Well, hello again!
For those of you experiencing summer right now, like me, you have my sympathy. It is as hot as Beelzebub's armpit nearly everywhere, and it's only mid-July.
For my readers in the cooler Southern Hemisphere - JEALOUS.
Summer is awful. I will not be taking questions at this time.
Summer is a season we were forced to love, because that's when school was out and life was fun and the planet wasn't melting yet. Give me that first crisp autumn morning, with hot, pumpkin-y beverages and the need for only a light jacket. Here in New England we only get about three weeks of that magic before slamming face-first into winter, which I also hate and will happily complain about when it arrives.
I have a pile of laundry that's reaching sentience. I should really do something about it before it begins to ambulate on it's own and starts intoning verses from the Book of Revelation, but...hhhhhhot. So, no.
But hey, you know what I CAN do, if not laundry?
Update The Greekish Life while sitting four feet from my air conditioner! Make brand new Spotify playlists to replace the crappy Amazon links on my Song Crushes articles! And write this blog post!
If you go to our Books and Music page, you'll find that alllll the articles that had not yet been given a Spotify playlist now have them! Starting with the latest article, Greece Goes Latin! and going forward, all new music articles will have a playlist embedded right on the page, so you can easily either listen to it there or be directed to Spotify.
If you're not signed up with Spotify - no problem! It's free and easy, and depending on whether you're a member or not, the embedded player will either allow you to listen to the full songs, or it will only play snippets and direct you to the Spotify app. There you can sign in or sign up, as needed.
As I've mentioned before, you don't have to have a paid premium subscription to Spotify, you can still listen for free. You'll get a few ads, but it's not a deal breaker.
For anyone who's new or wants to revisit them, here are the links to the articles with their shiny new playlists...
Song Crushes - Summer Songs, July 2022 - happy summer songs perfect for the beach
The Trio Bel Canto - classic sounds of the 60s and 70s
Daemonia Nymphe - wild and witchy music that brings you back to the groves of ancient Greece
Eleftheria Arvanitaki - one of my favorite contemporary singers
Song Crushes - Greek Reggae - yes, Greece has it's own reggae
Roza Eskenazi, the Queen of Rebetiko - the amazing story of one of Greece's most famous songstresses
Kostas Roukounas - "Ο Σαμιωτάκης - a versatile singer who is also a distant cousin of mine!
I've been inspired lately, and I have several new ideas for articles, recipes, and even new quizzes in the pipeline, so stay tuned!
In other news, I'm going back to Greece in the fall (Surprise! Heh...), and since I wrote you last, I did a solo trip to Morocco. Woo! What a trip it was! If anyone is interested, I'll write a bit more below.
For those of you who aren't all that interested in non-Greek content (although some Greek does get spoken at one point!), I'll sign off for now. Enjoy the new playlists, and leave a Comment on the page if you have anything to say!
Be well,
Barbara
Taken in Fes, Morocco
Still here?
Oh good! Because HOLY COW, Morocco was incredible.
I started and ended in Casablanca, and made a huge circle around the country, from Rabat to Tangier, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic, stopping briefly to see the medina of the town of Asilah, which reminded me a bit of Greece. It was also interesting to see the Mediterranean from the other side.
Above and below - Asilah, Morocco.
Looks a bit Cycladic, no?
Below - Casablanca - Rick's Cafe.
Yes, I had dinner at Rick's Cafe, and the place was gorgeous
and the food and service were impeccable
and the piano player came out and played "As Time Goes By"
and my heart exploded and I'm dead now.
From there it was south to the blue city of Chefchaouen, down to Fes and it's narrow souks, then to Merzouga - the gateway to the Sahara. From the desert it was west to Ouarzazate, then finally Marrakesh before swinging back up to Casablanca.
Above and below - Chefchouen, known for
it's intense blue hues.
In places it feels
like you're walking underwater.
Below, the medina of Fes.
Did I buy a rug in Fes?
Even when I had convinced myself I would not?
Oh, let's all laugh together...
Below - a spice market in Rissani.
Below - a view of Ouarzazate,
home of "Ouarzawood", the largest movie studio in Africa.
Below - with a water seller outside the Koutoubia Mosque - Marrakesh.
These crazy Berber-style hats were everywhere, and it took every
ounce of self-restraint not to buy one.
But at least this dude let me wear his for the photo.
There's way too much to talk about for each place, so I'll just leave you with these photos and an entry I made on Facebook after taking a camel trek to my desert camp in the Sahara. (It was "glamping", more or less, because I am not, in any multiverse, a camper.) This version is slightly more coherent than the original, as I wasn't trying to type it on a phone while aching in every joint and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep.
Warning - if you're put off by the occasional swear word, you'll want to click out now.
"So I rode a camel into the Sahara yesterday, because apparently I am an idiot.
If you and I spoke at all in the past few months, you know that I, like Bilbo Baggins in his ancient boll-weevil phase at the end of The Lord of the Rings movies, think I’m ready for one last adventure. Oh, I still plan on doing trips to Greece and the like, but I’m talking about things that really push my comfort level. Hence Morocco and camels. And I would like to go before I myself go full boll-weevil.
I had asked my tour agent a lot of questions about this camel trip. How long was it? Was it suitable for somebody who was not at all athletic? She assured me that I shouldn't worry - the trip only lasted 30 minutes, and then you arrived at your desert camp.
So I gave it a go.
A group of us from the hotel were driven out in a 4 x 4 to the camel yard. There, all seated neatly in rows with saddles on their backs, were our camels. It was late afternoon, and we were about to do a sunset ride into the Sahara dunes. One of the drivers tied a Berber-style scarf around my head and covered the bottom half of my face with it. This was not some cute thing they did for tourists' photo ops. It was legitimately to keep out the sand. I looked ridiculous, of course, but it was necessary. Despite the covering, I still had sand in my hair and even grains of it in my mouth. What came out of my shoes doesn’t even bear talking about. That stuff was e v e r y w h e r e.
The other travelers were cooing over the camels. How sweet they were! How docile!
I did not have one of those camels. I had Fatima.
Fatima was a blonde camel that took an instant loathing to me. I don’t know why. But when I approached she let out one of those grunty bellows they do and bared her big square yellow teeth.
Well, this was starting off swimmingly.
The camel driver told me to mount up. There are no stirrups on a camel saddle, just a metal T bar at the front that you cling to for dear life. I got my leg over the saddle and got into position. Fatima was having none of this. She would not rise, she would not move. She just made all kinds of annoyed sounds. I’m guessing she was demanding to speak to the manager.
Finally, with some coaxing by the camel driver, she rose.
This was utterly terrifying.
First, she flung me forward and then she flung me backward, but I managed to stay on. Now I was up. Man, those things are tall!
At first, she was the lead camel, which was fine with me because at least the camel driver was holding onto her and I felt some weird security in that. Eventually, because Miss Thing loudly refused to climb up some of the steeper dunes, we switched positions and ended up at the very back where she could be pulled along by the more reasonable camels.
I tried to put out of my head all visions of the rope accidentally becoming undone, separating us from the rest of the group, and Fatima and I meandering haplessly towards the Algerian border.
Fatima gallumphed to the beat of her own drummer. She could not be bothered to follow in line, because she is a free spirit - an iconoclast among dromedaries; a rebel among ungulates. She was almost side-by-side with the camel in front of her, wanting to be petted by that camel’s rider. I was really quite worried that she would miss a step and stumble because she wasn’t concentrating, and that I would get flung arse over teakettle into a sand dune, expiring on the spot only to have my desiccated remains dug up in a thousand years by archaeologists puzzled by this weird mummy with her bony middle fingers sticking up towards the uncaring sky.
FFS, Fatima, I need you to be a team player! Focus!
No one in this picture looks comfortable.
It was NOT the promised thirty minutes. It was a good, painful hour and a half before we finally saw the twinkly lights of the desert camp in the distance. The ride was an absolutely sublime and terrifying experience all in one. There were times when the camels would try to go up a dune or down a dune which caused me to lurch backwards and forwards. My arms and hands were braced and locked the entire time. Today I’m sore all over and have a collection of new bruises.
In the few peaceful moments between spasms of terror, I was able to enjoy the absolutely stunning and magical landscape. As I said, we were there for sunset, and a full moon was rising at the same time.
One unexpected bright spot was chatting with one of the young camel drivers, Hamid. We had dismounted to let the camels rest, and some of the more adventurous types had taken to the top of a high dune to sand board down. To the surprise of no one reading this, I stayed down below with the camels and two older Chinese ladies.
He and I started talking, and somehow the subject turned to languages. He asked me how many languages I spoke, and I said two – English and Greek. He immediately starts speaking Greek to me! “Efcharsto! Kalimera! Kalispera! “ As with so many of the people involved in tourism in Morocco, he spoke several languages. He showed me how he wrote his name in the sand, and asked me to write my name, as well.
The ride involved several dismounts and remounts, which I hadn’t expected at all. I managed them just fine actually, if not especially gracefully or with a lot of confidence. What I did not manage all that well is what happened when the dunes got too steep for the camels. We had to dismount and walk up the dunes.
This was so, so terrible.
You know how when you walk on the sand at the beach and it’s a lot of extra effort just even when you’re on flat ground, because your feet sink into it? Picture that at a 45° angle and slope on either side of you. You also have arthritis in your knee, like I do. You also haven’t been in any kind of fit shape since the Clinton administration.
Eventually, I made it to the ridge line, but hoo boy, I hated everything about everything at that moment.
It was such an intense and compelling experience that I’m even half-considering writing a memoir about it. Here are my working titles so far…
1. “The Adventures of Ali Barbara”
2. “Everything Hurts and I Think I’m Dying”
3. “The Sand Hates Me, and I Hate It Back”
4. “Camels Can Fuck Right Off”
The important thing is, it was a great adventure, and I managed to get through it and be with you here today, complaining loudly about it."
If you want even more beautiful Morocco, take a look at a couple of short videos I put up on YouTube. One is called "This Isn't...MOROCCO" and you'll really see why I thought some parts of the country looked like Greece.
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