they got it). But no, a quelconque Mr. Something+ escu. And then we talked as the new part of Tanger revealed itself to be thriving, modern, clean, and bright, rather the opposite of the Medina.

As the bus left, the most splendid of songs, reminding me a lot of Byzantine Orthodox tunes, were tuned at the radio, and I asked him what this was. He said, not without pride in his eyes, " This is our religion. This is the Quran". the voice modulations were indeed incredibly beautiful and making all seem solemnal and familiar at the same time.

This morning i noticed how everybody age 30 or more speaks French, while when I asked for some pastry two twenty year olds, they shrugged their shoulders at my parlezvousfrançais or hablasespanol questions. I asked him about that and he told me that before the 1980s, everything otherthan Arabic language and literature was taught in French. Entire generations were taught French literature, French philosophy, Durkheim's sociology; world geography and history, math and physics after French textbooks. But then the government decided to Arabize the schoolsystem, made everything taught in Arabic, so the younger people cannot deal with French as the older generations. I said that for me it would be natural that the teaching language should be Arabic, but his answer proved to be very smart- yes it is, but not when the country's libraries and teachers are not ready for that- the transition was over night, the teachers unprepared, the textbooks oversimplified and the rich supporting materials that were in French were untranslated and so the newer generations lost contact with the wider web of information. If the state would support more publishing and translating into Arabic , that would be something else.

The new generations, he said, have so many people that are unprepared to work and to face the real world. he added- look at Tanger and how miserable things are- all these kids come here only to pass in Europe, as life is supposedly better there and wages higher. There are plenty of jobs in Morocco, but they all want to go away. And then, there are so many- birthrates are going over the roof. And he is right, there are children everywhere, running around, playing football. The opposite of Romania or childless Germany. And there are so many problems into educating all of them.

But then he said that at least Moroccan students are not as American students... Hmmm.. Anti Americanism strikes again. He proved to be actually a English teacher and he came to Boston College for two months in 1995 and to 2002 to give a series of lectures about Islam and Morocco. The Americans, he said, know nothing. Can you believe they don't even have geography departments in their universities?? They consider the earth science and the knowledge of the world non important. I smiled and revealed my Middlebury identity, proudly proclaiming our Geography department's importance within the college. He told me he got so insulted when this American student asked him " What do you eat in Morocco?" ( I don't know why, but this question doesn' t seem at all that weird for me, but remember not to ask that a Moroccan). he answered something like
" we eat on a common plate the fruits of the earth with our bare hands and God into our soul, being thankful for this dinner. We are bathed by the sun and blessed by the sea, carressed by the winds of the desert." And the tone of his voice went up, his passion altogether.
The girl supposedly turned red.

Now I am in Alsilah, on the Atlantic Coast. After being followed by several guys to offer me all the legal and illegal pleasures possible, I arrived luckily free at the Medina Wall, facing the sunset. This guy came and started his speech, I declined accomodation offers, said I don't smoke hashish, nor drink. He left, not before letting a guy next to me laughing at my direct cutoff. No hashish for you? he he. He was like 25 and seemed not from this place, poneytale and all, and was with two American guys. Oh, you're from romania, I worked in germany for two years and i met some Romanians. I switched to German and found out he is actually Moroccan, living in Alsidah but getting to Berlin next month. The Americans asked me whether I wanted to join them for a walk, and I said why not. "I have to close some windows" he said, and he took us in front of this door. And when in opened, again surrealism.

Loud, magical, ambiental music. And the perfect house with the most amazing decorations I've seen, with a fountain in the middle of the patio, washrooms that looked like from the Alhambra, harmony, balance of colors, a splendid rooftop. It wasn't his, he designed it and made it. He is a designer and has worked in Germany as a scenographer. It was something sad in his eyes though, I didn't seem to get. One of the Americans has been living here for two years, and i didn't find out what he's been doing. the other said that he is actually from (whispering) Denmark, not the best place to be in the Muslim world right now... He started a novel about Al Qaeda after September 11, when he was living in NYC, and he moved to Morocco for a while. Hmm

My day will continue. I'm going to dinner and then plunge into some history of Morocco reading. Possibly on the beach. there's a lit spot. Talk to you later.

Sunday morning in Tanger

It was a terribly cold night, with a frozen nose and a weird trip to New York dream where I ran into most people I know leading their normal lives into a rather more Cordoba setting than Manhattanish background. I woke up seeing the colorful tiles and Islamic motifs of my youth hostel room ( which costed the equivalent of 5 euros...) and hearing all the street noises possible; ranging from cries to sewer system workers with electrical hammers. I am in Morocco. The feeling is weird, it is my first time in a Muslim country, something I've always dreamed at. Of course, Morocco is very special, being regarded in other Arab countries as too liberal, but as my Sciences Po classmate Hind from Rabat said, the gap between the West and Morocco is so great in every aspect, that this liberal spirit could be seen as a mere reactionary one accross the Mediterranean.

I really wanted to spend the night in Tanger, as this place evokes lots of vibes, from the Ibn Battuta we studied in history of geography classes in Bucharest and later in professor Febe Armanios' great History of Islam class at Middlebury, to its interwar years of scandalising glory and depravation and its pantheon of artists and intellectuals that fell in love with the undefinable city across the time, ranging from Delacroix to Matisse, from Tennesse Williams to Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet and Roland Barthes. And being defined in my guidebook as " an old lady that refuses to look at herself in the mirror", Tanger is, at 50 years from the end of its international status, confused, decaying, sad, but full of life and of paradoxical brightness. There are many West Africans here, waiting for the day they can embark to a boat to Europe. And indeed, watching from the Terasse des Paresseux with tens of young men, their eyes lost into the horizon, at Gibraltar and Spain, that seem so close, that are so close, ( I am even listening to Los Cuarenta principales, a radio station from Spain as I am writing this...) and yet they don't have the papers to let them go into the continent they see as paradise, as the chance.

And I, looking European ( even my Spanish youth hostel mate said when I entered to the other people" oh, look there's another Spanish guy!"), I attract too many glances as being European means money. I've got proposed only this morning 7 times a hotel, being followed around, and 3 times marijuana and hashish, (all times being called "Hola ! Amigo! hey! amigo!") . While looking at the sea, this older man came to me and asked me if I spoke French. I knew what was to come next after all the advice got from Paris and from the guidebooks, so i looked perplexed, saying no. English? " I have shop! nice shop!" No... I adopted a sad look and said " nu, nu , io sunt din Romania". No problem for the guy, giving me " a, parlo italiano!". " dar nu, nu, numai romana...". But then I thought what kind of monolingual tourist can survive while travelling ( oh, yeah there are always the American and the French tourists ...), so I adopted one foreign language I could speaking, saying to myself it's not possible for him to know it. " Ich spreche nur Deutsch." " a, zer gut, Doitch! Ih schpreche Doitch!". Ok, I'm lost. i will just play with it and see what he has to sell. In fact, that is a good first Moroccan experience. he continued by underlining the traditional Romanian-Moroccan friendship, starting to hug me and saying I am his Freund, and I followed him. " Du, Romano, no Americano. Das wichtig" ( that important), and I asked shyly why. Americanos are violent and kill people he said and showed me the traditional hand to neck gesture... I emphasized at my turn how poor Romania is and how me being a student from Romania makes me even poorer. We arrived at his shop, where someone described as his Bruder started showing me hookas. As if i will go on my trip with a huge hooka attached to my already serious backpack; but I said to myself I will buy something, only to feel the taste of bargaining. This cloth that both of them were wearing. Nimm das. Ok, I said, even though this on my father would look rather bizarre ( it'my dad's bday when I arrive to Romania so this would be the gift from Morocco), but anyways. 45 euros he said, and I looked at him with a naive, yet revolted look " Aber ich komme aus Rumaenien. Rumaenien, sie wissen, ist sehr arm" ( poor, poor Romania). Ok, 350 dirham ( =35 euros), not less. No, No, La , la. I will leave. Ok, 250 dh. No, 200 is the maximum I will give. Plus that I have to take money out from an ATM. OK, you're our friend. We love you. Ich liebe dich. How many foreigners received love declarations from this guy, I don' t know... I left for the ATM with the first guy, who started telling me that he speaks 5 languages and that he works very hard, not like these other people in the streets, that are so lazy, and thus Morocco is so poor. And the government... Oh, the government, so bad, so bad. sehr schlecht. I took money from the ATM, I payed for the unknown item, then he didn't leave. You need directions to the bus? (I previously made up a bus connection at 11). No. He came with me, and then asked me bluntly for a tip, invoking, Allah knows why, his silver ring and his son's name. I gave him, as all fooled tourists do one euro, as he refused the dirhams I wanted to give. He left touching me ( I cannot describe that as a hug), saying how great of a friend I was. That was the easiest friendship I made and lost in a long time...

The Medina is a labyrinth like no others. It's so, so hard to get to a specific place and not to get lost in the myriad of possibilities that open to you, including streets, shops, hashish, pastries, open fruit markets, Colgate and batteries. The shops reminded me of early 1990s shops in transition Romania, with poor design and marketing, and that certain way of putting things in the shelves. garbage everywhere, people everywhere, noise, but above all, the best thing was the tradiotional dress of the peasants who sell fresh vegetables, something I have never seen before- a large straw hat accompanying a very colorful canvas of clothes.

Seeing a photo exhibit at a French foundation at the end of a creepy alley with peeling walls about the Tange of the 1930s left me with the strangest taste in my mouth. A cosmopolitan, rich Tanger, extravagant and wild, so different from the state of things now. These weird, undescrible tastes accompany my trip lately, from

the Christianization and Hispanization of Cordoba and Granada to the huge contrast between Islamic type patios in Cordoba, elegant, splendid and bright and Tanger, neglected, dusty and tired.

But this is just the beginning. I will get on the Atlantic Coast, in a random village tonight to experience something else before parting for Fes.

Beyond Gibraltar...

People on every street. Hords of them. A weird mix of hair-gelled, colorful elegant shirt youth, old men in long dresses, veiled women, boyfriend and hip girlfriend with fancy hairstyle, leather jackets, old women, all walking with determination, talking loudly, and making altogether a moving human amoeba, tentacular and imprevisible, so distinct from the night hords from Spain. Tangiers is as animated as Barcelona, Madrid or Granada ( which by the way holds the record in agitation that I've seen in Spain), but the way this animation work and the extreme heterogeneity of its people makes it utterly distinct, and almsot surreal. Which seems to become the leitmotif of this trip. A feeling of transcending my known reality of temperate continental green, lush landscapes dotted by an Anglo-Saxon or the more northern Latin ( French or communism silenced Romanians) spirit.

I entered it the way I wanted- not with a tour, not with a bus, but running to the ferry terminal with my Moroccan neighbor from the Granada-Algesiras bus, savoring at maximum the time being there, in front of Gibraltar, between Europe and Africa, between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. We entered the port of Tangiers by sunset, but a disorganised queue was formed for our passports to be checked, occasion by which I started talking with this

... to be continued

the streets may be full, but judging by the population flooding them, Morocco seems to be 80 percent men... Indeed, there are men everywhere, moustache or not, old and young.

Des chiens andalous

Green, green Andalucia. Defying all stereotypes. And booming, thriving, Euro-financed, and worlds away from Italy's Mezzogiorno. The signs of prosperity are everywhere, panels with thanks to the EU structural funds ( and here kudos to Sciences Po for my EU oriented semester, from whereI got out with so much about this EU stuff, including structural funds...) , highways and bridges, cultural advancements, very well dressed and happy Andalusians on the streets, with smallish, catlike dogs with suspicious glances. The question is why cannot Mezzogiorno do the same... But this is another story.

Prosperity. It came back to Andalucia, the old haven of sophistication and advancement in Muslim times. To the weird feeling of seeing the Mezquita turned into a Cathedral or the Alhambra in Granada, some others are added- the Inquisition led from Cordoba or the Capilla Real de Granada, where Isabella de Castella, Fernando de Aragon, Juana la Loca and Felipe el Hermoso, powerful figures that always fascinated me, are buried. A mile away from the Alhambra, in a symbolic gesture, making maybe the statement that Spain means the Reconquista.
To the old, Islamic times quarters Cordoba adds fancy neoclassical buildings and a pan Mediterranean charm dubbed with classiness, while Granada, much smaller, has paradoxically the feeling of a great, bustling city, with busy boulevards and crazy nightlife.

... To be continued

The rain in Spain...

No, it didn't fell for me on any plain. And there are two reasons. First, because the dilluvian attack came in the abovementioned Parc Guell in moody Barcelona. And second, because contrary to Prof. Higgins' convictions, Spain's meseta is very far from being a plain, and rain is not common anyway. While the latter is very much known ( images of a dry, arrid Spain are what we usually have in mind), the first is not that much. Beyond the Pyrinees, there is the Spanish dry flatland think many ( and something that is not Europe, say some nasty French people). Quite the opposite. Spain is complicated by various mountain chains that appear from n'importe ou and havce traditionally slowed traffic and helped developing regionalisms and even nationalisms ( Luis's pater very well dixit). I won't get into any orography lessons, but just talk a little bit about my way through Spain, that got forgotten in my previous rants.

So after my stormy exit from Barcelona, I took the train to Lleida Pirineus ( doesn't the name sound exciting?) with a regret that I cannot get out of Cataluny sooner and spend the night in very much praised Aragonese Zaragoza. But my innate love for the sea made me unsettled in my chair, and as the train got to Tarragona, I quickly picked up my bags and stormed again, this time out of the train, only to realize that my dreamed sunset on the beach was to be blocked by the stupid rail tracks. I eventually got to the other side after walking with my heavy bags for 1 km, and saw a very industrial sunset, with the port of Tarragona blocking some sun.
But at least Tarragona has a youth hostel. It is a 3 km up the hill hike, but I will have a bed to rest. Actually, not, as the guy in charge said they were full. To my surprised reaction " Why is a youth hostel in random Tarragona full on a Sunday night in March ???", he told me that youth hostels in Spain may double as student residence during the low season year. He recommended a cheap hotel not very far, I went to the street, entered the hotel, paid, only to realize that the recommended hotel was next door, with much lower prices. Annoyed at myself for my sunset decision and stupidity , I furiously walked into old town Tarragona saying " What now? Rabbid dogs and angry sailors. And of course the Roman ruins that the museums in Barcelona boasted about"· But no, to my surprise, I discovered an enchanting, lively town, with colorful, but elegant houses, fantastic Roman ruins ( quite well preserved), all under magical lights. And a developed civil society (! Yeah Midd, yeah Sciences Po!), with protest sheets hanging from most windows against the ajuntament. " We don't want a dead city", said the most, but to my question to a local bartender what is actually happenning, I just got something about unhapiness and coches ( which means cars, as it was revealed to me when admiring my Renfe ticket, which stated that my place is in the famous coche 6). All in all, I loved Tarragona, one of the hidden, accidental jewels of the trip.

Woke up, ran in a sunbathed Tarragona with very matinal activities around, and took the train to Madrid. Madrid!!! Das gewartete Moment wird kommen! I said goodbye to Catalunya with Lleida Pirineus and gorgeous mountain scenery, then fell asleep and woke up on what looked like the moon. It was Eastern Aragon, aridity at its best, something that I have never seen in my anyway short life. Dry to the bone, but spectacularly beautiful.. Then I admired finally Zaragoza from the 6 km long underground train tunnel ( the train station is also underground) and got to Madrid.

Red city, red Austrias, red brick new districts, amazing museums ( I mostly enjoeyed Bosch and Goya in Pradp, Thyssen as an overall experience, and of course Dali and Picasso at the Reina Sofia), cool north to south axis, the most lavish and luxuriant Palacio Real ( I guess the most luxurious palace that I've seenb, reducing Versailles to a mere hut), but as I said, what made Madrid so special came from other angles of the trip.

Heading south again ( after a most wonderful day at Toledo with Luis), I passed through the green Castilla- La Mancha, home of Don Quijote, the up to shape Ciudad Real, the very beautiful mountains of Sierra Morena, with olive trees, forests, and lakes, adding all into a surreal landscape. Indeed, the natural landscapes I've seen in Spain, from moonlike Aragon to the snowcapped Sierra Nevada, seem dreamy, surreal, in a Dali spirit. And it is green , it is so green, defying all my stereotypes of dry grass, parched Spain. I came at the right time, I guess...

And then came Cordoba, which sincereky I liked much more than Barcelona. White houses, street life, kids polaying football everywhere, palm trees, the amazing Mezquita. As I was a kid, I read this children's book in which this 12 year old ( I think his name was Alunel...) meets several famous people, including Avicenna and Averroes. And I started to have this obsession with the two, and now, I was in Averroes' town. ( Yeah, our children's books in Romania are wild). And Maimonides', one of the greatest medieval Jewish thinkers. They both tried to reconcile science with religion, a beautiful endeavour I find.

Being in the Mezquita, and later this day into the Alhambra , I felt so many overwhelming things...But I guess I will continue this tomorrow, very probably from another continent. Marruecas, here I come!

and by the way, some photos:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/gruia_badescu/album?.dir=f759&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos
and
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/gruia_badescu/album?.dir=6f03&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

La mala educacion

I guess I have never been more uneasy about Christianity as here, in Spain. Stop. Rewrite. Not about Christianity, not about Jesus nor agape, humbleness and love, but about institutionalising it, about giving it a hierarchical and much too well organized and controlling structure.A true cliche, as I have heard this over and over, I know, and I take it as a truism for our contemporary world and for myself " I believe in God, but don't necessarily affiliate with a historically developed structure. Being historical, it is ephemerical and human, thus maybe ungodly. Being developed, it is thus an evolving process, which supresses infaillablity. And what church can claim to be infaillible, when it has produced horrors such as the Inquisition?". Yeah, but here I had the overarching feeling of that, of a bitter taste, of increasing questions.

Being in the Toledo cathedral and being almost suprressed by its greatness, splendour and luxury, seeing today a Catholic cathedral implanted in the middle of the very special Cordoba mosque ( act which made Charles the Quint exclaim to the Church leaders " You have destroyed something that was unique in this world..."), came to me as my mind is full of images and thoughts about the Franco regime, where the Church was allmighty. And unconciously, the first image when I think about Franco, is the image of this Cathlic school in the deep countryside from Almodovar's La Mala Educacion, (in Franco's time, education was controlled by the Church, I may get it wrong, but I think it was the Jesuite order ), a dusty, miserable place that gave me the feeling of suffocating while watching the movie. Grey, grumpy. God institutionalized and sterlized of any real feeling, a dictatorial approach, making God for these kids a sort of controlling, patriarchal figure of vengeance and not of love and brightness. An image of a totally repressed Spain, not far at all from the centuries of Inquisition.

I saw today in Cordoba , after the visit to the Mezquita turned cathedral, the Alcazar de los Reyes Catolicos, a wonderful place with sunny gardens and joyous water games. But this happy place now housed the Inquisition, and terrible decisions were once made from its sun-loving rooms.

In my image of Spain, Catholicism seems to have an uneasy place. Far from the redeeming, nation-binding, hope-giving Catholicisms of Ireland and Poland. And a far greyer image than catholicism's fate in Republican, secular to the bone France. There I felt the anti-church measures placed the church into a true victim position. Seeing so many French towns and cities where " oh, X had 34 churches, but 23 were destroyed at the Revolution", or the extremely moving visit to Saint Denis, where the French kings were burned and put into a common hole with contempt, against any Christian respect for the body, made me feel uneasy about a Republican tradition sometimes too violently opposed to the Church. In fact, in Civil War Spain, somewhat the same things happenned, with priests and nuns being mercilessly shot. Civil War Spain presents in fact the most accentuated image of the two European traditions put face to face: the Church conservatism facing Socialist progressism. Both had a hatred for the other to reach the sky and both murdered, shed much, much blood. Conservatism won, but the bloodshed did not stop, this time being unilateral: tens, even hundreds of thousands of opposants were killed. A new , more politicized form of the Inquisition. In fact, the 20th century was full of Inquisitions on all political sides- from Fascist camps to the Gulag. Ideologies have replaced religion for a while, but now some return to religion more or less. But in Spain, where Franco's last statue in Madrid was taken out only last year, I still had this weird feeling when seeing the churches full. When seeing the old priests.

No, don't get me wrong, I don't equate Franco to the Catholic Church, no, I am just talking about the uneasy position of the Church in Spain, always associated with controlling the society , with reactionary politics. And yeah, politics is the key word. From the Inquisition to our times. I don't even want to get into the colonization...

I may have written nonsense, I am extremely tired. And I just got out from a church, where there was this Jesus on a cross that people took photos of. A lot of photos. I asked this girl what is happenning and she said that it is that time to kiss Christ's hand. I have no idea about what she was talking about. I stood in line, but I saw no one kissing. Only taking photos...

Everything is a commodity, an object, this is our world. The Mezquita, the Jesus. Let's take a photo. I felt the need to pray.

Ein Vogel am meinem Schulter

I am in the most splendid Cordoba, surrounded by so much beauty and the memory of the times when Cordoba was by far the most thriving city in the whole of Europe, a most amazing center of culture, a ray of light in the dark Middle Ages. It was Muslim Cordoba, the capital of the Ummayad Caliphate, unparalelled and proud, spectacular and bustling. I will get back to this special place later, as now I cannot actually leave Madrid...

Louise Attaque in the background, some guitar accords by Luis, breakfast talks with his mom about Guernica and Franco, talking about nationalism and regionalism with his father over moules ( which make any Belgian counterparts remarkably insignificant and humble...) and etwas mit arroz ( very good, but its name totally escapes me, in the sea of names and words in castellano that invaded my mind, from ayuntamento and cocher to cercania and Zurbaran), tapas and then sangria in one of Madrid's literary cafes with Iulia, Stephanie and friends ( who turned out to be one an old friend of Alex Romero and Elise from Midd, the other with Clara from Sciences Po... Yeah, I've heard it before that the world is small) , Luis' treat ( he always tricked me in the discussions about paying for things...as I said to his mom, this hospitality should have its own rubrica in the dictionary...), the most brightest of days with Luis in Toledo, and our very natural, flowing heartfelt conversations in an ondulating German -becomes French -becomes Castellano ( with severe outbursts of Italian from my part)... This is the climax of my trip, as the wonderful things I've seen here are more than doubled with emotions and I cannot get over that.

Chamartin, Plaza de la Republica Argentina and somoe more will take their place in the sound enchanting array opened by the beloved Solferino-Bellechasse, Denfert-Rochereau, and more recently Urquinaona and Passeig de Gracia...

But I have to actually get back to Tarragona. I will try to do that on a less melancholic-turned day...

Xavier n'est pas la

Yeah. This is it. The utterly simple, yet somewhat technically flavored concept of "public space". Seeing this amazing exhibit in Barcelona, a temporary exhibit on the historical power and significance of photography, came in the right array of citymania that embraced me since my early ages in not so very urban Novaci, when I was drawing cityscapes with chalk on the street asphalt. There is something about a city, about this complicated organism, this intricate system, this vibrant body, that is purely fascinating. And how one of my other passions is dealing with the past, I put them all together in how the city represents living memory and about how we deal with signs from the past. My last summer fling with German cities reconstruction after the horrendous World War II times and the connections with a transforming view on national identity will be definitely continued.

And all throughout my journeys in France I was very careful at the way how new generations have interpreted the city. France is advanced, I think, in bringing a city back to life : remarkable tramway projects that create a new urban landscape and make people forget about cars and traffic jams ( with really pretty trams in Strasbourg, Montpellier and Bordeaux- at least the ones I saw and work in progress, with city centers devastated by excavations in southerly Marseille and its more glamourous counterpart Nice), pedestrianized city centers almost everywhere, bike lanes etc. Barcelona had all this figured a long time ago: it's all in the Rambla.

Yes, Barcelona is made to be public space friendly. The Ramblas are pedestrian focused and their car lanes are so peripheric that they recall actually pedestrian sidewalks in most towns. There are floods of people going up and down, the center is all pedestrianized. But these ramblas are just amazing, graced with medieval architecture, pastel-colorful and laundry-loving in the Ciutat Vell, and Modernista extravagant in L'Eixample. Il Modernisme was an expression of the wealth that Catalunya experienced at the end of the 19th century, its industry being dynamic and competitive, and worlds apart from the sluggish rest of Spain, an expression of avant-garde, of being always in the forefront of Spain on cultural and social aspects ( it coincided with the development of anarcho-syndicalism and various forms of expression that defied norms), but also an expression of identity. Look, this is Catalan. This is splendid, this is extravagant, this is ours. Gaudi's Sagrada Familia has its more recent doors of the Passion Facade adorned with Catalan excerpts from the Bible, every building tries to reflect avant-garde while keeping on insisting on Catalan historical peculiarities, from the Gothic to to Baroque.

That Sagrada Familia is astonishing, there were too many praises before for me even to try. But other than the surreal feelings that it gives you and the impression of the ultimate church, combining them all and going further, it was the primary concept of Gaudi that got to me. Nature is the utter perfection and offers all the answers, so we should seek applying its concepts into the way we construct our cityscape and the individual buildings. And what is more eloquent than the balance that a tree has, with its capacity of holding together heavy branches, in a perfect equilibrium, said Gaudi. Therefore, the whole church is build around the idea of the tree, with the traditional columns and vaults being replaced by tree-like structures, creating somewhat like a thick forest.

Keeping my Modernista spirit, I embarked on my usual bus ride to get to Parc Guell, something that was supposed to be a sort of "garden city" for the wealthy, one one of Barcelona's northern hills, overlooking the entire city. The project was handled by Gaudi ( who actually lived there for 20 years, finding his death in the house that now is the Gaudi Museum), but Guell, the rich investor run out of funds and the Barcelona ajuntament ( city hall) seized the property and transformed it into this magnetic park, something completely out of this world, with colorful porcelain tiles, sculptures reminding of the Sagrada Familia, and fabulous views. There were so many people there though and I felt for the first time on this trip claustrophobic. And suddenly the feeling that you Sarah mentioned tried me. Desolate. The clouds came above them all, the clouds crept inside me and didn't let me go. I was there, on Barcelona's roof, surrounded by surreal, dreamy beauty, by color madness and by an overarching grey, lead heavy sky. And I felt this huge pressure. I needed somewhat like an outcry, I wanted to shout myself, but the sky exploded for me. And the diluge came, not to be stopped. The most terrible of rains, with all the tourists running around, the painting sellers running away. I heard some jazzy music, I ran towards it and I found this Gaudian pseudo huge umbrella where there were two musicians and some people sitting down on cold rocks. I took my Histoire des Espagnols that I bought in far away elegant red Montauban, I sat on it and I listened to the soothing music, to the Castellano that my neighbors were rapidly whispering and I watched the rain. It got more and more violent, with streams being formed everywhere.

I didn't seem to understand a single thing. Especially the very esoteric Castellano, with no word to be comprehended. Every five minutes, this poney-taled guy exclaimed looking at teh sky " ne, ne España!!!" and I realized it was an accusing cry, rain induced of some visitor to Hispanic lands. So I asked shyly this lady which language were they actually speaking, as I already had doubts that was my close cousin language, Español. The lady answered with the most Maria-like accent ( Maria being one of the most wonderful people I have ever met, who teaches Religion at Middebury, and is utterly refined, warm, intelligent, profound and needless to say amazing. Oh, and she's from Greece) " We are Greek, from Thesaloniki". And then, keep on talking for one hour, with the rain never ending. They eventually left into the rain for the bus stop. It was 1 AM and I was terribly late in my schedule. Still in Barcelona, not having seen that much from a city that has an almost annoyingly high number of interesting things to see...And I felt the need to run away, to leave this place. Barcelona deserves more, much more but in a more peaceful, less diluvian time. And to come back in the summer to see the Parc Guell with the sun that has glown over Barcelona skies in that film that marked my year of coming to Middlebury, l'Auberge Espagnol. This time, Xavier n'etait pas la.

I would leave Barcelona, I would leave Catalunya and its weirdly sounding language, Dali, Picasso and the sea, and I would head out to Aragon , to Zaragoza, as a night stop on my way to Madrid. I called Luis, rather overwhelmed, and my German was at a historical low. ( In case speaking German with my Spanish friend sounds weird, the key is Middlebury Language School) And after many "Bis spaeter", jetzt war eigentlich die Zeit!!! Bald was schliesslich bald! So, so begeistert!!!

But the train station proved to be a hell, trains that existed on the Internet didn't appear on the screens, only to find out later that they were actually leaving ( no explanation for the misteriously appearance and dissapearing processes on the actual screens). At the counter " Lo siento", we have no more seats to Madrid, Zaragoza. What about Valencia, said I with my traditional last minute change of plans- no, no. Almeria? Nee. "You could take any regional train though, they don't need seat reservations". My Interrail could actually prove useful. The regional to Zaragoza left while I was talking to the guy. What to do now? There is one, to Lleida. Lleida? That is still Catalunya... But I thought I said goodbye to Catalunya and I rendered my homage ( no Orwellian pun intended).

So I took the train to Lleida. But the beachside trip with amazing views made me take a sudden decision- I picked up my luggage and got out the train on seaside Tarragona. They have a youth hostel, that should be ok. And there is the sea and sunset on the beach should be amazing.
The sunset was amazing. The beach though was separated by the town by the annoying railtracks and I had to walk over 1 km to find a whole to cross them, for the amazement of Tarragonians. I spent the sunset on the beach, facing a rather industrial landscape of Tarragona's port, being cold but bathed by the sun's last remnants. The sun was set.

Oh God, instead of being in Zaragoza or staying in Barcelona, I am in this weird portuary town.

soon to became the most amazing of the cities I've seen this tour...


***
Now I am in vibrant Madrid, happy and sunbathed. I will update soon...

Catalunya amor meu

March 1st

And so, I arrived to Spain: After leaving the most glorious and blue of all skies, mountains and the prettiest of towns in my beloved France, I took the Spanish train at Perpignan, full with rather obscure characters, including a drunk that walked back and forth, a very intense ticket "controlleur" ( yeah, I don't know how you say that in English- I haven't been taking that many trains in the US of A), and arrived at Girona in complete darkness, in an ugly rain, being cold: The streets were empty, the buildings rather ugly, very few people on the slippery streets. The train station was bustling though, being full of stores and having a suburban mall athmosphere. And I don't speak Catalan, which is seemingly closer to French than to Spanish, fact that I don't seem to get. When at the youth hostel, my newly acquired rooster identity made me address them all in a suave French, which did not seem to get understood, and this girl started answering in English... Don't worry, you francophone Gruia, in Maroc is Frenchspeakingland once again. Although the youth hostel seems to have a sizeabla German and British tourist presence ( and by the way, the Brits have discovered the Facebook, judging by what my neighbors here in the computer room are doing...), this lady , after carefully examining my Romanian passport ( this situation is something that US citizens will never experience... lucky people) ( yeah Romanians in Spain are like Spaniards in France in the 1950s, the poor migrant worker stereotype, a similarity that these people seem to forget, but whatever)., she placed me in a room with two people that , I have to confess, scared me: a guy, obviously sick, with open blisters all over, a lost look in his eyes ( also a moaning sleepwalker and a terrible snoring machine), and another one, drunk and screaming. Thank you, Catalan lady: You will be remembered.

Other than that I had a huge tapas dinner talking to the young, posh waitress in English-Italian. She was very nice and she told me proudly that she is a "Romanesa" ( aka Roma, aka for the unitiated what was used to be called a "gypsy"): Coming from Romania, that is something.

But the sun is out and I will run out now to the coast ( it's Costa Brava anyway) and to Figueres, where most of Salvador Dali's work is exhibited.

March 2nd

Barcelona is buzzing. Every street that I've been on is full of hordes of people of all sorts, walking at different paces, speaking every European language you can imagine. Of course, the queen is Catalan, the language I'm still trying to decipher. And even though, this is the first Romance language to exhibit such complete similiarity for individual words with Romanian ( "tot" means all in both languages, apparently egg is "ou", new is "nou", etc. ), the ensemble seems irreparably esoteric when spoken. It sounds more like Portuguese than Spanish or French and its written form abounds of double ll, x-s in all positions possible, t-s that appear when you don,t expect ( ex: bitlet for ticket), and a pronounciation for Barcelona itself that makes the city seem like a really ugly place ( for the Romanians among you, imagine saying it with the Ferentari accent dubbed with hatred and dismay). Plus that the suave, very feminine voice of French train stations' announcers ( "Ici, Nice". " le train Corail 456 part pour Lille-Europe ..." " Ici, Nice" once again), is replaced here by seemingly a 45 year old smoker, with a gutural sound and a stuborness to repeat that the train going to Barcelona Sants is leaving from the Platform #4 for like fifteen times in Catalan, Castellano, a weird form of English, and a French that sounds being pronounced with enmity and contempt.

I feared that French would be gone from my life, but no, they seem to be everywhere. Yesterday, in the astonishing Dali theatre-museum in Figueres ( surrealist to the bone, really a dreamlike, magical experience), I forgot I was in Spain ( ahem, Catalunya), being surrounded by a myriad of French tourists of all ages ( ok, there was an American couple with a personal guide, and the traditional Japanese tourists). I ate tapas in a place where even the waiter was from Bordeaux and the menus all around the city were in Catalan, Castellano, French, and sometimes English and Swedish...

Dali dominated my two days in Northern Catalonia ( as a matter of fact, I'm commiting a mistake for which I may be exiled by my Catalonian hosts- Northern Catalonia is actually Rosselo, which was taken by the evil French in 1648 and transformed into Roussillon, or the more prosaically named department de Pyrenees Orientales). Indeed, the amazing museum , the trip today over some very steep mountains with a bus that seemed to be at one point my last trip ever ( if you only ssaw the slopes, the curves, and the canyons...) to Cadaques, a Greek like ( at least for me) whitewashed village with its own gulf, breathtaking, and so tranquil, so quiet ( I don't think one uses tranquil in English, but anyways, it was so peaceful...).

Peaceful, though with a good number of visitors. Actually, this is one of the good things about this trip - I'm going in March, when the hordes of tourists that invade the Cote d,Azur , Costa Brava etc. did not make their appearance yet. I can see local life at its normal pace, grannies carrying baguettes in Cannes, and families eating their lunch in a garden in Cadaques...

Except Barcelona, which seems to be flooded with tourists. Even Girona, the city I so much abhored the first day, rain and all, revealed to have some splendid features by day and with a generous sun- a remarkable riverside neighborhood ( and I wait to get to Madrid, to put my pics on a computer and to send, send, send), a well preserved Jewish quarter ( before the infamous evacuation of like 1492 or something), the coolest fortifications I've walked on ( and I'm a freek for these things, especially the Vauban ones, in Alba Iulia, Luxembourg, Besancon, Aigues Mortes or St Malo by now), and a very busy streetlife ( of course, except when it rains, as my first night revealed...)

And I really want to go back there. Not that Barcelona struck a negative cord. No, not at all. But in the middle of Barcelona there is this huge tent housing the Festival of Catalonian Books ( yeah...), I found books about pretty much everything in Catalan, ranging from how to repair your motorcycle to how to repair a Franco-stricken Spain. I also saw some a dictionary " Catala-Romanes" , I opened it, realizing that Romanes means the Romanian language...I immediately approached a lady asking her how tu say "rumano" and "gitano" in Catalan, and realized that actually being a "Romanesa" ,means being a Romanian, and not a Roma. And so, after talking with my beloved waitress in Girona for an hour about being a student in France, about the French, about her life in Girona, I did't realized that she actually told me she is Romanian and that I could have talked in a language that I can actually speak about her experience there... Brrrr

But anyway, it's dinner time in Spain and I'm looking forward for a new treat!

And speaking of, Catalunya amor meu ( = Catalonia my love) is just a name for a tacky restaurant in Figueres, and not une profession de foi

March 3rd


Long day in Barcelona. Trying to find a place to stay for my second night ( the first hostel was booked full.), I ran from one part of the city to the other, called places, went to booking agencies, hearing everywhere about this huge fair that takes place this weekend that can explain why the city is so full. I eventually found a place with a decent price, but also that the insanely popular fair is on astronomy...

I continued many of my French acquired habits ( eating a breakfast consisting of various forms of pastries, albeit the croissant had a certain type of unindentified meat inside..), taking random buses just to see the urban landscape. New Barcelona is very gridlike - apparently there was this competition to design the best model for the expansion of the city beyond Plaηa Catalunya, and they voted for one, but they began actually building a grid.

Central Barcelona is so full of tourists that it can get very annoying. Not even in glamorous Paris have I seen (or actually heard) this many foreigners ( a lot of them being actually French). But I started really enjoying Barcelona in El Raval, poor, colorful, with laundry lying in everybody's eyes, houses in pastel colors , immigrants, grocery stores ( stuff i have'nt seen at all in the central area- even in Paris there's an Ed vis a vis de Centre Pompidou...), and a lot of garbage. The stereotype of the large Mediterrannean city. Something that the slogan " Barcelona is the southernmost city of Northern Europe" ( which is very true for most central parts, in acrhitecture and athmosphere) tries to hide. And there's also the Barceloneta district, beyond the recosmeticized old port, an old worker class neighborhood with the same laundry flying around suspended wires. There I had lunch ( ok, it was 4 PM...), in a small and rather neighborhood restaurant, with locals and not the much too usual tourists bulging in and requesting tables. I was alone, but got a table for 5. And then people kept coming in, and i thought about something I heard once in a German class with Roman, how in Germany, people eat at the same table when there are no more places. So I invited in my best Castellano this group of four ( three guys and a charming young lady), and excused myself that I cannot speak Castellano nor Catala, and my closest Romance bet would be Italian. " Ma, siamo italiani" said the girl, also adding that they thought I was too, judging by the way I speak Spanish => boost in linguistic self esteem) . And we talked , shared five types of intriguing seafood, such as prawns with an excellent sauce etc. " o, you went to Sciences po? i wanted so much to go there as well... But i'm doing my Erasmus at Madrid" said the girl. I feel horrible I don't remember their names ( the visit to the Museum of catalonian history, with stucking in my head names such as Jaume I, Guifre el Pelos etc. didn't help). Of course, she goes to school a la Luiss.... How small is this world...Giulia, Martina, Elena, Antonello, hehe.. We talked about Bocconi, Prodi, Berlusconi and the usual, we planned to hang out in Madrid, but then I realized I forgot to pick up my luggage from my hostel to move it to the other, so I departed, rather rushed without asking for a phone number...

History Museums, fantastically preserved Roman ruins, seeing every inch of a Roman house, medieval buildings, the rise of the Catalonian state as a buffer between the Carolingian Empire and the Muslim Caliphate of Cordoba, the alliance with Aragon, the plague,, entering Spain, having its autonomy dissolved in 1714, economic boom, modernisme, Renaixanηa, anarcho-syndicalism, socialism, republicanism, nationalism, Orwell's homage to Catalonia, the dark years under Franco ( especially a media display in Girona made me almost cry, as i did a couple of weeks ago at the Musee d'Armee seeing Eluard's poem Liberte. J'ecrit ton nom. There's something about freedom that only people having to do somewhat with totalitarian regimes can understand. And that reminds me of my long and deep conversation with my uncle in Marseille, whose father, my grandfather's brother, spend many years in communist prisons, for being outspoken... Liberte, j'ecrit ton nom.)

There's nighttime in Barcelona, and contrary to Franco's time of being resigned and refulated, people are in the streets. They seem to be free. i will try to be part of it. I am free. I will see Gaudi's Sagrada Familia tomorrow and some Picasso, and then off to Zaragoza.