extremes (updated)

 

Looking back on our trip from Hong Kong, these are some of the things that stand out.  Updates to the post extremes, from November, are in blue.

The Good

• best live music – choir in Hallgrimskirkja (church) in Reykjavik, Iceland
  

• best dance music – in Istanbul (small sample size, N=1)
  
• place we’re most eager to return to – Istanbul
  
• nicest train – (C) Vienna to Budapest (J) Singapore MRT, due to the lack of doors between each train car.  Whoah!  Everything is bendy!
  
• best wwoof farm – the olive-picking farm in Umbria, Italy  Sorry, Italy: we have to go with the lemon/avocado Moroccan farm.  Read about it in the posts wonderful wwoofing in morocco and  wwoof write-up.
  
• best skyline – (J) Istanbul Hong Kong (C) Florence
  
• prettiest church – Saint Chappelle in Paris with the large stained glass windows in the small church

• most impressive Roman building/ruin – (C) the Pantheon in Rome (J) the baths of Caracalla in Rome  Dougga in Tunesia, even if a lot of it was rebuilt. 
  
• best treasure collection – the Hapsburg’s collection in Vienna (much better than the Medici collection in Florence)
  
• best drink – 75 cent 35 cent fresh squeezed orange juice in Istanbul Marrakesh…. or maybe the $9 dollar Leffe Browns in Jerusalem after three weeks in Morocco.
  
• best new drink – Floc de Gasgogne in Normandy
  
• best dessert – (C) chocolate dipped candied lemon rind in Perugia homemade fresh lemon tart at the Moroccan wwoof farm (J) lemon gelato in Florence
  
• nicest strangers – (C) people in Normandy who picked us up while hitchhiking (J) man who gave us books on Hinduism when we wandered into a temple (in Singapore’s little India) to watch singing and dancing.  He didn’t really speak English, but he wanted us to have those books!
  
• best dining experience – the Weinbau (wine bar) Stadlmann in Vienna where a glass of (recent house) wine costs 1,3 €, the food is delicious, cheap and cafeteria style, the atmosphere is cozy and it is completely fine to play a board game while eating and drinking.  (J) Singapore hawker centers!
  
• best park – Versailles or le Jardin de Luxembourg in France (C) Park overrun by cats near the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (J) Singapore botanic(al) gardens.
  
• best meal – handmade gnocchi with organic white truffle sauce in Umbria, Italy (J) Chicken tagine, Moroccan salad, fresh fruit and ‘Berber whiskey’ at the Sahara dunes.  (C) Each successive meal at the Moroccan wwoof farm, including eggplant/tomato bruschetta, tomato/avocado/onion/lemon salad, lamb, stews and lots of ginger, lemon, and garlic.
  
• best swim –  (C) the Blue Lagoon in Iceland Dead Sea in Israel (J) Szechenyi Bath in Budapest with its ‘angry’ river.
  
  
• best art museum – (J) Uffizi in Florence, (C) the Borghese gallery due to the masterful sculptures by Bernini, or the Kunsthistoriches in Vienna, with its thematic exhibit, good bathrooms, and frequent benches.

Apollo and Daphne (1625) and The Rape of Proserpina (1622) by Bernini at the Borghese Gallery in Rome.  My favorite was is on the left and Jack’s is on the right.  Either way, these are by far the best sculptures we’ve seen.

• most fortunate travel coincidence – visiting the Duomo in Siena during the 6 weeks a year where the amazing floors are on display

• best call to prayer – When we were in Jerusalem, we thought it was home to the best muezzins (maybe to compete with the church bells), but that was before we heard the beautiful call to prayer in Amman.  The topography helped, bouncing the sound back and forth between the hills and making Amman the clear winner
  
• Best tourist information – Iceland, though getting around Singapore is so easy one doesn’t even have any questions to ask.
  
• Most entertaining animal behavior – (C) ferocious three-way goose fight at the Malaysian wwoof farm and (J) two horses and a dog chasing each other around the field in Normandy.

• Best hike – Umm al Biyara in Petra, Jordan. 
  
• Best (mostly) walled city: (C) Rome, (J) Jerusalem
  
• Most “lunar” experience – a toss-up between the Sahara and Iceland.
  

• Best travel innovation (by us) – (C) putting her hours of eyebrow tweezing to good use to extract a fish bone from Jack’s throat. (J) taking advantage of the water heater in our damp, cold Jerusalem room to make our water bottles into HOT water bottles.  It was a Christmas miracle!

The Less Than Good

• most power lines dangling over and on the sidewalks – Bucharest
  
• most footsore moment – in Glaises (Faverges) after hiking twice as long as planned with all of our stuff (J) I was pretty footsore in Petra, on the third day of hiking, after climbing up the Umm al Biyara… but it was a good sore.  My MOST footsore moment, however, came after a day of emulating the locals and walking around Singapore in flip-flops
  
• biggest letdown by google maps – the Gîte de l’École de Glaises which was about 3 miles up a mountain from where the maps said it was (see the most footsore moment, above)  Amman, Jordan - not only was google maps missing most of the streets, but searching was completely useless. 
  
• biggest rip off – 8€ Leffe beers in Paris.  This was our own fault. 
  
• most expensive feeling city – (C) Florence (J) Jerusalem in the moment I realized the exchange rate was 3.8 shekels per dollar, not 7.6…  oops.
  
• most smoky city place– Florence our windowless hotel room in Hong Kong, unfortunately
  
• most aggressive sales people – the rose pushers by the Spanish steps in Rome Ha ha ha ha, we were so young and innocent back then.
  
• worst planning error – not noting which side of the Danube our train arrived on in Budapest and therefore walking the exact wrong way (in the dark without a map)
  
• longest line – for the Bayeux tapestry in France where tour groups got to cut the line and the French people around us flew into a rage  (J) The line to get into St. Peters in Rome was way longer, but more expected.
  
• hardest place to communicate – Bucharest The Egged bus company information counter in Jerusalem… and not because they didn’t speak English. 
  
• what we miss the most – (C) Emo the cat, my clothes, and having an income (J) not living out of a small bag
  
• worst swim – in Corsica with the jellyfish (J) trying to paddle our windsurfing boards back in with no wind, against the current, in Singapore.
  
  
• most disappointing Lonely Planet pick – the Pirana Club in Bucharest, which was supposed to be in a happening student area and turned out to be in a cluster of two restaurants in the middle of nowhere
  
• worst museum – the ones in Mont Saint Michel, outside of the abbey itself
  
• worst credit card readers – all automatic ticket machines in France, Italy and Austria and the whole country of Romania
  
• most disappointing travel coincidence – the unexpected and unexplained closure of the Coliseum, the Forum and Palatine Hill
  
• worst sidewalks – (J) Istanbul with the downward staircases carved out (think Aggrocrag) (C) Bucharest with the construction,dogs, dog poop and wires  We have a new winner:  The Amman sidewalk with a sheer drop of about 30 ft to one side:
  
  
• worst candy – Iceland with the salty licorice or maybe the surprisingly bad Tunisian chocolate
  
• worst couch surfing experience – in Rekjavik with Sabrina (who lied or at least strongly mislead us)
  
  
• worst payphones – Romania where the phones appear to have enough memory for only 10-12 digits, meaning it is not possible to enter a calling card pin (J) Hong Kong, where our calling card is supposed to work, but where in reality the pay phones will not call any number (even toll-free) without putting change in
  
• worst bathrooms – France with the unexpectedly constant smell of pee, even when things look clean
  
• hottest day – picking tomatoes and peppers in Piedmont, Italy  Walking the approximately 1.5 miles from KL Sentral to our hostel in KL, wearing jeans, warm socks and our backpacks.  Welcome to Southeast Asia, Cari!
  
• coldest evening/night/morning – in Umbria with no heat but the fireplace
  
• worst sprint with our packs on – to the ferry in Nice (45 minutes of speed walking followed by about 20 minutes of running)
  

Obviously good wins out.  Definitely

from Morocco to Singapore

 

Hong Kong is our last international destination for this Grand Adventure, so let the trip analysis and synthesis begin!

A quick check of Wikipedia confirms what our experiences suggest;  Of the countries we visited on this trip, Singapore was the wealthiest and Morocco was the poorest.

A lot of what this disparity of wealth means is obvious, in terms of health, job opportunities and education, but I don’t know the specifics, nor do I have pictures to share.

The tourist experience is extremely different in Singapore and Morocco.  On the surface, this means pristine landscaping, safe streets and good public transportation in Singapore and trash in Morocco.  Seeing plastic bags drifting around the Sahara is sad.

Aside from wealth, the difference in the relationship between the state and the individual is considerable.  Granted, Singapore is probably an worldwide outlier that is a world away from any other place except for Disneyland, the happiest place on earth.

Singapore emphasizes benefits to the society as a whole and they have the money to make sweeping changes.  This means urban planning with high-rise housing surrounded by lush green space, many restrictions on car ownership, excellent public transportation, the relocation of fishermen out of the downtown harbor, legal prostitution and of course cleanliness and a ban on chewing gum.  It also means that hawking (or “touting” as they often say) is illegal. 

It is famous for its harsh penalties, like death for drug trafficking and $500 for eating on the MTR (train).  Beyond this, I found it fascinating how they have transformed cleanliness and abiding by the rules into a public virtue.  For example, on the train tracks there are signs saying something like “Respect life. Stay off the tracks!” and many bathrooms had cartoons reminding you that “Clean public toilets are possible.”

Morocco was a place of “rugged individualism” where hawking probably makes a meaningful difference in how much money and comfort an individual will have.   Unfortunately, in some places it has reached a disturbing level where it threatens the whole tourism sector of the economy, which accounts for almost 20% of GDP, I think.  We have complained a lot about Morocco, and I just want to make it clear that, aside from Marrakesh, we did enjoy a lot of the country. 

Although these two countries are quite different, it was interesting to note that both Singapore and Morocco had a lot of large highly visible infrastructure projects.  Singapore, as a rich urban planning machine, appears to build new subway lines in the blink of an eye.  In Morocco, King Mohammed VI is monarch with actual power and he seems to use it well for social projects.  Near our wwoof farm a new highway is being constructed.  The route will pass through a shanty town and the people there will soon be moved into some government flats in a completely new town constructed nearby.  The king also has an artificial insemination program for cows, designed to make the local breed larger and more productive.

<- part of the new road.

Neither country is a place to mess with, as you can see from this helpful Singaporean no trespassing sign.

WWOOF write-up

 

Over the past twelve years, wwoofing has taken me to six countries in four continents.  In this post, my goal is to review our wwoof experiences and to distil them into concrete advice for people who might be interested in wwoofing.

What is WWOOF supposed to be? Wwoof is a work-stay program for organic farms. It is supposed to give unskilled volunteers a chance to learn about organic farms, while giving farmers a helping hand and the opportunity to share their knowledge. There are multiple wwoof organization for different countries and a membership simply gives you access to the contact information for hosts. The rest is up to you.

Who are we as volunteers? Jack and I are probably not destined to be farmers, but we are interested in sustainable living, good food, and working up a sweat in the great outdoors.  We are fairly organized people who enjoy learning, but like to work hard and then relax.

What have I learned from wwoofing?  I learned to like tomatoes and plain yogurt and lots of other new foods.  I improved my French quite a bit, but not my Spanish.  Unexpectedly I learned about babies and Islam.  In addition to some specific practices for caring for plants and animals, I now have an idea of what permaculture is and some other sustainable living practices.  I learned something about how much I need clearly stated expectations, in order to work well and enjoy myself.  I also learned that being around animals can make me ridiculously happy.

Through wwoofing I have met people who have impressed me with the dramatic changes and conscious decisions they have made to improve their lives.

I have also practiced holding my tongue as I saw people do things I would never dream of doing, like driving on the freeway with a baby on their lap, burning plastic and feeding chicken bones to dogs.

Where have we/I wwoofed?

Key

• host is a summary of the relevent demographics of the host.
• B&B indicates how far along the host is in the hospitality industry.  This is a clue that very few hosts actually make money from their farms.
• miscomm is a reminder that in two weeks of working and living with someone from another culture and/or language there will be a few miscommunications.  Most of the time, they are no big deal, but sometimes tempers flare.

********** PRIOR TO GRAND ADVENTURE ********** 

What do I recommend when picking a farm?

• Go to a farm where the host has raised adult children or has a successful hospitality industry business.   Basically, go to a place where the host knows how to take care of people.  Of course you are not exactly a guest, but one of the most common issues (from our experience and what I’ve read) is inadequate meals.  It is hard to know in advance if the host has kids who have left home, but host profiles often give you and idea of their age and I recommend older hosts. 

Could I feed people for two weeks? No. Do I expect to be able to do so by the time I’m 50? Yes.

This characteristic alone separates the 2-3 bad farms from the rest.

• Don’t go to first-year farms.  Like the farm near Uvita, Costa Rica, they are unlikely to know what to do with you.  Wwoof Italia marks new farms.  In wwoof independent listings, the older farms are listed first.
• It’s hard to do, but if the host profile doesn’t explicitly list hours per day and days per week, ask about it.  It might feel like you will look lazy by asking, but it is harder to ask once you are already at the farm.  When you arrive, clearly ask about a start time and an end time for the day.
• You will do lots of dishes.  Without exception, every farm had a different dishwashing ritual.  Water conservation, availability of hot water, type of soap, dishwasher usage and drying method all varied.
• Most hosts prefer to cook most meals by themselves, but they usually appreciate it if you make a whole meal on your own.

 

A newer option that might fit more people’s interests, skills and trip time frames is http://www.workaway.info/.

the highest form of humor

 

In some of the places that we’ve been Dihram our trip, when you go out for Dinar at the restaurant around the Kroner, if you don’t have enough cash, Euro-n your own, there’s nothing Forint.  If they want to Ringget up, it would be better if they accepted credit cards in Leu of exact change.  Everything would be a Sheckle’ve-lot easier!

the fleeting un-photographed moments

 

I want to describe a few of the many fascinating, thrilling, delightful and touching moments we have encountered that couldn’t be photographed, for one reason or another. 

Why couldn’t they be photographed?

Sometimes it would have been indecent, like going to the women’s hammam (Turkish bath) in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, where I sat around in a steamy room with a bunch of other women in their skivvies, poured scalding hot water on myself and got scrubbed down by a vigorous bathhouse lady.  I thought I was exfoliating before this, but nothing I’ve had ever done before even came close!  Jack missed out on this.  I was lucky to be able to go with a friend of a friend because going alone would have been intimidating.

Sometimes it happened too fast, like the attempted purse snatching that happened right under our noses, just as the doors were closing on the train in Carthage, Tunisia.  The woman (a middle aged white tourist) held on tight and the thief jumped off the train at the last moment, sans sac.  The whole train car gasped and looked scandalized and then an older Tunisian man gave what seemed to be a lecture to the car at large.  I wish I could have understood what he said.

Sometimes we were afraid our camera would be stolen or would attract even more attention, like at many of the numerous markets we’ve been to.  Most of the medinas in Morocco were like this, including the snake pit that is the center of Marrakech.  Our wwoof hosts in Morocco also took us to a few local souks where we appeared to be the only foreigners.  I would include in this the Israeli soldiers (presumably!) who walk around in plain clothes, holding hands with their girlfriend or boyfriend, with an enormous gun slung over their shoulder.  Israel felt like the place we were least likely to have our camera stolen, but I still didn’t have the nerve to take pictures like this.  Maybe it was the ENORMOUS gun.

Sometimes they were in the dark, like the long walk back to our wwoof farm in Umbria with our British friend, where we were on a dirt road in the dark and the stars came out in force because there was no light pollution to contend with.

Often it would have been too impolite, like all the pictures of people and clothing that I wish I could have taken.  We’ve seen so many ways to wear a headscarf.  Arab Muslims and Berber Muslims and Malaysian Muslims and high fashion Muslims, devout Jewish women awkward touristas all have different styles.  Morocco was full of these handmade, brightly-colored, pointy-toed, leather shoes that don’t actually seem to fit on anyone’s feet.

Sometimes it wasn’t visual, like the tradition of applauding airline pilots for a smooth landing (on Iceland Air), or the sound of the tide rushing in to the bay around Mont Saint Michel, or the sound of competing calls-to-prayer ringing from the walls in Istanbul or echoing around the hills of Amman.  This also includes smells like the aroma of wild herbs we weed-whacked in preparation for olive picking or the constant smell of pee in French (non-residential) toilets, no matter how clean they sometimes appeared to be.  And then there’s the flavors like the white truffle sauce in Italy, the lamb in Tunisia and the mysteriously-impossible-to-find-again lemon cake in Morocco.

Often it required a better camera or a better photographer, like the panoramic views and consistent beauty of Petra and Tuscany.  This also includes the five-minute old goat kid we saw trying to stand up in Petra and the Moroccan peacocks who were totally unable to see the yummy frog holding perfectly still among the grains of corn they were devouring.

 

Fortunately, despite all my whining, we’ve caught a lot of good ones.

language and a mention of technology

As you know, I am very interested in language and languages, yet I haven’t posted anything about them yet.  I’m really not sure why.

I spoke a lot of French, but wasn’t that satisfied by my abilities and how I spoke it.  Most people we encountered in France spoke better English than I do French, but in Morocco the opposite was true.  After a month in France and 3 weeks in Morocco, it was fun to see Jack understanding some things.  He can’t say much, but he can catch some words, get the gist of the word separation and understand me when I am telling a story he already knows.

I listened to about 8 hour long Pimsleur Italian lectures when we were in Italy.  They are quite helpful for general tourism, I think, however they did not cover much agricultural vocabulary.  To give you and idea of what they did cover, imagine asking someone out on a date – “How are you? Would you like to drink something? Would you like beer or wine?  Where is the restaurant? At my place? No, at your place?”  With that and French and a tad of Spanish I could understand things occasionally, though I couldn’t say much of anything.  Also, as you’ll recall our first hosts were kind of antisocial and our second host had three English-speaking wwoofers and thus no one to speak Italian too.

I can remember about 15 words of German from a trip when I was a kid.  Staying in Vienna with my friend was fun though because her three year old didn’t get why we didn’t speak German so there was a lot of repetition and a little bit of learning on everyone’s part.

I think I said “thank you” once in Hungarian, but it could have been Romanian – with two days in each country it’s just a blur.

After 5 weeks in Arabic speaking places, making zero effort, I now can say “Hello,” “Thank you” and “alone.”  I only remember “alone” because I thought contextually that it meant “there is/are”…. but it doesn’t.
Now we’re in Malaysia with a Malay/Mandarin/English/Italian speaking host.  I plan to go read the language section of the guide book now.  It’s a reminder that we should probably all learn Mandarin.
Oh and I didn’t get a single syllable of Icelandic, Turkish or Hebrew.  LOL.

This is the street we stayed on in Jerusalem.  I like this picture because it has three different scripts on it, and also because it’s a classical example of the challenges of text processing for language technology.  The abbreviation “St” can be expanded to “saint” or “street” and you have to know the context to know which one is correct.



During our week in Jordan and our five hours in the King Khaled airport in Saudi Arabia, we encountered a foreign way of writing numbers.  What’s this you say, we use Arabic numerals so why would they be different in Arab countries? 

Here’s the story, as I read it on Wikipedia.  Our system actually consists of Hindu-Arabic numerals.  They were developed in India, and were then adopted by Persians and then by Arabs.  Europe took them from North Africa in the 10th century, without crediting Indians for them.  Evidentially, Arabs still refer to this system as Hindu numerals.  The foreign digits we saw in Jordan also originated in India and are called Hindi numerals, by Arabs.

{0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9} = Arabic, Hindu, Hindu-Arabic, Western Arabic
{٠‎ - ١‎ - ٢‎ - ٣‎ - ٤‎ - ٥‎ - ٦‎ - ٧‎ - ٨‎ – ٩‎} = Hindi, Eastern Arabic, Arabic-Indic

Confused?  Here’s a nice summary from Wikipedia:

“In English, the term Arabic numerals can be ambiguous. It most commonly refers to the numeral system widely used in Europe and the Americas. Arabic numerals is the conventional name for the entire family of related systems of Arabic and Indian numerals. It may also be intended to mean the numerals used by Arabs, in which case it generally refers to the Eastern Arabic numerals.”

take-home cooking ideas

While I can’t exactly say that I’ve learned to cook anything new and amazing yet, I can say I have lots of new ideas for dishes I want to look up.  Here are some kitchen ideas I want to bring home:

• fennel – It is great in salads
• sprouts – We sprouted some beans at home after our trip to Costa Rica in 2006, and I’m inspired to get back to it again because they give such substance to salads, especially with salted sunflower seeds
• baking bread – I probably won’t get around to this for a long time, but our second Italian wwoof hostess regularly made some whole wheat bread with her own leaver (Is that the word?) and it was tasty and amazingly filling.  The rest of the world seems to eat a lot more bread than the US, and it is much better and also much cheaper (often subsidized with fixed prices…)
• eggplant – I don’t think it’s possible to cook it wrong.  We ate a lot of stewed eggplant, tomato, garlic, oil dish in Morocco and it’s stupendous.  I think I could eat it everyday.
• veggies in sandwiches – I think at home this is underappreciated.  Sure Subway will put a few raw veggies in but it’s nothing creative.  Today at lunch we had sandwiches and Jack’s had a coleslaw, an eggplant dish like what I just described, a chickpea and tomato dish and regular lettuce, tomato and meat.  More is better!
• pressure cooker – As scary as they may be, I think I need to get over it and get one.  All of our wwoof hosts have made wonderful concoctions with them and I suspect that few people cook beans regularly without them.
• cream – Ah France and it’s vast consumption of dairy products, which was a bit much, in my opinion.  That said, adding a little cream to a quick zucchini soup goes quite a long way.

Oh and by the way family, I have even eaten a few olives!  I don't love them, but some of the "less-olivey" (according to Jack, this means less briney) olives are not terrible.

where do you draw the line?

I’ve heard that conflict makes good stories, and so with that in mind, here are two stories for you.

As you’ve read in culture part II or don't go to Marrakesh, Morocco was a bit of a shock for us in terms of how aggressively people pursue potential customers.  Because of this and the general fluidity of unmarked prices, we have started to think that we might be being cheated every time we make a purchase.  Therefore, after a few weeks in such a climate, when we encounter situations where we knew we were being cheated, we vehemently stuck to our guns, for better or worse.

The first such situation was at about 6:30 in the morning when we left our hostel in Essaouira, Morocco.  We had stayed there several nights and paid 900 dirham ($117) dollars at the beginning.  The night clerk was an older man who had been friendly, but who didn’t speak a word of English or French.  How someone could get a job in a touristy hostel in Morocco without speaking any French is beyond me.  Anyway, the hostel was in the warren-like medina and there was only one door out, which was locked for the night.  Like many of the doors we have encountered, it didn’t have a door knob, meaning that it was impossible to open without the key.  As we had already paid, we walked downstairs to the door quietly and were dismayed to find that the key wasn’t in the lock.  The clerk came over and spent about five minutes miming that we should give him 100 dirham ($13).  Eventually we insisted that he open the door and he walked out with us to the shop of another man who did speak French.  We went with him, thinking there was a slim chance that there was some plausible reason why we should give him extra money.  However there was no such explanation and when we told the mediator that we already paid 900 on our first day, he quickly sided with us and dismissed the clerk.  If I’d been by myself, I might have been nervous enough and worried enough about catching the bus that I would have paid.  How many people has the clerk scammed like this?

The second such situation happened on Christmas Eve.  For context, four shekels are worth one dollar.  This story is about embarrassingly small amounts of money and we’ve been discussing what the moral course of action would have been in this situation.  Don’t judge us too much.

We walked a dark and rainy three km back from Bethlehem to the check point between the West Bank and Jerusalem.  We planned to take a taxi the five km from there to Jerusalem.  Based on what we read, we were hoping to pay between 20 and 35 shekels.  We expected there to be lots of available taxis because it was only 6:30 pm and the party (ie church services) was just getting started in Bethlehem so there were lots of people still arriving at the check point, going the opposite direction from us.  There were, in fact, lots of taxis waiting for the thin trickle of people bowing out of the celebration early.

There was also a minibus.  The driver said “It’s five shekels. Go ahead and sit down,” implying that we would pay later.  We sat.  About six seats were still empty and it seemed like we would wait until they were full before leaving.  Then a group of about 15 Japanese people showed up and there was discussion of how they wouldn’t all fit.  Then they all piled on the minibus, leaving several of them standing in the aisle.  Though the bus was clearly beyond capacity, we still did not leave.

Then a full sized bus pulled up and they said “Everyone move to the big bus.”  As we walked to it, I said to the minibus assistant, “Is it still five shekels?”  He very clearly said “Yes, it’s still five shekels.” so we happily got on the bus.

We drove along and after a few minutes the assistant started to collect the fare.  He said “10 shekels.”  Everyone, from all over the bus exclaimed, “No it’s five shekels!”  As the assistant was laughing a bit, it was unclear whether he was joking about the doubling the price.  The man next to me said “Well I’m only paying five!”

The assistant conferred with the driver and then announced “eight shekels.”  Again everyone cried out “five shekels!”  Then they paid eight.  We were in the middle of the bus and when he came to us, we argued, “No, you said it was five shekels, so here’s 10 for the two of us.”   We ended up paying two more shekels thinking he would leave it that, but he insisted on four more (the inflated eight shekel price).  We refused.  He went and collected eight shekels out of everyone else on the bus and then came back to demand four shekels from us.  I called him a liar.  Jack argued.  We didn’t’ pay.  I was embarrassed a bit.  We both felt conflicted.
The bus arrived by the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem (though they said it would go to the Jaffa Gate).  As I expected, they closed the doors to prevent us from getting off.  The assistant and the driver demanded four shekels and threatened to call the police.  We said to do it.  The other passengers trapped behind us said, “Let us off the bus, we paid.”  The owner came over and the other people were let off through the back door.

The owner who was much more calm boarded the bus.  We were still locked on.  We argued.  Then one of the Japanese tourists came back on the bus through the back door and said “Look, it’s Christmas, here’s six shekels to pay for them.”  The money was accepted and the doors were opened.  We felt foolish and tried to pay the peacemaker, but he refused politely and said “Merry Christmas.”

Now, an hour or so later, we both feel stupid for making a stink about a dollar, but certain that they were wrong to extort another $25 dollars out of a bus load of tourists. 

Because it’s Christmas and we’re in Jerusalem, we also wonder what the moral or Christian thing to do would be.  We didn’t swear or yell, but we did stand up for what we thought was right.  It seems like it was all about the money, but it wasn’t because if they had initially said it cost eight shekels we would have obediently paid up.

The people we dealt with were not particularly poor. 

We can’t afford to not pay attention to prices and in so many cases we suspect that we’re being overcharged.  For example, we went to a busy market yesterday and bought a lot of food in about nine or ten different transactions with different merchants.  It seemed like every other purchase we thought, “wow that was a bargain” and “wow that seems too expensive" depending on the scruples of the merchant. 
Just how much of this are we expected to tolerate?  Is this the price of traveling?  Is standing up against people that are cheating you supposed to make you feel like such a jerk?  When very generous people travel, how much money to they hand out to all of the people who try to get a piece of them?  At what point will tourist economies implode because the people who work in them treat visitors so terribly?

Even though this post is one big complaint, please don’t think we’re not enjoying this trip.  We are.  It is certainly expanding our horizons, and of course, we’ve also dealt with plenty of honest and polite people. I would say that the less someone interacts with tourists, the less likely they are to rip you off.

We really are curious to know what you think we should have done. 

wonderful wwoofing in Morocco

 

During our last 10 days in Morocco we wwoofed at great place near Rabat, in the north.  It was our favorite farm yet. 

Our hosts were hardworking retired people.  He was a doctor turned farmer and she was a neuro-biology professor turned educational non-profit worker.  The were both fluent in both Moroccan Arabic (which is quite different from classical Arabic) and French, though they more often spoke French to each other and watched TV almost exclusively in French.  This was great for me – I think I spoke more French than in France – and didn’t bother Jack too much.  They were wonderful people.

On the farm, we pruned lemon trees, hauled around firewood (from the pruning), fed the chickens and sheep, planted grape vines, staked up grape vines and olive trees and picked avocados.

We also enjoyed our first travel pets since early October!

Their house was lovely and enormous, with the only catch being that they had only solar electricity and hot water because the neighbors wouldn’t let them cross their land to connect to the power grid. This meant no internet access in the winter time and bucket showers (with cold water on the occasional cloudy day). The absence of the internet was actually pretty nice, though we didn’t know about it in advance.

We had Sundays off and on the first one, our hosts went out for the day with some friends and invited us to tag along.  We went walking at a bird and nature refuge called la Reserve de Sidi Bou Ghaba (did you know that flamingos migrate from Europe to southern Africa, breeding in North Africa on the way?) and then at an old castle/site that was occupied by the Phonetions, then the Carthagians, then the Romans, the a variety of pirates, and then became a Moroccan royal palace about 500 years ago.  It was even taken by the United States in WWII.  It was at the mouth of a river in a clearly strategic location.  I need to figure out what it was called and where exactly it was. 

They also brought us to the nearby souk, just for the experience.  On the second Sunday we walked in the cork tree forest just outside their property, bringing with us a few stout sticks and the fiercest of their dogs (because there are so many other dogs in the forest).

Last but far from least, the food was incredible.  In all seriousness, it was the best 10 days of food I’ve ever experienced and we were lucky enough to be getting lots of exercise to work up a good appetite.  We had avocado salads every day, lots of cilantro and lemon and all sorts of scrumptious Moroccan dishes.  Yum.