Morocco: Fez pictures and diary

A boy taking the family's bread to a baker

He is the Chef, waiter, manager but also cleaning personnel.
This is a Moroccan restaurant for locals.
Remember: eat where the locals eat and not where the tourists eat!!

A peak through the door of a mosque

Boxing club in the building of a former synagogue

The view from our terrace

January 15, 2005

Foolishly we are in a rush and we jump in the first bus we see. Small mistake. Later we realize that we need to change bus twice to get to Fez. After some nervousness we relax and enjoy the adventure. We change bus in Sauk el Abea and we head to Sidi Kacem. Here we have to wait for half an hour, so Ervin decides to go to the coffee shop near the station. He just wanted to buy two coffees in some plastic cup, but the waiter seems to know how to do things properly. A bit of “arguing” but the waiter is stubborned. So the following happens. Ervin leaves the coffee shop as a gentleman, behind him an extremely elegant waiter in black suit and white shirt carrying on a tray: two caffe au lait in exquisite china, two spoons, and sugar. Ervin and the waiter go through the open air station full of sheep, staring people, and shouting kids. The waiter behaves like he would do this everyday. Maybe he does.

From Sidi Kacem we take the bus to Fez where we arrive after 16.00. We are looking for the medina and eventually we enter to a part of the city which seems quite old. With some help we find a hotel: Hotel Parc. After a long shower we hit the city trying to figure out where are we. We think that we are in the medina, but not quite. Things are not matching. Later we ask other tourists: they say that yes, we are in the medina. But things still don’t match.

On one street we get into conversation with a bit drunk guy: he tells us that he is Jewish and the head of the team which restores the mellah (Jewish district) and could take us for a tour. We agree and five minutes later we are walking on small, dark streets. A bit scary… We bump into some friend of our “guide” and he asks for a donation. He smells alcohol, so no “donation”. Our “guide” says that he will take us to an amazing place. After a couple of minutes we reach a building that does not “promise” much and we enter. The first thing we see is a boxing ring in the middle of the hall, guys and girls training. We are thinking: what is so special here? When we look up we understand: the building used to be a synagogue! The decorations are still visible, in some places there is still some writing in Hebrew, while the place for women is “home” to the couch. We ask our “guide” how he feels seeing this. He says that soon the American Jewish community will buy the building which will be restored as it used to be. We ask the boxers how they feel doing sports in a building which was synagogue. They just shrug shoulders and smile. They don’t care.When the tour ends our “guide” asks for a “donation”. Seeing our doubtful faces he lowers his request to a pack of cigarettes. We buy him Marlboro for 40 dirhams. This means 4 euros!!

We return to our hotel, we sit on the balcony, listen to Maroccan radio and have a nice supper. As we sit we hear the call for prayer. The voice of the muezzin vibrates in the air and for a moment only this voice exists. The sounds of cars, scooters and other noises disapper. Only for a moment.

January 16, 2005

The first call for prayer wakes us up. The sound echoes throughout the empty city. It’s a bit after five. The morning is chilly, so we make a tea and with our blankets go out on the balcony. While we have breakfast we watch how the city wakes up.

Later we hit the road again and try to find the medina. After 2 hours of fruitless tries we “hire” a 6-7 year old kid to take us to the famous tanneries. The kid may be 6-7 but he speaks 4 languages and has all sort of tricks for us. When we start our way to medina we realize that until now we’ve been in the wrong place. We reach the tannery 20 minutes later and pay our small guide: he wants more money, but we just give him the amount that we agreed on before.

The tannery is full of unbearable smells, those who have stomach problems watch out!! After some minutes we get used to the smell so we walk around: the sheep skin is prepared in the same way for the last couple of centuries. It really worth to check out. When we leave the tannery we go to a small workshop where we try to buy a wallet. Eventually we end up buying other stuff too, but they don’t have wallet which could fit our European size money. But that’s no problem! Under our eyes they just make a wallet in the size that we want, with the pattern we choose. In the afternoon we walk around in the medina, take photos and do some small shopping: spices and bread.

When we get back to our hotel, we meet Mehdi, the owner and he tells us that we have a good possibility to reach Sahara the next day. His brother has a small auberge near Rissani and we could do reservations through him. We could leave Fez the next morning with a “grand taxi” which goes to Rissani and from there his brother would take us to the Sahara. We like this idea quite much, so we seal the deal with a cup of mint tea. Ervin buys a huge tuareg scarf which might come handy in the desert. We hit the bed late in the night thinking about the yellow Sahara.