A day in Europe

Ceuta.

Here is a map (courtesy of BBC) of Ceuta and its relation to Morocco and Spain.

Taking advantage of my time of from school during Eid (three weeks ago) I decided to travel up to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.  In Morocco there are two Spanish enclaves that are on Moroccan soil but are considered part of Spain.  It took a train ride, bus ride and one scrunched Grand Taxi ride to get up to the border in the North.  Once at the border, the Grand Taxi dropped my roommate and myself off (along with the other four people crammed in the car) at the customs/immigration area.  As we entered this sort of no-mans-land, we were a little bit at a loss for what to do.  There were about five different window booths with long lines (and mainly Moroccans).  We grabbed two forms and filled them out than just picked a random line.  After I got the OK my roommate was told he had to go to next window.  We waited for around 15 minutes until someone finally came up and told us we had to go back to the first window.  By this point, the line was about ten people long and we were both craving some European soil.  Luckily the man at the window let him cut the line and stamped his passport and we were off down the long corridor.  One Spanish police officer took a quick glance at my passport and like that, I was in Spain.

Since we didn’t have any Euros on us to take the bus, the only option was to grab a cab and have him take us to an ATM.  As I entered the cab I suddenly became aware that I was no longer in Morocco.  There was space to stretch out, and the driver wasn’t going to stop to pick up anymore clients.  In Morocco it is normal for a cab driver to pick up other people while you are in one, so you could have three people in a cab all going different places, that’s why it’s always important to watch what the meter is at when you get in.

The cab driver was nice and drove us to the center of town where we promptly found an ATM.  As my roommate and I started walking up the street to try and find a hotel for the night, I began to just cross the street (not at a crosswalk).  He grabbed me and told me to look around, and sure enough people were using crosswalks and waiting for the little green man to tell you to go.  If you tried to do this in Morocco, you would never cross the street, you are constantly playing chicken with taxi drivers, motos and bicylsts.  I like to call it aggressive pedestrianism. 

We found a nice hostel and immediately set out to find some non-Moroccan cuisine.  Although I do enjoy Moroccan cuisine, it is nice to get a break once in awhile.  We decided on Chinese.  I had sweat and sour chicken that was packed full of MSG, but my stomach and palette welcomed the change.  We then checked out an Irish bar in the area, and my Spanish slowly came back to me.  In the morning, I wanted to leave early since it was still holiday and I assumed the buses and trains were going to be crowded.  We packed up and headed out again to the border, where this time all we were the only ones crossing out and all we had to do was show our passports, get a nice stamp, and then it was welcome back to Morocco.

Immediately we were greeted with the sight of the white Grand Taxis and the drivers shouting different names of cities in Morocco.  We found out going to Tetouan and waited for it to fill up with six people.  Once in Tetouan, I decided it would be best to avoid the train and just try for the bus.  I caught the earliest bus and headed back to Rabat.  To my surprise, the bus was practically empty.  The problem was that the driver had a certain affinity for techno music and blasted it for the first two hours of the trip until finally someone said something to him.  I spent the whole time wishing I had paid attention in Darija class when we learned how to say “turn off” and “turn down”.