What happened in Marrakesh? We were often "attacked" by shop keepers who were trying to get us to their shops, by "guides" who were offering their services, by taxi drivers who didn't want to turn on meters and prices that they were saying were of course higher than they would be with meters on, by e.g. orange juice seller who handed us a glass of juice as a gift. A gift for which you obviously have to pay! There were a few situations when we knew that people just want to get as much money from us as possible just because we’re tourists. Bleeeee… what an awful feeling. That’s why I didn’t enjoy the trip as much as I should.
But from the beginning…
At 7.45 AM on Saturday, we took a train from Rabat to Marrakesh. It took us 4 hours to get there. After a walk we had a coffee, found a cheap hotel and then went to the most famous square in the Medina and the city (Djemaa el Fna Square) full of cafes, shops, people with different animals (like snakes or monkeys) and henna women.
When we approached a group of snake wizards one of them seeing me invited me to the middle of the circle (or actually grabbed my hand and took me there), and put a snake on my neck. After a while there was another wizard with another snake that was on my neck in just a second. Surprisingly, I realized that I wasn’t afraid of snakes at all. I was more afraid of these wizards who “invaded” my comfort zone being too close to me. After taking pictures he asked for money – 100 dh (=1euro). I told him I wouldn’t give that much money and I’d give just 10 dh which is a coin but he kept saying “paper money, paper money”. Luckily, he didn’t feel like bargaining and he didn’t object when I gave him the coin of 10 dh. After we left the wizards I realized that… I had snake’s shit on my t-shirt (t-shit:) ) and on my arm… Well, I have never heard of snakes shitting on people so I felt sort of special that it happened to me. I didn’t care about that and I just assumed that it would bring a lot of good luck :)
Then we had orange juice story… The rest of the day we spent on random walking in the Medina until late evening, buying things from time to time and experiencing tiring bargaining, or saying “no thank you / no, merci” to people who wanted to “help us”. In the evening, we went to Theatro – a cool, expensive (15euro entrance fee!!) and posh nightclub that I went to in June as well. The place itself was really cool but the music could be a bit better. To get there we had to take a taxi and it was then that the taxi driver didn’t want to turn on the meter and he charged us more than it would normally be.
On Sunday again, we did some random sightseeing of Royal Palace neighborhood and some shopping with bargaining in order not to pay exorbitant prices! At some point, we met a Berber man who invited us at his place, showed us pictures of his family, did a massage of our arms using sort of oil (I guess it was a Berber specialty) served some tea with a lot of spices (so delicious!) and let girls wear his wife’s clothes. That was really cool!
Then, we finally took the train home to Rabat. I’m saying “finally” because it was the thing I was dreaming of the whole day. And now, I’m almost sleeping in my bed and right now I don’t need anything to be happy :)
Although, I’m not so positive about talking tonight about weekend in Marrakesh, what Konstancja said to me today in the taxi was totally true! She told me “Although you’re sometimes pissed off because of different things happening or not happening here you will be really happy at the end of your stay here that you have had the chance of living one year in Morocco”. I totally agree!
1 comment:
miss you babe!! can't believe you're still there! the place seems impossibly far away... i can't remember the smells, the noises...
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