I'm back stateside, and it's good to be home. I don't want to bore you with my travel itinerary, but I will just use this opportunity to relay a few stories from my vacation (once I get my pictures organized, I may update this to include a few).
First, Morocco. If you're looking to visit an Arab nation for the first time (and I don't mean a mega-rich Gulf state), Morocco is a good place to start -- mostly friendly people, a pro-Western government, and no history of violent extremism. There is poverty, of course, but I did not see the overwhelming poverty that you associate with many parts of the Third World, and I was not panhandled once. The streets of
Fes do provide a little culture shock, though. Fes is an incredible city -- it was the imperial capital and supposedly
one of the world's largest cities in the Middle Ages. It's not as heavily touristed as Marrakech, Casablanca, etc., so it provided the authentic experience I was looking for. There are few things like being awakened for the first time by the Muslim call to prayer broadcast on loudspeakers from the nearest mosque. The old city, where I stayed, retains a medieval flavor, as there are no cars inside the walls and donkeys are used to transport goods and the streets are a confusing warren of alleys and dead-ends.
My time there was mostly problem-free and I had a good time bargaining for a new briefcase (I ended up with a 40% discount). I may have still paid a little too much for it, but the haggling experience gave me a story that was probably worth more than the extra price I paid. I must add, though, that of the 12 Westerners I met, 3 had their cameras stolen and 2 were subjected to some fairly serious threats. In retrospect, it was probably just bluster, but unnerving nonetheless.
For me, the only annoyance was the teenage boys who wanted to be my guide walking around the old city. There would be a fee, of course, and from what I understand, all they do is take you to shops where they get a commission on sales (and of course, your price, post-haggling, is that much higher). In order to confuse them, I wore an Italian football jersey, which led to some trying to talk to me in Italian. I turned them all down politely, but there were 2 who stuck with me and 2 American friends of mine for about 30 minutes. After 20 minutes, I was about ready to give in when one said, "We'll stop hassling you if you pay us." Obviously, I could not pay at that point. We ducked into a museum and lost them.
On our tour of Morocco, we spent one night taking a camel for about 90 minutes out into the dunes of the Sahara to sleep in a tent. My camel was remarkably friendly and trouble-free. And I don't think I have ever seen the stars as bright as they were in the desert sky.
After Morocco, I went to Poland. Next time, I would just skip Warsaw and head immediately to Krakow. Warsaw is all post-1945 Communist construction, but Krakow was not bombed during the war and the old city is amazing. Auschwitz is nearby and, obviously, is an overwhelmingly powerful experience.
I hired a driver for one day to take me out to some very rural parts of southeastern Poland looking for the hometowns of my maternal grandparents. It's a poor area and it's easy to see why many Polish-Americans, including current immigrants, come from that region. There are some nice modern houses being built, but the pre-war houses that still stand are more like log cabins, or even shacks. My driver was an intrepid fellow and had absolutely no shame in asking any old person we found (there didn't seem to be any over 65, though) if they knew anything about my family. One pointed us to a house that had been abandoned for about 25-30 years and belonged to my great-great-grandmother's family. Who knows if she had actually ever been in it, but walking inside it, I did feel like this was what I had come for.
