The Story
Hello from Morocco!
 | Hello from Morocco! This is Adam Farrar, bringing you an update from my semester abroad. This past weekend I traveled with a group of my friends from Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane to the coastal city of Rabat. |
We were quite the international group - with a student from Germany (Frauke), France (Nicolas), Pakistan (Haseeb), Denmark (Mohammed) and me from the United States.
The capital of Morocco, Rabat is an impeccably clean city with a lot to offer and a strong European influence. However, the "real" Morocco can still be found in the Old Medina (Old City).
For me, the highlight of the trip was playing soccer on the beach. The five of us arrived, set down our belongings and surveyed the activity on the beach. We spied a group of Moroccans playing soccer and after I applied a liberal amount of sunscreen, we went to ask them if we could play. After getting over the initial jitters of playing with people who are significantly more skilled than I, I got into a rhythm with my teammates and we managed to score the first goal!
From that point on we controlled most of the game and Mohammed and I both managed to walk away with one goal each! The game ended with our side winning, 4-2.
After the game, we headed to the beach. While not obscenely hot like other locales in Morocco, such as Marrakesh, Meknes and Fes, it was a warm day for Rabat - around 28-30 degrees centigrade (approximately 85 degrees Fahrenheit).
The African side of the Atlantic is just as cold as the American side - and refreshing, given the heat of the day.
We took a dip in the ocean and then gathered our things and headed back to our hotel to clean up and wait for the dusk call-to-prayer so that Mohammed could have some food and water and we could actually find an open restaurant.
Being a majority-Muslim country, many people observe the daytime fast - making traveling during Ramadan difficult for both those fasting and not fasting.
Once the dusk prayers were called, we headed out to find a restaurant to eat Ftour (Break Fast meal). We tried the Goethe Institut to go to the Cafe Weimar, but alas, it was closed. However, we found a suitable alternative in the adjacent restaurant Au Hasard.
Afterwards, we shopped in the Souq (Market) in the Old Medina until the late hours of the night. We returned to our hotel at 1 a.m. and began our sightseeing the next morning, going to the Hassan Tower and the Mausoleum of Mohammed V and Hassan II.
After many photographs and being accosted by a woman intent on putting Henna on Frauke, we headed for the train station to return to Ifrane.
A 2-hour and 20-minute train ride plus a 1-hour Grande Taxi ride with seven people squeezed into a 1970's Mercedes-Benz later, we arrived safely in Ifrane and returned to our university.
It was a whirlwind weekend of travel and excitement and I can only hope that the following weekends hold just as much and perhaps even more! Stay tuned for more updates from Morocco!
This is one in a series of posts by Adam Farrar from Ifrane, Morocco. Adam is a junior at the College, majoring in middle eastern studies and psychology.
Read Adam's second blog post: Sufi Night!