Morocco summary

So Morocco was chill. Plain and simple. Imagine having no worries (except the small possibility of safety which was immediately disregarded) , no plans, no frets, and nothing aggravating- except people constantly offering you hash. But in a world where everyone nudges you, there are worse things to be offered than hash, and being offered has always bothered me less than being begged.
Tanger really is far from anything special. In fact, it sucks. When we walked in from the port, a cab driver with 2 people in the back seat pulled over to us. Thinking he needed something we approached him, only to learn that he in fact was offering to take us as well... even to as far as Fes (8 hours away). He even said he would take 2 of us to Tanger and come back for the third if we so chose. We needed a 15 euro bus followed by a 35 euro ferry... to get to madrid from casa was only a 25 euro flight plus baggage... logical? Not at all, but it was still necessary to head south. As crummy as Tanger was (imagine an industrial port city with crime and scummy areas), Chaouen and Fes more than made up for it. As Ari describes Chaouen, it is ´literally the chillest place everrr;´ Ari even created a hostelworld account for our hotel so that they could get more business. The food in all of Morocco is truly special- it is hearty but not overly cramming, inexpensive but not shit, and unique from the rest of the world. Although everywhere impersonates Moroccan food, nowhere can truly duplicate it. The people are friendly, but we always had the sense that in Chaouen, they were after something else as well. Whether they were asking for money after our interaction, offering something, or insisting upon our entrance into their shop, Chaouen had an urgent sense of demand from all. Fes, despite being larger (and I would have thought less friendly), was more open and less pushy. Other than Abdul the asshole (he found us a hotel then demanded a lot of money and took money from the hotel man... he also would whisper to all - and I mean ALL - girls on the street that they were beautiful and he wanted to take them to dinner [which surprisingly got 2 separate girls to wait like 5 minutes for him to come back for them]), people were great. Most mistook us for Berbers because we bargained so much, and only a few mistook me for being Muslim because of my lack of shaving (and my styling my facial hair in the islam0-beard fashion).
The thing that truly impressed me most about Morocco was the children. It is incredible how a whole group of people - and I mean everyone no matter what age - can be taught to offer any service for any form of money. Whether it was 2 10 year old shepherds climbing down a mountain right after us who offered to show us the best path down, or a 4 year old in the street, or any older man with hash, or any younger man who could find us the best hotel, everyone was insistant upon this. This was just side babble, however, because this didn´t impress me at all and forced us to just say ´lah´or ´no´ immediately to everyone. The children, on the other hand, will speak moroccan arabic to each other, french to older people, and then start speaking english to us. They would then ask us in italian if we were italian, and then spanish in spanish. Almost every child was fluent in arabic (of course), mostly fluent in english, fluent in french, and in the north (where we were), spanish too. And to think of the education problems American children have with just english.
In Chaouen we also learned of the zaa-zaa drink, an avocado-milk mix with fruits and yogurt in, and through our breakfasts daily at this place, met our Canadian friend Francois who accompanied us throughout Fes. After our departure with him, we sadly also said good-bye to Sam, Ari´s travel buddy for the past 4 months. Now, it is just Ari and myself in the Canary Islands, hoping to indulge in tons of fruit, sun, and watersports.

So Sweet it is to be without Worries

So Spain is fantastic. Plain and simple. My travels have been slow and steady, yet exciting and intriguing. In general, however, Spain is quite similar to most of Western Europe. Although the culture shifts from spot to spot, general trends underlie and emphasize its wonders. The food isn´t that fantastic, although everyone thinks its wonderful because they love the concept of tapas. For those who don´t know, all that means is that they give you a small portion of something, usually something far from fantastic. My first experience with tapas was watching the Barca game in a bar, ordering a hambuergeusa tapas, and receiving a bun fit for a half pounder filled with a burger that couldn´t stuff a White Castle box. Quite disappointing, although it wasn´t horrific. So the food is slightly inferior to most of Europe´s, save the Czechs, but the culture more than makes up for it.
In American night clubs, there is often free entrance before 11. In Spain, I have seen time and time again free entrance before 2, discounted drinks before 330, and regular entrance after that. People go out until 7 or even 9 on weekends, nap, pretend to work (Im still confused about this part), take their siesta, and then have a 9pm dinner. Its intense and relaxing, a traditionally conflicting pair which has made me love Spain even more.
The ability to have no set plans, the luxury to not know or care what comes next, makes me extremely jealous of Ari and Sam for having an extra 3 months of said paradise. We literally decided on a Friday evening to fly to Malaga instead of Seville, then learned of Dana Bernstein`s whereabouts in Granada. So what came next? We postponed our departure to Morocco (that morning) and headed off to the small town with a mandatory Tapas law.
[By mandatory law, I mean that whenever you order any drink at a bar or restaurant, they must offer to serve you tapas, even though you are permitted to turn them down.]
I think the only place I like more than Spain, in general, is the more specific Southern Spain. Life is even more relaxed, both for us travellers without an agenda and for them locals who pretend to work, and more enjoyable it appears. Granted that inflation is almost 13%, but they all enjoy how they go about their days, slowly, lazily, patiently, and most importantly, happily.
So time runs slowly, but simultaneously, it speeds through our days here. Our only plan was that we just purchased tickets to Paradise... literally. Jan27 we will arrive in the Canary Islands, and for anyone who doesn´t know where or what they are, check out wikipedia (even you Uncle Gary) and learn about Heaven on Earth. As far as other decisions go, I haven´t really made any, which is a small issue for post-April life. And by issue, all I mean is time that needs to be spent best, and with too many options, I have to put my finger down on any one thing. If you want to let me procrastinate even more, just distract me with another suggestion because it will be an idea in my head before you know it.

Part 2

So the semester has finished, the family has left, and part 2 has begun. What is part 2? It´s great, it´s relaxing, and it is still abroad, just totally different. I have moved out of Pod Karlovem 12, my beloved and cozy little flat for the past 4 months, and into my backpack. Of course there was the small intermission in which I lived in real nice hotels with the family, but that has disappeared too. So the executive summary (since the last post) first:
School ended, we partied a lot, I moved out. Ari and Sam have had fun in Prague, the family enjoyed touring us around, we had Chinese food on Christmas, then we went to Budapest then to Krakow. On the Warsaw-Krakow leg of the flight, Sam got really sick and needed oxygen at 10000m. We think he is OK, and a real, Western doctor diagnosed him with the same thing as the cooky, Polish doctor: stress (post-plane reaction). The Polish guy´s diagnosis did include all of the following: you are weak, will not have a good life, you are fragile, you are feminine, you have thin skin. Nowhere above did I include Sam´s story because he didn´t care for it. But when did we get the western doctor´s similar opinion? In Brussels, which comes now.
After a lovely evening at Babylon for the New Years, the fam departed for home, soon to be followed by our departure for Brussels. The SkyEurope flight was great, and we had 36 hours to do every touristy thing possible (and yes we did). We had waffles 4 times (and although the marginal returns diminished, when chocolate was added, the new good was far superior to even the first of the waffles), saw the mannequin pisse (who is absolutely hilarious because he is less than a foot tall and nobody realizes that beforehand), saw a protest outside of the EU buildings (Iranians PROTESTING Ahmadinajed), went through a museum (of military history which was massive and absolutely sick), and went to Cafe Delirium (world record holding bar for most beers: 2004. we tried about 20 of them). It was real fun, and we got up at 5am for our 9am flight out of Charleroi (the Bronx of Belgium as Guerric says) which is like 2 hours away. Little did Ari and Sam know how amazing RyanAir is.
RyanAir gives away free tickets. They charge you 5 euros a person to book online (and you can´t book in person or over the phone). They charge you 10 euros online to check a bag. The seats are tiny, the lines are long, there is mad chaos, and there is first come first serve seating. If you´re bag doesn´t fit in the box (and they check every bag), you must pay 20 euros to check it. Overall, they suck. The only thing worse is the Charleroi airport. For our flight, I thought there was tinted windows because it was so cloudy out. Visibility had been reduced to under 100m, so all flights were cancelled. Sam ran to the ticket office, was first in line, and was removed by security for being a security threat. 10 minutes later, the man said "I just didn´t know why you were standing here, but everything is good. You may get back in line¨ Since there were 6 flights cancelled, in those 10 minutes, Sam became number 750 in line. It might have been possible for Sam to have stayed in line during this ´security check,´ we aren´t really sure, but since Sam fell in love with the most beautiful Spanish girl that we had ever seen (the we includes Pierre), he waited next to the line not realizing he wasn´t in the line. Unlike everyone else, we had no plans; we decided to get our rebate online and just rebook. Outside, waiting for the hour bus back to Brussels, Sam met Pierre (in case you were confused from the previous sentence), an awesome Belgian who invited us to stay with his family.
Pierre´s family is some of the nicest people ever. Because we spent almost 3 days with them, there is too much to type about it and I am going to request that Ari not post about our lovely RyanAir experiences and just focus on our time with the Silverbergs, primarily their youngest son Guerric, a 20 year old who skipped high school to go to culinary school and cooked and took us around for 2 days once Pierre left for Barcelona (to read about our time with them, here is a link to ari´s blog: www.lifewithari.blogspot.com ). In short, they cooked unbelievably for us, bought us chocolates to bring home, took us out to see the city, took us to Belgian, nontouristy bars, took Sam to a doctor on a Sunday, took Sam to get blood tests on a Monday at 9am, rearranged their house and computer to turn it into a home entertainment system to watch the Big Lebowsky with us (they love it and Sam and Ari hadn´t seen it), and are just awesome.
So we left last night, went to Charleroi, stayed at a Formula1 hotel (which makes best western seem like a hilton), and woke up at 7 for our flight over here. We re-experienced the horrific airport, the horrific airlines, and the horrific people who don´t wait in the pre-formed line, don´t wait until the fasten seatbelt sign is off before they de-board, and don´t have any regard for other people. But you never know; not only were we some of those people, but Pierre was too.

update

finished the semester strong and lost my voice from consuming too much alcohol. still a little hoarse now (a week later) but it's practically gone. being with ari and sam has rocked, and the fam joined up too. we are now in budapest, enjoying the whole shabamm, then off to krakow and back to prague. the fam will be parting from us then, and sam, ari, and i will begin our trip to morocco (via brussels for beer and waffles and spain for not sure what yet)! merry xmas to all, and happy new years too!

Post-Berlin through Czech fina

Alritey, just a very quick update because I feel bad for not doing so in a while but am a little lazy.
Germany was fun, and I have no real desire to return - unless its Christmas time again. For one, Christmas in Berlin is aweseme, even though its Berlin. The wall was pretty strange, especially how there is literally just bricks in the middle of concrete to show you where it was and how it has no non-historical role anymore. From what I remember of about 24 hours in Munich but not at Oktoberfest, Munich was much more modern than Berlin. Although East and West are very integrated, a few areas still display socialist realism [Soviet architecture] and make you feel cold inside. The city has a ton of really high end shopping, something like multiple areas that are like Chicago's mag mile. One experience:
We walked into the Longchamps leather store, and I told the girls I was with that I loved it because they had free cookies on a table. As they laughed at me, a lady walked out and offered me champagne. She came around 15 minutes later with finger food. Not pigs in a blanket finger food, but high end, 5 star catering. Little brioches and miniature fruits/veggies stuffed with cheese. Fantastic. Truly. I then went to the Lacoste store, and then they repeated it. That is why I love Berlin shopping.
I also had Hoffbrau beer again - my favorite from Oktoberfest - the greatest beer in all the world. In Berlin they mix beer and juice to be an interesting but tasty afternoon drink. I had the mango, it was good. I also had a lot of hot wine at the x-mas markets, which is amazing and much better than Czech hot wine. I also had bratwurst, currywurst, and every other imaginable fantastic food, primarily meat. They were all delicious, as were the beers.
As far as social life, my program had a lot of party poopers - as in everyone wanted to stay in on Friday and many people wanteed to on Saturday. We went out friday and met a german pop/rock band named suboptimal who were cool, but weren't performing until we left. We even saw their advertisements in our hotel. Pretty cool.
Friday I had also bought homemade grappa at an x-mas market. This stuff was only 38% and was cherry-enough to be drunk straight. That is until you forget everything that happened. Oops.
Saturday we went to a bar at 4am. There was a 30 minute line, and it turned out to also be a techno rave. There were many stylish boys and a lot of crazy people, 2 things I would have known had it not been my first rave. I ended up sobering up by sitting at a bar and drinking jack, then water, then a lot more jack. When we left at 6am, the line was about 45 minutes long. This club is known to have people party all day Sunday too, as the schedule had DJs playing from midnight through 730pm. Also I learned how hard they party in Berlin via a British girl who told us she had a different agenda than us Americans as she wasn't expecting to go home before 9. Nuts.
I got 2hours of sleep, got woken in my boxers by our tourguide alerting us I had 2 minutes to make the bus, then walked around more. Went to the Holocaust memorial and museum which were both really meaningful and nice. Berlin absolutely despises Nazis, and goth people you would see in other places wearing Nazi swastikas actually wear anti-Nazi stuff in Berlin. WW2 isn't really mentioned in Berlin from what I understood, nor is the H word or N word (and not a black person). We also stopped in Dresden on the way home which is a sick city with crazy mixed architectural styles and another sweet market.
Since then, I had my czech final today which I rocked, partially because the hobbitt checked over my test before I turned it in to make sure I didn't have any real mistakes. I'm also trying to cook as little as possible and have thus not purchased any groceries in over a week. Laundry has turned into the same situation and is pretty bad, especially since I'm working out in a gym now. I hadn't realized how much I miss lifting until here, where I go to a gym run by the ex-Mr. Europe and 6th place Mr. World. I'll see them in about an hour, and most of the people reading this in under 2 weeks.