With an interesting history (to say the least) and blending in a few civilizations, Morocco seemed to be a fine experience for a short Easter's holiday. However what made me look into it was the almost 4200 m.a.s.l. Djebel Toubkal. I spent a few evenings looking into options of getting there, just to realize how many low cost airlines served several airports in the country - certainly resulting in a high number of tourists. With no time to consider alternative destinations (some of which required visas), I got tickets, packed bags and left home towards Morocco the evening before Easter, just like a good Christian (that believes more in Abraxas than in the good old church that is more about trade and politics than about faith).

Traveling to a place is sometimes at least a good introduction to the place itself. While in Frankfurt, waiting for the flight to Casablanca, I looked at the other passengers. Moroccan families with many children, men that probably worked in Germany and that were now on their way home, retired French couples and a few middle-aged Germans. Airport employees would desperately - and without any sort of success - try to set ordnung among passengers, with children running around, too large pieces of "hand luggage", respectively with everyone rushing to the gate when it opened. There was a sense of music, a certain vibration emerging from those people, in blend of Berber drum and African beat. We eventually reached Casablanca in the middle of the night, with children running along the aisle, hence providing the plane with life and joy. After a few busy days at work, the hotel I stayed in fully deserved its name despite the broken window that opened towards a busy street: Mon Reve.

The following morning I walked for a while around the Marche Central, just to discover streets that reminded one - in a way - of the area around the Place d'Etoile in Beirut. French architecture that employed a few local designs and decorative elements was rather imposing and misplaced; only the state of decay here and there provided these streets with a certain picturesque feature. However this was not what I had come to see. After having breakfast and a cup of the a la menthe, not finding any available places for the bus to Essaouira, I got instead on a bus to Safi, which was to be a lucky move. The bus arrived later than scheduled, passengers' access was granted only after luggage was checked in, paid for and loaded. A clerk then matched everyone's ticket number with the figures on his table. The system was that complicated (as I was to see, only in larger cities) that it resembled a Van Eyck; the more one looked, the more he/she discovered about it.

Morocco had a good road infrastructure so that transport was efficient and relatively fast. Expensive residential areas or beach resorts would alternate with poverty-struck villages or busy marketplaces where people from the neighbouring agricultural areas would come to sell their crops. The road was joined almost all the way by a wide gravel or dust shoulder or by a parallel dirt road used by peasants carrying heavy loads of cereals on donkeys or horses, while others were working in the fields using rudimental tools. Just next to a road followed by fancy cars and campervans registered in France or Spain, time had stood still for thousands of years. The Romans, Byzantines, Portuguese or French had little, if any importance to these people, as they lived between the harsh sun and their reddish land plot.

Safi welcomed me with a busy bus station and the piece of news that there were no buses to Essaouira that day until after 9 PM, as "priere de nous excuser, mais on n'a pas de demande pour completer le bus, m'sieur, peut-etre demain...". I dropped the backpack at the "consigne" and went to the old town. With a busy medina full of workshops and outlets selling ceramics, the town was appealing especially with its not being host for too many foreigners. Just across the road from one of the entrances to the medina, there stood one of the cultural contrasts that made Morocco an interesting place to visit: a fort of European structure...

Back to the bus station, after a short wait, I got on a "grand taxi" to Essaouira. If in Yemen this was a Peugeot that could get 7 persons instead of the "official" 5, here it was about white or blue Mercedes cars from the late 70s, that would get 6 (2 of which on the seat next to the driver) plus the driver. For me, this was fast and convenient. Essaouira was a different story: many tourists filled the narrow streets of the medina, half of which seemed to work in a way or another for the hospitality industry, with restaurants, cafes, terraces, hotels. Pizzerias or candle-lit restaurants brought a sense of unnecessary elegance as they hosted tourists in a way they were familiar with from home rather than providing a local environment in this otherwise beautiful place. The town was divided to a striking extent: while tourists walked and enjoyed themselves along Rue de la Skala and sat at Cafe de France, local families would walk along the end of the harbour in the sunset that threw magical glimpses in the Atlantic Ocean. The medina overwhelmed the pedestrian through its evening crowd rather than through architecture. The flow and buzz of people was filling, it just felt like carrying one away.

In the morning I walked to the bus station across the old - nowadays partly abandoned and ruined - Jewish quarter of Mellah. It was now hard - if ever possible - to imagine the dimensions this quarter had before the Jewish exodus. After a short nap on the bus to Marrakech, I wake up all of a sudden to reality. The city was busy with cars and people, there were thousands of pedestrians buzzing around. Motorbikes would cross the medina, with the narrow alleys and streets of its souqs, merchants would call for customers, children would ask the obvious foreigner with a large backpack whether he needed guidance to a hotel. Houses, hotels, terraces and former palaces were set around smaller or larger patios paved with ceramic tiles displayed in vivid, symmetric designs. Despite the fact that the tourism industry had long changed many of the traditional crafts, dragging craftsmen towards its needs, the city well preserved a sense of "normality" and natural agglomeration. The extensive medina also hosted superb pieces of decoration, such as Medersa Ben Youssef, with its fine carved ceilings or with its enchanting light play. The Moroccan approach of the Arab design was fascinating with its colourful, dense patterns that met the simple, elegant arches of the Arab peninsula in a delightful way.

As evening fell, the central Jemaa el Fna Square rose to the sky, as it got full of people and it turned into a Roman amphiteatre, only that the arenas had been replaced by "panoramic terraces" of the cafes and restaurants around it. Snake tamers, orange juice sellers, ad hoc restaurant waiters, fortune tellers, belly dancers, horse pulled cart drivers, shoe polishers, all were shouting their offers, while nobody could cross the square without being touched by it one way or another. There was however a bit too much order in it as a certain standardization had been obviously imposed. With a little imagination, one could have seen the square the way it had looked 100 years before, with just a difference of package, but not necessarily of contents. A thick smoke overwhelmed everything, coming from the many grills at various stalls in the square. Just like in Varanasi, there was a smoke and a River one could neither ignore, nor just shoot pictures of, for this was Life at its very best, disregarding of the safe distance tourists wanted to shoot pictures from.

Two days out of the buzzing city followed, as I went to hike Djebel Toubkal. If in Jordan and Syria the Bedouins had turned from caravan leaders and inhabitants of the desert into guides for tourists, presenting a lifestyle that slowly disappeared, the Berbers in the High Atlas were however going on with their - altered indeed - life, while also providing foreigners with a glimpse of something real. Carrying hikers' luggage up the mountains, acting as mountain guides, selling artifacts and tea or simply singing, these were the Berbers I saw, people determined to continue with their traditions, even though some of them spoke more than 2-3 foreign languages (not counting Arabic which was not their mother tongue).

Rather reddish, probably very hot and dry in summer, the mountains were at their best in April, with a good temperature (around 15-20C in lower regions) and fine views. Most hikers were from abroad and they came in large numbers. The shelter under the highest peak hosted almost 100 people when I was there, even though it could only accommodate 80 in beds. On the second day, going up towards the summit along a steep valley covered with hard, frozen snow (as we started at around 6 AM), I noticed that guides had no ice picks or crampons, while their boots were very poor and old, definitely not fit for digging steps in ice or hard snow. Their general equipment was very old, probably consisting of things they had got from foreign mountaineers. The extent to which Berbers were eager to live, their hospitality and charm were however impressive. The summit provided fine views towards most of the High Atlas, going all the way to the Antiatlas, with the horizon line melting to the South-East, in the Sahara. The same day I went down, just to cross a heavy rain that caused many floods, a few rock falls, mud and stone accumulations on the road from Imlil to Asni, on the way out towards Marrakech. Without draining ditches along the road, any major rainfall probably had the same effects, especially given the clay that did not retain, but rather let water flow down, and also given the lack of vegetation on the slopes. The fact that these people took problems slowly was however impressive. Without shouting, without getting nervous or rushing, they just tried to solve their problems one way or the other one and they generally succeeded.

Back in Marrakech, I discovered the vivid, captivating colours of the ceramic works at Bahia Palace. Just like those at Ben Youssef Medrasa, the walls and floors there resembled, in a way, the black and white stoneworks at Azem Palace in Damascus. By employing intricate techniques of decoration and rather simple shapes and designs, Moroccans had succeeded to create a refreshing oasis of joy and colour in the middle of the desert. In the early afternoon, I got on a train to Meknes, reaching the town in the evening. After finding a room in an old, decaying and in its own way charming hotel of the medina, I walked for a while and eventually stopped for a glass of "the a la menthe" at a small cafe located on the sidewalk of a busy street. Most chairs (and people sitting there) faced the street, even though the fumes created by cars (especially as the street went up, so that drivers accelerated their engines, hence producing even more fumes) would have made even a heavy smoker give up for a while. However tea was an institution in Morocco (just as it is in many Muslim countries and not only). Apart from being very tasty, as they infused fresh mint leaves after preparing it, tea had people socialize, sit for for a shorter or longer taifas, and watch the town go by, find out the news without the need of modern means of communication. For me, such not-so-tourist-friendly places showed the way things were, as one would have hardly noticed any difference between any of the omnipresent Cafe de France terraces (there seemed to be one in every larger town and city) and a regular cafe in Europe.

The following morning I took a train to Fez and, as I got too early at the station, I had breakfast at a small cafe, talking with the Berber owner for a while: "vous savez, au Maroc on a seulement des Berbers, il s'agit des Berbers arabises, mais seulement des Berbers". Arriving in Fez quite early, I could feel life in the medina growing as the sun went up in the sky. Shops opened, stalls were placed in the narrow streets, people began flowing like mountain streams through gorges. A town that lived to an important extent off tourists, Fez also preserved areas where vegetables and different household products aimed mostly at local people. Mosques that were crowded with believers at mass time stood next to nowadays ruined, but incredibly beautiful madrasas, such as Madrasa Sahrij. If Marrakech will remain in my memory for its colourful ceramic works, I shall always associate Fez with its wonderful and so delicate wood carved roof and window beams, or with its massive wooden doors. Another good point for the town was the fact that - given its so large medina with its labyrinth-like web of streets, one could not feel the many tourists like in Marrakech or Essaouira. Back in Meknes and at the smily caretaker of my old hotel, I ended the day with a refreshing theiere as whole families were having their Friday evening walk in the central square.

With a change of "grand taxis" in the holy village of Moulay Idriss, I reached Volubilis quite early in the morning. Even though it appeared to be smaller than Jerash or Palmyra or rather less imposing at the first glance, the site was very interesting, with its Madaba-like mosaics, differently arranged houses and public dwellings, the ruins of which left free way to one's imagination so as to realize the way they had once been. Two subsequent "grand taxis" and a train ride took me to Rabat where, after a walk, I reached the Archaeology Museum, being able to see objects and statues found at Volubilis. Bronze statuettes and stone carved portraits provided my earlier visit to the site with life and character. Rabat had two souls: a fast beat heart hiding in the busy alleys of the medina and a slower, "regular" paced life approach in the other part of the city designed by the French in the beginning of the 20th century. I liked the city also as it dignifully wore both its administrative capital and its merchant clothes. However, the loose laces of Fez and Marrakech were slowly tied up here, while the hand pulled cart full of oranges left way for new cars and people dressed a la Europeene, which no longer afforded to smile like Mohammed, the Berber mountain guide up in Djebel Toubkal.

The sun rose up over my last Moroccan day and found me in Hotel d'Alsace, a quiet, pleasant retreat just off the city walls. I took the time to walk across the Oudaias' Kasbah a few times, which felt like an unexpected breeze on a hot summer day. The blue and white of the old houses, the simple lines and the lack of unnecessary decorations, the silence and the lack of people (in the morning), all these seemed to merge with the ocean nearby. Down on the beach, large trucks and bulldozers were working on expanding the piers meant to protect the coastline, while children were playing and running in an atemporal scenery on the other side of Oued Bou Regreg. After a cup of strong coffee and a walk along the palmtree-lined boulevards, I left Rabat on the way back to Casablanca. I had wondered once, back in Meknes station, why local people crowd in the open wagons instead of those with compartments, rather preferring to stand in the former than to sit in the latter. I could see it now: it was a social matter, they enjoyed talking, seeing the others, learning something new, just as they did at their local teahouse. It was refreshing - as always - to see there are still people that take every moment of their existence with joy and interest.

Once in Casablanca, surprise: there was no "consigne" at either of the two stations, while at the CTM bus station one could only use it if holding a valid ticket (and one could not have that, as they had no buses for the airport later that night). So, after taking 30 minutes to walk from one train station to the other one and the same time to get to the bus station, still smiling and not willing to take either a "petit taxi" or a city bus in between, I once again found Mon Reve and its smiling old receptionist eager to host my luggage for a few hours.

For some reason, I did not like Casablanca too much, except for its medina. The cheap imitation of European architecture did not fit it or its inhabitants. The medina was however a gem, where small houses alternated with colourful shops and where the foreign intrusion did not bother one. Especially in the northern part of the medina, poverty struck one with an incredible strength. Old, poor houses were only brought to life by the noisy children living there and by the colourful outfits of inhabitants. Some were sipping tea on a poor, basic terrace with a waiter which was very happy that I joined the local crowd, while others were trying to make a living by selling napkins, polishing shoes, carrying luggage for those doing their shoppings. Even though this was not the first medina I had seen and also not - by far - the first Muslim town I was crossing, the medina in Casablanca stroke me in a unique way. However there was more to the city, as just at a 5-10 minute walk from the medina, there was a building that made Ismail Kadare's "Pyramid" seem to be only a bed story for the young’n naive: there was Hassan II Mosque. Well polished, of a grand, mall-like design and boasting a green pagoda-like roof shining in the sun, it imposed itself to the watcher only through its vast dimensions. Just like Ceausescu's "House of the People" in Bucharest or like Governor's Palace in New Delhi, its only message was "look at me, I am big". It did not merge in with the town it was located in, like old mosques in Marrakech, Damascus or Sana'a, to mention but 3 cities where balance had been sought when building large monuments. Actually it had nothing to do with the people it seemed to crush rather than remind of God, maybe the only connection with them was the fact that it had been built through special, imposed taxes and charges. As far as new structures are concerned, I have appreciated much more Sultan Qaboos Mosque near Muscat, with its less dramatic volumes, but with its far more appealing and human approach of divinity, as well as with its superb light play.

I spent the afternoon walking between the vivid, kind poverty of the medina, and the wanted (but not always found) elegance of the early 20th century part of the city. Palmtree-lined alleys, sophisticated (what for?) administrative palaces, coffee served in espresso cups instead of glasses... the world is indeed going towards a global village concept, but aiming too far does not make life different, it just throws on another package. Evening came and so did my train to the airport. I was leaving Morocco somewhere in between its kind, helpful people, its fine, even though not spectacular mountains, respectively its colourful medinas, pottery and madrasas. As for the imitation of foreign elegance (instead of the local one which was more than impressive) and the modernist mock of French style a a thousand kilometers from where it belonged, show might go on, but it is and will remain just a show, with or without a green, pagoda-like roof on it.

Other than that, Morocco will always remain for me a country of friendly, warm people, eager to tell the stranger their story if they are given the chance. Happy for what and where they are, as well as creating a colourful, joyful environment out of the desert, many of them give little - if any - importance to material values many Romanians for one exclusively live for, so as to push them ahead for the only purpose of having a shiny, noisy social image. I shall always appreciate more my mountain guide, Mohammed, going up and down the snowy Djebel Toubkal in his poor, old boots, no ice axe or crampons, but never abandoning his smile and singing.