Flashback: September 19, 1997

The special heart pendant I kept (Photo by me)

Exactly 15 years ago to this day, I gave my grandmother and parents some lame excuse for going out in the early evening, got on my bike, and sneaked off to a park in our São Paulo neighborhood. Expecting me there was a blondish, hazel-eyed classmate of mine, also 13 years old and from the same neighborhood, who had long before decided he loved me and told everyone about it. He spammed me with romantic greeting cards. He sent me flowers and a stuffed kitty for my birthday. Even my parents and their friends knew and teased me. I tried to play it cool and told them I didn’t like him back. In truth, I was not used to the kind of attention I was getting from him. I was usually the one crushing and not being liked back – already a seasoned hopeless romantic (from age 5), with a gradually developing penchant for the unattainable, fickleness in my affections, and admirable resilience in the face of rejection. Perhaps that romantic precociousness was simply due to my nature. Perhaps it was influenced by the hormones raging too soon among my classmates. Perhaps it had to do with the present-from-birth social pressure to pair up, palpable in relatives’ self-satisfied comments about unfortunate 30-year-old “spinsters” and things such as “Festa Junina,” a traditional party held each June in Brazil where a mock wedding takes place between little boys and girls complete with bridal gowns.

As I entered the park that evening in 1997, my heart was pounding so hard I felt sick to my stomach (and it wasn’t even my mock wedding night). The boy was very nice and patient with me – I think he noticed I was shaking – and tried to calm me down. I pulled away from his embrace a couple of times. He gave me a gold heart pendant and I accidentally dropped it on the ground from my nervous grasp, fumbling around until I retrieved it. I actually reciprocated the boy’s feelings, but for many months had resisted his requests to slow-dance with me at classmates’ parties and kiss me. The thought of “dating” someone (not just imagining and writing poems about it) embarrassed me, and at the same time I got an ego boost from the boy’s persistence and some satisfaction out of leaving him hanging. (Even at 13 I had my heartless bitch moments.) The kids in school were annoying, sometimes cruel. They repeatedly teased me and asked me how I could dare to reject such a boy. He was a lot more popular than I was – me, the nerd, the butt of everyone’s jokes; him, the boy at least three girls in school, and others from outside, wanted to kiss. But my nerdiness is precisely what got him to like me (and even admire me, he would tell me years later). He turned all those girls down to wait for me, but at some point he got tired and ended up kissing some girl he didn’t like. I found out and was livid. That, and the fact I would be leaving Brazil in a week to live in the United States, convinced me to finally meet up with him alone in the park (previously, I would drag my little brother or friends along and knock on his door when I wanted to see him). It was now or never. Also, I wouldn’t have to bear the jeering of kids at school if we were caught walking around holding hands. They wouldn’t get a chance to see us together.

   

So our kiss finally came, under a tree – my first real kiss, but not his because he had kissed that random chick (either way, ours was the first kiss with meaning for both of us). Today I can still taste that first kiss, minty and soft, and experience tells me it was actually really good. The heart pendant he gave me somehow survived about 20 moves (I kid you not!) to different houses and apartments, went through nine cities, five countries, buried among trinkets from a dozen relationships and decades of family hand-me-downs. Our friendship and at least affection for each other, if not a sort of fascination, also survived somehow. Perhaps it was because our relationship was never tainted by the strife of an actual romantic relationship – no fights, breakups or sex. I wrote poems and a song for him. We saw each other again twice in 15 years, but not since 2001, and never kissed again. At times, but often not at the same time, I or he expected a lot from the other and ended up disappointed. We would make plans to meet up again almost whenever we talked (mostly on the Internet, but occasionally running up the phone bill to hysterical-parent levels), but something or someone always got in the way. When he went to the United States to study for a year, in a city I could easily have flown to, we were both in relationships – though, again, not at the same time – and with his overly jealous girlfriend and my demanding newspaper internship schedule, we could not manage to see each other, let alone talk regularly. Coupled with other circumstances, this turned into not talking at all for about four years at some point. After I got my first full-time newspaper job, he found my byline and my e-mail on the Internet, and we restarted what he once referred to as our “never-ending conversation.” The other day I told him that if we ever end up together in this life, we should definitely make our story into a book.

Recently I discovered this song by The Shins (video and lyrics below), the words of which (down to “the charm on the chain” the vocalist sings of giving to his muse) came to remind me a lot of my story with the hazel-eyed boy from São Paulo – one of the few constants in my life, despite the great physical distance and divergent paths (e.g. he lives in the same house he did growing up; I never lived in one house for more than three years). Here’s to the next 15 years, my dear... whatever changes, curveballs and missed opportunities, we will always have that evening in the park.

"SIMPLE SONG," THE SHINS

Well, this is just a simple song,

To say what you done.

I told you 'bout all those fears,

And away they did run.

You sure must be strong,

And you feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun.

When I was just nine years old,

I swear that I dreamt,

Your face on a football field,

And a kiss that I kept,

Under my vest.

Apart from everything,

But the heart in my chest.

Chorus:

I know that things can really get rough,

When you go it alone.

Don't go thinking you gotta be tough,

And play like a stone.

Could be there's nothing else in our lives so critical,

As this little home.

My life in an upturned boat,

Marooned on a cliff.

You brought me a great big flood,

And you gave me a lift.

Girl, what a gift.

Will you tell me with your tongue,

And your breath was in my lungs,

And we float up through the rift.

Chorus:

I know that things can really get rough,

When you go it alone.

Don't go thinking you gotta be tough,

And play like a stone.

Could be there's nothing else in our lives so critical,

As this little home.

Well, this would be a simple song,

To say what you done.

I told you 'bout all those fears,

And away they did run.

You sure must be strong,

When you feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun.

Remember walking a mile to your house,

Aglow in the dark?

I made a fumbling play for your heart,

And the act struck a spark.

You wore a charm on the chain that I stole,

Special for you.

Love's such a delicate thing that we do,

With nothing to prove,

Which I never knew.

The gradual return of creativity

I must admit another creative crisis had hit me as the massive practical matters and responsibilities of moving to a new country inundated me. Having less than an infant's level of German and not living in a city where English is widespread, I heavily depend on the combined goodwill and gesture-reading skills of the strangers behind the counter and/or the charity of German-speaking friends for essential tasks such as registering in the city, applying for a visa, filling out employment forms, getting Internet in the apartment and even picking up mail. I am amazed at how smoothly furniture-shopping went, and now I have a bed to sleep in and cabinets for things I hadn't unpacked since my U.S.-Denmark move over 2 years ago. Finally, with things getting on track and the apartment suddenly empty as my flatmates and visitors were out doing their thing, loneliness came to visit me and out came this poem, untitled for now because I didn't want to name it "Loneliness" but had no other better idea. (I had to post it on the blog with my cellphone because the apartment still has no Internet and when I'm at the coffeeshop with WiFi all I do is look for train tickets and hostels):

Loneliness makes one stumble
on one's way somewhere better;
in an unguarded moment
the body goes over
the edge of a step and
hits the ground.

The fall makes one look for
crutches as the backbone
feels broken,
when it simply hurts
too much
to walk.

The crutches though
readily available
are fragile wood,
they crack under all the weight;
one stumbles again, though not as hard,
bumps against the wall, a bruise forms,
sometimes right on top
of the old wound,
which reopens.

Loneliness makes one give up
on one's way somewhere better;
in searching for a shortcut
the body passes from
crutch to crutch til it can't
do without.

Conversely one looks for
a rest stop between steps,
still healing,
but willing to wait
to learn
to walk

beside
and not because of
a fellow journeyer.

A letter to Żubrówka

Photo from Cooky Cat blog

This is my little homage to my favorite vodka – for the memories more than for the taste, which took a little while to grow on me. If you have Żubrówka stories of your own you’d like to share, please send them to newswriterana@gmail.com. I may want to feature them on this blog.

Dear Żubrówka,

You meet so many people I doubt you remember me. The first time I saw you was in the hands of an Argentinean from my Wrocław dorm, on a movie night where about 10 people from various nationalities squeezed into the not-so-big room I was sharing with two other girls. We had barely moved in. How did he find you so fast? You looked strange to me as you settled down with the Argentinean in the middle bed, our makeshift couch, sporting your yellowish coloring and blade of grass inside bison are supposed to like. (I had always known vodka as colorless.) The Argentinean was more familiar. He had been the first person I met with whom I’d be spending that semester – he just happened to be sitting in the wagon I got into, of the train from Berlin to Dresden to Wrocław. I had immediately struck up a conversation with him as he chivalrously helped me with my bags, and found out we would be going to the same Polish dorm and university. We talked all the way to our destination, and the person picking him up brought me and my bags and a new Ukrainian arrival and her bags along as well to the dorm. Us three international students wouldn’t shut up on the way to the dorm, despite the exhaustion, and kept going all evening looking at churches and monuments and drinking beer together at Rynek (the central square). We were instant friends. She became my roommate. We would sometimes walk to Polish class together in the yellow Baroque university building, passing 70’s communist-style buildings and then across the Old Town with its Gothic cathedrals and metal bridge with love-vow-inscribed padlocks hanging all over (diverse architecture here, indeed). Then we would hang out after class as well, doing some pretty universal stuff – talking bullshit, watching bad YouTube videos, cooking together, trying new alcohol. But despite all the alcohol I would meet in Poland, you, Żubrówka, would become the most memorable. 

So the Argentinean and Ukrainian and I, as well as a few Germans and an American and for a while Czechs and Slovaks, I think, were all there watching the movie – “Scott Pilgrim vs.the World.” All I remember about the movie is a boy falling for a girl “out of his league” and getting her interest only to find out she has evil ex-lovers he has to fight videogame-style. (And perhaps that’s all there is to it.) I was doing my best to pay attention, really, as you, Żubrówka, worked your magic. I had my first sip and didn’t like you much then – you were like a grass and butterscotch shake (not that I’ve ever had one), but also intensely dry and burning.  But I decided I’d give you another chance. Over time I have been learning not to dismiss people or things on a bad first impression, to be open to acquired tastes. With the shitload of chances I gave you that night, I think I drank at least a third to half of you. The Argentinean and American helped finish you off, but I don’t think anyone in that room got as drunk as I did that night, and I don’t think I had ever been as drunk before or have been as drunk since. I started getting very philosophical and told one of the German girls she needed to pursue a major life change, and I remember her agreeing with me (I don't know if she did that to humor me or because she actually believed). Then I started talking about the affinity I have with German people and Germany (without ever imagining I would move to Germany one day), and my friends and I decided I had been a German cat in my past life. Perhaps, Żubrówka, you are a religious experience too. I also sang, and one of my friends captured it on video. I don’t remember singing, but watching the video, I decided I had never sounded so bad in my entire life. I don’t remember two hours of that night, but at least my bed was right next to me and I woke up in it the next afternoon. But I do remember throwing up into my Ukrainian friend’s laundry basket as she rushed to me with it, and my then-boyfriend calling mid-barf (I can’t believe I picked up the phone and even managed to make sense for him). For I while I wanted nothing more to do with you, Żubrówka – but like a rollercoaster relationship one keeps returning to, I couldn’t let you go. And things worked out more smoothly between us as I got used to the way you are, and learned to savor rather than inhale you.

You and I would come to share many other noteworthy moments. Like that time of the 90’s costume party at a Polish friend’s house, when a German guy and I quickly hit it off as acquaintances and spent the whole night dancing together as he proceeded to give me every other shot of the Żubrówka bottle he toted in. And the time during a get-together in my apartment when my Polish roommate’s friends scared off my international friends (who had brought in a Żubrówka bottle as their contribution to the evening) by joking about orgies. And how, in my latest trip around northern Europe, I filled up my one clear plastic bag allowed as a carry-on item on flights with four Żubrówka bottles (bison grass and clear varieties) instead of toothpaste and deodorant. I gave the bottles as gifts to my hosts in different countries, and in Finland it helped lead to conversations into the night and a taste of Finnish schnapps to return the favor. In Riga, another stop on the same trip, I didn’t have any Żubrówka on me to share, but did talk about you and this helped establish a common like between me and a cute guy I met. You have become my Polish greeting card, Żubrówka, and will forever be linked in my memory with Poland and making new and interesting friends and experiencing a wonderful mix of epiphanies and embarrassment. Can’t wait to taste, and share, more of your kind. Friends and I will spend time with your sister brown Żubrówka tonight.

Yours truly,

Ana

Suspended romance

I have had a few crazy romantic moments, but I don’t believe anything has come close – on the craziness scale that is – to what happened to me when I was 16 years old and traveling between Miami and Rio de Janeiro. Some of my friends have heard this story and agree that it is pretty unique. And random, as well. Randomness seems to have been a theme in my life for a while now.

I’m traveling with my parents and little brother on a Brazilian airline. It’s evening. Turbulence turns kinda bad on the flight by my standards, from pretty early on. For some reason I’m becoming hysterical (this is the only time that would ever happen even though I’m hardly a fan of flying). One of the flight attendants, very sweet and helpful, comes by and offers to have me visit the pilot’s cabin. (This was before 9/11; they don’t allow this anymore, I think.) When I get to the cabin, another girl is there, with green eyes and long brown hair, crouching in a seat close to the co-pilot. She has been more hysterical than I over the shaking. The flight attendant stays on for a while with soothing words, then leaves as the extremely nice pilot and co-pilot take over calming us down on top of having to, well, tend to the plane. The turbulence magically stops. Two boys come in. They are brothers – the pilot’s sons.

We are all making pleasant talk, including the pilot and co-pilot. Us four teenagers start reading a magazine together and making each other laugh. This is the first time I notice my own irreverence and flirtiness, and how it’s having an effect; I like it, although I can’t believe it’s coming out of my mouth. (This was three years after my first real kiss and I was coming out of a dry spell, with boys up to that point much preferring to make fun of me than make out with me.) Hours go by and we don’t leave the cabin – not even to pee, I think. No one tells us to leave. We forget all about our fear of flying. At some point, the green-eyed girl sits with one of the pilot’s sons on the right side of the cabin, and I sit with the other on the left side, behind the pilot. I look out the panoramic window next to me; at 30,000 feet and without parts of the plane blocking our view, the sky is a perfect black dome, the stars unspoiled, like scintillating decorations on a curtain. (I would only see a similar sky again 10 years later, way down there, in the Sahara desert.) The boy pressed next to me is cute, with his dark brown hair slightly curly, brown eyes, tanned skin, a small mole on his nose.

He kisses me.

It’s irresistible. His kiss is nice and soft, and I want more. I glance over and notice that the other girl and boy are kissing, too. I look at the pilot and the co-pilot. They are quiet and seemingly frozen in their seats. They do not look behind them.

I’m not sure how long we all kiss for, but the sun comes up at some point. The flight attendant brings us all breakfast. So surreal. Still, no one asks us to leave. I decide to leave at some point, shortly before landing, in case my parents think I have been hijacked. I sit next to my mother with a huge grin on my face. She asks me what happened. (I think that I tell her and that she tells me to keep it quiet.)

I manage to get the boy’s contact information before we get off the plane. We talk once – maybe twice – back on the ground. Although we agreed to try to meet again, we would never manage to. This is the first lesson of many I remember being given on how some wildly special people and situations in life are meant to remain just moments, self-contained. I have not yet fully learned to accept that. It is high time to do so, however, with the kind of life (of constant hopping around) I have chosen. More on that to come in later posts.

White glass

The emptiness hits as

all the adventures become

memories without

tangible continuity

and impatience makes one

undesirable to its objects.

The silence is

all-encompassing, unbearable –

will do anything to hear a voice

in the harsh total absence

of yours.

Your once-sweet phrases

assault me cruelly now;

they’re ghosts

reminding me of the depth

of the loss I brought

upon us.

Someone who looks

like you but can’t be you with his

white glass face derides my crying,

shuts the door on me

for good.

- Me

Breaking me into Europe

Me in front of THE Moulin Rouge

Come to think of it, the first article I ever wrote for a newspaper – my campus newspaper – was a travel article. (I found a copy of it amid the stuff I recently retrieved from my ex-boyfriend’s apartment, and decided to resurrect it here.) I was 21 and had just returned from my first ever trip to Europe. My years-long obsession with the film Moulin Rouge may have played a small role in my choice of destination out of all the countries in the continent. I stayed in a village outside of Paris, with a Brazilian journalist friend of my mother and the lady's French husband. With them, I had my first glimpse of the instant, generous European hospitality and openness I would come to love, and which sometimes still leaves me speechless when it manifests itself. On that early trip I would spend my days in Paris, mostly on my own and making pitiful attempts at French of American high school caliber, and return to their house in the early evening to homemade meals and pleasant chats (in Portuguese). I also visited Mont Saint-Michel with the lady, but that's another story. Anyway. I could feel myself getting intoxicated, especially when out in Paris on my own (so liberating), and was hopelessly hooked. So it’s not surprising that when a fellow student suggested that I write something for the campus newspaper, this is what I came up with. (Needless to say, don’t expect a masterpiece of travel-writing. I reproduced it exactly as I wrote it, errors and all.)

The Beacon, January 2005

The City of Lights

Paris looks like a huge open-air museum to me. It seems that on every corner you turn, there’s an ancient castle or monument staring you in the face. It’s an imposing and breath-taking city, indeed, but one that’s also uncannily easy to “conquer.”

TRANSPORTATION

Getting around Paris is no mystery. The transportation system is well-integrated. Train stations like Montparnasse lead down to metros (subway stations), which are practically on every corner. There’s also the RER, a breed between a subway and a train, which gives you a high and low view of the city so you don’t need to pay for those red sightseeing cars. One of the RER drop-offs is at the nearby city of Versailles, where the beautiful Louis XIV palace is located.

For 30 euros, you get the best deal in town – a single pass that lets you use any kind of transportation in and around Paris for a whole week.

Almost every morning, I took the train alone from the town of La Falaise (with a floating population of 621 and no commerce), to Paris’s Montparnasse station, an hour away. I was staying with acquaintances I had only met over the phone – a Brazilian lady and her French husband.

DELICACIES

We carried whole conversations in Portuguese, and I inserted half a sentence in French. They fixed me exotic dishes every night when I came home for dinner, such as escargot, couscous, foie gras (goose liver) and duck legs.

Sometimes I ate chocolate crepes in Paris throughout the day and chocolate crepes again for dessert at the house back in the village. Good stuff.

But the husband was somewhat of a hermit and didn’t like the big city, and the lady often wanted to keep him company. So she only accompanied me to Paris a couple of times to get me used to it. After that, I was on my own.

There are tourists and lines everywhere in Paris, even when it’s as cold. I visited the Eiffel Tower and waited a couple of hours to get to the tower in a shaky, little elevator. I felt uneasy, but the panorama was worth any shivers from fear or cold, and any crowds.

MONTMATRE

Another highlight of Paris was the neighborhood of Montmatre. After climbing a hill with the ancient Catholic chapel of Sacre-Cour on top, there was an overlook of a “village of sin.”

After climbing down the other side of the hill, there were artists everywhere painting portraits of tourists in the middle of the street, which is no sin except a sin of the pocket. But when you get to the bottom, you are taken aback by the number of sex shops and cabarets.

The mildest one seemed to be the Moulin Rouge, now more like a circus.

In fact, in Paris, the duality of Catholicism and sex is quite an interesting theme. I reencountered this sensuousness in a more artistic way at the Museum d’Orsee.

Walking in, there was a sculpture of a woman writhing after having been attacked by a “snake.” On the right side of the hall, there was a huge painting of a Roman orgy, titled something like “The Decadents of Rome.”

Near the world-famous impressionist works by Monet and Van Gogh, there was a painting by Courbet that showed a vagina titled, “The Origin of the World.”

The Louvre Museum has more classical art, although its Greco-Roman aisle presents sculptures of men in questionable actions.

But I redeemed myself. I went to Sacre-Cour, Notre Dame and about 10 other churches or basilicas in Paris. I unintentionally witnessed Mass in French in a little chapel among the expensive shops of the Galeries Lafayette and understood none of it.

PRICES

Paris is not cheap, and prices are disproportionate. The price of tickets for attractions like the Eiffel Tower is on average 10 euros. Meanwhile, the price of a cup of coffee is a little under half of that, at four euros.

The coffee was only worth it for me because I sat in a Paris café and imagined that Ernest Hemingway must have done the same thing when he lived there. So I felt like a Bohemian novelist for half an hour. But in Hemingway’s time, there was no such thing as the euro, which is worth about 33 percent more than the dollar.

ENTERTAINMENT

At some point during the two weeks I spent in France, I was invited to sing at an Irish Pub named Corcoran’s, in the trendy Paris neighborhood of St. Germain-des-Pres. My payment was free food at the pub and free board for one night at one of the cheapest Paris hotels; the nightly rate was 80 euros.

LOST AND FOUND

After spending the whole day worshipping the Eiffel Tower, I got to the Montparnasse station and, not looking at any signs and assuming I knew where to go, I took the wrong train.

I ended up in a town in the middle of nowhere, in the complete dark, and thought I’d spend the midnight hour alone in a desolate train station.

To me, French rudeness is a false myth. It was French Samaritans who saved me and directed me to another train that took me to another station where I took yet another train back to La Falaise that night.

The trip back lasted three hours instead of one.

I arrived at 7:15 p.m. and the lady with whom I was staying drove me to a new train station and deposited me inside my fifth train of the day, so I could meet up with a couple of French girls I barely knew and proceed to the soiree (party) somewhere near Paris.

PARTY TIME

It was a house party spiced up with lots of toast with caviar, sangria and champagne, American hip-hop, me trying to speak French to people and people trying to speak English to me. Well, at least I made some new acquaintances. I took about 200 pictures and, in spite of the transportation system, walked about 200 miles. But I wanted to walk.

I had an exhilarating sense of freedom strolling by myself along the Seine River and the Place de la Concorde, through the Arc de Triomphe and across bridges held up by sculptures of golden angels. I also felt safe.

You do run a serious risk, however, of wanting to stay there indefinitely.

Arriving in Morocco

My photo of the ferry from hell

Arrivals – or trying to arrive somewhere – can make for some of the most desperate and memorable moments of a trip. Our saga trying to get to Morocco definitely falls into this category, and foreshadowed the insanity our time there would be. It took me nearly three years to be able to write about this trip, of which Morocco was the biggest third (there were also Portugal and Spain). I will do it in bits because there is indeed so much… 

The bus stops before it’s supposed to.  Everyone gets off. It’s around 4 a.m. in Seville, and the station is closed. The rude Portuguese bus driver refuses to give me and my travel buddy any information. He takes off. It starts to rain. I must still be drunk from a whole week of partying in Lisbon for New Year’s, because I laugh about it. Ironically, it’s not until we manage to enter the station and find out where and when the bus to Algeciras comes in that my travel buddy and I have a spat. It’s bad. We sit apart and don’t talk to each other the entire way to Algeciras. Slowly, the hangover and exhaustion start to kick in. I haven’t slept in 36 hours. I try to sleep but am too paranoid we will miss our stop. I am thinking I will turn around as soon as we arrive in Algeciras and go back to the handsome blue-eyed Moldovan expat I took up with in Lisbon. At that moment, I hate the friend I’m traveling with. 

We arrive at the Algeciras port and decide we must speak to each other if we are to get through this. She tells me off at some point and I cry a bit. We make up. In keeping with our desire to be, uh, spontaneous with this leg of the journey, we have no clear plan or hotel booked in Morocco, so I get on a computer at the port and book something in Fes. After that we find out the next ferry doesn’t come for a few hours. With the way things are going, I am not surprised. I feel sicker than ever before in my life (except for when I once had a stomach flu and thought I was going to throw up all my internal organs). I lie down across some seats in the waiting area and once again fail to fall asleep. Finally it’s time to board the ferry – but not before getting through border security. Even nearly throwing up all over the security official, I make an effort to be nice to him and speak Spanish. Big mistake, because I have my U.S. passport on me. I don’t know if it’s plain stupidity or just assholeness on his part, or maybe a combination of both, but the guy does not believe my passport is real, that I can be an American citizen and speak Spanish at the same time. I tell him I used to live in Miami but that does not convince him either. It takes him half an hour to clear my passport. While I am waiting, I run into a fellow Brazilian girl I used to know in high school and hadn’t seen in 10 years, and it turns out the jerky security guy is giving her boyfriend a hard time, as well.

We get into the ferry and find seats. They look like airplane seats and are quite comfortable. It’s a nice, big ferry with a big bar. Windows go around in a dome-like shape. Little round white lights line the ceiling. TV screens hang from above. I feel relieved and not so sick anymore. I settle in to watch the journey to Tangiers. I start feeling like I am living the good life. The feeling is fleeting, however. As soon as the ferry sets off, huge waves start to hit it. The big ferry is being tossed about like a little rowboat. Soon the TV screens (pictured above) turn red and plead, “Asseyez-vous, s’il vous plait.” (“Sit down, please.”). No one is about to disobey, I think. The ferry crew members start to look uneasy. They hand out sick bags. Someone does throw up at some point – but not me. Oddly, I am fine. (Perhaps numb would be a better word.) I don’t even panic when plates start breaking, tumbling down from the bar shelf. It feels like the ferry is taking turns sailing on its right and left sides, but never straight. It goes on like this for the entire journey, which is an hour or two but feels much longer under these circumstances, naturally. Suddenly, calm is restored. The ferry stops where it’s supposed to. After more security delays and my nearly hitting someone (which would probably have gotten us thrown into a rotting Moroccan jail and set off a diplomatic crisis), we finally get off the ferry and into Tangiers.

Surprise, surprise, we haven’t booked a hotel there. My brilliant drunken mind thought about our second stop, Fes, but not about our first. Moroccan guys in traditional garb are devouring us with their eyes as we walk across the dusty street. Slightly frightening vibe, and not the prettiest city on earth at least at first sight… but needless to say, we are too exhausted to give it a second look… even the next day. We check into the first hotel we find, which is actually kinda nice with its chandeliers and Arabian-Nights-style drapes (duh, this is Morocco), but once again, we don’t explore much. We go into the room and I take a bath and almost fall asleep in the tub. We pass out in the bed for 15 hours. We wake up, take a cab and go straight to the train station. We catch the train to Fes… nice train, with cabins. We get a lot of male attention once again (duh, this is Morocco) but thankfully this time we get a reprieve from creepiness. A semi-cute Moroccan guy sits in our cabin and we decide to share Arabic songs with each other on an iPod. We dance while sitting down and take pictures of each other. He decides to call me Salma (like the Moroccan king’s wife), then Mimi. He gives my friend a nickname too. He gives us his phone number. An older guy comes in at some point and gives us a business card with the name of a riad (traditional Moroccan hotel) and its address printed on it. It looks nicer than the one I booked on the port’s computer and offers to send someone to pick us up. So we decide to go for it. 

Big mistake (or was it?). In the next post I write about this trip, I will tell you why.