"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love." (Ernest Hemingway)
The Asian-American flashpacker marvels at what he sees from the window. He looks astounded. “Hmm, the men seemingly dress like in Iran, in long trousers and with shoes.”
His gaze goes down towards his own outfit — shorts and flip-flops. Just minutes ago, he was bragging about the “dangerous” countries he had already visited on this trip – Iran! Jordan! Muslims! – but now he does not realise that Morocco is also a Muslim country.
Continue Reading →You can say a lot about Estonia (1), but not that it’s a mountainous country.
Okay, Lasnamäe was built on a plateau of limestone and extreme euphemists – the type of people who’d say that Donald Trump is one sandwich short of a picnic – call the region around Karksi-Nuia and Otepää ‘the Switzerland of the Baltics’. Let’s say they’ve never been in a hundred-kilometre radius of the Alps. But even with those terms in mind, you won’t need to pack climbing irons for the highest mountain molehill in the country. Not even now that it got a few metres higher. What did you expect from a landscape pimple with the name of Big Egg Mountain? And yes, there’s also a Small Egg Mountain. Reinhold Messner already calls for his mother.
Marrakesh is a loud, chaotic, messy, disordered jumble of streets and alleys…
In other words, a great city.
The petit taxi opens its door near the El Badi Palace and we inhale the atmosphere of Marrakesh. Quite literally. Our nostrils fill with the familiar smell of gasoline, exhaust fumes and sewer. Marrakesh transports us to Indonesia, to the Kraton in Yogyakarta for example. Unlike Agadir – knocked to the ground by an earthquake – Marrakesh largely retained its classic Moroccan character, at least within the old walled medina.
Continue Reading →Morocco is in a festive mood. Just before our arrival, the Atlas Lions qualified for the World Cup in Russia, at the expense of Marc Wilmots’ Ivory Coast, and it shows. Even days after the feat, men crowd in tea houses in Agadir to look at the decisive goals of Nabil Dirar and Mehdi Benatia from every possible camera angle, to watch replays of the exuberant celebrations and to listen to endless analyses. It colours our first days on African soil. Not that there’s a lack of colour.
Agadir may be known as the Saint-Tropez of Morocco, but we’re staying in an Airbnb near the souk, the local market, and the surrounding working-class neighbourhood contains enough local atmosphere to satisfy us. Old gentlemen trudge around in brown hooded robes, armed soldiers guard the market building and traffic is crazy. Not as crazy as in Asia, but crossing a street nevertheless feels like a suicide mission. Cargo motorbikes and rickety orange petit taxis zoom by on all sides. There are many white Renault 4s and old Peugeot motorbikes, the type of moped that was especially popular among Belgians who listened to hardstyle. Ramshackle is the keyword. The sunshades of cars are often home-made from cardboard, the pavements are uneven and contain potholes, and empty water bottles, packaging and cigarettes are lying around everywhere.
Alright, but wasn’t Agadir the Saint-Tropez of Morocco? Yes, the view of the city changes completely when you get near the Atlantic Ocean. A nine-kilometre beach with a wide pedestrian boulevard next to it, surrounded by flower pots and palm trees, white luxury hotels with swimming pools, expensive restaurants, casino’s and discotheques: it’s a different world. Agadir is the resort capital of Morocco, but leaves no doubt about its values: “Allah, king, country” is written in giant letters on the flanks of the hill with the remains of the kasbah, clearly visible from the beach. Although the inhabitants of Agadir may be happy to turn a blind eye in exchange for enough dirhams.
Do not think that devout Muslim women throw off their headscarf ritually and run to the beach for a topless tanning session, but still: the morals are slightly lighter around the beach compared to the rest of the city, and – by extension – most of the rest of the country. Agadir tolerates Germans in Bermuda shorts and damsels in two-piece bikinis. Some restaurants sell alcohol fairly openly. We read on the internet that Moroccan tourists come to Agadir for everything they can’t or dare not do in their hometown. Think: drinking, smoking, partying and shagging. We did not notice that, although couples are perhaps sitting closer together than usual.
Every Moroccan tries to sell you something. It starts at the airport, with taxi rides to the city centre. No matter how determined you are to take the bus, cars keep halting at the bus stop and will automatically lower their prices — until the minimal extra charge of a taxi barely outweighs the inconvenience of a local bus. On the beach and on the promenade, hawkers sell mint tea and coffee, fruits, doughnuts, surf lessons, jewellery, amethysts and other hollowed glittering stones, T-shirts and balloons. Some of the vendors are stubborn – like an annoying fly that keeps coming back after you’ve swiped it. Most are respectful and remain friendly, one throws an Arab curse at us.
On our first afternoon in Agadir, we walk towards the beach when a man named Ibrahim starts a chat. He is Berber and walks with us in the direction of the Berber souk, the market where he sells spices. Agadir is the capital of the Moroccan Berbers, the original inhabitants of North Africa.
“It’s socially appropriate for Berbers to marry at the age of 20”, he says, “At 37, I’ve been married for almost 20 years now. When my parents thought it was ready, they went into the Sahara to find a wife for me.”
“And, did they choose well?” I ask.
Ibrahim shrugs his shoulders. “Bof, I’ve had my problems. But so do men who can choose for themselves. I have my tactics of dealing with it. Whenever my wife bursts into tears, I’ll leave her alone. By the time I return in the evening, the situation has usually cooled without blowing.”
Ibrahim points out the difference between Moroccan and Belgian Moroccans. “Here, we are much more relaxed, calm and open to foreigners. The Moroccans over there are much more competitive. Of course, they all compete for the same jobs.” After which he kindly invites us to come and drink tea at his home. Anete’s face, however, is a thundercloud. She wants to go to the beach straight away. To maintain the peace in the household, I reject the man’s offer. Only afterwards do I learn that it is considered very rude to say no to an offer of tea.
It is a missed opportunity to learn more about the tea culture in this country. The rituals are so extensive that beginners need a manual to avoid mistakes. If you order tea in the south, you will receive a metal saucer with a small silver kettle with green tea. You’ll also get two glasses – one with a bunch of fresh mint in it, the other turned over – and one or more bricks of sugar. You can take that literally, they’re huge lumps of sugar.
You have to put the mint in the kettle, grind it well with a brick of sugar and then pour the tea, letting it drop into the glass from a height. Then you pour the tea back into the kettle. Repeat the procedure about three times, to mix the sugar well. There you go, you are a Moroccan tea master. Mint tea holds a central place in the life of Moroccans. They even call it Moroccan whisky. Wherever you go, you see men – only men – sitting in tea houses, tables facing the street. Usually, you don’t see women.
We start our trip through Morocco in Agadir for a reason. Agadir is famous for its intense sun, 300 days a year. It’s a matter of resupplying the vitamin D deficiency we gained in Estonia. But Agadir is more than just the beach. After a swim, we run up the mountain that towers above the city, over a gravel path among arid bushes, trees and cacti, in a hurry to reach the kasbah in time to enjoy the views of the marina and the fish harbour, and the sunset which colours the rugged landscape in pastel pink hues.
And, just because we can:
Life on the rhythm of a city like Agadir certainly has its peculiarities, which tickle the imagination of the traveller. The garlic sellers who trade their wares on terraces. The shoe polishers who go around with a wooden bench on which they brush up the footwear of anyone who requests it. Just like in the black and white films. The garbage collectors that pull out with horse and cart after dark. But Agadir is also a new city. An earthquake destroyed the old version in the 1960s and killed a third of its inhabitants. We will only fully realise this later during this trip, when we visit other parts of Morocco, like Marrakesh. But about that, dear reader, you will hear everything in the next part.
First published in Dutch on Tom’s blog.
When you turn 23, you party until the moon becomes a sun, and drink enough beer to single-handedly keep AB-Inbev’s business figures up. It’s the celebration of your life and all your friends are invited! Then, seemingly the next day, you turn 33 and you feel weary, beat, exhausted. You’d love to go to the bar, but how about getting rid of that sleep deprivation? You need a good soak in a jacuzzi and a decent night of sleep. That’s the story of life, dear friends. One day, you’re young and the night is endless, the next you’re contemplating the value of different supermarket loyalty cards. One day, your hobbies include sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. The next, you like birdwatching and spa visits, and consider fleece blankets the best thing since sliced bread.
That is why we board a train to Jõhvi on my birthday. I might be getting old, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let life lull me to sleep. Trains in Estonia look like carrots, but they’re comfortable, fast and have free wifi. We sit opposite a guy in khaki camouflage colours who’s slurping coffee. He leaves the train in Tapa, which translates as Kill. Tapa is the home of a large military base. I think it’s brilliant that the Estonian army is based in Kill. More enterprises should be that transparent. Think about McDonald’s opening its HQ in a place called Fat City, Obesity or Diabetes, Facebook in Fuck Your Privacy, or the Belgian train company NMBS in Always Late. It would so much fun!
Anyway, there’s a reason why I’m mentioning that soldier with his coffee on the train. By the time we arrive in Jõhvi, we’re dying for a coffee. Alas, Jõhvi, like most other mid-sized Estonian cities, is deprived of many facilities. At least if you’re not looking for a mall, because, like most other mid-sized Estonian cities, Jõhvi has malls a-plenty. All the cafés are closed. Good thing we’re not in a hurry, so we idle away until the bar of Wironia Hotell opens its door.
We step inside and wait in line behind two middle-aged ladies who discuss loudly which cake they should have with their alcoholic cocktails. It’s ten in the morning on a weekday. I order a piece of cake with cranberries. After all, we’re in Jõhvi. Cranberry translates into Estonian as jõhvikas. Even though the two have no real connection, I like the logic behind ordering jõhvikakook in Jõhvi. It makes almost as much sense as building an army camp in Kill.
According to some Estonians, Jõhvi is the “real” border of Estonia. Everything that lies east of Jõhvi is predominantly Russian-speaking. In fact, Jõhvi is too, with two-thirds of the town ethnic Russians. We stand in line for the ATM between Estonian Russians and buy a raincoat in a kiosk from a Russian. It’s not weird – by now, I’m used to life in Lasnamäe. In one of Tallinn’s most Russian neighbourhoods, you can witness a marital drama over a bottle of vodka any time of the day.
Jõhvi’s only landmarks worth mentioning are the concert hall from glass – which spearheads the attempts to re-establish something of an Estonian identity in this town – and two churches, one orthodox and one Lutheran. The latter, the Jõhvi Church of St. Michael, witnessed the execution of two vicars, in 1918 and in 1941, which, according to Bradt’s Estonia guidebook, gives it “the macabre distinction of being the only church in Estonia with two martyrs.”
We jump onto our bicycles, leave Jõhvi northwards, direction Toila, and cross the pühajõgi, the Holy River, which is more like a creek than anything Grand, Big or Larger Than Life.
I like that about Estonia, that everything is on a human scale. The country doesn’t try to be more impressive than it actually is. It’s the anti-America. Even its highest mountain is nothing more than a molehill with pretension. It’s called Big Egg Mountain, for fuck’s sake, hardly a name that strikes fear into the hearts of mountaineers. In Estonia, even your grandmother can summit the 20 highest peaks of the country in one day. To make it more challenging, Estonians make that hike on Christmas Day. Possibly they do so while still drunk from the previous day’s celebrations, as that seems to be a thing with the people from this wondrous country.
We turn right after the Holy River, cycle past a lonely wild strawberry picker and through the spruce forests. We encounter two cars before we reach Kotinuka. As soon as we leave the village and its 40 inhabitants behind, the road turns dusty and we’re on our own.
Famous for its spa, Toila always attracted a lot of wealthy Russians and Baltic Germans. We’re staying in Voka, on the other side of Oru Park, in a lovely cabin with access to a swimming pond. Which is all we need after marinating for a couple of hours in the Estonian summer sun – yes, climate change is real! It’s not our only swimming option. Toila has a pebble beach which – I can attest to – is a great place for winter swimmers, even in summer. Not for the faint of heart!
Oru Park once held a castle, built by a certain Grigory Yeliseyev, a rich merchant from Saint Petersburg who made his fortune with a shop on Nevsky Prospekt. Now, I’m not sure if Russia has its own version of Monopoly. But if it has, Nevsky Prospekt is probably the most expensive street on the board. So yeah, Yeliseyev had the dough to construct a fabulous palace in Italian renaissance style in Estonia and he even had the money to swap Toila for Paris when the net was closing in on rich bastards like himself. A few Estonian industrials bought the property in 1934 and gifted it to the young Estonian state. The palace in Toila served as a holiday house for Konstantin Päts, the first Estonian president.
Nowadays, there is no palace to be found in Toila. The Red Army, retreating from advancing German forces, burned it to the ground in 1941. By that time, Päts was already dwindling away in a psychiatric institution somewhere in Siberia, where he kept insisting that he was the president of Estonia. A sad end, both for the castle as well as for Päts. Luckily, the garden has regained its former glory, with fountains, flower beds, tree-lined avenues and little trails that meander through the scenery. On a cliff, we find Päts’ little coffee pavilion. The president constructed a rock garden on the slopes, the biggest of its time. The pavilion overlooks the Baltic sea and the sunrise. We can see all the way to Sillamäe. Not a bad place to have a cup of coffee! I start to understand why Päts spent his free time in this slice of paradise.
O, by the way: forgot what I said about the pühajõgi, the Holy River, not being grand. In Toila’s Oru Park, it cuts the landscape in half. Which allows for hilly views uncharacteristic of this part of Estonia. To reach Toila, we have to zip down the hill on our bicycles and, err, toil our way up again. It’s a good thing that the spa awaits on the other side. After soaking in various baths and saunas for a couple of hours, we blissfully swoop down the hill again, accompanied by the most glorious of sunsets. Which idiot said Estonia couldn’t be grand?
ONWARDS: From Toila, we cycled to Sillamäe, the most Russian place in Estonia.