In Which I Tour Many Fine Rural Moroccan Toilets

Like so many clichéd wanderers, I fled into the desert for a quest. I chose an easy desert country though—one that didn't seem too scary for a solo female traveler: Morocco. There were camels of course, and an incident at a Hammam (the incident stemmed from me not having a really clear picture of what is a hammam), but especially there was a great deal of bread and oranges and bus rides and catcalls. I rode a camel--at sunset and at sunrise, bargained for traditional Moroccan pants (which have already enjoyed much use on the streets of NYC), learned how to cook in a tangine, saw dead sharks piled up in a very traditional fishing port, learned the correct way to pour mint tea so that it reaches the desired level of frothiness, and joined in a rousing sing along of Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You in a seedy night club.

I knew that the Venn diagram of 1. People I know whom I think that I could enjoy travelling with and 2. Friends with similar time off and available funds, is an extremely slim margin (so I simplified and went alone). This was my first trip wholly alone from start to finish. I had had days here and there on past trips, and in London (as the archives here show) I had many solo mini trips around the UK, but this was just me for ten days, stepping off onto the African continent for the first time. I said that I wanted to have an adventure.

What makes something an adventure?  More often than not it’s just being routinely and consistently inconvenienced by the culture and the norms of a new place, but (and this is the key) having a good attitude about it. Fall asleep with exhaustion in the middle of the Casablanca airport and wake up with a cat napping next to you? Adventure! Men following you for blocks in the Essaouira Medina babbling in French? Adventure! Sand in your eyes and ears while sitting atop a dune in the Sahara waiting for the sun to set? Adventure! Shared rooms with a German girl who got up to use the bathroom five times in one night? Adventure! Riding atop the camel who is also carrying 11-12 bottles of wine? Adventure! (You get the idea.) Solo travel adds innumerable inconveniences on top of the usual ones. And worst of all, you don't have a companion with whom you can immediately complain. But on the other hand, you are completely free to make your own choices and mistakes and then spin them however you'd like when you get home. I am the hero of all my tales! 

A perfect trip is one that isn't worth talking about.  This was not a restful trip. I did get one afternoon reading poolside, but mostly I was using my brain to find things. Bathrooms of course, as the title suggests, but also ATM's, snacks, water, change, directions, hotels, Wi-Fi, clean clothes, perfect photo ops, etc. It was a chance to put aside all my work emails and daily woes for a more basic set of needs. Substituting usual anxieties with new foreign ones is a type of rest I think. I heard once I got back that quite a few people were worried about me. I think we’re supposed to be grateful when someone worries about us, right? I've never quite understood that. What value comes out of other people’s worries? The scariest thing that happened to me was when a hundred-year-old topless woman scrubbed an entire layer of skin off of my body and then quibbled in French about how much I owed her for that service before I could get my clothes back (the Hammam).

Somewhere up in the mountains, I realized that I probably should have given myself more time. I packed a lot into nine short days: Marrakech, then a guided tour out to the Sahara, Essaouira, and then back to Marrakech. It involved near constant moving since the edge of the Sahara is all the way on the eastern border with Algeria. Both Marrakech and Essaouira are on the western side of the High Atlas Mountains. I’d like to go back one day and go north to Fez and to the blue city. Someday it might be nice to take a boat from Tangier to Gibraltar and on to Spain/Portugal. (It’s a symptom of travel that you can’t help but spend half the time planning your next trip even while you experience the current one.)

At one point, as I was hopping over sandbags to cross the river down near the gorgeous UNESCO site Ait Ben Haddou, I felt like I was in another world. Nothing was pulling me down except gravity. Seeing my giant smile, my cute guide turned to me and asked if I was married or engaged? 

"Do you see any rings on these fingers?" I retorted saucily. 

"So why are you single?" He asked (Moroccans are nothing if not blunt).

"Well, it could be my terrible personality. But I think it's also that I never wait for anyone to catch up. I just keep walking."

Hightime in Germanland

I just had a shockingly short trip in Europe. Usually my travel MO is to go for a month or several months or a year when I travel internationally. The careful exploitation of natural breaks in your life plan are integral to this type of travel of course, and so now that I am a working stiff with a "regular" job and not adhering to a campaign cycle or being a student, I have to wander a bit less and plan quite a bit more.

Surprisingly though, short was not terrible. Although I slept in a different bed nearly every night, it was almost how I imagine old rich ladies feel after a wildly expensive spa weekend: tight, taut and rested. It helped, I suppose, that I went nowhere new. My youthful dalliance as an exchange student was in the same German state as the wedding, so it felt like a form of homecoming. The train routes make perfect sense to me here. The culture is as comfortable as yoga pants, and the language came soaring back into the speech section of my brain almost effortlessly.

By arriving a day and a half before the nuptials, I was lucky to fold into the planning errands of the happy couple and found my German spilling into the front seat with amusing stories and harmless gossip. Weddings are particularly inefficient events as all the guests are there to see the couple more than each other--but the actual couple seem always just out of reach.

Despite concerns that the weather would be too cold/rainy, the coffee & cake part of the agenda, and champagne toasts were cozily performed in a three-sided barn with netting on the third side and heat lamps interspersed. I stuck with the Brazilian and German girls who had also been exchange students (with the bride) in my home state in 2000. During the toasts we chatted with the bride's boss, unbeknownst to us, resulting in us telling him that the bride had been a "party girl" in former years. Whoops.

Wedding in German is Hochzeit, or directly translated, "high time." The highest time of the night was a surprise firework show, funded by the father of the bride. Brilliant explosions of light above the sleepy German farm was set to the Lion King's "Circle of Life," as over a hundred guests, emotionally softened by the effects of alcohol, wondered upwardly up with shiny faces of joy. Ain't love grand?

After all the speeches, the eating, the dancing, the bouquet tossing, the skits and the photo-shoots, small groups broke away in a series of taxis and cars. Arriving at the hotel, we were approached by a worried boyfriend: he had lost his girlfriend. When he confused our Brazilian friend for his girlfriend, we realized that the confusion might rest on him. Less than a minute down the road, we came across the actual lost girlfriend, who had apparently left the hotel by foot to find cigarettes at 4am in a thoroughly sleeping village. Unfortunately we had now lost the boyfriend, who it was later revealed to have gone into a hedge. We orchestrated a very drunk reunion between the two that was actually quite heartwarming.

The remaining days of my trip included a day trip back to one of my favorite cities in Germany, Köln, where three girls climbed to the top of the Dom on legs that were dead tired from too much dancing. On Monday, I wandered around Brussels, eating waffles and frites to make up for all the museums being closed, the day capped with a behind-the-scenes tour of the European Parliament buildings (my dear readers should know intimately how much I like Parliamentary buildings--this one is an airport motel compared to Westminster). En route back to New York, I slipped past customs for a few hours to have lunch and a pre-noon beer with a good friend in the Dublin airport. Next time though, I'm going for a month at least.

Let's Go on a Moonlight Swim

Before going to Oahu in January, I did my research. I watched Blue Hawaii almost all the way through (sleep overtook me before I could resolve if Chad and Maile would actually get the blessings of his parents or if Chad would become the heir of the vast pineapple farm  against his own wishes... I am still in suspense, but sure that some light guitar playing and singing heralded the conclusion).

Sadly, the Waikiki of Elvis fame is now basically an upscale outdoor shopping mall. I prefer the kind of traveling that means culture shock and weird foods. I suppose that not everyone enjoys trying new things though, or being on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean without a Forever 21 and a Tory Burch nearby.

This was a multi-generational trip with my mom and my grandma (who is 91!), and we managed to create a little oasis of awesomeness in spite of the mall-like exterior. The first day we bought groceries so that we could eat healthy and more cheaply by fixing it in our room. Also, my dear friend (N) picked us up from the airport with a bag of fruit and ground coffee--which endeared her to my grandma for life. We kept up a daily ritual of eating at least one papaya every day for the full two weeks. Perhaps my post-vacation blues are really just papaya withdrawals.

Visiting N's new homeland was my primary incentive for vacationing in the 50th state. That, and getting out of the cold, dark gloominess of winter in New York. Although since returning to the snow and bitter cold, I fear that I just prolonged the inevitable. When it comes to the topic of cold weather  New Yorkers are basically complained out by now, so when I strike up some witty small talk about the real possibility of frost bite I get blank looks.

Other than eating copious amounts of papaya and lying on the beach and/or by the pool everyday (with sunscreen on, or course), I snorkeled at Haunama Bay, painfully clambered up the Koko Head Stairs of Doom, fell in love with açaí bowls, watched the sunset at the China Walls, danced poorly with scarily-aggressive army guys at Addiction, and walked into Honolulu to see the architecturally interesting State Capitol building.

I also heartily recommend the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, but the Dole Plantation was just okay. I think I would have liked DP more if the bus ride out there wasn't so long. But the dole whip (only available there and at Disneyland Resorts!), was a nice treat. Imagine pineapple soft serve, covered in pineapple... there you go.

Green Green

The trip over to Ireland was much less romantic than I had anticipated. The four-hour train ride to Holyhead was lovely: gentle scenery, a quiet car and an attentive snack cart attendant. However, the ferry was a bit of a nightmare. It must have been family day since there were more small children running around than at Disneyland. I uncovered an algorithm that determines that families with small children need precisely twice as many seats plus one as there are members of the family. Thus so, I was hard pressed to find a place to sit and read. I finally found a group of three elderly passengers who were using precisely three seats of the four at the table and they were nice enough to let me join them.

I don’t even want to tell you about the sheer amount of junk food that I consumed that day—except that it was notable and I am committed to accuracy for posterity. Using up my quid on the train, I had innumerable cups of tea and bags of crisps and candy, but it wasn’t enough to tide me over on the ferry, so I also gave in to the smells of chips. Starving as I was, the first seven chips I stuffed into my face were the best things I’d ever eaten… and the subsequent 17 chips were some of the worst I’ve ever had and reminded me why I don’t really care for chips after all. (I suppose I should mention here that I am referring to a dish that Americans call French Fries [although a Belgian invented them.])

My first view of Green Isle was grey and industrial, but that was soon mended with tours into the countryside. My dear friend and reader, S, devoted himself to my delights and administered a thorough tour of the island via train, car, bus, and boat. S lives in Bray, which is a charming seaside town southwest of Dublin .

Being the ancestral home of my family in particular, I managed to track down the pub in Listowel, in County Kerry, where my Great-grandma Mae was born above. The bartender was not a member of the O’Connor family, who had bought the pub from GG Mae’s family before they moved to San Francisco, but he show me a picture of my Dad’s cousins who had visited in 2008. I had a pint of Guinness (after having learned the day before the proper way to pour a pint thereof) and tried to feel the fullness of being in the place where a woman had been born whose DNA eventually contributed to my own.

S, my fearless chauffeur, had an additional wish to go to County Kerry: the Skellig Islands. The largest of the two, Skellig Michael, was a monastery for over 500 years and bears the labor of these monks in beehive shaped houses and a thorough system of steps leading up to said huts. It is also a summer nesting spot for thousands of puffins. I can’t imagine that there is a more adorable bird in existence, and they were cautious but not fearful of the humans exclaiming over their cute beaks, cute wings, cute bodies, and cute waddles from just a few feet away. Did I mention that they were so cute?

We also journeyed to Cork (where we tried in vain to find some traditional music), Mitchellstown (where we did some spelunking AND got a bit lost in a hedge maze), and Glendalough. Glendalough is a monastery nestled in the Wicklow mountains that was founded by St. Kevin the Hermit. We went on a beautiful sunny Saturday so it was crawling with tourists, all trying to outdo each other for group photos next to the ancient tombstones. And really, what says ‘family’ better than everyone standing on grave smiling?

For my last day in Ireland, Sunday, we climbed up Bray head (much like Tillamook head, but with fewer trees and a big cross on top). There was also an air show event, so the little town was packed with carnival booths, prams and unsupervised teenagers. We ate corndogs made by a genuine Minnesotan. There are many more Americans in Ireland than I ran into in the UK.

Now I am back in New York, where it is humid and ill-mannered and malodorous as ever. Yesterday while I was reading in Madison Square Park, a young man asked me the time. As I had a clock on a chain that I had purchased in Camden Market, it took a few moments for me to make the mental adjustments to report. He asked me why I have a clock in a different time zone and then asked me if I was British. Oh dear, back in the land where accents are not discussed, and are even completely ignored.

Photo Journal: Cardiff

Welsh Rainbow

Wetlands Preserve

Crossing the bay

Locks to get in or out of Cardiff bay

The old lightship... now a restaurant

The Welsh Senedd

Stranger on a Train

Bridges Crossed: 10/12 (Vauxhall, Lambeth, Westminster, Hungerford, Waterloo, Blackfriars, Millennium, Southwark, London, Tower)
Train Stations: 8/10 (London Bridge, Charing Cross, Victoria, Liverpool Street, Waterloo, Paddington, Euston, King’s Cross)

Well, I didn't meet my goals for Bridges and Stations. My only real regret is that I didn't make it to Fenchurch Street Station, but I only had Friday to really round out my goal, and I decided that running around town to cross bridges and stand in stations wasn't really worth it. All the ones I did visit/cross was out of actual need, so I am quite proud that I accomplished what I did.

My last full day in London was quiet. I was a bit fragile from the previous night's festivities so my first real event was fetching lunch from the Thai food from a cart in the eaves of St. John the Evangelist for lunch. Then I headed to Barbican to see the 50 Years of James Bond exhibit. My brother told me about this show and they had a wide range of 007 memorabilia from the movies such as Q's inventions and Oddjob's hat, as well as many first editions of the books. Afterwards I wandered over to Covent Garden to finally try this place I'd been meaning to: The Icecreamists. They are infamous for their human breast milk ice cream, but I couldn't bring myself to try it. Instead I had a couple scoops of Popcorn ice cream that was just the perfect blend of salty and sweet. I will be dreaming of this flavor for some time.

That evening I went on a Haunted London walking tour with my flatmate. It wasn't necessarily scary, more like a historical tour with the odd ghost story thrown in. We learned a great deal about the great fire of 1666 and the architect Christopher Wren who rebuilt most of the city. It was a nice chance to get to areas of the city that I hadn't seen yet, including the Bank of England. I was the only person on the tour who admitted to liking the Lloyds of London building, the famous "inside out" building. That evening those of us from the program who were still there got one last pint of cider at the Hole in the Wall.

On Saturday I took my massive suitcase on the tube to Paddington station where I caught the train to Cardiff. I had drawn myself a map of how to get from the train station to the hostel, but unfortunately I left off a key street, so I spent much too long dragging my burden around an unfamiliar place. There are always pitfalls and snags in travel--that can be part of the charm--but I loathe being overburdened when I travel. If I could I would only ever have a backpack. Of course as my purpose for being in London involved wearing work clothes I couldn't pack light this time. Just as I had found my way and was approaching the bright orange door of the hostel, a man on the street gave me unsolicited advice on where to go... where had this guy been 20 minutes ago?!

Once I settled in I wandered around the large shopping area, finding lunch and a movie theater to see Spiderman. The movie really made me miss New York. I finished up the evening in a pub called both "Weatherspoons" and "the Central Bar" depending on which entrance you used.

On Sunday I walked down to Cardiff Bay, which was perfectly lovely. I found coffee, breakfast and a wetlands preserve to explore. I took an Aquabus across the bay to the locks and then walked back around the bay. The Welsh accent was much less pronounced than I had thought it would be. Many of the people I met almost sounded American. It was nice to spend some time in Wales collecting my thoughts and easing out of the comfort zone that I'd built in London.

You Won't See Me

So my last week at Westminster is officially over. On Tuesday I sat in the gallery for the House of Lords. I had been anxious to observe them live because they are a self-regulating body, although still active in the adversarial style of politics that Parliament does so well. Since the Speaker sits quietly and doesn’t call on those who may talk, the loudest and the quickest to their feet gets to speak. As the median age in the Lords is easily 20 or 30 years more than in the Commons, this isn’t usually that quick. I particularly felt for one ancient man who repeatedly leapt up at the pace of a wounded snail, only to be beaten by his slightly younger colleagues.

Wednesday morning was our one-on-one meetings with our sponsor, a member of the Lords who had previously been in the House of Commons for over 40 years. All of us interns had been meeting with him every Wednesday morning for the last ten weeks. He is a very kind man and chalk full of wisdom and history and anecdotes. I told him and his assistant[1] how much I adored MP and that I had had a wonderful experience.

Also on Wednesday, I took notes at a meeting with MP, and sat scribbling furiously while she bawled them out for shady dealings in her constituency. One of the men was quite defensive and produced an agenda from another meeting that declared that the company had been providing the correct financial statements. MP shouted, “I could show you a piece of paper that said that there was a whale in the Thames, but that wouldn’t make it true, would it?!” In my printed notes, I wrote, “[MP] was skeptical.” This was the second to last meeting I’d go to with her, and also the second to last meeting in which there was a great deal of shouting. She doesn't always shout, but MP knows that those are the meetings that will be of greatest interest to me. Also, as I’ve mentioned before, she is a lovely woman, but she absolutely loves to start fights. It’s quite refreshing to go to meetings and not hear all the regular political-ese that seeks to avoid what the meeting is actually about. Politics is naturally adversarial and putting it all on the table right away is MP’s unique style.

I stayed late on Wednesday finishing up research and letters, as I wanted to be available to respond to any draft changes on Thursday (my last day). And on Thursday, I gave MP a card and a thank you gift. The card mentioned on it that she should think of me if a spot ever opens up on her staff. She agreed wholeheartedly and said that I should definitely check in after I graduate and to keep in touch in the meantime. I think we both got a little choked up. Later, she took me up on the roof of the palace. Since she has a dodgy knee I knew how much it hurt her to climb up to the roof. To be honest, I felt a bit overwhelmed by the gesture. Also as a thank you present, MP got me a beautiful silver Portcullis necklace from the House of Lords gift shop. It’s basically the prettiest thing ever (when I got to my hostel in Cardiff, I only put two things in the tiny room locker: my computer and that necklace).

Photography outside the tourist areas of Westminster is frowned upon, so I spent my last few days sneaking pictures down halls and through windows. Very few of them turned out well, but I’m glad to have them. A hall might not be very interesting to most, but when you’ve walked down them happily for ten weeks, they become friends.[2]

I’m loath to forget all the eccentric habits I developed over the last two and a half months. For example, whenever I had to fetch someone from the Central Lobby to bring them to MP for a meeting, I would always tell them the same thing to make conversation: That yes this place is a maze, and really I’ve just figured the layout a week ago, and that I had just discovered an amazing shortcut, so that is the way we’ll go! (I really just took them the same way every time, but as they were different people, they had no idea. I think it gave their experience a little extra drama.) 

Other habits included saying Howdy to anyone that MP introduced me to as “her American intern.” It started out as an accident, but everyone seemed to like it. I also got into the habit of saying Cheers. I had no idea what a handy word this can be. At its heart, Cheers says, “I acknowledge your existence.” At first I tried to emulate the British, but then I just started saying it for a great deal of things: thank you; you’re welcome; yes, I would like some tea; I would be happy to make you some tea; here you go; you just held the door for me; I just held the door for you; I love you; etc.

Did I ever tell you about the food? Strangers dining hall at in Westminster Palace offers a variety of delicacies, each more abysmal than the last. Lest anyone worry that Members of Parliament are glutting themselves on exotic morsels, let me just tell you that the entrees I tried physically made me sad. The fish and chips tasted like rejection; the jerk chicken was a metaphor for loneliness.

British food is universally regarded as terrible, but it seemed like the dining hall there was subsidized for taste as well as price. I generally stuck to simple items: a pre-packaged sandwich fittingly called, “Just Chicken,” a satsuma, a cup of tea. Surprisingly though, Strangers’ kitchen could produce delicious puddings. I frequently rounded out my sad, bland lunch with a slice of Victoria Sponge or Chocolate Lava cake.

My last night in Westminster, I finally did a Houses of Parliament pub crawl. A friend on my corridor brought me with him to the Lord’s pub and also the infamous Sports and Social Club.[3] Sports was uncomfortably crammed with old politicians and young staffers. Shouting my order to the bartender, he asked me what part of the States I was from. He then told me: “I had a flatmate from Oregon… he hated it there.” I told him that his flatmate sounded like a pinhead.

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[1] As I mentioned in my Lords post, Peers don’t get staff. However, our sponsor is so used to having an assistant from his years in the Commons that he co-opts the services of his former staffer, who helps him out of the goodness of her heart even though she has a new MP boss. She is a really lovely person and when I saw her at Sports on my last evening, she told me that I should contact her if I ever want to come back and work for an MP full-time.

[2] Yes, I made human friends too.

[3] It's infamous because MP-on-MP fighting has sometimes broken out here. Recently the PM allegedly did some red-faced, finger-pointing at one of the rogue, anti-Lords Reform Torys in Sports and it got brought up during PMQs (Prime Minister's Questions time).