Fez

The tale of Marrakech, as James tells it, ends on a high note. Yet this isn't the whole story. Perhaps it was one of our dinners in the square, or perhaps a sip from the wrong bottle of water, but something disagreed with my longtime traveling companion, turning the seven hour train ride to Fez into something of a hellish journey for James. I've never seen the color drain quite so completely from a human being. When he wasn't curled in the corner of our compartment, he was stretched out in the corridor, confusing the locals as they squeezed past and stepped over him.

This left a void in our compartment, and as the stations and hours passed, it got to a point where we could no longer in good conscience keep the seat free. It certainly didn't seem that James would make any sudden comeback. Thus his seat went to a young man in a lavender shirt, who's name, we would discover, was Mohammed.

This chance meeting was to change the entire experience of Morocco for us. After some conversation, we were invited to dinner with Mohammed and his friends. With some skepticism, we took up this offer, and were massively rewarded. In the heart of the Medina, we were presented with a splendid dinner in a colorfully tiled room, along with seven or eight Moroccans around our age, and one New Zealander. Stacey, the girlfriend of Isham (one of the Moroccan lads) , became our link to the city of Fes. The two of them were incredibly hospitable, and offered to show us around the city the next day.

I cannot stress enough the value of such an offer. Navigating a Moroccan medina is an utter nightmare, with twisting streets, no signage, hundreds of people and twice that number of dead ends. Without guidance, you will never find anything... including your way home. Where we'd likely have spent the day blindly searching for a tourist office, instead we were shown to several mosques, a fantastic view out over the city, a carpet cooperative, a weaver's showroom, the city tanneries and the dyer's headquarters. And at night, we again were treated to an authentic home cooked meal, and a game of soccer in a nearby parking lot.

This was the sort of experience that you set out to capture when you leave home on a trip. The holy grail of travel. I really can't convey how fantastic it was to get this glimpse into real life in Fes, with people our age. We were visitors, but engaged visitors, not just spectators.

I've spent almost 180 days away from home, and if it was all just leading up to these few days in Fes, it's entirely worth it.

“What are you looking for?”

We were immersed in Moroccan culture swiftly after landing. Our host in Marrakech was Khamal, a Berber in his late twenties who had a touching amount of concern for his guests well being. He showed us everything we needed to know about Marrakech in a 1 hour power session then followed this up with “Berber Whiskey”, a sweet mint tea that is served everywhere in Morocco. This was all very civilised and tame and we crashed out early.

The next day we went and got to know Marrakech properly.

This place is just charged with energy that wears you down. It’s hot (though not oppressively), busy, touristy and the Souks (markets) are just a different world. Come nightfall, everything doubles with the obvious exception of the temperature. The reason for this was Ramadan. Unbeknownst to us, our trip landed squarely in the first week of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. From sun rise to sun set no food or drink of any kind may be imbibed and no pleasures such cigarettes or the fairer sex may be indulged. But when the sun goes down... it’s a different world. The main square in Marrakech is fairly empty during the day, just a few orange juice vendors hawking their wares. After evening prayer though this square fills up with locals and tourists alike as people pack into the temporary eating stands to get pretty much anything from soups to whole lambs on a spit. It was a feast for all the senses with the smell of roasting meat, the guys spruiking their stands and the lights strung everywhere being defused in the haze from the fires.

The markets district was several blocks all undercover that you quickly get lost in. Any sort of handy craft you wanted was available if you knew where to look. If you didn’t know where to look anyone nearby would try and sell you something from their shop, or their neighbours shop, or their friends shop just the street over. You walk through the winding streets with a constant cacophony of offers, declarations and questions. “What you looking for?”, “you want something?”, “where you from?”, “How much you want to pay”, “I have best shirts!”. You really just tune it out after 5 minutes. But not always... I remember one exchange I had in the food stalls after I had eater. A gentleman wearing a filthy white apron and a Lakers cap at a jaunty angle shouted out to me and this was the exchange.

“You’re a yank!”
“No I’m not!”
“Ah! Aussie! Down-Under mate!”
“I hate Down-Under!”
“Pavlova!”
“Lamington!”

This was all done from about twenty paces and I never stopped walking. I'm pretty sure I won.

Espaná

Overdue as it is, I can’t let Spain fall by the wayside. It’s hard to sum up the experiences I had in the country of Bull fights, sultry dances and magnificent weather. For me it was on some form of mental pedestal in terms of culture, landscape and atmosphere, and in many respects it rose to the occasion yet I can’t really think of any time that it exceeded. The first stop on the Spanish leg of the trip was San Sebastian, former fishing/fort town, turned tourist Mecca of the north Spanish coast. We caught a train down from Bordeaux and arrived, slightly lost in this lovely little town. Armed with Klaus’ iPhone however we struck off and scored some free wifi that quickly set our feet on the right path. Our Hostel was one San Fermina, right in the heart of San Sebastien’s old town. The street we were on was pretty and reasonably busy during the day, but come night the place was an absolute riot. Literally dozens of Tapas bars were clustered along its surprisingly short length, all of them spilling merry-makers out on to the street to perch on high stools around little tables or to just find a nearby step to sit and talk on. A common practice was as wander from bar to bar, getting just one or two items and a beer before striking out into the balmy, light filled jovial evening once again to brave the press. This was the vibe that San Sebastian radiated during the night and kept thinly veiled during the day. Our last night was somewhat less tasteful however and resulted in four seedy gentlemen dashing for a 7:30am bus at what can only be described as a shuffle.

Next stop, Barcelona!

Feeling somewhat better that afternoon we arrived in Spain’s second largest and reputedly most exciting city, eventually rolling into our hostel mid afternoon. To be honest my first impression of Barcelona was one of indifference. It was warm, large, kind of pretty but not really Spanish. We headed out on the town a couple of nights, not overly Spanish. Most of the people we were around, not overly Spanish (read Australian). Most of the food we ate, not overly Spanish. Now I know I can’t blame a lot of this on Barcelona, but it was a lot harder to find some Spanish culture here than I was expecting. And certainly not for a reasonable price. Stephen and I went to the food markets just of La Rambla and guess what. Not overly Spanish. Also, our coffee that day was served by a forty year old Chinese man who spoke passable English, but judging by some exchanges with other customers, dismal Spanish. One thing that did feel Spanish across the board however was the weather. All day, every day was blue skies and mid thirties. Having said all this, I was a little dishearten by Barcelona. I was expecting this multicultural, over toured mess, but it’s a little heart breaking to have the romance stolen so brutally.

"La Tomatina"

Alternative title: "How I waited five hours for a black eye."

So here we are, headed to Spain. It's the height of summer (at least, it feels that way) and we've been asked again and again... "You're going to be in Spain right about the time of the tomato-festival... are you going?" We were unsure, the traveller's demon of cost vs. budget made it look like we'd be unable to participate. Indeed, for two members of our group, it was simply not an option. But two of us looked into our wallets and decided that we could spare a little more cash for an absolutely unique experience.

And thus we found ourselves on a train, headed to Valencia.

La Tomatina is just one of the hundreds of festivals that occur all around Spain. We've been told that there's a festival for every day of the year, that every village has their day of celebration. It just happens that the town of Bunol celebrates in a rather unique way. The origins of the festival

are a little unclear, with any number of urban legends claiming to be the true meaning for the day. Yet the reasons have clearly been lost in the sheer frivolity of the event:

Let's all get together in the streets, and hurl tomatoes at one another.

Indeed, La Tomatina is just one massive food fight, and this seems to draw an absurd number of foreigners to the town. Once you have a certain number of people throwing food, the very scale of the event attracts more people. This self-perpetuating phenomenon brings thousands apon thousands of people to the town, all intent on hurling some fruit (to be technical). And of course, most of them are Australian.

What is it about our national character that causes the youth of Australia to flock to a food fight in Spain? I can't explain it, but we make up the vast majority of the crowd. And this is some crowd. Upwards of 50,000 people come to the town, who's base population is something around nine thousand. The result is an absolute invasion.

The procedure for taking part in this event is very simple. There's no fee, the only costs involved are the train fare to get you to Bunol, which is just loose change. You get up nice and early, and catch the regional train to the town, along with thousands of other excited young people, mostly clad in white. Why white? Alas, there's no cultural motivation. White simply shows up tomato splatter more effectively. My companion for the trip, Klaus, took this to absolute extremes, purchasing a white suit and Panama hat, making him possibly the best dressed food fighter that has ever graced Bunol.

We got to the town, and joined the horde of participants, and waited for signal to begin. Having started our journey at 6am, the kickoff was not until 11, so we had five ours of transit and waiting before the first tomato was hurled. As soon as this happened... I can't really use words to describe it. Pictures are vital. I shall simply explain the environment: Thousands of excited people packed into narrow streets, eager to throw things at one another. A cannon fires, and then they drive trucks laden with tomatos through the crowd. It sounds crazy, and that's because it is utterly crazy.

Oh, and why the alternative title? About seven minutes into the fight I caught a tomato... with my face. All I can say was that it was unexpectedly painful, but that it ensures I will never forget my La Tomatina experience.

continental shift

Update: Well what do you know, the interwebs HAS made it to Morocco. I never should have doubted

Shortly we will be departing for the exotic lands of North Africa, where the air is blisteringly hot during the day and carries sweet spicy fragrances in the cool evenings. I'm mainly just dropping a line to let you know that we may be slightly difficult to reach over the next week or so and not to panic over the continued blog drought.

So if you will all excuse me... I have a plane to catch.

loving it

Read this as an answer to David’s post, or perhaps a compliment, I'm still deciding what I'm thinking and feeling as I write. Pretty much I love travel, I love all these places I see and I love all the people I get to meet. Even the shoddy locations like Modena and Hamburg have something to offer. It drives home a fundamental lesson of life. There will always be ups and downs. You have to face it, not every experience you have can be the best, and that’s just fine with me.

Having said this though, I am sick of living in a 65 litre bag. It really does get trying after a while. As David said, you really start to despise your wardrobe. Personally I see my backpack as the root of all my woes. Indeed, all of mankind’s misery. I even named him. Spite. Forever getting heavier, hiding socks from me and catching this one particular grey shirt of mine in his zips. And I mean proper stuck... it’s a two man job to extract the damn thing.

Six months is ambitious for this sort of undertaking. Logistically it is both too long and nowhere near enough time. I think we didn’t realise this until we got over here and saw how much we were missing in lots of place and how many places we have been told are fantastic but had to bypass for fiscal or time constraints. Conversely there have been weeks just wasted in a couple of locations. So here I am, over four months in and I wouldn’t be upset to discover I had miss booked my ticket for two weeks hence, just enough time to hit up my last three countries. I have to collect the set you understand...

It’s fantastic having all this knowledge and experience now about how to plan a trip, how much money you should budget, how much time and so on. But that specific information on Backpacking in Europe isn’t much use to me anymore because I don’t think I’ll be doing this trip again. Instead I’ll have to learn a whole new set of information for whatever destination I'm headed because lets faces it, there isn’t anywhere else on earth like Europe.

And I guess that brings me to the final point. There really isn’t any place where I can see so much art, history, culture, landscape or diversity of people as I can in Europe. I am mentally tired, ready to go home, I want my bed and solitude, I have a bag that is evil incarnate... but I'm loving it.

Paris, Take 3

And so we're back in Paris. Well, half of us are back, the other half are here for the first time. It says something about the city that personally, I've been keen to come back not just once, but twice.

So here I am, four and a half months away from home, and I must say, it's taxing. On a paper, six months doesn't seem such a long time. You look at your itinerary, and wonder how on earth you'll see all you want to, you fear that three days here, a week there, it just won't be enough. And in many ways it isn't enough, and there is so much more you want to see. But at the same time, there's only so much you can absorb, and all the while the desire to come back home grows.

I can only speak for myself, of course. I've met people for whom travel is a lifestyle, people who see 'home' as a docking port between expeditions, somewhere that can only be tolerated for a few weeks at a time. I might even be traveling with some such people. But if I've discovered anything, it's that I'm not built for that.

There's something incredibly wearying about being on the move, all the time. I've come to dread the days where we pack up our bags and shift towns. There's always the excitement of what the next destination will offer, but there's an awful routine to it as well.

I've left a trail of my belongings scattered across Europe. Thankfully most of it has been deliberate. As early as the second week, I was discarding bits and pieces that were weighing me down. The process has continued, yet of course my load seems heavier than ever. As predicted in one of my first posts, I've come to utterly resent the wardrobe that I brought along with me. It's impossible not to, when you've been stuck wearing the same pair of shorts for months, when the weather doesn't permit you to mix it up by putting on your only pair of pants.

How dare I complain though? I'm on the trip of a lifetime, blissfully unhindered by work or any other such responsibilities. I must be seeing half the countries in Europe. There are probably people who would sell their souls for such an opportunity. Yet the grass is always greener, isn't it? Day to day, I'm having a fantastic time. Yet in the scheme of things, I can't wait to come home. To friends and family. To my own bedroom, where the only person allowed to snore is me. To a shower that I don't need to wear thongs in.