Ana mashi tourist!

Heh. Well, maybe just a little bit. As much as we want to blend in and act like locals, sometimes we just have to get our tourist vibe on and embrace it.

So, I took advantage of our very first visitor, my wandering soulmate and college roommate, to enjoy a whirlwind day of medina meandering and a return to the Bahia Palace. Michele arrived early on a flight from Geneva for a 24-hour taste of Marrakesh. This is a girl who gets me. If you are already in Switzerland, then, of course it is normal to just pop over to Morocco for the day. It would be silly to pass up that opportunity. So, we browsed the souqs, sniffed the spices, fought off the snake charmers, pried off the monkey handlers, dug into couscous, and sampled the nightly mayhem of the Jemaa el Fna. It was wonderful to have out first visitor to out shabby-chic digs in Marrakech.

Rooftop dinner in the medina

In an effort to immerse ourselves in the local culture, Brianna and I went to a storytelling cafe, where they are attempting to preserve the art of storytelling for the next generation of young Moroccans. We listened to two young Moroccans recount traditional Moroccan tales in English, and Brianna got pulled into the act as the storyteller returned to her time after time to repeat the details of the story. Then, we were treated to a performance in Darija by the master storyteller. We enjoyed his expressions and tried to imagine what he was saying, but, unfortunately, the meaning of his tale was lost on us.

Storytelling

We followed up this cultural effort with our first Darija language lesson. A lovely woman came to our apartment and spent an hour schooling Brianna and me in the basics of Darija. We learned important things like how to greet people and how to say, "I am not a tourist," despite the fact that every fiber of our beings screams tourist. Sigh. In the meantime, Andy keeps plugging away at French. Between all of us, we can usually manage a conversation in three languages that accomplishes our mission in the market.

Today we put those mad language skills to use at Bab el Khemis (Thursday's Gate) Flea Market. We had managed to find out that the place to buy used bikes was at this flea market that happens on Thursdays at one particular gate to the medina. We wound our way there with the steady guidance of Google Maps (the mere fact that this app works in the medina never ceases to boggle my mind), and, after a few false starts, managed to locate a few bicycle sellers with a hodgepodge of bicycles and bicycle parts.  We tested a few, bargained the best we could in a weird mix of French and English, with a few polite words of Darija thrown in in an effort to win over the bike's owner. In the end, I left with a bicycle and Brianna (despite the seller's best effort to get her thrown in as part of the deal), and a promise to get the "papers" when I return with the final part of the payment on Saturday. When I asked what "papers" there are for bicycles, the vendor (through his friendly translator) let us know that most of the bikes at the market are stolen. Fabulous. Chances are that I probably overpaid for a hot bicycle that will get confiscated the first time I ride it past a police station. Ana mashi tourist!

Andy somehow managed to do his own wheeling and dealing on the bike front and made a friend of his own at a real bike shop. Somehow he is riding a top of the line cyclocross bike without having paid a dime (yet), and he doesn't even possess mad Darija skills like the girls. For the record, I have both a basket and a bell on my very hip urban bike. He has neither. That bell might come in handy if I have to ring it to get someone's attention from the jail cell for bike thieves. Oy (I don't know how to say that in Darija).

The very best hostess gift you can get when
in Morocco (although the Swiss chocolate was
pretty sweet too)!