Archive for category: Travel

As Sold by Ginger

As Sold by Ginger

The Hajja, momma, real momma, andrew, Mar­wane, Eliot, Sufian, me, Lat­i­fah, baba

For my 21st birth­day, my mom (Norma Lerner, pedi­atric hema­tol­o­gist oncol­o­gist, red­head) and my brother (Andrew Schwartz, New York City-based stu­dio assis­tant and artist, reddish-colored beard) had planned to come visit me in Morocco. I orga­nized a whole trip that would go to Rabat; Essaouira and Agadir, two really awe­some beach-towns in Morocco; Mar­rakech, and Ourika, a Berber vil­lage about an hour’s drive away from there.

This trip was a cul­mi­na­tion of my entrance into offi­cial adult­hood and an offi­cial abil­ity to do every­thing within the law that my par­ents’ can do, the longest vaca­tion my brother has taken since grad­u­at­ing col­lege, and a week of relax­ation for mom, who’s turn­ing 35 on May 10, being pedestal­ized by Mother’s Day on May 13, and is cur­rently in the process of mov­ing to her new job at the National Insti­tute of Health in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Need­less to say, it was so excit­ing to have them here, and all the while, as the title sug­gests, my mom, through my sand-covered iPod Touch, was sell­ing her Philadel­phia home.

May 8, 2012 1 comment Read More
The Secret World of Alex Mack

The Secret World of Alex Mack

Con­quer­ing Le Cascades.

This past week­end, I impromptu decided to explore my more mys­ti­cal and moun­taineery side by ven­tur­ing to a far-off vil­lage for some moun­tain hik­ing, or al-tasalaq (lit­er­ally: climb­ing). Along with three friends from my pro­gram, Sonja, Grace, and Tamar, I trav­eled to Mar­rakech on a four-hour train ride and then to Imlil via a two-hour, ter­ri­fy­ing car ride through a twisted moun­tain pass. Imlil is known for its hik­ing, how­ever; in fact, the second-highest moun­tain in Africa, Toubkal, is located there in the High Atlas Moun­tain Range.

Get­ting to Imlil, in hind­sight, was rel­a­tively easy save a few alter­ca­tions in Mar­rakech, a city that, I must admit, I am slowly warm­ing up to. Both lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively. Land­locked and mountain-bordered, Mar­rakech is privy to a hot sun and incred­i­bly weather. It was a bless­ing in com­par­i­son to the recent rel­a­tive cool­ness of Rabat. The dri­ver of our taxi kabir ended up not only being reck­less, but he was also quite pos­si­bly involved in some sort of drug trade. He kept stop­ping along the road, talk­ing to peo­ple and exchang­ing the 200 dirhams we had paid him. What’s more is he kept ask­ing us if we knew “Alex.” (“Yes, we know an Alex, but there are a lot of Alexes in the world,” we explained.) Time would tell that it was not strange to hear this from the mouth of this Imlil-native, how­ever. We were vic­tims to the secret world of Alex Mac, now.

April 25, 2012 0 comments Read More
Nickilodeon

Nickilodeon

Kutubia and old friends.

This past Pink Fri­day, AMIDEAST took us on our last offi­cial trip to the incred­i­bly touristy and land-locked Mar­rakech. The jour­ney, thank­fully, was enriched by the schizoid, wigged-out, and ludi­crous lyrics of our dear­est Nicki Minaj and her newest album, Pink Fri­day: Roman Reloaded. On the first lis­ten, I felt as if my brain had been scooped out and sat on by the rumpus-causing rump of the rap­per her­self (to be fair, this is all logged in a live-tweet ses­sion I did about the album instead of doing any home­work). But the more I lis­tened to the intox­i­cat­ing album perfectly-manicured-based-on-algorithms-of-popular-music-which-generally-disregard-artistic-intent, I real­ized that my Mar­rakech trip resem­bled Nicki’s own year-long effort with her sopho­more album. In fact, with my new skills at com­pre­hen­sion, the major­ity of Moroc­cans with whom I inter­acted actu­ally were quot­ing her! Unfor­tu­nately, I under­stand Dar­ija bet­ter than Nicki’s rap lyrics, so there were many misconceptions. This, my friends, is Mar­rakech, the hit new musisil brought to you by Nickilodeon.

April 11, 2012 1 comment Read More
Get the Picture

Get the Picture

Chefchaouen.

To be fair, I never saw this Nick show, but the title was per­fect. I’m headed off to Eng­land tomor­row to see some good friends with Julia but first wanted to keep you all updated on my trip to Tang­ier and Chefchaouen before leav­ing. I could ram­ble on using puns to hint at my slight frus­tra­tion at being in such touristy areas (“Ara­bic?” one shop-owner asked me, “Just speak in Eng­lish, please.”) or I could detail my ever-growing prob­lem of pur­chas­ing sneak­ers here (Moroc­cans have really small feet), but I decided that pic­tures, in this sit­u­a­tion, tell a thou­sand words. And so do after­thought captions.

March 8, 2012 1 comment Read More
Salute Your Schwartz

Salute Your Schwartz

Schwartzes meet Seddikis.

This past week­end, two mem­bers of the Schwartz fam­ily vis­ited Al-Maghreb: Dr. George Schwartz (role: father) and Ms. Mar­i­lyn Schwartz (role: grand­mother, gen­eral famil­ial fig­ure­head). They arrived Fri­day morn­ing, beat jet lag, and together we had an excit­ing nihayat alisbua’ah of Raba­t­ian tourism and Fez­ian trav­els. And thank­fully, unlike the hit show of my child­hood, no one’s box­ers got hoisted up on any flag­poles because that would be hashooma now wouldn’t it?

February 23, 2012 4 comments Read More
David the Explorer

David the Explorer

Do Azrou please.

These past two week­ends have been a whirl­wind of travel, so apolo­gies for the lack of updates. I have pic­tures and sto­ries for you from Casablanca, Fez, Mek­nes, Azrou, and Ifrane, all of which are very, very dif­fer­ent areas in Morocco. In fact, it was remark­able how I could go from hav­ing a snow­ball fight to play­ing with mon­keys to sit­ting on Roman ruins all in one day. But that’s Morocco for you.

About ten days ago, I went to Casablanca with a large group of friends from my pro­gram on an unof­fi­cial adven­ture. We took the train there–it’s only an hour away and only thirty dirhams, so the whole process is pretty easy. We did the first log­i­cal thing to do once we arrived, which was to go to Pizza Hut. I would describe the cheese-filled crust and the cer­e­mo­ni­ous con­clu­sion of my pep­per­oni abstemious­ness in detail, but you would prob­a­bly be _____________. (Off-screen, David the Explorer shouts, Disturbed! Disgusted! Ashamed! in Spanish.)

February 16, 2012 5 comments Read More
Aaahh!!! Israel Monsters

Aaahh!!! Israel Monsters

Tufts cham­pi­ons Mount Masada!

Right now I’m in Emma’s cousin, Rebecca’s kib­butz in Akko, Israel—we’re wait­ing for a taxi to come pick us up, as we for­got that trains don’t run on the Sab­bath and we have to be at Ben Gurion Air­port at 3 AM for our flights. Impend­ing doom, stressed pack­ing, and Emma’s snor­ing aside, I thought this would be a nice time to write a blog post.

After Shab­bat, some­thing hap­pened in our group where every­one started get­ting closer and closer. Peo­ple started becom­ing accli­mated to Israel’s many cli­mates and used to using the bus as a Hol­i­day Inn. Israel and travel started click­ing, and after that hur­dle things became even bet­ter and bet­ter. Peo­ple started becom­ing really good friends.

Much like Abra­ham, we needed a way to rep­re­sent this new­found covenant, and the low­est place on Earth is as good a place as Mount Sinai in my opin­ion. That morn­ing, we had come from Har Hertzl where I com­plained of frost­bite in a sweat­shirt and a jacket, and that after­noon we were at Min­eral Beach in bathing suits ready to swim. Israel baf­fles me.

January 14, 2012 2 comments Read More
Legends of the Second Temple

Legends of the Second Temple

Hello. My name is David Schwartz, and I’ve been Inter­net sober for six days.

In other words, I landed safely here almost a week ago. So far, I’ve stayed in two kib­butzim, includ­ing the old­est one in Israel/the world; in a Sephardic cen­ter in Golan Heights; and a hotel in Jerusalem. We’re in the holy city now and leave tomor­row to float in the Dead Sea and stay in Ein Gedi AYHA. What­ever that means.

“Wel­come back!” every­one tells us.

After a lit­eral day of trav­el­ing includ­ing beau­ti­ful Swedish stew­ardesses and no REM cycles, we arrived in Israel. I’m here with around 40 kids, most of whom are from Boston Uni­ver­sity. Now, we also have eight Israeli sol­diers trav­el­ing with us. Every­one on the trip is great, but I’ll give some char­ac­ter break­downs later. (Click “Read More”)

January 10, 2012 3 comments Read More