Michelle's Travel Blog!

I co-wrote this piece with Sylvia Needel from Cazenovia College. I think it sums up my trip nicely.

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21 June

On June 21st, streets are closed to cars while citizens squish bodies to catch melodies. From the popular American cover-band with the horrible American accents singing Maroon 5, to the flowing skirts and dreaded haired music of African drums, to speakers booming techno and disco balls sending sparkles along crumbling churches, people from the smallest child to cute elderly couples holding hands enjoy the sense of community togetherness that the annual music festival in France brings. Beer bottles fill hands and street gutters while the younger generations climb into fountains and ride regal protecting horse statues in their underwear. Continuing into the wispy wisps of morning air, the entire city becomes unified in celebration and in musical exploration. 

14 June

My relationship with France sent me into a bit of a panic when, again, (AND AGAIN), their credit card machines did not accept my credit card. I knew my bank account was dangerously low, but I didn’t realize how low until my card would only let me take out 40 Euros. The ticket: 58 Euros and some change. Already tired from waking up at 3am to take the flight from Barcelona to Paris, I couldn’t handle the fact that not only was I literally flat broke, but also very much in debt from all the times I had used my credit card. I frantically searched through my belongings, looking for the next 18 and some-odd Euros to pay my fare, and literally came to my last penny to make the fare to go to Nancy to stay with my friend. Making the payment, I sat with my belongings and held back tears because I didn’t even have the money to pay the 50 cent fare for the bathroom. I debated whether I should ask people for some money, but embarrassment kept me from admitting to myself that I really was the poor backpacker that I had always wanted to be. I was just thankful I wouldn’t have to spend the next few nights in Paris collecting money into mcDonald’s cups hoping that some kind stranger would help me with my fare.

10 June-14 June

Still blinking away African sand, I somber through air, pavement, and underground tracks emerging into the boiling energy of the busiest and most famous street in Barcelona - Las Ramblas. Trading cracked pepto-bismal and pollen colored Moroccan houses for Spanish-Red buildings and quick footsteps, medieval souks for bright bricks and tapas and beer, and empty beaches for oceans so full of people and boats the line where the city ceases and the ocean commences is indiscernible, I begin my exploration into the heart of Barcelona’s soul.

Barcelona is a city of proud people. Among the imported sand and squeezed tanning and mostly topless bodies are burning passions and loyal citizens. “Barcelona is the best city in the world,” the Catalan equivalent of a plaid and chucks New York City kid tells me along the edge of the blistering sands. 

“I haven’t been to very many cities,” he continues, “but I don’t have to go because I just know that Barcelona’s the best. Look at it. We have the beach. We have the parties. We have the best food…”

While endless supplies of passionate syllables about ‘the best place on Earth’ continue to tumble from his closed-minded lips, he ‘accompanies’ (more like follows) me around the city for a few hours. His prideful unnaceptance of ‘the other’ mirrors the sentiments of every Spaniard I’ve ever met. Taking their loyalty to the grave, they will die in the city in which they are born, forever clinging to their closed lion’s-heart pride in blissful unawareness.

I leave him in Cataluyna Square, where satirical, courageous, and ambitious Spanish youth protest the unemployment rates by defacing statues, having informational booths, and camping in open spaces and trees - complete with hammocks for relaxation. They have been here for over a month. When the police tried to end the protest a few months ago, new protestors flocked to the scene, and now even the bravest of police dare not enter. 

Having gathered information about the true heart of the city, the proud city where Picasso and Miro made public mockings of each other’s works, from non other than its true representatives - its youth, I decided to explore more of the sights. My worn flowered shoes took me to ancient cathedrals, quiet narrow stone alley-ways, and to the Museum of Art where a spectacular splash of sprouting and colorful fountains lit up packed crowds of happy faces for hours. They took me past stone walls that have been built higher upon centuries of rule, to the steps where Christopher Columbus told of the new World to Ferdinand and Isabella, to a church carved with craters from the Spanish Civil War, and inside a former bull-fighting ring that was now keeping with the times and had turned itself into a shopping mall.

I left the city of festive toes and passionate souls after only a few days on its sidewalks, sunburnt and ready to begin my next adventure. 

31 May -10 June

Our linked hands and somber-happy footsteps carry us silently across the relatively empty square in Jemaa el Fna to a place we both know we’re going. We step from the taxi and follow the forward pointing noses of bored fly-swatting horses linked to carriages with sleeping masters. The heat rises from the pavement and blurs the pink-grain colored desert buildings of the square. At the hot hour of the afternoon sun, most people stand only where shadows touch. We continue to walk past orange juice stand after orange juice stand, the owners behind their rows of oranges throwing up arms in welcome. We pass by them, not stopping until we reach our final destination: stand number 28, the place where our eyes first met over sips of fresh squeezed oranges two months ago.

 The stand is directly in front of the Argana cafe. This time in place of the cafe stands ruins covered by a large sheet and paintings on canvasses that mask the bombing of the month before. This time, we are not stealing curious glances at one another over our glasses, but with happy glances of eyes that have known each other for a long time. Today, at orange stand number 28 we drink our juices next to each other, during the last of ten amazing days together. We don’t know how long it will be before I return again.

The orange juice leaves us feeling bittersweet.

…

Ten days before, I find myself in a swarm of mixed emotions as wheels attached to flying wings touch pavement at the airport in Marrakech. Had I really defied my family and friends’ pleadings to not go to Marrakech to spend ten days with a boy I met in a chance happening only two months before? My friend who I left behind in France was convinced that she would never see me again. My mother bribed me by telling me she would pay for my plane ticket home. Even my roomate in Italy, who was there when we met, thought it too dangerous to return alone.

Amine walks through airport doors and we embrace like it doesn’t matter that it’s practically illegal for his culture. My feelings of apprehension and nervousness dissipate in his embrace, and I know that this is where the wind in my life has lead me to for a reason.

He is accompanied by his friend Anas, who I know from the last time I was in Marrakech, and Anas’ girlfriend, Magali. 

We’re going to Amine’s house in Marrakech to meet his family. I am the first girl he has ever brought home to meet them. As he tells me this, I look down at my too-short for American-standard shorts and wish he had told me this before so I don’t offend their conservative culture, but it is too late. I meet his family in their living room, a large rectangular space lined on all sides with red and gold embroidered sofas. I meet his aunt, who speaks to me in English, his fourteen year old cousin Otman, and his grandparents.

His grandmother welcomes me with a face created through a life of happiness. She has a scarf wrapped around her head, and her long blue dress with delicate designs is sashed below a grandmother’s bosom. She can only speak Arabic, and the one word I can understand is “Zwina”, which means sweet or beautiful. Amine’s aunt translates for me as his grandmother tells me “You are a part of our family now. Like my daughter. I know how hard it is to be away from your family, and while you are here you are like my daughter.” She continues to tell me that I am very zwina, beautiful, and nice, while kissing her hands and looking at me with loving eyes that only an elderly lady could. I meet Amine’s grandfather only for a few fleeting moments, and Amine tells me later that his grandfather didn’t want to offend me by staring at my legs because my shorts were too short. I instantly feel ashamed.

They welcome me with endless amounts of food and affection, erasing all of the doubts of my friends and family that had creeped into my mind that deem Arabs as a dangerous people. I have yet to meet a Moroccan who is anything less than one of the nicest people I have had the chance to meet. We eat a Moroccan salad, where carrots, rice, beans, beats, and other vegetables are separated in little sections. His grandmother brings a whole chicken which we eat with our hands, the custom here. Otman, Amine’s cousin is a little shy, but I get him to show me some of his techno dance moves before we depart the house after dinner to our first destination.

We climb into the rented car with Magali and Anas and the wheels carry us away from Marrakech into the mountains. Stars chase the moon into the sky as twinkling lights from Marrakech wink at us from below while we drive to our hotel. Illegal to rent a room in Morocco without marriage papers, Anas and Amine make sure that the guy at the front desk will not call the police on us in the morning, and he agrees to have us stay. Amine and I carry our things to our room and are finally truly alone for the first time without the threat of his family walking in or him being sent to jail. We almost don’t know what to do, but before we can decide too much, Anas and Magali invite us down to the pool to have some drinks.

_______

Waking up in the morning, the shadow of mountains turn into recognizable forms, the blues and greens of their pointedness mix with the pinkish square and rectangle buildings built in their center. I feel like I am in a movie, as Amine and I stand there in the light of the morning, looking out at the tranquil scene.

Today we are going to see the Cascades, the first stop in Amine’s thoughtful trip to show me some of his beautiful country. We park the car and begin along a dusty road split by an angry river. Along the stoney banks, women wash clothes in colorful buckets and chickens eat pebbles. We cross a bridge made of split wood and rusty nails, surprisingly holding our weight. Beginning the climb into the mountains, we weave through a small dusty path flanked by a berber man selling cherries, artisans selling trinkets, homes, and restaurants with steaming clay-pyramids of Tagine.

The pebbles under our toes in the dusty path turn into boulders as the trail gets more narrow and steep. In some parts we are forced to cross nature’s melting ice tray to continue, but a wrong step could mean tumbling down a sharp and jagged waterfall. We are high enough now to see the mountains spread around us on all sides, and we continue up the tricky banks of the cascade. Finally reaching the top, we cross another splintered and shaky bridge over a deep ravine, the cascade spraying us with her frigid welcome on our left. At the top, plastic tables and chairs are set up for tourists to take a drink. Like along the rest of the trail, plastic tubes are snaked with the cold offerings of the cascade, where the water drips from punched holes over bottles of american Coca-Cola or Fanta. We scrape and slip our way back down the steamy-sharp rocks, until we find a good spot for Tagine, salad, and tea. We eat the Tagine with our fingers, and the soft vegetables mix well with the spices and our bread. We sit on a carpet lain over dirt ground, on pillows around a small table. 

After eating, I sit in Amine’s lap and give him a kiss, and the owner of the restaurant tells him in Arabic that he can’t do that because there are families that walk here and they can’t see that sort of thing. -Another part of Moroccan culture that I find hard to believe - if Amine and I hold hands in public, it’s already a huge statement, and a kiss on the cheek is considered risqué, even for married people!

We continue our descent again, on the dusty path with smaller pebbles, weaving our way back down the mountain and to the distraut river. Crossing a slightly more stable rotting bridge, we make our way back to the car and to our hotel. Amine and I decide to spend the rest of the afternoon lounging by the pool there, enjoying the Moroccan sun.

For dinner, we head down into a bigger town, passing by large collections of pottery or Shepards with animals on the road. Dusty roads, donkeys, carts, and buildings blend with the clothes of the people on the streets. Like what will become customary, Amine and Anas leave us girls in the car to go to some restaurants to negotiate prices for our dinner. I ask Amine one day “why do the girls always have to stay in the car while you guys go and find things to eat? Don’t we have the right to go with you?”

-“Of course you can come with us, it’s just easier instead of having everyone get out of the car at the same time and then going back in if we can’t find something” He replies, but I think it has more to do with the culture that men like to take care of their women than anything else.

We finally find a restaurant where they have something vegetarian for me, and we go in. (The concept of vegetarianism is hard to grasp for people in Morocco. One evening, Amine came to the car window to tell us that we could have fish, chicken, cow, etc, naming all sorts of meat; I just looked at him and said ‘how do you not understand that I don’t eat meat? It’s like if you told me you don’t eat tomatoes and I came to you naming 5 different kind of tomatoes we could eat for dinner’. He laughed at me and said okay baby, I understand. Another evening after that one, at dinner at his house, he brought me some chicken, ‘just to taste.’ Apparently the point had been lost among the culture of ‘but God put animals on the planet for us to eat them, I don’t understand why you don’t want to.) A table of young muslim girls keep staring at me, as I am sure I am the only blonde girl in the entire village. Amine and Anas bought meat from a butcher down the road, where as the custom, cows and chickens are attached by their feet to the roof of a run down building on the side of the road, and the buyer can select his cut. They give the cuts to the owner and tell him how to cook it. As we eat, I am starting to get more accustomed to eating with my hands.

______

This morning, we are going to the ocean. Leaving the mountains, we head back down to Marrakech to get supplies, and then take the flaked road that will lead us to the slippery blue of the ocean.

“Ok, Michelle, if we get stopped by the police, you know we have to say that we are going to be married. And we have to have the same story because they will probably talk to you too,” Amine informs me along the way.

I laugh and reply, “Okay, Amine, and what is our story?” Ready to hear what he has concocted as our lie.

“Well, we say that we have known each other for 2 years and that we are going to be married in a few weeks and that you are here to get things settled for the wedding.”

“Okay, sounds good,” I say. A few months ago I would have laughed at this sort of over-prepared paranoia, but now that I know about the culture here, I know that he is completely serious.

We drive along the desert road, where kilometers of rust-red and butterscotch sand are broken up by tiny villages or stables constructed from the very same earth. Carts with flaky asparagus green paint or splintered wood are pulled by donkeys missing tuffs of hair. Sometimes, large American tractors pull cracked carts so full of hay the slightest wind could topple them over. Shepards in long wool-designed tunics lead rib-cages attached to cows or naked sand-coated sheep along the roadside.

We come to a village and a police stop, where they tell us to pull off the road once they get a good look inside at the two women who are obviously not Arab. I lower my sunglasses over my eyes so I can feel more anonymous. Only understanding a bit in Arabic, I follow the flow of eyes and hand movements to gather that Amine and Anas are telling their stories about how they ‘know’ us foreigners. Magali is a ‘family friend’, and I am the ‘fiancée’. I always know when Amine has told his share, because the interrogator gives Amine a certain little smirk when he gets a good look at the ‘bride to be.’ They let us go without any further questions.

After a few hours driving at speeds that match the Fahrenheit degree of the menacing sun, we enter a large town along the ocean and stop for lunch. We pick our fish out of the others, and they are served to us whole - the entire fish, head and all, was grilled just how it was, and here, you eat it with your hands. I had never eaten a fish like that in my life, and Amine shows me how to take out its spine and eat it. But, I’m not very good at it and still manage to eat a few bones every now and then. He just laughs at my discomfort at not knowing how to eat the fish and also because I want to cry when looking at its face. I imagine how foreign I must look to him, but know he adores it just the same.

Continuing our path after my fight with the fish bones, we break into a long drive along ocean, where jutting, burning cliffs and pristine, boatless waters are only broken by a few minuscule farm villages and some donkeys. The late afternoon sun sequined in rich tones across the water, and I make them stop to take pictures along the edge of the cliffs. I have never seen such a virgin stretch of ocean.

Close to sunset, we reach one of Amine’s favorite villages in Morocco, Oudidia, a quiet town settled right along the ocean, where he has come for family vacations. We get the money settled with the landlord for our apartment - completely furnished, complete with two living rooms, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen, and basically right next to the ocean, for only 20 euros a night.

Leaving our belongings behind, we walk down to the water to catch the last glimmers of the fading sun. In a little inlet, green and yellow boats sit on swirling pinks and purples, and we walk towards the cliffs, towards the hiding sun. We leave Anas and Magali behind, and move closer towards the sunflower clowds and navy water. Even though the sun has already set, the colors and the emptiness of the beach left us alone with our emotions of its appreciation. Stepping out of the romantic somberness, we climb down to the sand into the shadows and sparkled lights, where we end up wrestling, forgetting the  oh-so-propper-customs of Morocco, because when we are alone, not even the pages of the Koran can find us.

______

Having a lazy morning, we venture out around midday to get breakfast with Magali and Anas. We go to a local restaurant, where we eat at plastic tables and chairs next to men working on pipes below the ground. To our left, plastic beach balls and colored water-noodles hang from ropes to attract children. To our right, carcasses of cow, sheep, and chickens hang upsidedown from the roof and are tickled by the legs of flies. Fresh squeezed orange juice fills our glasses and the Moroccan version of crêpes topped with butter and honey fill our plates. We drink mint tea, and I look at the picture of the tea on the menu with the writing on it, and learn to write my first word in Arabic letters.

After breakfast we go to the beach, where our party of four, a traditional Moroccan family, and a couple of guys far away from us are the only ones at the untouched ocean.

“Amine, don’t you think it’s unfair that the mother over there has to keep on her Muslim outfit and can’t enjoy the sun or the water with her husband or children?” I ask him, baffled at how the mother can stand the heat in her all black garb, even under her umbrella.

“Yeah, it is a bit unfair I think.” He replies, and I can tell that I’ve made him think about what is required of his religion.

We lie in the sun, which nearly smothers us in its heat, where we take breaks splashing in the spray of the ocean. In the afternoon, we leave our places to go eat seafood. Walking along the ocean, some muslim girls are swimming in the water with all their clothes. “See,” Amine says, “some girls can go swimming here.”

-“Yeah,” I rebuttal, “But it sucks to have to go swimming with clothes when you can’t feel the ocean on your skin.”

Taking my American perception of fresh seafood to a new level, we go to another part of the beach to eat. An umbrella and mat are set up on the sand, while the cook has his grill and supplies next to us. Amine and Anas go with him the few meters to the ocean to pick out the crabs, lobsters, and fish that the chef prepares for us that moment. Magali and I split three huge fish between the two of us, served like before -completely whole - only this time I know how to eat them. It’s some of the best fish of my life. I can’t imagine eating seafood that doesn’t come directly from the ocean to my plate, and Amine is shocked when I tell him I’ve never eaten fish so fresh like this, because for him, it’s a completely normal day at the beach.

We rest after lunch, and head back out to watch the sunset together. A foreign couple with their child and Amine and I are the only ones at the entire beach. As the sun slips between rows of clouds like blinds, Amine and I sit in our continued conflicted state of happiness and dread of another day closer to my departure.

“We’ll have to always keep in touch,” we say with a slight glimmer in the eyes, “even if some day we are both married to other people, you’re always welcome to come visit me.” But we let the somberness pass as we squish our toes into the sand and our hands into each other’s and the sun slips below the horizon, leaving a bright remembrance in its wake.

_______

Deciding to go to El Jadida the next day, to see another city along the ocean, we encounter what is now our normalcy: trouble with the law. Starting a relatively normal morning, Amine, Anas, Magali, and I walk along the ancient barricades of the city, protecting it from ancient sea invaders. The sun bakes down and I beg Amine to finally move to the sea to go swimming. We set up our things, and since this is a bigger town, I am not the only girl in a bikini, but it is still pretty rare. Muslim families surround me, with children playing in sand. A group of teenage girls walks along the ocean, daring to get the tips of their pants or long sleeves wet.

“Amine, isn’t it unfair that they can’t go swimming like us?” I say again, finding it so weird that the girls end up going swimming in their clothes. “It’s such suppression that the guys can walk around in swimshorts and the girls are covered from head to foot! It’s not equal!”

“But Michelle,” he says to me, “No one forces them to do anything. It’s their choice, and they really believe in their religion. It’s forbidden for Muslims to undress in front of a man they don’t know. They want to dress like that.” I see his point and leave it at that.

I am sitting on my towel as Magali swims in the ocean and Amine goes to meet Anas who is just returning with some drinks. My purse is a bit far away next to Magali’s things, because she was watching it when I went for a swim before. All of a sudden, I see Amine and Anas run after something, as I look over to see that my purse is gone! Shit, I think, what am I going to do if I can’t get that back. I talk to a pair of French ladies a few meters from me as they ask me what has happened, and I tell them that my purse has everything, all my money, cards, and even my passport and camera!

I look up above the water-break, to see Amine and Anas with the perpetrator, surrounded by a group of loud voices and flailing arm gestures. Amine has my purse. ‘Thank God,’ I think, ‘I don’t know how I would go about canceling everything in Morocco!’ I think I see Anas punch the kid, but I don’t ask any questions. They return with my purse and I think the episode is over, but it has only just begun. A police officer summons Amine to go talk to him, and then they call me over and say to bring my purse.

They want us to go to the police station to report what happened, because there had been police sitting in a cafe who had witnessed the whole incident. Putting on my clothes, we head with the cop to a white van. The man is ecstatic that I am American and is very jolly. At the van he asks Amine to identify a young boy, handcuffed, wearing only red swim shorts, crying and saying things in Arabic that I don’t understand sitting on the unfurnished metal floor in the back of the van. Amine tells them that that is the guy and they put us in the van with the kid. The whole ride to the police station, the kid is crying and saying things in Arabic, and the ‘jolly’ police guy yells at him.

“What is he saying?” I ask Amine to translate.

“Just that he didn’t do it,” he whispers back.

We arrive at the tourist police station, and they roughly take the kid out of the van. The ‘jolly’ police man harshly slaps him a few times on the back of the neck as he makes the kid walk into the room with us. I wince in shock and revulsion at how they are treating the boy, and I instantly want to escape.

The room we are in is bare, with just a desk and a record book. They record my name and the things of value that are in my purse: camera, passport, credit cards, some durams, some euros. At the sight of the few euros I still have, they wave them in the face of the perpetrator, saying things in Arabic that I can imagine as “Ohhh I bet you wanted those!” As they hit him again. I flinch.

At the sight of my passport, the police look at it with interest and also wave it in the already shamed face of the boy who stole my purse. I don’t think they have ever seen an American passport before, and I think that my being American made the situation worse for the boy.

We document the incident and walk outside and into another police building, the normal police. I hear them hitting the kid with great force and I have the urge to vomit as tears enter my eyes and I slowly drag my feet into the next room. I want more than anything to run away as I imagine the conditions the child is going to face if he goes to jail.

They force the kid to sit and face the corner as he wallows in his own tears and shame. I sit on the other side of a desk with an old computer and Amine stands to my left. We fill out pages of information, while the police man asks me questions like: “Do you like Obama?” “How is the American economy?” “Do you like Morocco?” “How did you learn to speak French?” And I want to hit him because he obviously can’t see how uncomfortable I am.

He also talks to Amine and I know that Amine has told him ‘how we know each other’ and that ‘we are going to be married’ because he peaks out from behind the computer and gives me that same smirk that says  ‘way to go man, I can’t believe you’re going to be married to such a beautiful American girl, wink wink’. I want to escape the room because the police man is so content while this kid, who we later find out to have only been 18 and born in the same year as my brother, is crying in the corner and I am dying inside at what is happening. I just want to be at the beach and not do any of this.

The forms are finally finished as the light of the afternoon continues to fade. Amine tells me that now it is too late to watch the sunset at Oualidia, and I’m saddened that this child had stolen the last sunset Amine and I could have together. The papers are in Arabic and Amine and I sign them. I have no idea what they say, but after I sign them, the police officer says something about prison in french.

“Wait, Amine, are we sending him to prison?!” I whisper desperately as my stomach drops.

“Yeah.” he says.

It feels like my world is crashing. “But I don’t want to send him to prison!” I say and Amine tells me we have no choice.

I run out of the room to the front of the station and start to cry as i finally realize that the police are never going to let this boy go, or give him community service. Amine tries to comfort me and I push him away; he comes back a few minutes later.

“I don’t want to send him to prison,” I tell Amine. “In the USA I can decide whether I want to prosecute the kid or not, and I don’t want to do it! It’s my fault that I left my purse like that! He’s too young to go to prison and they already punished him by hitting him. It’s not fair, he’s probably poor and has nothing to eat!” I sob at Amine.

“Michelle, it hurts me to send him to prison too like this. I don’t want to either. But you have to come back and finish the papers.”

I refuse.

Later, Amine tells me that the police officer told him that he needed to go out there and ‘yell at his woman and tell her to come back and finish the papers.’ Amine just replied to him that he couldn’t do that to me because I cry at even a dead baby fish. I am glad more than ever that my Muslim man is not like the older generation.

The police man finally comes out, and I try to tell him that I don’t want the kid to go to prison. He starts on a spiel about how the kid deserves to be punished because he is just going to go it again. I think the kid is punished enough because of how he has been treated, but my opinion doesn’t matter here.

A few minutes later, the young man is led out of the police station, and doesn’t even look at me in his shame. Things are tense between Amine and I as we leave, because I still think that we had the right not to send the kid to prision, if Amine had only said so. We reconcile after he tells me that no, we can say that we don’t want to send the boy to prison, but if the police want to send him they can override us. The whole ordeal has taken almost three hours, and we make the walk back, Amine barefoot, to where Magali and Anas are waiting at a cafe by the beach.

Surviving our first fight, and first incident with the police where they weren’t questioning us but someone else, we head back to Oulidia too late to even watch a few fading colors of the sunset, Amine feeling accomplished as my hero for saving me from the purse-snatcher, and with me feeling forever responsible for changing some young man’s life.

_______

Ending our mini-vacation, we head back to Marrakech a little browner and braver after surviving the cascades and purse-snatching experience. We spend the night at Amine’s family’s home in Marrakech, where I joke and play with Amine’s cousin Otman. I tell Otman that Amine smells like fish, and make funny faces at him throughout dinner when Amine gets too close to me, and he cracks out laughing and no one knows why. We eat spaghetti out of a giant pan in the center of the table, all of us out of the same pan, forks in hand. I find it still weird that everyone eats out of the same plate here, even spaghetti, but I don’t say anything because I know that my customs are probably strange to them.

After dinner, Amine and I go with Anas for a drive downtown. Having just won a soccer match against Algeria the day before, Moroccans in Marrakech were still in celebration. People flooded the streets, bodies hung out of cars waving Moroccan flags, and girls on motorbikes with flags whizzed by among the noise of honking horns and the backdrop of the Mosque in the center square. In the back of the car, we talk about our money and differences. Amine sometimes works 18hr days here, and earns about 40$. I tell him that if I worked 18 hours at a shitty job I could make about 200$. His monthly salary is 300$, with a 6-day work week. We figure I only need to work about 3 or 4 days to make the same, and we are both shocked by each other’s lives.

We go back to hang out in his sector where I meet a bunch of his friends. I get slightly annoyed at Amine because he and his friend only converse in Arabic, when they could just speak in French so that I could understand.

“But I just can’t express myself in French as I can in Arabic,” he tells me, and I say that I can’t either -It’s both not our natural language. But, what can I do? It’s his country and I should be the one learning more Arabic.

We steal a few kisses outside of his house, wishing it could be more while Amine searched for police cars with dotting eyes, afraid that they could come take him away. We like to live life on the edge.

_______

Today we are heading to Aituina to meet Amine’s parents and sister. We brave the stifling heat of the afternoon. I am wearing jeans and a sweater in the over 100° weather, determined to be more respectful at this second family meeting. We take a small taxi to a place where we can take a larger, communal taxi. Amine and I both pile in the front seat, as four others sit in the back. We begin our drive out of Marrakech, leaving some of the desert behind for a backdrop of mountains and trees. Amine spent most of his childhood here, and I’m excited to meet his sister after talking to her on facebook for the past month.

His parent’s house is beautiful, with an outdoor garden and lovely decorated interior. The walls are decorated with designed tiles, and the white ceilings have intricately carved designs in them. The sofas are ornate and colorful, and the house has two floors and a rooftop terrace. I meet Dounia, Amine’s 17-yr-old, sweet blue-eyed sister first. After talking for a few minutes and eating crepes, we decide to make a little tour around the town. Amine refuses to go with us because he doesn’t like how the men stare at me.

Dounia and I walk up the dusty pathed streets passing by soda cans and wrappers outside of the pink-almost pepto-bismal colored houses that are found everywhere. Weaving through souks, Dounia points out places in the city - where she gets her hair cut, where her mom teaches at the school, or a mosque where people can go pray. Since the town is small, we run into many people she knows along the way, and I know that everyone we pass by is aware of my foreigner’s presence. I buy Dounia and I cotton candy, paying only two durams, the equivalent of maybe 10 cents, where the same would cost me a few euros in Europe. Dounia points out the river to me, a spitting and fighting muddy mess that splashes its way through the city like a black diamond water slide.

We pass by a group of carriages; “couchie,” Dounia tells me the word in Arab, and I laugh and tell her what the word means in English.

Heading back home, I meet Amine’s mother and father, and one of his cousin’s who is there for a visit. Amine asks if I want to go meet more of his family, so the three of us head over, and I he tenses up as I try to grab his hand on the way there. Since he knows everyone here, it is sure to be the talk of the town and I understand.

We go to meet the parents of his father and more cousins and aunts. He show me the farm where animals feed in a yard and the skins of dead animals hang in trees. We have tea and cigarettes on the roof and talk with his cousins.

______

Ready for more traditional experiences of the Moroccan life, Dounia takes me to a real Hammam the next morning. I don’t know what to expect, but I envision a type of sauna. At the entrance we buy soap and henna. We make our way to the changing room where I discover that we are only going in with just our underwear and no bras.

Walking through the doors, we enter the first of an all tiled room square room. Dounia has brought with her large plastic buckets which she starts to fill with warm water from a tap.

“There are three rooms here, this one is the coolest, then there is the middle and then the last one is the hottest,” she explains to me.

We wet ourselves with the warm water, using little hand buckets to do so, and then we move to the hottest room. As we pass through the middle room, almost naked women and completely naked children are washing themselves and sitting on tiny stools. I am a little shocked as I realize that we are in a giant public bath instead of a sauna, but I embrace the experience and my half-nakedness with curiosity. We set up a mat and place our stools on the ground, and Dounia gives me some brown chunky-liquid soap to wash up with. She helps me get it on my back, and once we are covered we wash it off and then do the same with Henna. After that, she hands me what I think is a hand wash-cloth and I start scrubbing. She laughs at me. “Nooo”, she says, “like this,” and shows me this sort of up and down scrubbing technique which ends up scrubbing off brownish dead skin. At first, I can’t get it to work for me, but once I get the hang of it, tons of dead skin starts coming off my body.

“Woah!” Dounia says, “You’re so dirty!” and laughs. She doesn’t have nearly as much dead skin as I do, but that is because, like expected of her religion, she comes here once a week to get squeaky clean. After exfoliating, we wash our hair and rinse off. We head out into the changing room, where we dry off and get dressed. We walk back to her house wearing sweats an bonnets - which I find really weird that we are going out in public like this, but I guess it’s normal.

Amine is still sleeping when I come back, but I wake him up.

“How was the Hammam?” He asks,

Dounia laughs and says “She was really dirty Amine,” and I say that it was really cool and that my skin has never felt so soft!

We play outside  with the kitten, which is really me dragging Amine outside to play with the kitten so that I can have some company. Dounia and a neighbor are inside cleaning the house and cooking some couscous for lunch. Amine and I go upstairs to take a cigarette break, which always lasted much longer than necessary.

Having learned some Arabic from Dounia, I say “Behibec Ana” to Amine, which means I love you, totally sure that I had fallen hopelessly for the man with the blue eyes and the flannel shirt that I had met at orange stand number 28. Amine kisses me and smiles and tells me the same thing in Arabic and French so that I can understand. 

For lunch, Amine, Dounia, his mother, and the neighbor and I eat a giant bowl of couscous and vegetables that she has prepared. Amine, Dounia, and I eat with forks, but his mother and neighbor roll the couscous and vegetables into balls with their hands and eat it like that. It tastes delicious.

After lunch, we dress me up like a traditional muslim girl, which Amine gets much pleasure out of.

“Now you’ve become so respectable,” he says, and he and Dounia both say how much they love it on me and that I look really beautiful like that. I think it makes my face look fat and tell Amine that I could never dress like that. (His sister doesn’t dress like that either; she says it makes her feel like she is in a cage, and I agree.) We take pictures just the same and I imagine how different my life would be if i wore an outfit like that everyday.

We take another cigarette break, and leave the ladies to take a nap while we go for a walk around the town. I meet one of Amine’s childhood friends and we walk out into the fields of the city, past tall cacti and the wider and angrier water-slide river. Heading back, I ask Amine if we can ride around on a Moto, because I had never been on one and he calls his cousin to ask if we can borrow it.

Arms fastened around his waste, we pass by staring eyes and the bustle of pointed-shoed feet and dusty carts of the city and out into the countryside. The road we take leads us into the mountains. Below, the city of clay masks itself in the green and richness of mountains. We follow the road accompanied by mountains until we reach a beautiful, lone cafe. The only ones, we sit on the terrace. In the distance, people are carrying loads of wood at the base of a mountain. Higher up, a small city constructed with the earth below its foundations stealthily rises out of the ground. We steal a few kisses when the waiter isn’t around, and drink our mint-teas.

I ask Amine if I can try to drive the motorcycle, thinking that it can’t be too hard. Sitting in the driver’s spot, I realize just how heavy it is and ask Amine to get behind me and help me that way. We go only a few meters in the parking space, before Amine realizes that I would probably kill us both if I tried to drive on the highway. I reluctantly agree, and hop in my position behind him, ready to start the second half of our romantic drive back through cactus lined streets and into his town.

Dropping me off at his house, I hang out with Dounia and we decide to play dress-up (again). I play the good Muslim, and put on an ever more traditional Muslim outfit than before and Dounia dresses like an American. We take pictures, and then again in normal clothes in the garden outside, where Amine gives us weird looks as he has just come back from returning the motorcycle.

That evening, we play around on the computer, showing each other funny youtube videos, and then Amine plays songs for me on the guitar.

Dounia and I are closer this second night, and we share secrets in the room we are both sleeping in until we fall asleep.

_____

We leave Dounia and his parents in the afternoon after a quiet morning.

“You’re going to get changed, right,” Amine says to me, and I look at my black t-shirt and shorts with leggings on under them and think that I am surely covered up enough for his culture.

“But that’s why I have leggings on under the shorts this time!” I say to him.

“Don’t you think the pants are better? That’s more of an outfit for the house,” he retorts.

I laugh at him because I know that in his small town no one dresses like this, but in Marrakech, it’s okay. So I put my jeans on, one of his shirts, and tuck my hair under one of his hats and say “there, now I look like a boy, so no one will look at me.”

Smiling and laughing at me, he gives me a kiss before we leave the house. Saying goodbye to Dounia was hard, and tears filled her blue-green eyes as we walked out the door. I don’t think Amine could have been any happier that his family loved me as much as I loved them.

Walking back to the Taxi, where too many people for the tight space and smothering heat would cram in to get back to Marrakech, we linked hands and not one man looked me with unaccustomed eyes. I told Amine he was right, and thought long and hard on the Taxi ride back on the point of wearing revealing clothes when it’s going to be hot no matter what you wear, just to have men look at you all the time? Maybe his culture has got something going here, having women cover up so they can be seen as more than a walking pair of boobs and ass?

Getting back to Marrakech, we hang with his family for a few moments, before heading with Anas to rent an apartment for the night, and the next - my last two in Morocco. On the way to the apartment, we stop at a grocery store so that I can buy things to cook Amine for dinner. With Anas, we get things settled for the apartment. It is the apartment of one oh his friends who is out of town on vacation — we’ve learned how to get around the marriage laws quite well by now.

That night, we enjoy each other’s company, without having to worry about his family being there, or coordinating plans with Anas or Magali - who went back to France a few days before. I make Amine one of my favorite Italian dinners, and he’s pleasantly surprised that I can cook, since he is the one who studied to become a chef and worked in an Italian restaurant. We share a bottle of wine with our meal and spend the night in the apartment.

________

Bringing us back to the beginning of our lives becoming intertwined, we find ourselves back at orange stand number 28 on my last day in Morocco.

“You should tell the owner that this is where we met two months ago!” I tell Amine, thinking it would be funny to share our love story with the worker behind stand number 28. But Amine is too shy to say anything, and I vow to myself that the next time I am in Marrakech with him, we will go to stand number 28 and tell them our story.

We walk hand in hand around the souks in Jeema el Fna, and stop at the French Cafe for some drinks - the place where Amine and Anas had invited Adriana and I after we met them that first time in March. We meet up with one of his friends for lunch - a classy meal of American staples that have taken over the world: McDonalds and Pizza Hut.

Stepping out of the apartment in the fading light of the day, we go to local markets of farmers in falling down huts selling vegetables for dirt-cheap prices. It’s Amine’s turn to cook dinner tonight, and he prepares a type of fish-stew, with a medley of vegetables. We eat dinner together and watch TV on the couch, imagining what life would be like if this was our life, instead of just a vacation from it.

“I love you,” I tell Amine, for the first time in English, my native language. To me, it seems more real to say it in English than in French.

“I love you too,” He says in his slow and heavily-accented English- surprising me that he knows how to respond.

“How are you?” I ask, again in English, because I know that he at least understands that.

“I’m sad, but happy,” he says, struggling with the words, “before (corrects himself), because, y-you going,’ he points to me as he gets the words out. It’s possibly the cutest thing anyone has ever said to me, and I understand why Amine loves it so much when I struggle with my mutilation of Arabic to tell him cute phrases like that.

_____

It’s like a dream taking the taxi to the airport, 10 days have slipped like water through a dying man’s fingers - leaving him satisfied for only a few fleeting moments, but desperately vying for more.

“What do we do?” Amine asks me once we get to the airport in Marrakech. And I explain the process of how check-in works. He’s never taken a plane in his life.

“One day, Amine, you’ll be coming with me on one of these planes, and it won’t be me leaving you behind,” I tell him.

My eyes are already puffy with the tears that he keeps wiping away, but I choke up before I can tell him that “now is the part where I leave and you can’t come with me” as our feet drag slowly towards security.

We hug and embrace and he is strong for me.

“Don’t cry baby,” he says, “It’s not the last time we’ll see each other.”

I can only hope that the circumstances in our lives make it so that he is right.

(*Title idea thanks to Marlo Colletto.

*The story of how we first met is also in my blog. )

30 May.

The word for chemical additives in italian: Preservative. In French: conservateur. However, the word Preservatif in French means condoms. Sitting around the dinner table with Amelie, our friends, and Amelie’s mother and brother, Amelie’s mother was asking me some questions about my life as an American. Serving some coca-cola and snacks before dinner, she asks me if I like the coca-cola here better than in the states.

“Yes. I think it is so much better here,” I say. “They put preservatives in the coca-cola in the USA and it’s not good for you!” I continue, using the italian word for preservatives instead of the French one, and everyone at the table starts laughing hysterically. Amelie’s mother explains what I said wrong, which I find to be really funny and then explain that the word preservatif in italian means conservateurs in French. Her husband then comes walking in, to which she laughs out: “Do you know what Michelle just told me they put in coca-cola in America?” -“Condoms!”

Sometimes speaking languages that are so similar leads to embarrasing mistakes.

29 May.

If you’re not in shape, forget about coming to Luxembourg City. Situated among plateaus and deep crevasses of land, the city weaves in and out of itself with a series of cobble-steep roads, slow pathways, and bridges. Pie-crust dry castle ruins sprout from hillsides and trees, while in the distance skyscrapers rise to modernity. Taking walks, we step toes to heels up and down staircases of ruins, to catch flickering views of rivers and cathedrals or luxurious cars parked in front of decadent houses. 

Tired from walking the past two days in up and down patterns of enthusiasm, exhaustion, and paths blocked by train tracks or deep gorges, we decide to spend our last afternoon on bikes — to stretch a different set of muscles and to get us further into the countryside.

 Like many European cities, bikes can be rented from stations dispersed throughout, providing citizens with further mobility and the environment a chance to breathe. Renting our bikes, we push shoes on pedals to make wheels touch bike-paths in the busy roads and begin to find our way out of man-made beauty. Riding through paved parks, we swirl around trees and out into suburbs. Neatly lined houses of yellows and pale corals, with the occasional lime-green, flash by as we move further from the city. We stand on the pedals to gain more momentum to rise up a hill, where we reach some countryside.

To our left, a field of tall grass leads us to a steep path that carries us effortlessly through the breezing growths and into more suburbs. Finding another park, we climb and descend the pavement through the trees, until we break through at the top of a long climb into the Luxembourgish countryside. Fields of hay are dotted with poppies and trees, while the cotton clouds threaten to float down onto them.

A red farm tractor rolls over rows of cut hay, where bits of hay dust are blown into the warm air that teases our clothes and leaves hair blowing behind. Cows chew on curds and look at us and our un-fit city bikes while we find benches along the trails to eat a picnic.

We are now 5 K outside of Luxembourg city, where only passing by-planes leave marks in the sky and disturb the peace in our ears. We sit in almost-silence, eating our lunches, reflecting on the beauty of the countryside and our mini-vacations. Ready to return, legs burn as we meander through beautiful landscapes and back into the city, where we can finally sit on our train to France and rest our out-of-shape limbs.

Just for tonight, we’re invincible,

So light up that tobacco stick

  Just for tonight, we’re rich,

So put it on that plastic.

28 May.

The couple seated next to us have perfectly cut squares of raw-red steak, meticulously stacked in a beautiful scene of sacrifice on pristine white plates. In front of them, a black cauldron of boiling oil sizzles and crackles as the meat cooks to their own definition of cultivated perfection. The appetizer champagne we ordered lightly touches and tickles tongues as the server brings a bottle of wine in blanket of white. Teasing us with a taster of delicacies, in mini-bowls of fish, cream, tomatoes ,peppers, and spices are served, to prepare our mouths for the flavors to come. My sea-bass comes first. Presented on a rectangular 3-sectioned white plate, three mounds of heaven-whipped potatoes and cream make soft beds for sizzled pieces of bass. On top, a warm mixture of tomatoes and spices drools over the edges. A few splashes of creamy soft-green basil and a mini salad of greens and grilled still-on-the-vine cherry tomatoes complete the plate. The seasonings of the bass are cooled with the soft cream of mashed potatoes, while the tomatoes serenade them to perfection.

Florine Florine and Cedric both order a steak, the cutlets taste tender and juicy, complemented by a beige steak sauce and seasoned potatoes. 

The wine we order sits light and soft, providing for smooth swallows and a slightly sweet aftertaste. The well-dressed waiters who call us Mademoiselles and Monsieur, never let the bottle touch fingers or glasses stay empty. 

For desert, I chose Tiramisu. The servers brought to me a flat-slate rock for a plate, where fresh whipped cream flirted with the little bowl of chocolate ice cream next to it, while shredded almonds led a trail through sweet strawberry cream to a real strawberry. In the left-hand corner sat a glass of Tiramisu, the cream so light is was barely there, yet full of flavor. The bottom, was a crunchier take to the traditional lady-fingers, but it went well with the light cream and strong flavors of espresso. 

Florine ordered the fondue, where perfect milk chocolate sat warm in a mini black-pot, and the freshest strawberries, kiwis, apples, and bananas mixed in little glass bowls on either side. 

For just today, we could pretend we were more than poor college students, sitting in our fancy restaurant in Luxembourg’s center, letting the fresh food of the region taunt our senses, and leaving us pining for more. 

22 May.

Yards of lego-perfect hedges form mazed patterns around a statue and a slippery fountain. Flowing paths are lined by bright pinks, oranges, and reds so rich, the contrast against the deep black-green leaves sear the corneas and tickle the noses with pollen-scents. To the right, tangles of groomed mud-brown sticks make tear-drops in mossy trees, while hedged ducklings and roosters flirt with blossoms. Ancient metal jeweled carousel horses and wooden swing contraptions surround the fountain and rustic blue-wood boat in the center of a pond. Terraces of balled-purple and watermelon cone-like flowers are visited by plump and furry bees with orange bottoms. A path ahead leads to rose vines hung on white-whickered arches. In another part, children play in mazes and slides in a fantasy world of kings and castles.

The gardens wrap around most of the Palace of Ludswigsburg, with the most expansive in its front. Here orange, lemon, and lime trees line gray-gravel paths to trimmed cones and rosegardens with all colors. The yellow-bright paint of the palace is sharp against the rumbling clouds that threaten to stain the pretty landscape with grey furry. In front, violet and hot pink flowers carve elaborate designs in the grass, in two neat blocks that line a path to an enormous fountain housing pairs of ducks waddling in love.  

The Palace itself, stands rectangular, surrounding a regal fountain guarded by lions. I catch glimpses inside, where white and golden angels line flourishing banisters, and decadent chandeliers cast rainbows around the rooms.

26 May

“You speak pretty good French for an American,” the cute, roundish, curly, and slightly sweaty man tells me from behind the check-in counter at the Youth Hostel in Luxembourg City. It was refreshing to hear after I spent the better part of two hours wandering the cobblestoned old city carrying a 13 kilo backpack - leaving any functioning capacity of my brain slightly fried from the heat and my shoulders already aching. 

I left Frankfurt a few hours before, with teary good-byes from my new-found German relatives and from my mom who had come to visit to begin a multiple bussed journey through the western German landscape and into undiscovered paths for my flowered shoes. The buses curved through mountains and stretches of land, flanked by egg-like mint bushes and pistachio grass and slithering potato leaves against the moving air. Gravity turned sideways as trees tilted until their bark’s almost cracked and cast shadows on pristine white and brown houses surrounding a sorcerer’s hat-topped cathedral. Sometimes I saw cow tails flicking at wispy air, or puffs of white and black herded by bounding energy. 

After a good six hours of traveling the budget way, I had arrived at the train station in Luxembourg city- a city more than 1,100 years old. I hopped on a bus that I hoped would bring me dowtown, where I commenced my walk in what I thought was the direction of my hostel. The center of Luxembourg city was all cobbelstoned, pedestrian- only, and filled with ancient sites. Old cathedrals with skinny spirals sprouted from browned stoned bodies, as the streets curved in all directions. I came to a deep gorge, where below greened shrubbery and german-looking houses taunted at my inability to get to them and I headed in another direction. Asking a mother feeding her baby in a cobbled square for help, she pointed to my map where I was - almost back where I started and even further from the hostel than when I had begun! My back was tired from the weight, but I didn’t mind because I had just stumbled across another ancient cathedral and another gorge offering views of a turreted castle on the other side. 

Turning back to the center, I walked back where I had passed by an hour before, this time trying new directions and to read my map better. My feet brought me under tunnels and through children eating cotton candy and carnival rides. I passed by armed guards watching over a palace with gold and iron-wroght gates.

Finally taking a turn through a narrow sand-bricked housed street, I came across the bridge that my map said would lead me over the gorge and towards my hostel. Walking, surrounded on either sides by ruins of castles and houses and tall  towered churches below, I could appreciate the city better knowing that I was on the right track. The road brought me behind a castle ruin, as birds were swarming out of the windows in the weathered coal-colored stones. I felt like I was in an evil movie- with a darkened castle looming before me and vultures ready to swoop down and take over my dehydrated body, but they turned out to just be pigeons.

I rounded the bend, thankful to not be lost, smiling at the peppy guy behind the counter, and ready for my new adventures in a foreign land to begin. 

20-21 May.

I knew it was going to be an interesting night when my cousin and his friends Robin and Mateo procured a bottle of Absinth, some sugar cubes, cola, and paper cups. Already hung over from my first night out with my cousin and his 16-yr-old friends at the GartenLaube, a place that throws together fast food stands, beer-gardens and clubs, I didn’t think I could keep up with their young bodies for another night.

We walked to the park, crossing the bridge over the Neckar river in Heilbronn as the sun set behind the tower-clock church that my mother was baptized in behind us. The blood-orange sky mocked the cool breeze from the water. Setting sugar cubes on fire, the 16-yr olds knew more about drinking Absinth than I did, but they come from a culture where drinking is encouraged and beer, wine, cigarettes, and clubbing are legal at 16.

After a drink or two, we set off to the GartenLaube, where I was carded a total of three times that night. Once at the entrance, twice while ordering my drinks, and the third while I was actually drinking my Mai Tai; apparently no one in Germany thought I was 21. The GartenLaube was filled with 16-yr-olds, most of who had lost the urge to get wasted because they were bored with it or it was too expensive. People of all ages filled the clubs and outside tables, but most of the people dancing in the club areas were 16-yr old girls who were dressed for the street-corner, and who even knew how to make better use of the poles on the dance floors than the strippers I had seen in Canada. I danced and chatted with my cousin and his friends until we had to leave the club with my cousin and my friends at midnight- the limit for those under 18. 

Walking out of the club, the older crowd started to arrive - the crowd of which I would normally be going out with, if I knew anyone in Heilbronn my own age. Nevertheless, hanging out with my cousin and his friends always proved fun - with their high-spirited nature and easy-going attitude. I can only imagine what life would be like if people were allowed to do these things at 16 in America. 

18 May.

High-pointed silver-metal architecture and see through glass rise from the hills and pathways at the Olympic Stadium in Munich. Walking over the bridged highway and under parts of the structures we come to an unexpected park. In the center a lake is surrounded by perfect-german-green hills and trees, a retro blue sky and happy-sheep-clouds. Sitting in the grass, we watch as German families pass by, hand in hand, with children on racing bikes and wobbly scooters. In the distance, a hill rises out of cultivated flowers and trees, so pristine and perfect, we are afraid that if we walk to it our noses will touch a projection screen. 

We feel adventurous, like the piles of athletic germans we watch running or biking in front of our spot on the fluffed grass. We take the path to the hill, as German Grannies more in shape that we are come bounding down the steep paths in their best Nike gear. Germans on mountain bikes cruise over the dirt paths that cut through the hilled landscapes, and they race to the top leaving us in their bike-wheel dust. Reaching the top, amidst the runners and bikers, we are taken to a circular point in Munich- offering picturesque views for all 360 degree angles. To the south, the white and violet-blue alps cut across the skyline. Below, we see the spirals of churches and houses. To the left, the giant-marble white structure of the soccer stadium explodes out of the brown and rusty rooftops. 

Feeling accomplished, we walk down the paths, weaving in and out of trees, hills, and cobblestoned trajectories that eventually bring us back to the beginning of the park. Hopping on the U-Bahn, Jacquie decides to take me to the HaufBrauHaus, a brewery in Munich almost twice as old as the United States itself.

Through the entrance, hundreds of people sit inside on wooden bench-like tables. Men in leiderhose play instruments and sing ancient German songs in the centers. Taking a table outside, we sit with strangers from Sweden, as waiters and waitresses in traditional German attire impressively carry an ungodly amount of 1-liter beers in their arms. Completing our German experience we order a liter of beer each (they come in giant mugs) some sauerkraut, potato knodels, and some potato salad. While we drink our beers, rowdy folks in and out make soundwaves of laughter and chatting, while hands clap when someone looses a grip on their beer and the glass shatters. 

We end the night by dodging drunken limbs and spilt beer and go to a more quiet place to grab some drinks with two Germans and Jacquie’s friend Cat at a mexican bar. 

18 May.

“Arbeit Macht Frei” (work makes free): were the iron words that wove themselves into the metal gate, words that wove a lie and mocked the prisoners who slaved behind them and believed that their work would really open the metal doors to freedom. My friend Jacquie and I had arrived at one of the first concentration camps Hitler had opened during his bloody dictatorship, and the only death camp that had remained open through the entirety of the war. It’s name: Dachau. 

We pushed through the gate and turned right, shoes crunching on gravel once walked by shriveling bodies, and eyes looking at the same guard towers that now housed empty spider webs and shattered dreams but once housed soldiers who would shoot the daring, or maybe even just for fun. Hot sun seared our skin; we could have water if we wanted. Or perhaps an ice cream down the road.

First we came to where they tortured the prisoners. The long corridors of cells and doors and broken freedoms misted the cold air of rotting corpses. It would never get hot in here. I can only imagine the cold when the winter snow came - the cement cells trapping the freezing weather and shrinking further the already shrunken bodies. In the yard to the back, poles hung where once arms behind backs were strung from them- for fun, for information, because the Nazi’s simply could. 

We walk across the yard where they were made to stand, every day at 4 AM for roll call, and again at around 8 in the evening. My footsteps trace paths of the walking dead, walking towards the barracks. Perhaps, right here, someone died from exhaustion.

In the barracks, rows upon rows of wooden beds fill the rooms. It doesn’t seem so bad, but since the camp always breached capacity, each of the tiny beds would have to be shared by multiple people at one time. They had toilets too, two neat little rows. But I doubt any toilet paper. Only two barracks still stand, at the beginning of a long line of them, where only outlines and rocks remember their existence.

We walk down the center, where vibrant, lively trees cast shadows on the ground and lead the eyes to the dreamlike sky of puffy-white bunny tail clouds, where thousands once looked to and dreamed of floating away into the immaculate blue sky.

At the end of the path, we walk left, out of the electric fence, into the trees. Unlike the prisioners once housed here, we could leave the fence freely, and we would make it back out of the wooded area alive. A little path leads us to the right. A large stone marks where ashes used to be stored. Up ahead, a long trench, is now overgrown with the bushes and trees that gained their sustenance from the blood of the murdered. Around the bend, the blood-bricked chimeny rises from the trees. Inside, my shoes touch the concrete where they once stood, ready for their “showers”. Through those metal doors, no one that entered would have ever seen life again, but I would. The ceiling was low, almost touching the hairs on my 5-foot-4 frame. The “shower” heads were numerous. In this little space, up to 150 spirits could be extinguished at a time.

In the next room, thousands of bodies would be stacked, shriveled, spiritless, and starved, waiting for the ovens that could cremate up to three of them at a time. Drains sit in the floors. At the time of liberation, about 3,000 bodies were found here.

There, beyond the next doorway, we come to the ovens. All the ovens link to one big chimney by way of underground pipes. They are large and brick. In front of the ovens, some of the unlucky ones could be hanged on the beams - listening to the screams of the gassed and smelling the burning of what would later become their own flesh. Outside, and over to a corner, sits a smaller building. In it- only two ovens. To think, they had to build another, larger complex, because these two ovens couldn’t keep up with the mounds of destroyed and innocent souls. 

Walking back through the camp, we look at its entirety and devastation. Our free feet bring us to the gate and close it upon the cruelty and destruction of a past not so long ago.