Whoa

I'm failing at posting. But here's one now!

So, first, I should explain something about myself. I hate crowds. The fastest way to stress me out or make me completely miserable is to put me in a large crowd of people. I usually deal with this for things I like - football games, going out with my friends (bars and house parties are usually crowded), and hockey games. But there's a definite limit. You'll rarely see me going out after a football game. If there's a football/hockey game on the same weekend, while I will be THRILLED, I can also guarantee I'll be headed home to sip tea and do things... well... not surrounded by people... afterwards. It's never really been a problem, my hatred of crowds has never stopped me from doing things I enjoy, but I always knew there would be a point where I just couldn't take it anymore. I've always totally understood agoraphobics and their hatred and fear.

So, uh, that said, Taize was great! The music was fabulous, talking to people from all over the world was absolutely amazing, and the MUSIC. Dear God - so freaking beautiful to hear 4,000 people singing in harmony.

But there's that 4,000 people part. Have you ever tried to get dinner with 4,000 people? It's kind of like a football game. Four times a day. Have you ever tried to get into one area with 4,000 other people? It's also kind of like a football game. Have you ever lived in an area of less than five acres with 4,000 other people? It's like the dorms, only worse, and there is nowhere. to. get. away.

So, on the plus side, I found that limit I always knew was there - the amount of people and crowds I can deal with. I can, apparently, deal with a football-sized crowd for about 4 days. And then I start having panic attacks.

But Taize was beautiful - It's definitely on my list to make it back in, like, February.

So, after realizing that my options were to starve or to... starve... since I couldn't handle going through the line for food again, I hopped the bus to Macon (a frighteningly small town in France that has absolutely nothing of note) and checked into a hotel and laid on the bed enjoying aloneness. And then I wandered the town, which was absolutely gloriously dead, and continued to enjoy the space.

And then I used the week I thought I'd be spending in Taize in Paris!

My first day was spent strolling around the city and visiting the sites that I could visit without going in - the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, walking along the Seine, and the like. The next day was spent in the Louvre. I discovered that, with my visa, I get the same prices that EU citizens get, ie - free. 6 hours in the Louvre! Then I took a tour of Montmarte and, although the tour was dreadful, I met a few friends and we went to dinner and out for a night on the town in Montmartre. I don't know if you know, it's mostly a lot of strip clubs and sex shops. So really, we went to dinner, walked around, and got creeped out. I also made it to Versailles - it's crowded! Yeesh! But Marie Antoinette's "peasant village" was really cute - like Disneyland. For princesses.

Paris was beautiful, I stayed at a fabulous hostel - a Korean guesthouse that offered both breakfast and dinner! Breakfast and dinner were both Korean food (with the option of the baguette and jam in the morning), so I am now a master of chopsticks. Great hostel, I highly suggest it. Quiet, friendly, unfortunately far away from the city center, but other than that, just ideal!

Currently, I'm in Loches, enjoying the peace and quiet and the fabulous food and having puppies around!

Dublin

Dublin's been great! My hostel is this huge old Georgian home that's spacious as hell. The only downside is the miles of stairs to climb to get to my room. But totally worth it.

I've spent the past couple of days relishing a more violent history than I've been looking at for the past couple of months. Sure, the Romans were great. But then you get to Celtic history - grar!!! There's a very creepy museum here that goes through all the Viking and Medieval history of the area. I call it creepy because somebody, somewhere made the executive decision that creating wax recreations of life would be a good idea, so you wander through this ill-lit museum of Vikings marauding and women sacrificing animals and men in prison. It's weird.

But today I went to a museum that deserves a shout-out. I suggest you go to the Prado, if your thing is art, and I suggest you visit Chenonceau if your thing is cool buildings, but no matter WHAT you like, I suggest you visit the National Leprechaun Museum in Dublin. Definitely one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. Let out your inner child for a day and know that, for once, it will not at all be insulted. The museum is really to teach the art of storytelling, so there's very little of the history of the Leprechaun and a lot about the fairy stories of Ireland. AND IT IS AWESOME.

And I'm going to admit something to you here - the Giant's Room is awesome. I say this as a 21 year old woman. It's a room where everything is scaled so that you're leprechaun sized (1/3 of human height, says the poster as you enter), and you just get to climb on shit. And I would have felt stupid, if there weren't four other early-twenty year old girls doing exactly the same thing. When I say climb on things, I don't mean "climb on the areas of the exhibit where it's obviously stated you should climb," you could just climb (and I mean CLIMB, there's a picture on some stranger's camera of my legs flailing helplessly off the side of a giant table) on everything! Tables and chairs, the fireplace, the cabinets. I'm not joking that this is like... My six-year-old self's dream come true.

But, after fooling around, what inner-child day would be complete without a story? And here is where the museum really really really shines. Because there are storytellers. Good ones. So after climbing around in the Giant's Room, climbing under the Giant's Causeway, you come to the end of the rainbow (obviously!) and enter the story room. Again, this is not a museum entirely for children (although it's very child friendly), and the stories certainly don't insult your inner child either. They're scary, they're thrilling, there are ghosts... Stories so good you don't want them to end. This was really what won my heart - our story teller was so good he left you with that unsatisfied feeling you get after a good book or a play when you're almost upset that it's over and nothing else is going to satisfy the craving you have to get back to that world - that world, not another similar world, that one.

I guess the closest comparison I have is that, yes, in a way, this museum is for children. But unlike most things for children, it's not insulting. Much like The Hobbit, it respects the darker side of things, and because of that, it's really just a joy to everybody who walks through the museum.

I can't stress this enough. Go. I wish I had the time to go again. And the girls I went through with today? Were there for their second time as well. Seriously, gooooo. This museum is a good book. I have the exact same feeling I get when I finish a life-changingly awesome book - one of the ones you start reading again immediately or get upset that the author didn't make the book longer.

http://www.leprechaunmuseum.ie/

Memphis > London

Here's a few things I've noticed:

1) Both Memphis and London are completely un-walker friendly. Entirely. Yes, there might be sidewalks, but both cities have spent time expanding out, rather than up, so they're both absolutely huge. I like to walk, so that's not usually a problem, except that neither city has anything to look at between point A and point B. Office buildings - yeehaw. Added to this are the "Walking Paths" outlined on some maps. The one I strolled down yesterday took me through a car park (not shitting you) and through an unloading dock before abruptly ending and telling me if I walked forward, it'd be trespassing. If you're traveling in London or Memphis, I advise you, rent a car.

2) You must rent a car because of number 2. Both cities have absolutely no comprehensible system of public transport. Now, in Memphis, this is largely because of political corruption and bad management. In London I believe you might be able to get around on a good day, but they get placed in this category because a few lines are under construction but there's absolutely no way to figure out which lines and how to get around these lines or others ways to get around. London is the only city in which I have declared defeat and hailed a cab.

3) They both have King's houses. And all of these houses are tourist traps. The Brits went so far as to install moving walkways in front of the crown jewels to keep people moving. If you want a blatant tourist-herd, go to the real King's house, Graceland, where at least the visitors dress interestingly enough to keep you, well, interested.

Now, those are my arguments as to why Memphis = London, but that's not my main thesis.

Why Memphis > London

1) Food. Meat Pie is awesome. Great invention, good job British. But then they named the rest of their food "spotted dick" and "toad in a hole." Who wants to eat that when you could have fried chicken, gravy, sweet tea, shrimp po-boys, and, obviously, BBQ? Come on. This one's a no brainer.

2) Soul. Memphis has it, London doesn't. End of story.

3) Memphis is hundreds of times cheaper. It's four pounds to take the metro here. FOUR. That's before conversion rates! And it's two to take the bus - and there's no way to buy a pass if you have to switch buses, you have to buy a new ticket on the new bus.

As you can see, London hasn't really done a good job of impressing me much. It's actually done a super good job of being completely unthrilling. On a scale of one to ten, judging how much you need to visit this city, I'd give London a three. Now, Memphis on the other hand...

A surprise patriotic moment

Today I took it kind of slow - slept in, went for a run, moped around the hostel, and generally didn't get going until afternoon. But I headed up to the Edinburgh castle, which is pretty sweet. Edinburgh lends itself to Gothic novels (you can just imagine some loved-crazed woman fleeing the castle towards her lovers shack chased by the dogs of her husband... Or something...). The castle isn't a let down in this respect either. Dark stones on a giant crag of a mountain. Way cool looking, and apparently despised by everybody who lived there - the royals didn't, if they had any other option.

But there was a thing I wasn't expecting in my tour. They had a special exhibition on the prisons that used to be there - housing POWs as well as pirates. The exhibition was a little silly - wax works and sound system "prisoners stories," but they did have a couple of old doors that prisoners had carved graffiti into.

Most of these were carved by POWs during a rebellion, by French men and others, and a couple were carved by pirates, treated lower than the POWs. Pirates and rebels, British men who fought against the king...

... and flew the American flag! (That's what that is.)

I just wish I could have gone back and told this man thanks... Not to wax eloquent or anything, but it really struck me that somebody over 200 years ago and thousands of miles away believed so strongly in his cause. He didn't know me, or even if they'd win, but I still have a country that this man fought for. A whole "thanks to all our troops" moment, if you will.

After that I went to The Elephant House - where J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter!

Morocco

So aside from my own status going from "super exotic" to "totally mundane," Morocco to Scotland has been quite a fun switch. I just went from getting a sunburn in seconds to huddling under the comforter for heat. Another note - it's 10:15 and the sun's still up. Yay high latitudes!

But I haven't fully explained about Morocco yet.

It's rather hard to take in. There's just so much going on. And while I quite liked Morocco, it's also quite obnoxious. The Jemaa El Fna, the grand square in Morocco, is unlike anything I've encountered before. It's huge and loud and bustling from about 11 AM to 3 AM. It's also there completely for the sake of tourists - snake charmers and henna artists and musicians and monkeys. Even knowing this though, knowing that it's there to satisfy your ideas of oriental culture, it's so hard to avoid how alive it is. How completely overwhelming everything is. I'm not tripping over myself to go back, but it definitely takes your breath away when you see it.

Vendors in Marrakech are ridiculously pushy. They'll grab you by the arm, follow you down the street, do absolutely anything they can think of to get you into their store. You're doomed if you do go into a store - once there the owner won't let you go until you've looked at all his wares. Saying you don't want to buy anything seems to be some kind of personal offense.

But the heat was so wonderful, it was hard to dislike it. After a rather rainy spring in Aix (a very bizarrely cold one, too), and constant rain in Spain (which did stay mainly on the plain), getting to a city that was appropriately warm was wonderful. Now I'm back in abnormally cold places. Brr...

But I did have an adventure in Morocco. I had my first couch surfing experience! My travel partner had been talking to this couple for quite a long time, he was in charge of the surfing part of our trip.

The couple we stayed with lived in Imin Tadert. They live about 3 km below Setti Fatma - a village based entirely around the tourists who come to climb to see the falls. Imin Tadert usually gets driven past entirely, however. Mostly because it's on the other side of the ravine from the road...

So we meet up with our hosts - two very hippy, dred-locked, absolutely kind-hearted people with two adorable dogs (one who was unfortunately teething). And we head towards their house -

Down steep steps carved out of the mountain, sometimes a winding path, inches away from a fall to a bridge. You remember those bridges on playgrounds when you were a kid? The ones you could jump up and down on and shake? Alright, now stretch that bridge out from ten feet to about a hundred, make it wobbly not only up and down by sideways, instead of the super-safe nets on both sides have nothing but one steel cable, and change the even, kid-approved planks for uneven, unevenly spaced logs. And add bags. Then up the other side to their house - a basic, unattractive cinder block house, like every other house in the entire village.

Inside was covered with carpeting and the walls were painted with symbols and Arabic and Berber words. Inside was beautiful.

The next day we woke up and climbed the mountain (our host was a mountain tour guide who took us up for free). And then we returned home, exhausted. But my adventure is only beginning. That night our host and, by extension, us were invited to a local wedding. I have mixed feelings about crashing this wedding, mostly because I know if several uninvited, unknown guests showed up to my wedding I'd probably be furious, but it was a whole lot of fun.

My poor travel partner was sent off with the men-folk to do manly things, and the women all clustered in a room to do what women do best - coo over the bride. She was absolutely beautiful. All the women were beautiful in sequined robes and matching headscarves. I hold to my jealousy - women in headscarves look so damn pulled together! Argh!

They brought us dinner - loaves of bread which we took and ripped apart and scattered around the table, and then two chickens, which we ate using the bread we'd distributed evenly before. I know all of two things about Morocco table manners, and they are as follows.

1) Try to eat out of the sliver of the plate directly in front of you. (Don't steal other people's food.)

2) Don't use your left hand.

So, using one hand, I grabbed a piece of bread and tried to dig into the chicken. With bread. Have you ever tried to tear apart a chicken wearing hot mitts? That's kind of what it feels like.

But I realized how easy it was - pieces of chicken were always directly in front of me on the plate. Like magic. Or like super nice women saving me trouble (and face). And then, the grandma next to me must have got it into her head that I was either eating to slowly or starving; she started handing me food before I'd even put the other bite I was holding into my mouth, she kept pressing me to eat. I've been overfed before, I DO live in the south and I've been fed by Southerners, French women, and Italians, all of whom love to overfeed guests. But I've never felt so stuffed in my life. I nearly made myself sick on the chicken, and that was before the second course came out - lamb! Lamb is much easier to tear with pieces of bread, but that didn't stop my guardian from picking me pieces and handing them to me. And the dates that came with the lamb. And whatever nuts were also floating in the sauce. So much food! So delicious, all of it!!!

After dinner it was time to amuse ourselves until the other women arrived to escort the bride to the dance. And amuse ourselves we did (or rather, they did and I was a fortunate bystander). Drums, singing, and dancing were the order for the day. And don't let anyone tell you Berber women can't dance (not that that's a stereotype I've ever heard). Because they can shake it enough to make Shakira jealous. Berber dancing involves hopping from foot to foot - kind of like polkaing but much much smaller - and moving your shoulders in time to the music. And then shaking. And that's where it gets entirely beyond me (I tried, to much laughter). I can't properly describe it, suffice it to say, "cool."

Unfortunately, my story ends here. My guardian and my host were both tired and wanted to go home. As much as I wanted to stay, I couldn't stay without my invited hosts, so I had to tag along home, walking the treacherous paths down to our house in the dark. Admittedly, this was past midnight and the main party hadn't even started, I was quite exhausted myself.

The next day we headed off to Essouria and showers. Did I mention - our hosts had no running water? Oh! And a Berber Toilet (that would be a hole in the ground with a sort of... cover... thing? Google it for yourselves). The no running water bit actually worked out quite well, since we ran down to the stream (that we'd crossed on the terrifying bridge) to get whatever we needed. We couldn't drink the local water anyway, so we were drinking bottled and had been since we got to Marrakesh, and aside from not being able to shower or wash my face, all other tasks were quite easy to accomplish.

But I was quite glad to get back to WiFi and showers. I'm a bit of a travel princess. I can deal with crappy showers and sketchy bedding and all manner of other things, but I really dislike being dependent on a stranger for my comfort level. I'm not cut out for couch surfing, even though I admit all the "cool" kids are doing it.

The rest of Morocco was fabulous, our hotel on the last night was one of the nicer ones I've stayed at, and that's by hotel standards, not just hostel standards. It was beautiful, I'd recommend it to ANYONE going to Marrakech, not just poor students.

I have mixed feelings about Morocco. The greatest part, by far, was waking up early one morning and hearing quiet - no sounds of snake charmers or drums or anything - nothing but the morning call to prayer sung from five different mosques all over town. It's right up there with bells for early morning mass. It's an eerie, lonely kind of beauty.

Tidbits and pictures!

I had originally planned to run downstairs for a few minutes to check my email, but I timed it to when the cleaning lady decided to "mop" the floors by soaking them with loads of soapy water. I think she's going to come back to wipe them up, but right now, I'm suddenly stranded in an accidental bath.

So I'll tell you a little about the Alhambra, which was stunningly beautiful, and Marrakesh, which is even more awesome.

The Alhambra was built a looooong time ago with people with the same evenness issues I have!

It's all so intricate, so awesome, and so beautifully even. The Alhambra inspired M.C. Esher to begin his drawings, which, after walking around, isn't that hard to imagine. It's also the place were Isabella sent Columbus on a crazy journey (with hints that Ferdinand might have wanted him gone because Columbus and Isabella were fooling around).

The Alhambra is beautiful.

And Charles V decided that he wanted a "normal" house, so he built a palace along side it. It just looks silly and severe next to the spacious Alhambra.

Morocco is amazing.

I haven't taken photos here yet, mostly because I'm not sure what I'm "allowed" to take photos of and what I'd have to pay to take photos of... I want pictures of the monkeys in the market, but I know I have to pay for that. And I wanted a picture of the man playing the banjo with a chicken on his head, but again, probably would have to pay.

Ah well, I'll just keep walking around and getting "unofficial tours" that I don't particularly want and then having people expect money from me. The easy bit is that they tend to walk ahead of you (at least the two guys who tried it with me), so you just duck down an alley when they aren't looking.

I bought Nun Cookies!

Kristie, I was going to write this in that letter I so desperately owe you, but I want to share this here. But imagine it's handwritten in a letter... :/

Today I woke up and took the free walking tour of Granada. On the tour, among many other cool buildings and facts, our guide mentioned that there's a nunnery in town that sells cookies. They're cloistered, they can't see people, but they're supposed to make AMAZING cookies.

You better believe I bee-lined it there as soon as the tour ended. Mostly because I love cookies and because you can't say no to nuns selling cookies, but also because I was intrigued how they conquered the issue of being cloistered and doing business.

The nuns are, as stated, cloistered. So you walk into this room where there's nothing but a little window with a lazy-susan style turnstyle that takes up the entirety of the window and, next to the window, a PA system. Nicely outlined in Spanish and English are instructions - push the button, wait for response, say what you want, get cookies, pay, go away.

Which is exactly what happened. I pushed the PA button and the turnstyle shifted just enough to hear a voice - "Si?" I said what I wanted, the voice went away and was replaced by cookies! I placed my money on the turnstyle, which seemed to know when I had because it immediately turned.

And I plopped myself down right outside and dug into my delicious nun-cookies.