Fez - Chaotic, Mesmerizing and Annoying
Trip Start
May 05, 2008
1
11
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Trip End
May 09, 2009
Fes,
Morocco
Monday, June 9, 2008
Itinerant musicians
. It is a gigantic maze of bustling narrow avenues jampacked with shops and restaurants, and very narrow alleys through which a person can barely squeeze through. Walking its streets, one wanders past hundreds of shop-owners who try to be your best friend within 0.5 seconds; one has to squeeze past donkeys carrying heavy loads meant for the tanneries, and rubs shoulders with some people dressed in costumes that haven't changed in a thousand years, and then the next moment meeting the haughty glance of modern Moroccan girls dressed in clothes that cover them from head to toe, yet manage to be skin-tight. The place really gets rocking late in the evening, when the night's coolness allows the people to leave their homes (which are non-descript on the outside but one can glance glimpses of luxurious furniture inside). Throughout the day, one can hear Arabic music blaring from shops, which makes it hard to hear the regular plaintive chants of the hundreds of muezzins who call to prayer almost simultaneously. While the place seems at times to have changed little over the past few hundred years, one sees many foreign influences, ranging from the Moroccan version of Kris-Kross giving out free concerts for a festival currently ongoing, to Bollywood movies, Italian-style gelaterias and the ubiquitous satellite dishes bringing Euro championship soccer to tea-houses. GO Romania: they tied France today!The place is notorious for its annoyances, from the somewhat overly pushy/friendly shop and restaurant owners (which we're getting used to); to faux guides, of which we had the unpleasant experience earlier today
Village on the way
. We wanted to visit the famous Fez tanneries, since the most interesting and beautiful buildings, the mosques are off-limits to us. We ran into a fellow which gave us a "free" tour (we were prepared to give him something fair) , which we found to be very interesting since we saw first-hand the harrowing conditions in which the workers conduct their daily business.We then meandered through alleys which we would have never took by ourselves and got to see first-hand a luxurious Moroccan home which we entered through a hole in the wall as well as the working conditions of people heating up the hammam waters.The fellow then took us to the obligatory craft store and when we decided we had enough, using the excuse that we were tired and hungry, he told us he would leave us at a nice restaurant just around the corner. Since we didn't know the city and he told us he would leave us on a main street any minute now, we had no choice but to follow him to the restaurant. Which turned out to be another luxurious place in a narrow alley, with English-only menus displaying prices 5 times more than other restaurants for the exact same food. We gave the fellow 45 dirhams (6 dollars) for the 1.5 hour tour (which we knew to be a fair price from reading the guide and from asking around); he started complaining that it wasn't enough and that he had personally paid the tannery to get us there. When we pointed out that he initially had said the visit was free; he said that the visit to the first tannery rooms was free, but visiting the other rooms costs money! We called him on the bullshit, pointed out that he had also made some commission from a small item we bought in the store, took our leave, and then left the overpriced restaurant without spending a cent
A Fez shopping avenue
. Virginia was proud that Tavi stood up for ourselves, since she had to leave him to handle the whole affair by himself (women are generally not respected enough so that voicing their opinion makes a difference; other than the man being asked what is wrong with him to let his wife talk in public like that: and yes we did get that comment before). The experience was interesting and we probably only somewhat (by a factor of 2 perhaps, which is not that bad by tourist standards here) overpaid for our small purchase, so while all in all we got out of this fairly well; the whole thing left a bad taste in our mouths. So far; this fits in with our experience of Morocco: the first impression is rather bad, then we grow to find the place very interesting and even somewhat pleasurable, only to end up with a bad taste in our mouths. We find that the place is somewhat charming, most people are quite friendly and that the place's biggest danger seems to be being conned in giving out way more money than needed. Most people seem to work really hard and appear honest, but the whole experience is spoiled by a few who make their living from targetting tourists. We are learning very quickly how to deal with them (it becomes easy to see which people to ignore or say no to after a while), and we think that this will be good experience for our future travels through India or Egypt. We will be staying here for another day, after which we're off to the even grander but more hassle-free city of Marrakech and then on to the relaxed coastal city of Essaouira, which will complete our Moroccan experience. We will try to upload some pictures tomorrow.
