Morocco - Fes

I'm trying to remember if anyone in Fes was actually wearing a fez--- I don't think so. The sage scholars at wikipedia are apparently unsure if there's an etymological connection between the two and, since I stayed at a budget hotel, even the door man lacked a fez. Apparently higher end tourist hotels make their door men wear one.

The many artisans that populate the city's crumbling medina seem to make almost everything other than those iconic hats. We did visit a ceramics factory, where I was interested to see how the ornate tile mosaics for which Morocco is known are fabricated (I still don't really understand it). At the end of the tour we came to the gift shop, where I bought a cereal bowl. Shopping, or my total lack of interest in it, would be a common theme as I toured the medina. I would be led to some shop or workshop, where I would see someone making something in a particularly low tech and interesting fashion, and then they'd want me to buy something. Mostly I resisted, returning home with, albeit cliché, but highly succesful husband-to-wife gifts like a scarf and cereal bowl. Why just this morning Vanessa was wearing her new scarf while enjoying a heap of muesli from her moroccan crock.

Fes is famous for its tannery, with its colorful dye vats and sulphuric stink. To reach the view pictured above, I was led through one in a long series of inconsequential looking doors, up a ladder-like stairway, to a leather goods shop with open air views of the tanners at work below. It's almost as if the lack of signage in the Medina is designed to support the tour guide industry.

This is the conversation I had at the leather goods shop---leather shop doesn't seem right in this context, as there were no chaps in evidence. Also, I find the term "ass-less chaps" to be redundant:

"Sir, how about a nice leather jacket?"

"Oh, I don't think so."

"Maybe this one here." He holds up a sort of all leather, primary colored (all of them) letterman jacket. Something not unlike this.

"No, that's too hot for where I live."

"Where do you live?"

"Dubai."

"Oh no, sir. Not too hot for Dubai." Knits brow.

"Yeah, it's going to be like 42 degree centigrade there soon." That's 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

"No problem, jacket not too hot for 42 degrees."

So, needless to say, Vanessa wasn't sporting a new pair of Moroccan slippers, or letterman jacket, while she ate her muesli. She already has a The Abyss cast and crew letterman jacket, but it's not here with us in Dubai. Similarly, I didn't buy a rug, or one of the ornate pressed metal plates that I viewed at subsequent shops. The latter sales pitches weren't quite as reality-adverse as what I experienced at the leather goods shop, but the truth is that we have exactly the same stuff for sale in Dubai, and I'm not particularly tempted to acquire more belongings at this stage of our residency here. I suppose I could have made an exception for the puppy, but he wasn't for sale.

At the madrassa in the medina

While in Fes I took a tour of the medina, or old city. With its narrow, circuitous lanes, it's nearly impossible to navigate the medina on your own, as many of its most interesting sites reside beyond closed doors.

In the medina I saw a lot of interesting things, but among them I thought this madrassa deserved a post of its own. Not so much because I have a lot to say about it but, well, look at it.

The windows above the courtyard are actually the dormitory of the school, representing the most striking architectural view of any dormitory I've ever seen. Morocco has moved on to more secular modes of education, so most old madrassas are no longer used for religous instruction. In fact this one is just a tourist attraction at this point. We did see a group of students lining up at another madrassa, but I was told it is mainly used to house foreign students.

Morocco - Tangier

Spain's slow drizzle evolved into a downpour as I boarded the boat for Morocco. I was pleased to find myself once again aboard a ferry, having commuted to San Francisco that way one summer several years ago. For some reason, I thought the weather would improve once I got to Morocco and, while the sun was shining on my arrival, it was a brief dry moment in what would be a particularly wet trip.

I hadn't made any arrangements for a hotel, so once I was safely aground in Tangier, I caved in and hired one of the several guides shilling at the ferry terminal, selecting mine more for his festive hat and cowboy boots than anything else. I'd corresponded with our Moroccan friend Omar via email prior to the trip, and he'd warned me that there would be touts everywhere, and that they could be both aggressive and annoying. Omar also explained that official tour guides would be able to produce a badge identifying their official status, and that it might be worth asking for, even if it could be fake.

After seeing his badge, I hired Rashid to be my guide and, after I withdrew local currency from an ATM, he led me to an overpriced taxi and we zipped off to an internet cafe. If you find yourself under-scheduled and accosted by dubious helpers in a foreign land, the internet cafe is a great refuge. For one thing, I was able to begin work on my Audi article, as the deadline would fall during the trip. I had mostly written off my time in Tangier as a travel day anyway, and wanted to free up time for Fez. Additionally, I was able to read several less than enthusiastic reviews of the hotel that Rashid was pushing, and book a place of my own selection. Working on my article was also part of my strategy for dumping Rashid, I would simply wait him out. Eventually it worked, I explained to him that I'd made a hotel reservation, and that I planned to work for a few more hours, and he went away quietly enough after naming his price. Rashid was the first of many Moroccans to reject my Euros in coin form, for some reason they're not accepted in Morocco, which I found annoying since the bills are welcomed.

After roughing in my Audi review, I walked to a cafe for a decent but unremarkable dinner, and then caught a taxi to my hotel. Fares are double at night in morocco, at least in the usually more affordable petite taxis, and I was a little taken aback when the driver pointed at the meter and asked for twice as much. Still, the prices weren't as high as Rashid's Mercedes driving cohort had commanded, and I was too tired to care. The driver didn't know quite where the hotel was, and at one point we drove down a narrow street in the medina, only to back out in lurching, clutch smoldering fashion, when it became clear that we were headed the wrong way.

The hotel had a crumbling charm that was inversely proportionate to its lack of insulation. The common areas were both shabby and ornate, making the even shabbier, but not at all ornate guest rooms a bit underwhelming. Still, I was safe and dry, and drifted off to sleep with german coverage of the winter olympics murmuring in the background. In the absence of travel partners, the winter olympics would become my constant companion throughout the trip, biathlon its chief personality defect.

Costa Del Sol, Spain: Audi A8 Drive event

Hotel Finca de Cortesin is probably the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in, and I've stayed at some swanky (and not so swanky) pads since becoming an automotive journalist. My pal Reg, a seasoned reporter and interviewer, claims that in the old days, organizations like GM would tote journalists about in their private jets, and that events could last a week, rather than the current standard of one, maybe two nights. The good folks at Audi Middle East have, at least at the events I've attended with them, added a second night at their own expense, which helps cushion the blow of traveling so far, for such a short amount of time. And so we spent a second night at a nice, if less memorable and quite empty, resort hotel. I missed dinner that night because Reg kept buying pints and telling tales of war zone bartenders and Rolls Royce sporting johns on the prowl in the GCC.

Think of me at the first joint, a lovely sprawling golf resort, plotting to depart from Spain's Costa Del Sol, where it was raining, for the crumbling, under-insulated but not charmless hotels of Morocco. I enjoyed driving the A8, which is a powerful and fine tuned machine, and was pleased to navigate the winding mountain roads above the coast with the car completely to myself. Not that I would have minded driving with a partner, as often happens, but more often than not these press trips afford you very little time alone, something I'm used to having plenty of.

I enjoyed the luxury hotel and my time in Spain, a country whose language I can speak passably. From there I went to a place where I didn't speak the language, where nearly everyone I met was hustling me for a few Dirham, and where hot showers could be undertaken only during prescribed hours. I was prepared for this contrast, but admit that, after four cold nights in Fes and Tangier on the cheap, I was ready for warm, clean, and thoroughly plastic Dubai. Still, I enjoyed Morocco quite a bit, and look forward to writing more about it.

Munich, 2011 Touareg Launch

My brief time in Munich started off quietly as a group of us, led by our very kind and well organized hosts from VW, wandered the hushed, snow covered streets in search of a tourist bus that would show us the city from a relatively warm and dry vantage point. When we did eventually find the bus, they wouldn't take us aboard for some reason, so we had carrot cake and walked around instead.

That evening, as I dusted off my 'job interview' duds ('journalist on the go' was wrinkled and sodden at home) I found that, not only does Germany get most of the Saudi Arabia based movie channels that regularly bring us classic films like Short Circuit 2, and Christmas Caper (starring Shannon Doherty, and gracing the small screen this March) here in Dubai, they also have some very odd televised costume parties that we don't have access to in the desert.

The event itself was surprising due to its particularly American choice of themes, which included a Late Night style interview format, hosted by the "David Letterman of Germany" and featuring a Late Night style band led by Germany-renowned percusionist and moustache farmer, Leslie Mandoki. Several of the interviews were conducted before a monument valley inspired backdrop, in front of which I insisted on being photographed, making for an awkward pause in the proceedings. My ego duly sated, they brought out performance artist Kseniya Simonova, whose deft hands craft evolving sand pictorials that are quite impressive in their scope and speed.

Throughout the evening, blue-jean and gingham clad servers in kiddie cowboy hats navigated the crowd, handing out a variety of tasty, if unexpected and ultimately forgettable (I just remember that they were odd, but good) appetizers. Our obliging hosts, in that unabashedly blunt German fashion, asked several of the attending VIPs who they were, culminating in my favorite reply: "Oh yes, now I remember. She's a very famous boxer." The evening closed with the music of Justin Timbalike who, sporting his trade marked fedora, shredded the violin alongside the Mandoki Players. We were gifted with Justin's CD on our way out, and most of us wrongly assumed it was the press kit and therefore didn't bother to hunt down the actual press kit. A press kit, or more specifically the Press Release, is what a journalist typically combines with a thesaurus to produce a magazine article. It was awesome. If you ever have the chance to attend a corporate launch party in Munich, the answer is "ja!"

New Year's Day Carnival

Everybody loves a parade, right? Well, I don't. In fact, while I definitely enjoyed the New Year's Day carnival in Kochi, I actually found the crowd, which seemed to outnumber the parade participants by about ten to one, much more interesting than the parade itself. There were circus floats, dancers, men dressed in drag (women aren't allowed to participate), the cast of Avatar, and many others in colorful, often homemade costumes, but that wasn't quite as compelling as the excitement of the crowd and sheer mass of bodies thronged together. I don't really like being in a crowd, and for the most part managed to skirt this one. As always, the locals were kind and facilitating. At one point we found ourselves inescapably deep into the parade crowd, and Vanessa was able to appeal to the wall of onlookers to let us pass through to safety, or really, lower anxiety. I don't mean to overstate this, it's not like I have a proper phobia, but rather, sometimes when I find myself surrounded on all sides by human bodies, I wonder, "why did I come here?" And so, the edge of the crowd was really much more my speed.

The mood was celebratory, everywhere we went people were excited to put their English into practice, wishing us a "Happy New Year," and grinning at our replies. The kids were out in force and, without exception, once one youngster had their picture taken they all wanted in, huddling together and mugging for the camera. Perhaps the day's most infectious good mood was emanating from the Michael Jackson memorial dance float, where in particular, a nattily dressed gent in a tweed sports coat and straw hat was demonstrating some serious moves. Bill had opted out, and after about an hour and a half I could see why, having had my fill of the excitement. All in all, we were glad we went.