Tirana's Gotta Tirana

As a parent, one does not always succeed. But we have our moments. I know one of my mother's success moments had to do with a birthday card. She likes to retell the story, so it must be a success moment. She got me a birthday card and on the front it said, "Son, when they made you, they broke the mold." It shows a picture of a mold being broken by a man with tools. Then you flipped it open and it says "And beat the hell out of the mold maker." The corresponding picture of the man with tools is not so good for the man with tools.

It was an amazing birthday card. Score one for my mom.

What holds those projecting parts up?

Alrica and I have visited Tirana, Albania before. But this is the first time we are staying for a longer stretch. This gives me a chance to walk the city and explore. And I have to tell you, Tirana is breaking the mold.

I feel loved.

When you visit European capital cities, they often have their own character. London is the ultimate in cosmopolitan. Paris is groomed and artistic. Rome is ancient and haughty. Vienna is a showcase of Austro-Hungarian grandeur. Sarajevo is resilient and functional. But what is Tirana? Or maybe the better question is this: What is Tirana aspring to become?

Good thing he has cling powers, or that head would flip him over

Best answer I can come up with: quirky.

I wasn't expecting to see Spidey again so soon.

There is so much construction going on in Tirana. But why build something that's just a boring rectangular prism when you can build something that isn't? The architecture of the city plays with shapes, colors, and structure. Many of these buildings are still going up and it will be interesting to see them when they are complete.

Like its wrapping its big arms around you

Architecture is just one feature of Tirana that feels different, weird, but in a fun and friendly way. The murals are youthful and surprising. The store names are often puns (and there are a surprising number of puns in English.) It is almost like the city is serious about not being too serious.

I guess this is an English/Latin pun

I walked across bridges over the river where some vendor had laid out thousands of books on the railings. They were in Shqip, so I wasn't in the market, but hey, you have a bridge here, why not use it for something else?

Building not interesting enough? I have an idea, stripes!

I think what best encapsulates this serious about not serious vibe is the sign I saw prohibiting a particular activity. Not only is it not allowed, they make it clear what they plan to do if you violate the rule.

What if you're really trying to become a YouTube sensation?

I think that, like my mother's birthday card, this will lead to a success for Tirana. And maybe this time the mold maker might escape unscathed.

Unexpected Nonexistence

René Descartes walks into a bar. He asks for a beer, but the bartender says, "Wouldn't you rather have an appletini?" To this, Descartes replies, "I think not." And he disappears.

This joke kills at philosophy conferences. René Descartes is a famous mathematician who gave us the Cartesian coordinate system, most of the notation we use today, and a variety of other mathematical ideas. He is also the reason we call the imaginary numbers imaginary. He thought the idea of square roots of negative numbers was stupid. So he called them imaginary as opposed to the numbers he liked which he called real. This is unfortunate because many people then think that imaginary numbers don't exist while real numbers do. But that's not the case. Imaginary numbers are no less real than real numbers and real number are no less imaginary than imaginary numbers.

Setting all of that aside, Descartes is also famous as a philosopher. His best known quote is "Cogito ergo sum" or, in English, "I think, therefore I am." This was a thought experiment in which Descartes wanted to ask what does he really know to be true. Imagine that you can't trust your senses, what you see may be false, what you touch may be false. Can you make any conclusions? Descartes did, he concluded that the very fact that he could ask this question, that he could doubt his own existence meant that he must exist in some form. Maybe his body was fake, but there had to be some mind, something capable of thinking. So he did exist.

The joke plays on "I think, therefore I am." Though, it is logically flawed because it is then accepting "I think not, therefore I am not." That's the inverse of Descartes's original statement and the inverse of a proposition may not have the same truth value as the statement. The philosophers know this, but somehow they still find it funny.

Alrica and I ran into our own question of existence, though not our personal existence. We arrived in Tirana, Albania on Tuesday night. It was a slow bus trip from the airport to the city because of an accident on the highway. But eventually we made it. And we got to the place we are staying.

On the way to our place, we walked down the Rruga Him Kolli. (Rruga is the Albanian word for street or road. Him Kolli is the name of the street.) Much of it was deserted and dim, though there is a Spar grocery store and a pizza place. But the next day we went out while the sun was shining. And this nocturnally dim, empty street is super non-empty in the day. There are fruit and vegetable stands lining both sides of the road. We are living right off of fruit street! One thing I love about many other places is the availability of low-cost, high-quality produce. You can't get everything at every time of year, only what's ripe now. But it is so fresh and delicious and good for you.

We also bought a fruit with which we are not very familiar. It looks like a big pear but with bulges in the pear shape. We asked the woman at the produce market what it was called, though she didn't understand us. So I pointed to bananas and said "banane" and then to tomatoes and said "domate" and then to this fruit. She understood and told us it is called "ftui". I don't know the first thing about eating ftui, so I looked it up. This is a quince, in English, rhymes with wince. In Spanish, the word quince means fifteen, it isn't a fruit, and it rhymes with mean say. But we are taking about the fruit here, not the number. Turns out, you have to cook a quince before you eat it or it is so astringent you won't enjoy it. (Sadly, the cook time is NOT fifteen minutes, which would be such a beautiful convergence of coincidences, I might have to doubt my existence.) I might cook a quince today!

Look, a fifteen! No, no, that's the fruit version of quince.

But the quince being a fruit and not a number (neither real or imaginary) is not the existence problem. We continued our shopping for essentials. We stopped at more than just fruit and vegetable markets. We bought bread at a local bakery. We bought cheese and butter at a dairy store. And we bought some regular groceries (and things like toothpaste) at the Spar, which as I mentioned, is a grocery store. One of the things we picked up off the shelf was a vinaigrette dressing. We had purchased tomatoes at the produce market, purchased feta cheese at the dairy market, and Alrica makes a fantastic tomato and feta salad that uses, (I bet you can guess,) vinaigrette. But when we got to the checkout counter, our cashier had a problem. She scanned the vinaigrette and it didn't scan. She tried again and again. She typed in the barcode number. But it wouldn't go through.

Our cashier did know some English and she told us, while holding up the bottle, "This does not exist." Obviously, she is of the Descartes school of though. Even though she can feel it in her hand, and she can see it in front of her, that doesn't prove its existence. It is kind of a modern day "I think, therefore I am." But this one is "The computer doesn't know this product, therefore it isn't."

Alrica solved this by darting back to the shelves and buying a different brand of vinaigrette that happily does exist. (We ate the salad last night, and so I also have my sense of taste to back up my senses of sight and touch.) But I wonder this: Couldn't I have just taken the non-existent vinaigrette without paying for it? It's not theft if the item doesn't exist, right?

Don't worry, I didn't test my hypothesis. Because if I were wrong my ultimate conclusion would be "I am imprisoned, therefore the vinaigrette exists." And even Descartes would agree that's not worth it. Assuming he existed.

Wet Cookies and the At Key

Sometimes adventure comes in the everyday things. That's not to say it doesn't also come in the new, the extraordinary, and the spectacular. Just saying that's not always the source.

We are in Hamburg, Germany, only for a day. Our flight got in on Monday afternoon and our flight goes out on Tuesday afternoon. So yeah, day in Hamburg. Hooray!

This is Speicherstadt. Say hello, Speicherstadt.

By the time we landed in Hamburg, got tickets for the S-Bahn (a subway), rode into the city, and walked to our hotel, it was after 3 PM. My stomach was having words with me. So our first order of business was to get lunch. We went to a traditional German restaurant across from Central Station. There I had Nuremberg Bratwurst which included six narrow sausages served over sauerkraut with a side of potatoes. Alrica had Labskaus which was very different. It was ground up corned beef mixed with ground up beets, and it was excellent. It came with a side of pickled herring, a pickled pickle, a non-pickled salad with a mustard dressing, and a fried egg on top (also not pickled.)

Central Station

We then visited Speicherstadt; this literally translates to Warehouse City. This is a UNESCO world heritage site with this striking red brick, tall buildings built in lanes with canals between them. Of course, these were designed to be warehouses, though they are surprisingly intricate in their architecture. Today, they are used for many other activities and include several museums.

More Speicherstadt. Now you can say hello back.

But the big adventure was that night. We were in the hotel room and I wanted some dessert. There was a grocery store only a block away, so I told Alrica I planned to go there and get cookies. Her reply was, "I'm not excited about dry cookies." I said, "So you want me to get wet cookies?"

So now I am on a quest for wet cookies, or fluid biscuits if you're British. But I also had a second task, not exactly a side quest, more of a simultaneous quest. I needed to get something printed for the next day, something that confirms our transport from the airport in Tirana into the city. But hey, the hotel has a business center. I can print it there.

First, to the market where I must find wet cookies. Quest completed! I found these cookies that have a soft cake layer topped by an orange curd and then the entire thing is dipped in chocolate. But curd in the cookie makes it wet, right?

If there's curd in the cookie, then the cookie won't be dry.
Cause the curd in the cookie is the key.
Put some curd in the cookie and you'll giggle and you'll sigh
Saying fork that box of cookies over now to me.

Where I had more trouble was in printing the document. I went to the business center, and there is a printer. But there doesn't seem to be anyway to connect a USB drive to the printer. No problem, I can connect it to a computer in the business center. But the computers in the business center won't let you just open up File Explorer to see the contents of my USB drive. So I can't send anything to the printer.

The business center is on the ground floor as is reception. So I go to reception and the man at the desk tells me to email it to a particular address of the hotel and he will print it for me. Great. So I go back to the business center to log into my email. I can't do it from my phone, because I don't have the file on my phone, it is on a USB drive. That's when I realize I am not dealing with the keyboard I have come to know and... maybe not love, but at least get used to. Many of the keys are in the same place, but I quickly realized the Y and Z are switched, along with a few others.

Can you see my key problem?

This is not a big deal, I just have to be looking down at the keyboard as I type. This is when I hit my roadblock.

If you are planning to send an email, there is one key you must be able to use. You can't put in an email address without the @ key. For you and I, you hold down Shift and press 2, and you get @. But that is not where the @ key is on a German keyboard.

Hopefully you can see it in the picture. It is with the Q key, but not written above it, rather below it. So I am trying keystroke after keystroke to get an @ into the email address and each time I either get q or Q.

Finally I gave up on guess and check. I went to the internet and searched "How to use a German keyboard" and the first result that popped up was "how to type @ on a German keyboard." I feel better knowing I am not the only person who ever had this problem.

In case you ever find yourself with this particular conundrum, here is what I learned. You hold down the Alt Gr key (which is different from the Alt key) and you then press the Q key.

I successfully completed both of my simultaneous quests. Does this mean I go up in level? Or get an upgrade? Rocket shoes would be cool, but maybe the ability to understand more languages (and their keyboards) would be more practical. Or at the very least, could I hear trumpets, see confetti, and have the words "Quest Complete" scroll across the sky please. That's a modest request, right? Certainly more modest than wet cookies.

Not the Hobbit

We are in Bilbao, which is in Spain, but it's really in the Basque country. There is a part of Spain and France in the Pyrenees Mountains inhabited by the Basque people, a group with their own culture and their own language. It is actually a very fascinating language because it is unlike any other language spoken on Earth. And there's a reason for that.

Colorful

Long, long ago, before the time of writing, there were many groups of people living throughout Europe. Those distinct groups were geographically isolated from one another and they all established their own languages. But then in some eon or age, migrants from India and Asia Minor came to Europe and brought with them their early languages. Over the course of the next centuries, these new migrants wiped out all the previously spoken languages of Europe, all except one, Basque.

That's City Hall

Why did Basque alone survive? No one knows for sure, but the ruggedness of their lands in the Pyrenees likely had something to do with it. However it happened, Basque is the most ancient still-spoken language of Europe and possibly of the world. Note though, the Basque people don't call themselves the Basque, nor do they call their language Basque. They say Euskara. No one knows the origins of the word Euskara. No one knows the origins of the word Basque either.

Mural Beneath a Bridge

Bilbao, in Euskara, is called Bilbo, but not Bilbo Baggins, just Bilbo. It was called that long before any hobbits were ever named. And it is a fascinating city. There is a mix of architectural styles in the buildings, some very modern, some very classical, few, if any, dull. Historically, Bilbao was important as an iron working city. Iron was mined in nearby mountains and sent to the foundries of Bilbao. Then it was transported down the Bilbao River and across the Bay of Biscay.

The Guggenheim Museum

One thing I found interesting, and maybe a bit disappointing, was the complete lack of fire hydrants in the city. I stopped at a tourist information bureau and asked about it. Apparently, the fire department carries something like a hydrant with them. There are panels in the street (or maybe sidewalk, I was unclear on that) which can be lifted and the access to the water is there. I've looked for these panels. There are many panels, many are unlabeled, but none that are labeled indicate they are for fire fighting. This is not entirely new to me though. There was a similar system in parts of Australia. I asked what happens when it snows. I was told it rarely does that here, and when it does, the snow doesn't last in the city center for any appreciable length of time.

A pig. In a hat. Wearing a skirt with a pig. In a hat.

Perhaps the most fun aspect of our visit is a result of dumb luck. It just so happens that this is the week of Carnivale, the week before Lent begins. Spain, being a Catholic country, celebrates Carnivale. And Bilbao has all kinds of strange and wild traditions surrounding it.

Fly my lovelies, fly!

My favorite is the costumes. Bilbao, on the Saturday of Carnivale, is like Halloween in the United States. But in other ways it isn't like Halloween. First, adults dress up, even if they aren't with children. Second, large group themed costumes are very common. You can often tell who is with whom based on what they are dressed as.

Big head creature. Is it an owl? A donkey? A cross between them?

There are concerts and dance shows going on. There are children's activities. There is an actual carnival on the side of the Bilbao River, a Carnivale carnival. And there's the sardine.

I don't know why children would want to be anywhere near this

Sardine? What does a sardine have to do with Carnivale? Apparently, this is a Spanish thing. On the last day of Carnivale, Fat Tuesday (or Mardi Gras in French), you hold a funeral for the Sardine. And then you burn it. How this tradition began is debated. There are hypotheses, but not enough strong evidence to justify any one of them. But it must be at least partly symbolic. You have just had a six day feast and festival, and then you have the ritual Burial of the Sardine (which isn't a burial, it's a cremation.) In some way you are saying goodbye to gluttony and accepting the more somber tone of Lent and its period of self-denial.

At one time, actual fish were burned. These days, it is a papier mâché model of a fish that gets burned. But you can get your picture with it before it goes up in flames!

Just the two of us and a sardine who will burn on Tuesday.

Saturday was the height of the festivities, but we are still in the midst of a six-day party with schools closed and pirates and superheroes (and many people dressed as sardines) walking the streets.

I think the hobbits would approve wholeheartedly.

Ocean Deep Thoughts

I mentioned, in my last post, how Alrica and I visited Oceanário, the aquarium in Lisbon, Portugal. While that was a fun and fascinating experience, it led to some deep thoughts, which were not thoughts of the deep.

Now we are in Bilboa, Spain. I did an bit of exploration on my own this morning and it led to more deep thoughts, different from the first set of deep thoughts. In fact, the two sets are disjoint. (Non-mathematicians, don't worry about it, you'll get it from context.)

Don't misunderstand. I am having a great time seeing the world. But a big part of seeing the world is to broaden your mind. And sometimes as it broadens and swells, it forms eddies, swirling vortices of "huh." Now, I experienced two such vortices this week, and I thought I'd share.

At the Oceanário, there was a lot to learn. Many of the panels didn't just talk about the animals or plants, but about the threats posed to them. As you can imagine, a high proportion of those threats are caused by humans. It got me thinking about my career path, my choices.

As a young man, I had a good mind for science. But I didn't choose to go into biology or oceanography or ecology or chemistry. In those fields, one could perhaps deal with major environmental issues like climate change, microplastics, plastics that aren't micro, pollution, or medical breakthroughs. Instead, I went into mathematics. Don't get me wrong, I love mathematics. But mathematics, or at least pure mathematics which is more my side of it, is, to say the least, abstract. Often the things we consider and study have nothing to do with the real world. I shouldn't say that. Maybe in fifty years or three-hundred fifty years someone will take theorems of today, esoteric branches of mathematics of the present, and use them to model phenomena they are studying in the future. That would be great, but honestly, mathematicians would say "Who cares?" Mathematics is studied and expanded, growing in our imagination and our journals, until maybe it reaches the limit of human ingenuity. Or maybe there is no such limit and it can continue to expand indefinitely (or at least until there are no more humans left to appreciate the expansion.)

This thought in my mind is really only a flicker of wonder, a smidgen of doubt, a slight blemish on the unbridled beauty that is a world of abstraction. I don't regret what I've done with my career. I've always worked in educational settings: science museums and universities. I'm helping to pass knowledge on to future generations with the hope that one day some of them will surpass me. I'm sure many will. I'm sure many have already.

So maybe I'm not solving these crises of the world. This isn't to say it was my task to do so, but if I had been capable, should I have made it my task? Maybe, indirectly, I did. Maybe one day someone who learned to love science a bit more because of my work in a museum, or someone who learned a new mathematical skill because of a class I taught, will be part of a team that does address these major issues. And then I played a part, right?

And if that doesn't happen, no student of mine ever works on any of these problems our society faces, I still opened up the potential for it to happen. I guess, for me, that is going to have to count as enough.

That was the deep thought of two days hence. For the deep thought of today, let me tell you about one of my destinations in my ramble. I walked to the Old Town of Bilbao. From there, one can go up to the Basilica de Begoña. When I say up, I literally mean up. You start at the bottom of a long stone staircase. Each set of stairs is only seven or eight steps, but there are dozens of these sets. I looked it up, it's a total of 311 steps.

The start of what would be a long journey

It was actually quite interesting, because there are apartment buildings that have their door along this rising slope. Some people have to walk some portion of these steps everyday just to come home or leave home. (I suppose both.)

The Basilica from the front

I reached the Basilica de Begoña. It is a pretty building, and I walked around it, seeing it from all its sides. Then I went inside. I didn't take pictures inside, this is a place of worship, and that felt disrespectful. I sat in one of the pews and looked at the detailed stone work of the ceiling, the many paintings depicting religious scenes, and the colored windows. That's when the deep thoughts started.

All of this splendor must have cost quite a sum of money: the architecture, the materials, the art. And it must cost a lot of money to maintain. Mind you, the Basilica de Begoña was hardly the most decorated or ostentatious place of worship I've seen of late. You can look back at my post about St. Sava in Belgrade or way back to when, while traveling with the kids, we visited the Vatican. There is so much money tied up in these buildings. These churches represent a huge investment. And all of that money isn't going to educate the ignorant, to improve the prospects of the poor, to find cures for the sick, or to combat the hatred of the intolerant. It's going into a building, into things.

I'm personally in favor of art. I think artists provide a wonderful service to society and they should be paid for their work. But if that work is going to be cloistered away, hidden from the eyes of most people, then doesn't it lose its true value? (This, by the way, got me thinking about another thought. You know how writing is protected by copyright, but eventually it goes into the public domain. Why can't visual arts do the same? If an artist makes a work and a collector, or the church, wants to buy it, great. The artist makes a living and the collector has a new treasure. But after some period, some time after the purchaser dies or the artist dies or just so many years after the completion of the work, it becomes public. It goes to a museum, somewhere that the people can see it. And it goes to the museum for free, or maybe the museum pays for shipping. But the point is that because the art comes for free, it is also put on display for free. Even the indigent can go see amazing, beautiful works because they belong to the people.)

That was a tangent. (Or maybe a secant as it wasn't entirely tangential, but again, for the non-mathematicians, just ignore this parenthetical statement.) My main point is that maybe religious organizations should spend less on the houses of worship and more on the missions espoused by their scriptures and teachings. I'm sure expensive architecture and art can heighten the spirituality of the moment. But if parishioners can't get into a worshipful frame of mind without a 20,000 dollar painting hanging at the side of the room, maybe the problem is the piety and not the property.

I don't mean to call out the Catholic Church as the primary offender on this front. Though, once you've seen the troves of Roman artifacts, statuary, and gold at the Vatican, you realize they probably are the primary offender. Still, they are not the only offender. I've visited churches, synagogues, mosques, Hindu temples, and Buddhist wats that must have cost eye raising sums to raise in some impressive and barely accessible locations, to then be stuffed with a unfair plethora of decoration, ornamentation, and the good stuff.

I also recognize that me, Erich, calling this out is, not hypocritical, but maybe... I can't find a single word for it, but I mean this: I'm an outsider in this society of religions, not part of the community being served. I don't believe in any supernatural beings, and when, as a child, I accepted the existence of some divinity merely on the word of an older generation without any evidence or critical thinking on my part, that divinity was not Christ. I'm saying, as an outsider, maybe I will never, at a guttural level, understand why an ostentatious display of wealth is necessary to commune with the divine. Maybe it is needed by true believers, their prayers may seem meaningless without shimmering golden cups on the altar. I don't know, and I'm never going to experience that particular emotion or sensation.

Or maybe an outsider is exactly who can ask the question. Someone who can say to the believers, "Why?" Why is such expenditure needed for the building where you pray? Why can't that same money be spent in the community, doing the work that your prophets called upon you to do? Maybe an insider is so inured into the culture of their church, so inside, that it just seems natural. They don't question it because that's how it has always been.

Either way, I am the one asking the question. I don't expect an answer. But I would like other people to think about it, or at least ask the question along with me.

I know, we're already asking ourselves so many meaningful, unanswerable questions. Can we really handle one more? Or is it just a drop in that proverbial deep thought ocean?

Layover in Lisbon

Alrica and I are in the midst of a week of travel. We left Morocco on a Wednesday. (At the present, in our past.) We will reach Albania the following Tuesday. (At the present, in our future.) And in between are the doors. (I'm paraphrasing someone else's quotation.)

We flew from Casablanca to Lisbon, Portugal. From Lisbon we flew to Bilbao, Spain. But in between were the doors. (No, I already did that.) In between, we had a 21 hour layover. What would you do if you had a 21 hour layover in Lisbon?

Naturally you would suck it up, stay in the airport the whole time, and play some sort of mindless match three game on whatever electronic device you had, wrestling fellow denizens of the terminal for outlets, and paying exorbitant prices for whatever food they would sell you in that transit trap. That's exactly what we did. End of blog post.

Wait! No, that wouldn't be worth posting about. That's not what we did, and I'm sure it wouldn't be your choice either. We did a quick, but eventful trip into the city.

Ah! Ah! My hand is cramping!

One awesome thing about Lisbon is that one of its metro lines runs right to the airport. So we took the metro into the city and had lunch at some street food carts. Then we headed into another part of the city to check into a hotel where we left our things and did some more exploration.

Monster art! Maybe a troll, as it was under a bridge?

Our big trip was to the aquarium in Lisbon, the Oceanário. It is a very impressive place with many species of plant and animal. They have the central aquarium around which is built several other exhibits. And you get to see the exhibits from the upper floor and the lower floor. In the outside exhibits, the upper floor is the surface of the water and the lower floor is under water. For the central aquarium, both levels are under the water. But your perspective on the inhabitants is very different.

And cue the theme from Jaws

We learned a lot about the plants and animals. We also appreciated the Oceanário's missions for conservation and rehabilitation.

Dough it costs to see this place. Ray, a fish with spread out wings.

Alrica had a meeting and I had classes to teach. This meant we didn't have as much time to just freely explore as we might have liked. Also with the time zone difference between where I was and where my students were, it meant a very late night. And we had to be up early the next morning to catch the flight to Bilbao.

No body shaming, especially for hydrants.

We had been to Lisbon before, when we traveled with Carver and Syarra years ago. That first time, it rained the entire visit. This time we had much nicer weather to enjoy the city. Lisbon is definitely a place I could see us visiting again.

Between Two Cities

I haven't posted in the blog in a while. I've gotten some grief about it, though not much grief. I only have about 14 regular readers, so not that many people noticed. The reason is that I have been doing some other writing of late.

I wrote a sock puppet parody that I hope may get performed. It's called Dye Hard: The Siege of Sockatomi Plaza. I bet you can guess what bloody movie is being parodied. That was actually a very challenging movie to write in sock puppet form. A lot of things happen in multiple locations, there are major effects like explosions and dangling from a fire hose. And how does one handle a major plot point that is being barefoot with sock puppets which literally don't have feet (but could cover them)? Hopefully my ideas will work. We'll see.

The other thing I have been working on is a book. It's Alrica's idea and I am cowriting it with her. A lot of people ask on various online forums questions pertaining how to live abroad. Alrica gives detailed answers on many subjects. So we are collecting them into a book that will hopefully help people who are interested in this lifestyle.

But that does mean I have neglected to give much of a report of our remaining time in Morocco. And tomorrow we leave Morocco, so I should get caught up.

Mural in Casablanca

We are living in Mohammedia, which is between two major cities: Casablanca and Rabat. Those two cities are about 70 minutes apart by train, not too far. So we took a trip to each of them, separately.

An escalator alternative at the mall

The Casablanca trip was partly necessity. Alrica needed new pants. One pair of hers had worn out, and there is plenty of shopping in Casablanca. We took a bus to Casa Port and then walked from there. You know what is in the shopping center we visited? Krispy Kreme. I don't think I expected that. You can't get Krispy Kreme in Minnesota, but you can in Morocco.

No, we didn't get any doughnuts

We also visited the Old City of Casablanca, the medina. It's not as cluttered and full as the Medina of Fes, but there are parts which still have some of that market atmosphere.

In the Old Medina

Overall, Casablanca feels like a big city, a New York City that happens to be in French and Arabic. It has neighborhoods with distinct character, much like New York. It has good public transportation, much like New York. It has a harbor on the Atlantic Ocean, much like New York.

I suppose a business with this name was inevitable

The Rabat trip was just for fun. And it was fun. There are some magnificent buildings in Rabat, some ancient and some not so ancient.

The Bab Oudayas of Rabat

Of particular interest is the Hassan Tower alongside the Mausoleum for Mohammed V. The Hassan tower was built in the late 12th century. It is in a plaza with many stone pillars. The whole area was meant to be a huge temple, but other than the tower, the rest never got finished. Had it been finished, it would have been the largest religious structure in the world (in the 12th century. Today we probably have megachurches in Texas that are bigger.)

View of the Tower and the Plaza

The Mausoleum was built in the mid-twentieth century. It incorporates a beautiful design and uses Moroccan techniques. The stone work inside the mausoleum is very detailed and must have taken a lot of artisans to create.

The former outer wall of the complex, the tower, and Alrica, to give you a sense of scale

The Mausoleum and the sun, which probably doesn't give you any sense of scale

We also visited the Mellah, the historic Jewish district. Today, there aren't really Jews left there. But during World War II, the king, Mohammed V (same one that the mausoleum was built to house) protected the Jews. He wouldn't let them be taken by the French Vichy government or the Germans. But since then, most Jews have emigrated elsewhere.

We headed into the medina of Rabat which has a larger market district than the one in Casablanca. It was a nice and easygoing day. And we saw plenty of other non-Moroccans, mostly Europeans.

I know that was a quick rundown of about a month. A lot is going to happen in the next week, so when the whirlwind ends, I will try to keep up on the goings on.

When Words (and Pantomime) Fail

Communication is hard. We use words as our main means of communicating, but that doesn't always work. Let me give you a couple of examples.

Boardwalk

Alrica and I are in Mohammedia, Morocco. It's a city a bit east of Casablanca. It isn't exactly a suburb of Casablanca, but it is becoming one. It's one of those situations where the city of Mohammedia existed as its own place. But as Casablanca grows and people want to live near but not in the big city, they move out to other nearby cities. I think that's what is happening to Mohammedia.

The White Mosque of Mohammedia

The city has a beach on the Atlantic and a big port right beside the beach.

Does anyone know what these white birds are?

Along the beach there is a long boardwalk that is called "Le Corniche". Our landlord was explaining that we should visit it, but couldn't think of the English word for Corniche. I couldn't either, so we did a web search. The translation given was cornice, but that's an architectural feature. It made no sense. Eventually, we figured out from context that it had to mean "boardwalk."

Even signs can be hard to read. I think this means birdbath used to lure prey for snakes. Alrica disagrees.

Tacos

Picture of a "taco"

Mohammedia has outdoor shopping areas and restaurants with covered outdoor seating. Alrica and I got "tacos" but, again, the word "taco" is misleading. Let me explain. In verse.

A taco in Morocco
Isn't what we'd call a taco.
It's delicious and its neato
But in shape it's more burrito.
Though inside it's not burrito
Sure, it does have spice and meat
Only there's also fries, not teeny.
Plus it's grilled like a panini.
You should absolutely try one
If you get the chance to buy one.
Only don't expect a taco
From a taco in Morocco.

Matches

We live very near an Aswak Assalam. This is a big store, a grocery store and more. It has electronics, house goods, and clothing. It's like Target or a Walmart Supercenter in the United States. But they also serve prepared foods and there is a seating area. We ate there yesterday, though it wasn't our intention.

Those most alluring aisle in the grocery store.

We planned to cook lunch at home, but we had a problem. We have a gas stove, but it doesn't have an automatic starter in it. So you have to light it with one of those long lighters that is vaguely shaped like a rifle. Only when we turned on the gas and clicked the trigger of the lighter, nothing happened. The lighter we had was out of fuel. Well, we are nothing if not flexible.

You can buy hummus in a can

We went to Aswak Assalam both to get some lunch and to buy either a lighter or matches so that we could cook going forward. The lunch was amazing. Alrica got Asian noodles with a ginger infused soup and a shrimp egg roll. It was fantastic Asian food in Africa. I had a pasta dish which was fine, nothing spectacular.

After we had eaten, we set about the challenge of trying to find matches or a lighter. It's a big store and we were failing, so we decided to ask someone for help. Here's the thing: I don't know the word for matches in either French or Arabic. And Google translate failed me. The problem is that the English word "matches" means a lot of things:

• Wooden sticks with phosphorus on the end used to start a fire
• Pairing or couplings
• Sporting events or contests
• An opponent of nearly equal ability
• Having colors and patterns that complement one another

You see my problem. My translate app is giving me a translation of matches, but not the wooden stick with phosphorus kind. But in such times of trouble, when words fail, we can always fall back on pantomime and sound effects. So here I am trying to pantomime striking a match and trying to make the sound of it flaring to life.

It would appear that I am bad at this game. The man helping us lit up, certain he knew what we were looking for. I felt very accomplished in my pantomime abilities until we arrived at our destination, a corkscrew. He took my striking a match to mean opening a wine bottle.

It wasn't a total loss, because in the same aisle, as we were walking toward the corkscrew, we passed lighters. So we did, with a bit of luck, find our quarry.

Look at that sensuous, serpentine curves of that hydrant. Almost as alluring as the grocery aisle.

Today, as I write this, I have just finished the lunch we planned to make yesterday. So good news, we can cook! Even if we can't always communicate.

Let Fes Be Fes

When I was a kid and I liked a particular thing, maybe a color or food or movie, and person X did not like it—more often than not person X was my brother, Adam—or when I was the disliker and person X was the liker, my mother would often remind me that it's good that we aren't all the same. She would explain that if everyone were the same it would be a very boring world.

She was right, of course, as moms often are. When I ask my mom how she got so smart she tells me something about mother school. I'm pretty sure that one is a lie. My hypothesis is that when a child comes out of the mother, it creates a vacuum and knowledge rushes in to fill it. The problem with my hypothesis is that the women who adopt children can also be maternally wise and my proposed mechanism can in no way account for that.

The Medina of Fes

Ignoring at present the question of how or what or where the wisdom comes from, I need to take the wisdom to heart. And that's why I want to talk about Fes. More specifically, the Medina of Fes. Even more specifically, Fes El Bali, but I won't limit myself only to that subsection of the city.

Let me explain what all these parts are. Fes is a city. Sometimes it is written as Fez, though I'm not sure why. The Arabic name definitely ends with a letter pronounced as s. The city is large and much of it is very modern. That's because the city has grown out from its historic beginnings. Fes, as we know it today, began in the ninth century. It was a big city for its time and place and it was a walled city. The gates were closed at night for protection.

That oldest walled precinct is today Fes El Bali, which means Old Fes. But in the fourteenth century, another walled city was added adjacent to Fes El Bali. This is Fes El J'did, meaning New Fes. That's a bit ironic since the much larger unwalled city of Fes is even newer (quite a bit newer) than New Fes, but we'll let that go. The two walled cities together comprise the Medina of Fes. (Medina is the Arabic word for city.)

Alrica and I stayed for four nights in a riad in Fes El Bali. This was a hotel of sorts in one of those ancient buildings in the narrow and labyrinthine streets of the oldest party of the city. Ryan and Michelle were in the other room on the same floor as ours.

When we arrived, Ahmed, our night host, served us mint tea (Alrica generously drank mine for me,) gave us an explanation of sites in the Medina, and carried the bags up the very steep staircase.

I had to meet a student at midnight that night, meaning I had to stay up late. Before the meeting, Ryan and I went out in the night and just got ourselves purposely lost in the twisting streets and then got ourselves purposely found again.

How brilliant is this branding?

The next morning, Alrica and Michelle wandered the Medina and did some shopping.

Ryan and I saw some of the sites. We walked to the Royal Palace. You are not allowed inside but you can go to the outer walls and see the beautiful golden gates.

The King (sometimes) lives behind those doors

Next we wandered in the Mellah, the old Jewish quarter of the city. In the days of caravans, the Jewish traders collected and traded salt and they liked to live near the palace with the theory that it was the safest part of the city. Certainly no military force would let invaders reach the home of their king.

From the Mellah, Ryan and I went to a part of Fes El J'did that isn't often visited by tourists. It was a great chance to see how the locals lived. It was here that encountered the hydrant picture that can only live in in my mind, the one that got away.

Unexpected optical illusion in the non-tourist area

There are surprisingly few fire hydrants in the Medina. But in this neighborhood I saw a beauty, shiny red, and butted right up against the wall of one of the old buildings. Why didn't I get the picture? Sitting beside the hydrant was an elderly Moroccan woman all decked out in traditional dress. The contrast of her clothing with the fountain would have made for a fantastic photograph. But I didn't know enough Arabic to ask her permission to take the picture and I didn't want to spook her or upset her. So the image will have to live on in my mind. (Maybe in Ryan's mind too.)

Next we saw the Jardin Jnan Sbil. There were some white water birds mingling with (or truthfully trying to avoid) the geese. I'm not sure what the white birds were.

I did get a hydrant picture in the Jnan Sbil Garden. You're relieved, right?

These were all in Fes El J'did. When Ryan and I reached the Blue Gate, we crossed back into Fes El Bali.

The Blue Gate is one of the ancient gates of Fes El Bali. It's name in Arabic is Bab Boujloud. Bab is pronounced close to Bob or Baab and it means door or gate. Boujloud doesn't mean blue however. It may mean Father of the troops (though there is not full consensus about this.) And originally it wasn't blue. The French built the current gate at this spot in 1913. Also the Blue Gate is only half blue. Or better to say it is only all blue on half the area. The outside, the Fes El J'did side, is decorated in blue. The inside, the Fes El Bali side, is decorated in green. But you can't call it the Blue Green Gate because none of it is in turquoise or teal or aqua or any such color. I guess it could be called the Half Blue Half Green Gate, but that's unruly. The Blue Gate will have to suffice.

The Blue Gate (the blue side)

Here we met up with Alrica and Michelle.

The afternoon found all four of us together in Old Fes. Ryan and Michelle did some shopping and Alrica assisted in the haggling process. We also visited the Nejjarine Museum of Wood Arts. It was full of lovely examples of decorative woodwork. But it also had wooden tools made for craftsmen of other arts or industries, like farming, leather working, or making music.

For dinner we had pizza, all of us needing a break from tagines after the desert tour.

Other activities included watching a football (meaning soccer) game with Ahmed at a coffee shop, eating "tacos" which are closer to shawarma than what we consider tacos at home, and enjoying the Fesness of it all.

This arch in the old city comes up to my jaw. And there are homes on the other side.

Let me explain what I mean by that. I love to travel and to experience new places, new cultures, new people, and new foods. There are so many interesting differences.

I don't know what the bottles of oil are here for, but there must be a reason, right?

But what I also see is how many of those differences are being blotted out or smudged. In some ways, big cities are big cities. Bangkok and New York City have different language, but seem so alike in so many ways. For many tourists that's good. They know what to expect. They can have similar beds to the ones at home. They can expect similar service to that of home. But if we ever reach a point that Tokyo is just another London filled with Japanese speakers (or London is just another Tokyo,) Quito is just Spanish speaking Denver, and Fes is only Montreal in Arabic, then we will have lost something. As my mom explained to me all those years ago, if every place is the same, this will be a very boring world.

I like the colorful stones leading to the door here

That's what I love about Fes El Bali. It has the same crowded streets, the same tiny shops, the same street food, and the same feel as it has for centuries. Sure, there has been some modernization: electricity and running water and sewers. But its character has remained true to itself. And I hope that no matter how much some tourists want it to become more like the other places they go or more like where they are from that it won't, but instead it will keep on being the Old part of Old Fes. It's different; that's what I appreciate most about it. Good golly, keep the Bali in Fes El Bali.