Accountant Adventures: I’m grounded

Casablanca Shore

We got to the train station in Marrakesh by 11am and bought tickets for the 1pm train to Casablanca. The train station in Marrakesh looks and feels very new and has restaurants, shops and free wifi. For breakfast we had croissants with orange juice and then before we left I got some McDonalds. I am pretty sure that I am addicted to McDonalds and its good that they don’t have them on every corner here or I would never eat anything else. I didn’t get a burger because I didn’t want to mess with telling them to make it plain so I got chicken McNuggets and fries, they both tasted very authentic in comparison with the way they are in America.

When we went to get on the train shortly before 1pm we hadn’t known that Marrakesh is the end of the line and the train would be waiting. The train already had lots of people on it who had known and were waiting for the train to leave. We climbed on the train and started our way back looking for empty spaces. As I said before there are 8 seats per chamber and any chamber that had at least 2 open spaces I would ask if they had 2 open seats available and I was told time and again that all of the seats were taken despite it being obvious that a family was trying to hog all of the space for themselves. We finally found a spot that had 3 open seats and we claimed ours. The men in the chamber, I don’t know why I’m using that word, even rearranged themselves so that Julie and I could sit together.

There is supposed to be AC in each chamber but it wasn’t working in ours and it was very hot. I’m pretty sure that I was slow roasting and in another hour or two I would have been ready to eat. I could watch the sweat droplets form on my arm and then evaporate. It was that hot. Imagine the hottest you have ever been, where you thought, if it were any hotter than this I would surely die. Well you don’t die you will just be miserable.

One of the guys in our chamber left and another man came in and started to stare at Julie and me. I would look at him and make eye contact to try to get him to stop but he would just lock eye contact and continue to stare. Julie tried to ignore him by closing her eyes and I tried to look out the window but I could still feel his eyes on me. I would have said something but I doubted that he would speak English and then it would have just been an awkward conversation with everyone in the chamber staring at us. I don’t know why but it made me really angry and I made myself leave the chamber to stand in the hallway so that I couldn’t feel his eyes on me anymore.

Before coming to Casablanca I looked for hotels in Casablanca that were close to the train station because Julie will be taking the train to the airport and I will be taking the train to my next town. When we got to Casablanca all the cab drivers wanted more money than was necessary and again I got annoyed. We talked a driver down a little bit and in the grand scheme of things it was $5 total for the ride, but it still upsets me when people try to rip me off and then play innocent.

We are staying at a youth hostel and I have never stayed at one before. I told Julie that I was worried I might be too old, but that apparently isn’t a problem because there are lots of older people than me staying here. We have a “private” room and I put that in quotes because part of the ceiling is missing and opens up to a larger room so that we can hear other people talking while we are sleeping.

Our hostel is near the water and we walked along the main road on the water to explore the town some. We found the Hassan II Mosque close by which is the 3rd largest mosque in the world and the tallest building in Morocco. We weren’t dressed properly to go in and so we stayed outside and took some pictures. We spied through a gate near the mosque where construction is going on the ocean and some people playing in it. We looked for an entrance but could only see the construction zone. We decided to venture in and found the rocks that all of the men were playing on and swimming and fishing in. The water was very dirty with trash and there wasn’t really a beach only lots of very sharp looking rocks.

At the hostel I saw a guy who was wearing a Nike shirt that said “Quit your job”. He asked at the front desk, “How do you make the showers hot?” The manager laughed at him and said something about it being the summer and hot showers being unnecessary. I agreed with the manager until I tried to take a shower this morning and realized that not only is the water not hot it is colder than any water I have managed to buy from refrigerator or freezer anywhere in morocco.

We had a couple of errands to run before we were going to do touristy things in Casablanca. I wanted to buy a backpack to put my stuff in and give Julie my bag to take home with her, so she could get her stuff there and I could unload some unwanted stuff. First we looked in the Medina and all they had were junk backpacks that didn’t fit right and would surely have fallen apart in a few days. Then we asked around to find where there might be a sporting goods store and went to two different places in opposite sides of town, neither of which had anything remotely useful. I decided to scrap the idea and deal with my bag and Julie would just buy a cheap duffel bag from the market. Then we tried to follow a walking tour of Casablanca but I kept getting us lost. After what seemed like forever we were able to find the walking tour which consisted of mostly old post offices and old hotels. It was probably the worst tour ever.

I didn’t plan well this morning and I did not put on sunscreen for the first time since leaving America and I am feeling really sun burnt. I’m just sitting here now waiting for the red and tenderness to come.

Tomorrow Julie leaves to go back to America and I am planning to head to Rabat, unless something more exciting strikes me before then.