Play it again, Sam!

One of the benefits of living in France is being much closer to a whole host of travel possibilities. While my weekend took me to Belgium and Luxembourg, this week saw me in exotic Casablanca. Having grown up on the Canadian Prairies, traveling to North Africa seems truly foreign, and like an opportunity for insight into another culture and people. This past semester, we read ‘Culture and Imperialism’ by Edward Said and I was keen for a field experience of the thresholds between myself and the Other.

My fellow adventurers, guides like myself, and I left Arras for Paris on Wednesday – 9 March. This was my first time back to Paris since I flew over it and trained away from it my first day here. We headed to the Great Canadian, an expat bar that boasts Moosehead and chicken wings (although disappointingly they were out of clamato – so no Ceasars) I drank the house beer (the waitress didn’t know about Sleemans?) and ordered a cheeseburger, which was excellent. It was refreshing to be able to speak English without getting stared at and while the decor is a bit kitsch (think Kelseys crossed with the Parliament) it was fun to see provincial flags, old hockey team pictures and growl about a Rough Riders pennant behind the bar (I don’t even know why – but got to hate the Rough Riders)

This is the four of us after discovering that we’d missed the last subway train to the airport, where our hotel awaited us. What follows was a hilarious challenge to find a way to get out there. In the end, the solution turned out to be a night bus. Sadly there are no pictures – it may have been a bit dodgy. Eventually we ended up at the hotel for a well deserved nap of roughly 1.5 hours before our early morning flight.

All cabs in Casablanca are all Mercedes Benz – white, old and without seatbelts. We sat Colin in the front to be on the safe side. Found the hotel – word to the wise – three star in North Africa is not the same as Europe or North America. Having said that – the hotel was lovely, the owner/desk man was awesome and it was very conveniently located.

We headed out to explore the markets and streets of Casablanca. The hotel was located inside the old medina – which is a walled or fortified portion of a city. There were many beautiful shops specializing in leather shoes, lamps, and exotic and unfamiliar trinkets.

There were few objectives – Rick’s Cafe, the world’s second largest mosque and a Turkish spa.

We walked and walked in the hot sun a short distance from the ocean. However, there is plenty of construction and a new marina is underway.

You are able to see the mosque from quite a distance and it is quite beautiful. The style was both familiar and unique.

Rick’s Cafe for lunch was one of my most memorable dining experience of this trip certainly. The wait staff was respectful and attentive, the food was delicious and the bread was never ending. (http://www.rickscafe.ma/index.htm)

A house cocktail – JD Sour. Quite possibly one of the strongest drinks I have ever consumed.

We headed to the Turkish spa which boasted so much nudity that there are no pictures. The experience was profound. Between the woman and myself, there was no lingua franca yet it was a sort of kinesthetic communication. When we arrived, we were separated by gender so we bid farewell to Colin who would be independent for his spa experience. The attendant took our money and handed us baskets to put our clothes in. In the basket was a tiny slip of fabric, ostensibly to cover ourselves. Being the Canadian giant that I am, the slip was either going to cover the top or the bottom. I opted to leave my underwear on and cover the top. Once we walked in, it was clear that this was going to be a different sort of spa experience.

In North America, there seems to be so much anxiety about our bodies as manifested by pressure from the media and the underlying Puritanical body ethos. With our obsession with our bathing suit areas, spa treatments can be fraught with stressful moments of body awareness. Between being splashed in the face with warm water and having every inch of my body scrubbed pink, I felt my North American body anxieties being washed away. A sauna and a massage were also included in the package. Once we emerged from the massage, our underwear were pointed at and the hand gesture that followed clearly was to indicate that this was the part of the experience when we would lose our panties. Having had nights like this, I paused for a moment and went with it. I was then wrapped in plastic with hot seaweed paste everywhere.

Between the three of us, a new comradeship was born. The kind that can only come from being completely outside of the norm, in a new cultural encounter, without the language to articulate exactly what happened.

Our intrepid explorers – at the Casablanca airport. Which incidentally allows smoking.