The Cosmopolitan Blog

The New City
So, we get off the boat, and look out for our guide, who turns out to be this middle-age, rather short, happy-faced unshaven Moroccan man, wearing the typical jalaba long robe. He guides us to a very modern looking small coach (in fact, probably the most modern, brightest item in the whole Moroccan port). And we’re off, cameras on lap, for a trip through the “new city”… Honestly speaking, there’s nothing really new-looking about the New City. The street along the coast is pretty enough, if not a little bare, but very Arabic looking, reasonably large beaches, nice waterfront walkway, palm trees and the feeling of sand in the air. The beachfront properties, however, are rundown, obviously not taken care of. Which is basically the whole theme of the New City. Everything is run down, the sidewalks, the streets, the benches, the statues, the buildings, the balconies. Entrances are not decorated or lit up. One can tell that there was a time when this city was shiny and new, probably built still at the time that the French occupied Morocco, but since then, nothing has been upkept. This is the main point, i believe was different from the documentary on Fez that i saw on the plane. There, large parks, walkways, avenues and buildings built by the French have been kept up with pride, in order to attract tourists and offer a pleasant experience. Cafés line the street in Fez, and at the cafés, you see tourists, just like you would in Rome or in Paris. There is none of that in Tangiers. As a pretty adventurous tourist, i, myself, would never venture on my own in the new city, there is nothing there for tourists, just the local population leading their everyday life. There are no outdoor cafés, and the few bars are uninviting, usually with a Moroccan man standing in the doorway encouraging you in. There are few women, and those one see have their head covered, again, different from the shots of Fez i saw in the documentary. In Fez, the women stroll and enjoy life, here, in Tangiers, the women rush from one point to another.

The new city is hilly, and we’re glad to be sitting in the bus. We snap away from behind the window at a couple of architecturally interesting buildings, balconies with carpets hanging out of them, and we drive by a couple of mosques. There is no indication that these mosques can be visited, they seem bare and solemn, again, very different from Fez where people seem to understand the way tourism works: you keep up sites worth visiting, you stick an entrance booth in front, and you charge tourists a fee to visit.

In Tangiers, this is not the case. We didn’t pay for the bus tour, it was a special package set up and subsidized by the Moroccan government, businesses such as cafés don’t set up an attractive cafés, and sites are so rundown that there is nothing to visit.

We made 2 stops while on the bus, one, in what could only be described as an open-air parking lot, camels sitting on the ground waiting for us to ride them, not far, you understand, just a few steps so we can take a picture. So we’re all told to get off the bus and encouraged to ride one of the 5-6 camels available, and by encouraged, i mean harassed until we do. In the meantime, men are walking around with items they are selling, belts, sunglasses, hats, jewelry, and shoving them in your face telling you the price in Euros and reducing it progressively even though you show no interest. After 15 minutes of feeling trapped and harassed, it’s up on the bus we go again, and are told to get down again 5 minutes later. Here, we get off atop a large clip with a beautiful view on the sea, and we’re told, this is the point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea. What a fascinating place, i tell myself, but look around, not a café, not a stand with souvenirs and photos, the area has not been beautified and the trees lie there now as they must have for centuries, no one here is capitalizing on this site and making it a proper tourist attraction, instead, they rather have local, aggressive men shoving belts in your face and selling them for 1 Euro.

The Old City
Then the bus makes its way to the old town, the Medina. There, we get off and are told that, for the rest of the day (about 5 hours left), we will be walking around and having lunch. The main plaza seems bright and pretty enough, although no building is very old or particularly attractive. By then, i had understood that you don’t go to Tangiers for the sites, you go to Tangiers for the experience of how a poor people and a poor city live. Tangiers is like the forgotten city of Morocco, and even though, apparently, the King has his summer vacation house there, this city seems to have been frozen in time and ignored, when it comes to budget, city management, beautification, and cultural preservation.

Lunch
Our guide takes us through the narrow streets and the sook, which is the main market place for the locals. Women buy their groceries, men sell impressive varieties of olives, bread, dates, herbs, meats, and jalabas and kaftans (the men and women’s local dress/robe). After about an hour, we proceed to a restaurant that seems out of place, beautifully decorated and obviously made for tourists. Musicians play as we walk in, we’re told the meal is included in the tour, but alcohol is extra… Alcohol! The first act i saw this city do in the name of tourism, allow alcohol in order to reap the profits. Not that I’m complaining. Interestingly, we start speaking to our travel companions, and it turns out that one of them had done a similar tour back in the 70s, and wanted to see how things had changed. Not surprisingly from what i had seen so far, he confirmed that he saw no difference, down to the restaurant set up for tourists on their tour. The food was good and plentiful: local soup to start, then kebabs, then couscous, and honey cake for desert.

The Medina
Then, we’re off again, through the winding narrow streets of the Medina, with all sense of direction lost, since these streets are so enclosed that you can barely see the sky. And there, the harassing starts again. We would walk at a reasonably fast pace to keep up with our guide, a maximum of 2 people side by side able to fit in the narrowness, and we’re constantly followed by 10-20 street vendors who just don’t give up and follow you for hours on end, shoving items in your face and shouting every-decreasing prices. One can barely hold a conversation or hear the guide speaking. The guide, obviously paid off by certain businesses, then proceeds to take us to these places. First, the local carpet maker, and it’s up 3 flights of stairs to a big room with small Moroccan stools, where we are a captive audience as they give us a presentation (turns out, a rather interesting one), on the history of carpets in Morocco. After that, we are not let out of the store for about a 1/2 hour, until they’ve done all they can to convince us to buy a carpet.

Then again, it’s back through the winding streets for 20 minutes until the next stop, the local pharmacy, and again, up the stairs, sit on a stool, watch a presentation. This time, the pharmacist is selling more affordable items, this herb to stop snoring, this herb for digestion, this cream for exhema… His show is convincing enough, we’re all tired and we all decide these are items we could buy, so everyone walks away with around 4-5 items. Interestingly, the only thing i bought turned out the be rip off, he promised me the same delicious mint tea as we had tasted in the restaurant, makes me smell it from his jar, it smells great, then gives me packaged boxes he promises me contain the same stuff. Neither of us check the box, and, of course, it turns out to be green tea from China, and not mint tea, but by the time we found out, we were long gone.

And it’s out of the pharmacy and into the streets with it’s aggressive and now frustrated vendors. By the end, we were all ready to move on. So we leave the Medina, and the guide walks us to an old dilapidated hotel with an attractive large terrace, so that we can sit down, rest and pay for an overpriced cup of mint tea.

And we’re off again, this time walking towards to old wall fortification of Tangiers, cameras ready, expecting something old and pretty. But we’re disappointed, it’s just a pile of rocks next to an old wall, at the top of a cliff… and apparently the local drug spot, with teenagers shooting up in open view of the tourists. By then, i was very frustrated. This was the oldest spot of the town, and it was being reduced to a pile of rubble topped with syringes!!

I think at that point, my brain switched off. I kept snapping away, hopping my camera would spot something i had missed, we walked a couple more streets, and then dragged our tired little legs down to the port, where we all thanked our guide profusely (he was, in fact, rather entertaining, telling us stories and speaking in 3 languages at all times, English, Spanish and German, and had a jolly sense of humor that somehow seemed out of place in this glum city). We got on the boat, slumped down on the seats, and either fell asleep or deconstructed our visit with comments of disappointment and sadness.

I slept reeeeally soundly that night, cosy in my European bed.

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