We get into out compartment and there are only guys speaking extremely loud – great! this looks like the nightmare kind of a company for a 6 hours ride.
Train starts moving, the men start moving to a different compartment and three pretty women showed up; Mark is happy! the woman sitting right by him is in her twenties and very pretty. Besides Mark there is only one man and he drives me crazy from the beginning; he talks very loud and he is trying to be funny. I decided to stand out on the corridor, looking at the scenery, but in the mean time I was thinking “dam it I am not going to let this guy to spoil my trip”.
I looked around and I find an another compartment; only 2 girls are in the compartment and they are half asleep. I asked permission to sit there, they don’t have a problem with me. I sat there quiet looking out to the Moroccan arid landscape ; there is beauty but it seems to me there is certain sadness in the plains, crops, low mountains, country roads; one in a while solitary figures showed up in the middle of nowhere, going to nowhere…….there is nothing around.
Half way the trip I go back to my compartment; I started talking to one of the girls. She is from Taza, but works in Tangier, she was going home for the weekend. She was westerly dressed, she seems very well educated and modern. I asked her about Morocco, about women status and life in general. She is happy to answer all my questions; as I was noticing on the street there are many women still very traditional and wearing traditional dresses, but the new generation is modern and has a choice between traditional and modern. There is still lots of pressure form society for a woman to have a certain status and behavior but this is more and more changing.
By the end of the trip we are all talking and laughing. Luckily my French and Mark’s French allows us to have a conversation. At one point the Moroccan guy offered us his business card to call him if we want to rent a place in Fez; I took his card just to be polite, but at the end of the trip he asked for his card back saying that he doesn’t want to deal with us “poor people”. I gave his card back saying “merci, ce pas grave” but in fact I wanted to say “I wouldn’t have called you big fat, cocky, stinky bastard (he was smelling really bad).
We got to Fez around 4 pm; I got off the train and I felt like I hit a wall; how I am going to survive in this heat?
We don’t have hotel reservations, so we have to look for a hotel. In Tangier we went to an Internet café and I wanted to book something on the Internet, but a room can not be booked the day before, plus as usually Mark is very impatient when I am trying to look up stuff on the Internet, so I gave up; now in this unbelievable heat I regret that I gave up and I am really mad with Mark, but I keep my mouth shout.
There are taxis in front of the rail station, but the taxi driver really wanted to rip us off by charging almost 10 times more than the correct price! so we got pissed off and decided to walk in the heat; to put it Very Mildly that was NOT fun at all. We found hotel Splendid, hotel that is recommended in Routard book. I was so happy, hotel is located in the new ville, it is nice, clean, has air conditioning and a small pool! Wow!
We settled is, showered (the shower was soooo good, I haven’t had a shower in a couple of days in the other place we barley had any hot water) and went for a walk. At this point my impressions about Morocco are about to change. Fez new ville is very nice, streets are wide, there are lots of lights, people walking around and having a good time. In the evening is still hot, but pleasant. We had dinner, went for a walk and in bed by 10 pm.
Ugh, I am tired but glad to be here! welcome to Fez to us.
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