Casablanca, first impressions

The Cairo-Casablanca flight is nearly 6 hours, but felt easier than that, perhaps because there were many empty seats all around the plane.

Passport control was horrible: over an hour. From there I went to the luggage belt to find that my luggage wasn’t there. Sounds like it wasn’t stolen, just left behind in Cairo. And they don’t deliver delayed luggage to you here, so I’ll have to leave the conference on a $60 round trip to the airport and back, which supposedly EgyptAir will reimburse. (Having waited many months after the Iceland volcano to get a refund for an actual ticket, I’m not optimistic I’ll ever see anything back for a tai ride.) The airport people said the hotel would have people who could do it for me for a fee. The hotel says no, only normal taxi drivers, and I should go myself or they may open the luggage and steal things. I somehow doubt it, but having been warned, I’ll do as the concierge says.

First observation: how many trees there are here compared with Egypt. In a few places I even saw tiny little forests.

Casablanca is not the romantic place you see in the Bergmann/Bogart film; apparently Tangier is more like that.

French really is used heavily here– heavily enough that everyone seems to speak it, and they all seem to speak it reasonably well. Even Egyptians usually say they can’t understand the Arabic of Morocco, though the reverse is not really true (since Egyptian Arabic is familiar throughout the Arab world through films, music, etc.).

The Casblanca souq is relatively new, not medieval like those of Cairo or Damascus. It probably reminds me most of the Turkish side of Nicosia, though with a bit more of an enclosed feel, and even newer buildings on the whole (northern Nicosia does have some genuine very old historic buildings).

Obviously, the first thing on my plate was to buy enough clothing to get me through to the appearance of the luggage, and as I described on Facebook a couple of hours ago: “Took less than an hour; fourth block I looked on. The Arab world in general is an easy place to buy decent men’s clothing, I’ve found. It’s all these family-owned shops that have been in business for generations, and the 55’ish pillar-of-society father is always there running things, and he always has a lot in stock, he has good solid advisor’s taste, and he never tries to sell you more than you need. And often his kids will hand-deliver the purchases to your home a few hours later for a small tip.”

I have conference duties for most of these five days, but when it turns on the last day-and-half to full-blown business professor stuff not related to my own administrative mandate (faculty/grad student research), I may be able to sneak away briefly to Rabat or Marrakesh. That remains to be seen.

What has definitely been true so far are all the claims of aggressive tout harassment. I’ve had maybe two slightly annoying ones so far, and only one of them went past the first three negative responses. That’s not bad. The worst harassment I’ve ever experienced is probably a tie between the Pyramids in Egypt (I simply won’t let visiting friends go there alone, due to the various scams that need to be defused by a veteran in advance), and perhaps the most intense of them all: Agra, India (home of the Taj Mahal).

However, the Taj Mahal really is worth it. I don’t care how bored you are by photos of the Taj– in person, it’s mind-blowing. Especially the way it changes color every couple of minutes after dawn.