Oujda. Half a million people with nowhere to go.
We woke up several times during the night, thinking we'd slept for more than we had! Laure had heard the call to prayer at 4am and 6am, several people singing together. Eventually we managed to get out of bed!
We found for a place to have breakfast, three pains au chocolat, a croissant, a coffee with milk and a mint tea for 21dh. Wandered back to the railway station; it was pretty hot. Enquired about times, reservations and supplements, surprised that the supplements were so relatively expensive (28dh each). We had not decided where to go at this point - Fès or Meknes -, so we decided to phone a few hotels. After trying (and failing) to use a public phone box (not for the first time on this journey) we called up a few hotels on the mobile. Firstly we tried Fès, but we had no luck finding a hotel within our price range. Then we tried Meknes, and fortunately we succeeded (though we dreaded to think how much these calls had cost!). After paying the supplement we sat outside for a few minutes. Some guy out of nowhere talked to us, asking if we were going South. Said he knew La Rochelle blah, blah, blah...
Went on the train, which was pretty full. We found a compartment with an old couple (bright purple djellabah, man with typical toque). They were there all the way, while some others got on and off. They didn't speak French, but offered us a sort of sandwich with couscous, vegetables, meat and chips, which was quite good. Another woman gave us an orange and another offered yoghurt, but we declined that. The journey was long and the landscape changed several times - Mountains, desert, large regions of stony ground, a few isolated farms, packs of sheep that we wondered what they could eat. Cart tracks for roads, lots of wadis with remains of bridges, a lot of olive trees. Sometimes around a lake or river the ground was dry, and then you had large areas of greenery in the middle of nowhere. The towns looked pretty much the same.
The suburbs of Fès looked really poor, with a lot of idle people (possibly just not working that day, we still didn't know when they had their Sabbath day). Litter everywhere, but then did they have an alternative? More landscape; mountains in the distance which looked a very light blue colour. Everything was wrapped in mist, and even the sky wasn't blue but more like white. Coming to the end of the journey the railway was very bendy and there were a couple of quite long tunnels. Sometimes it was so green that it could have been Britain.
We got off at the Meknes El Amin Abdekhader station in the centre of the town. When we got off the train we were approached by a lone male American Inter-Railer; he wanted to know if we were staying at the Youth Hostel. Although we weren't, we were able to give him directions as our guidebook had a map of Meknes in it. He was doing a tour of Europe as well, although he was doing it slightly more randomly; he didn't know which town to go to next. He didn't hear highly of Marrakech though and hadn't even booked the Youth Hostel bed. It did seem strange to chat with someone like us, although we did see a few other backpackers here. It kind of implies what we thought, that Meknes was far more of a tourist town than Oujda.
We noticed straight way that it was busier than Oujda, we felt it was good that we started the trip with a "small" town (less threatening), to gradually get used to the country. We were aware of the "Faux Guide" problem; someone talked to Ian in English but he made it clear that he didn't want to chat - the guy's English didn't allow it anyway. The hotel wasn't far; 300 meters down the road. We got a room for 90dh, with two single beds and a washbasin, where there was hot water in the evening. The walls were painted in an odd way, yellow with pink paint splattered. Clean toilets just next door, with paper and flush working. No complaints again.
Ian had to draw out some money. We decided to trust the cashpoint of the BMCE opposite the hotel, given that Moroccan people were using it. The bank was still open (at 6:30pm) if we had had any complaints. It was still early, so we decided to walk a little to get the atmosphere of the town. We had an idea in mind to eat at a rotisserie. There was quite a lot of traffic, especially blue "petit taxis" blowing their horns for no apparent reason. The buses were packed solid. The pavements were just as busy, with a lot of street vendors selling nuts and seeds, snails, sunglasses, fruits, etc. We bought some chocolate from one of them. Ian was ecstatic, we both really liked it. Laure thought that she was in South America; at least that's what she imagined Cuba or Rio probably looked like.
We sat outside (to catch the life) the Rotisserie Karan, mentioned in the guide. We had a starter of cheese omelette, then we had a chicken between us, with chips, rice, and olives. It was very filling, and we did not finish our plate, but a cute grey cat helped us. It wouldn't leave Ian alone! The waiter/manager/cook was very sycophantic, but still pointed out that service charge was *not* included! We were going to tip anyway, though. There was a guy sat at the next table, who had the same guidebook as us.
When we finished it was dark and raining, but only about 8:30pm, so we decided to go for a walk. We bought stamps at a kiosk (6 and a half dh, not as cheap as we had expected). We saw a cybercafe and decided it would be cheaper to go there rather than in Spain (5dh for 30mins). The entrance of the building looked gloomy and deserted, but then we saw the sign that said it was on the 3rd floor. Indeed, up there it was like going back to our civilisation. It felt strange to Laure to be the only woman but by then she was getting used to it. This however would be likely to be the case in England as well! We didn't actually get to do much there; we had great difficulty in accessing the Spanish Railways (Renfe) website, which was what we had actually gone there to do, to check out times and methods of alternative journeys back through Spain. In addition, there was only one person on the IRC channel that Ian usually goes on, and he seemed to be away from his PC, so there really was no reason to stay there much longer than we needed to. At the next-but-one terminal, two young Arab males were busy downloading a video file of porn. Very moral! This was the first time that either of us had been to a cybercafe, and at 10dh/hour probably the cheapest we would ever go to!
Went back to the hotel because life was slowing down now. In our room we wrote postcards, read a bit, then snuggled in the single bed like we used to do in the old flat at West Bromwich!