Morocco: Chefchaouen

The village of Chefchaouen is a calm respite for the weary Moroccan traveler. While Fes was fascinating and eye opening, it was also busy, crowded, and demanding on the senses. Chefchaouen is much quieter. It has a picturesque medina, nestled in the beautiful Rif mountain backdrop, and filled with white-washed homes with dramatic blue accents.

We immediately adored the serene village. Every corner we turned was another charming building with a unique feature, decorative door, local good being sold, or mint tea to be consumed. The pace if Chefchaouen was very slow, offering us time to enjoy simply being, and not as much doing. The highlights to see there included the ruins of an old mosque that are on a hill offering views of the whole village, and the Kasbah, or fortress, in the center of the city.

Local women washing their clothing on the hill

What made our experience this enchanting village even better was the friends that we made on the bus ride there from Fes. Hearing English in Morocco in February is not the most common occurrence, so when we saw another young American couple, we struck up conversation. They were our age, living in the midwest, and we found many similarities between us. We ended up spending our entire time in Chefchaouen with them, instantly feeling like we had known them for years! We were thankful for other travelers to exchange experiences and observations with. 

While we only spent two half-days in Chefchaouen, they was filled with stunning scenery and new friendship, so we hold those two half-days dear to our hearts! But soon enough, we loaded the bus, and sat through the four hour bus ride back to Fes, where we would leave early the next morning for our desert tour. 

Morocco: Fes

 “Semana Blanca” is a week in February that is typically used for locals to retreat to the mountains and get their dosage of "blanco"( or "white".. as in snow). While most head to the Pyrenees nearby for a week of skiing, we were both more interested in going somewhere warm! So, South we went... to Morocco!

Living in Spain, most of the people we know have been to Morocco. This worked out nicely for us because we were able to survey those we knew and get some insight about planning our itinerary. While many tourists retreat to Marrakesh, we received a lot of mixed feedback about the city. We ultimately decided to skip it, and head straight to what we were told is the more authentic city - Fes. 

The Blue Gate - the icon of Fes and entrance to the old town.

Fes is a smaller city in northern Morocco. The city itself is divided into three main sections, the medina (old town), the new town, and the Jewish quarter. The entire Fes medina is a UNESO world heritage site, and the largest medina in the world, so we decided to stay in a Riad (guesthouse) right in the middle of it! There is no easing yourself into the medina - upon entrance through the Blue Gate, you're immediately met with cafes, restaurants, artisans, clucking chickens, and wide-loaded donkeys.  Welcome to Fes! 

 Many of our travel expert friends advised us to hire a guide to tour the medina, but we figured this would not be necessary, and we would rather explore on our own. Our first afternoon there, we attempted to do just that….and quickly realized that we were wrong! There was NO way to make it through the medina without a guide.

Besides the streets being windy alleys, keep in mind that Morocco is not a place we could even attempt to "blend in". We speak no Arabic or French, are white, and were traveling in the off season... so we stuck out like sore thumbs. Because we were so obviously tourists, shop owners were especially excited to get our business, so every single shop that we passed, we were hassled to come in. This got tiring very quickly, as we couldn't walk for more than two feet without saying, "No thanks, Not now, Maybe another time..." So we headed back to our Riad, and decided to hire a guide the next day.

After eating some street food (literally), we found Cafe Clock, the westerner's safe haven. This cafe is constantly packed, and offers the most variety of food that you will find in the medina (hence why we ate four meals there). As is common in Morocco, it offers a beautiful roof terrace, which we also frequented.

For our first meal, we ate street food, which, as you can see, was literally made on the ground, on the side of the street.
Good news: It was tasty and only cost us the equivalent of 3 euros to total!

The view from the Cafe Clock terrace

With our hired guide the next day, we saw the medina in a very different light. We informed our guide that we had no intention of purchasing anything, so he passed this along to shop owners before we even entered. Thankfully, this meant that they did not spend hours (seriously) trying to make a sale to us. Fes is very famous for it’s tanneries (where leather is made), and carpet shops. Our guide took us down alleyways and through doors that we never would have found on our own. What would look like a broken down door leading to nothing would open up to an entire carpet factory. We were fascinated by the making process and were thankful for a local to reveal them to us.  We also had so many questions about the culture, and he was very informative. Conclusion: HIRE A GUIDE! Well worth it.

A local man working on his tapestry.

A common site in the medina.

The tanneries, where leather is dyed using different natural elements.

One of the mosques that we visited.

While being in the medina is exciting, it is also overwhelming to the senses. With very small streets, the strong scents of tanneries, donkeys, and Moroccan food easily fill every inch of space. One of our favorite things to do was exit the medina, because just across the main street is a beautiful hill with a panoramic view of the old city. From here, we could see that it is truly a huge maze. We really enjoyed retreating to this hill, where we could find peace and quiet. It gave us some space to process our observations of the city and culture that we were experiencing full force in the medina.

The view of part of the medina - this doesn't even show the whole thing.

After a couple of days in Fes, we were ready for a calmer pace, so we set off for a small, blue mountain town, which we will tell you about in the next post!

Skiing in Switzerland

Living in Barcelona, we are not too far from the Pyrenees mountain range. Many people frequent the mountains to ski in the winter. While we have thought this sounded like fun, Devin has never skied before, and Rachel has not skied since high school. Before we committed to bringing all of our winter gear over to Europe, we wanted to give it a test run to see if skiing was something we were really interested in doing. What better place to do it than Switzerland?

We flew to Switzerland to meet up with Sarah and Peter, and let them show us the ropes. We drove to Airolo to hit the slopes. Since Devin was brand new, we thought it would be wise to get him a lesson. Unfortunately, the instructor only spoke Italian. Between broken English, and a lot of demonstration, they made it work. The weather on the mountain was BEAUTIFUL to look at, but it didn't create great ski conditions, as it snowed heavily all day. When skiing, this means that your goggles are covered, your layers are soaked, and the mountain is so white that it is hard to see anything. With the challenges presented, we managed to make it through a good few hours of runs, and laughed at ourselves a lot! At the end of the day, we really enjoyed it, but were ready to get warm!

The professionals

Near Lugano, there is a large facility called “Splash and Spa” . It is as cool as it sounds… it has multiple pools of different temperature, a swim up bar, four different waterslides, and a whole spa area. A big group of people from TASIS met there for the evening, and it was the perfect way to treat our bodies after a day of skiing! (Unfortunately, I was too busy relaxing in the water, so I don't have any pictures!)

Sunday morning we were able to relax, walk around the river, and make gluten-free pancakes before heading back to Barcelona.

It is weekends like these that make us so thankful to have family nearby to spend a weekend with, and for budget airlines that make it possible!

East Germany Part 2: Berlin

If you haven’t been to Berlin, or Europe generally, this East German city is a must. An explosion of war history and cultural splendor, Berlin seems ever in the crosshairs of ideology and struggle. In only the last century, it has felt the tides of Nazism, Communism, economic ruin, liberty, modernity, and multiculturalism. Our meager three days were quite a crash course in each category.

We rode in by bus from Dresden and settled into our apartment on the East side of the old wall. Our introduction to the neighborhood was through its culinary diversity, with our dining lineup in the first 48 hours as follows: Indian, Vietnamese, Thai, and Mexican (after a “Bahamas” bar with sandy floors and palm trees). Additionally, we picked one of the many vegan places, had some more Indian, and Devin got Curry Wurst from a famous stand under the bridge. After his very interesting haircut experience in the predominantly Arabian neighborhood (his nose and ears were on fire at one point), we spent several hours wandering the “hipster” West side with its typically trendy coffee shops and novelty establishments.

Of course, a walking tour was just what we needed to make sense of the many cultural and historical layers. Our guide was especially energetic and insightful – enough to keep 30 people riveted in 45F weather for nearly three hours. We started at the Brandenburg gate and got caught up on German history before the 19^th century. Passing the modern Capitol buildings, we heard about WWI and the financial struggles that followed. Nazi architecture was next, and we stood in the now parking lot directly above Hitler’s suicide bunker, next to the park where the body was discarded and unsuccessfully burned by his fleeing guards.

From there we zigzagged for a bit along a brick path, running the whole length of downtown, representing the location of the Berlin Wall - only part of which remains today. Ubiquitous Communist architecture and public propaganda provide a sort of blast-from-the-past, given East Berlin’s continuing economic struggles and inabilities to rebuild and modernize, unlike its Western half. Even today, one may pass entire families on the street who have only been reunited as of 30 years ago, some discovering that spouses and even children had been spying on them for decades or were even responsible for the disappearing of particular loved ones with unapproved political thoughts. From Nazi vets to Communist spies, from German and Russian identities to a swirling mix of immigration and international student life, Berlin is a dizzying mural of European endeavors.

The remaining part of the wall.

The German Reichstag

The Berlin Duomo

Another beautiful church, amazingly unscathed throughout wartime.

We appreciated the many monuments and museums, often free of charge, that help piece together Berlin’s history and accent its very real and deeply human aspects. Most striking was the Jewish holocaust memorial, an entire city block dedicated to a powerful artistic expression of the magnitude of suffering and death, with an underground museum containing a seemingly endless amount of pictures, writings and artifacts from those affected by the concentration camps. One great lesson to be learned is that racism against Jews is unique in human history: it has always been marked by an exterminationist intent. Marked not merely by a dislike or an avoidance of the hated, or a desire to see them set back or exploited, but a pathological obsession with their complete annihilation. Further, Jew hatred never stops with just the Jews; how many non-Jews suffered and died because of Hitler's war on the Jews?

Also striking was the “dead zone” between East and West Berlin, a sandy area seeded with mines and sharp objects, between the two parts of the wall that had top edges designed to be insurmountable, and patrolled 24/7 by dogs and snipers on a kill order. We heard several incredible stories of brave individuals who found ingenious ways to get across, including zip lines, pole vaults and even catapults. It is quite telling when a country has to build a wall… to keep people IN. 

A section of the East Side Gallery (a mural painted on a portion of the remaining part of the wall).

Overall, we left Berlin with twice as many questions as observations, with very satisfied stomachs, and with an unfolding desire to visit again soon – or more than just visit??