Casablanca Journal - Day 1

Three colleagues and I were sent to Casablanca for business three weeks ago. The trip lasted four days, so I kept a daily journal. This is the first day. 

We arrived at the Hassan Mosque before evening prayers
and it was a hub of activity.

So Long Luggage

We have arrived in Casablanca, although without some luggage. Katie and Malika both checked their baggage in Budapest and, probably because we only had an hour to change flights in Rome, their baggage is lost.

Their hair product and business outfits are in those cases, which is not a good situation to be in when you’re looking at two days of client meetings and retail outlet tours.

Tissue Vendors

At stoplights, vendors walk between cars selling boxes of tissues. In one case, a guy in the backseat of a BMW bought a box of tissues from a vendor while the light was changing. As the vendor was fumbling for change, the car began lurching forward, so the passenger just took two boxes instead of the change and sped off.

Medina Discovery Walk

We checked into the hotel and went for a Discovery Walk to the Medina, which is Casablanca’s old market. We quickly got lost in the maze of old buildings, narrow streets, and stalls.

Along the way we met Omar, who latched onto Arnold right away. Omar told us he would guide us through the market and took us to a shop, where he was clearly had the job of steering tourists in. Another guide brought in a couple of Dutch sailors.

We purchased a few things and Omar took us for a walk through the market, slowly guiding us to our destination: the Hassan Mosque. Along the way, he talked about fighting in the war, living in the mountains, traveling with Berber nomads in the desert, a dead wife, and all manner of hard luck stories. It all could have been true, or simply tall tales, because when we reached the mosque, we felt obliged to give him a couple of Euros, enough if he didn’t expect payment for his tour guide services.

Eating like Moroccans

For dinner we went out for some traditional Moroccan grub: Tagine. I got the Chicken Tagine with vegetables and couscous. Delicious stuff, but Malika wisely ordered the lamb with stewed prunes. She’s a light eater, so I helped out and quickly realized I should have ordered the lamb.

Of Curses and Hungarian Healthcare

There's a grim joke going around the office that the Canadians are cursed.

It began with Teak tearing an Achilles tendon playing squash. After a traumatic visit to an emergency room/butchershop, surgery and months of physiotherapy, he still limps.

Kevin flew over the handle bars of his mountain bike in the Buda hills. He has had three surgeries on his shoulder and still has metal screws holding things together.

The rest of the Canadians have gloomily awaited their turn. We are cautious. We don’t jaywalk. No one does extreme sports. When Cara, another Canadian, and I go running in the Buda hills with our Hungarian running group, prayers are murmured down every treacherous trail. Other Canadians just stopped being active. They just stay home. They avoid outdoor activities. They avoid disaster.

Then the curse struck me this summer.

A week before my 31^st birthday, I got a pain in the neck. It was so incredible that my shoulders were scrunched up to my ears. I went to a private doctor’s office frequented by my other  expatriate co-workers. The nice doctor prescribed me a bunch of awesome drugs, set me up with an MRI exam and sent me home.

For two days, I lay on the couch, popping muscle relaxants, until my MRI appointment. Normally, the wait is longer, but going through the private doctor and paying more meant I jumped the line. Not something that happens in Canada, the Land of the Long Wait.

I went in, got buzzed by the machine and they handed me a CD with the images on it almost right after, ready to be shared on the book of face. Nothing to worry about, just muscle pain from poor neck posture at the work computer, so I began physio.

Not a week later, I got a sore throat. No matter, I thought, just sleep and gargle some salt water and all will be well. 

That Saturday, I laid on the couch, unable to eat anything because my throat was so sore. Kata came by with a thermometer, because, silly me, I didn’t pack one when I moved to Europe. It informed me my temperature was in the neighbourhood of 40 degrees. It was not a routine sore throat, so she administered a tea and strepsil cure and I decided to see a doctor.

Private medicare isn’t cheap in Hungary, which is a universal truth everywhere, so I asked the internet about public care. I found an information number on a government website and asked for help. With my woefully limited Hungarian and the operators’ limited English (I could hear several other employees in the background, helping out), I found a walk-in clinic.

I took the metro, staggered into the office and began the most sacred of medical rituals: the wait. There was no front desk, no triage nurse. You just walk in, and sit on a chair near the door of the office you are meant to visit –I just did not know which door I was meant to visit.

After waiting and awkward conversations in Hungarian with other waiters, I managed to get into and office and lo there was an English-speaking doctor. She took one look at my throat and said it was an infection. She prescribed a bunch of powerful antibiotics, which are cheap in Hungary, and told me to rest.

I embarrassed myself a bit later, when I returned for a follow-up, just to make sure I was cured. I got a lot of strange looks because it seems no one just drops by the doctor’s office to make they’re sick.

Since this writing, a Canadian copywriter has developed inner ear issues – the curse struck again.

Escape from Venice

Venice has its medieval charm, which is lost when you need to get out. 

Neither of us wanted to leave Venice, but there were jobs and responsibilities back in Budapest, so we had to get out. But if you want to get out of Venice you have to manage your time.

We started with the water bus, or vaporetto, which took us to the stop near our hotel. We walked to the hotel. The hotel manager eventually buzzed us through the gate remotely. We collected our luggage and walked as briskly as we could with hulking backpacks to the water bus stop. Then we waited.

When it arrived, we boarded the water bus, which leisurely took us to the train station for the tiny monorail that would take us to the bus station.

The water bus route creeps along the Grand Canal. It’s a beautiful ride, but we were watching our watches, not the scenery. We reached the docks and ran frantically to the station. We paid quickly, boarded the monorail train, which has only two stops.

As we reached the final stop, we saw a bus with our carrier lines’ name written on the side. It might have been ours, but it could have been another one. We got off and waited. As we waited, as the realization that we missed our bus to Budapest sank in.

This was not good. It was after 8pm, we had to work in the morning, and, save for restaurants and bars, Venice shuts down in the evening.

Everything was closed, there was no way we could buy a ticket anywhere to board a night train, so we found a hostel, rented two beds in a dorm room and slept a nervous sleep.

In the morning, after a few hours of train station waiting and negotiating with travel agency people, we figured out our journey. We take a bus from Venice to Villach. From there, we catch a train to Vienna. We debark at a remote, Viennese suburban train station and hop on the night train to Bucharest, which was making a stop in Budapest.

Monty Python couldn’t have dreamed of a more ridiculously topsy turvy trip.

To our gleeful surprise, the bus to Villach was an Austrian double decker highway coach. We got seat on the second level and spent most of the ride enjoying the view of the Alps as we crossed from Italy into Austria. Next, we got a comfortable Austrian train to Vienna.

Things seemed to be turning to our favour.

We packed a lunch of proscuitto, olives, cheese, and bread in Italy for the journey, but ran out before Vienna. There was nothing open around the train station, so we decided we could afford some overpriced train food, no matter how suspect it might seem.

The sounds of our hopes crashing when the train arrived could have deafened people around us. The train looked like it arrived from the 1970s East Bloc.

It was old, with peeling paint, faded upholstery and reeked of stale cigarette smoke.We managed to get a compartment to ourselves, but could not get comfortable enough to sleep.

There also no dining car, so the final leg of our journey was spent with grumbling stomachs, which we sated at a McDonald’s in Budapest after we finally arrived, almost 18 hours later than expected.

The Alps, from our Austrian double decker bus.