Towards the end of January, it was time for me to leave Europe once again. For the second time in my life, although only barely, I would go to Africa – specifically, the far northwest of the continent: Morocco.
The flights weren’t too bad – although for some reason I had to immigrate into France during my stopover in Paris, which took almost an hour.
Although TGS is based in Rabat for this term, all of the students flew in to Casablanca because the international airpot there has a lot more connections and is in general quite a bit bigger than the capital’s.
Landing in Morocco was quite surprising – it was certainly one of the greenest countries I’ve ever seen; and I’m from Austria! Together with the setting sun and some thunderstorm lingering over the country, the approach to Casablanca was really quite nice.
The airport itself is very empty. Except for one plane operated by TUIfly and our Air France plane, only the national Moroccan airline seemed to be present at the airport. Also inside the terminal there wasn’t much more going on, we were through the immigration and with a new stamp in our passports within 10 minutes.
Morocco is a kingdom. The airport is named after the previous king, Mohammed V., and there are portraits of the current king, Mohammed the VI., in the offices at the airport.
And the country is also very religious – so much, that they stopped the baggage claim at the airport during the prayer, and airport staff laid out carpets in the direction of Mekka and prayed.
On the way to our hotel in Casablanca, where we would stay for one night before going to Rabat, I was surprised about the amount of flags there were. Every couple hundred meters next to the highway, and at every intersection in the city and randomly in between, there were Moroccan flags. There was even a poster of nothing less than the Moroccan flag.
The next morning we went out to take a look around Casablanca before we’d depart for Rabat in the afternoon.
Casablanca is a city that lives off its Port, and most of the buildings are fairly new and – let’s say – built solely to fulfill their purpose. Big streets, crazy traffic and fairly hectic people dominate the street life.
But if you take the right turn, you will still find signs of Morocco’s long history.
And if you follow those signs of the past, you will eventually end up in the narrow roads of Casablanca’s Medina, the historical city center.
Many of the ‘larger’ roads of the Medina have markets that sell everything from clothing to food; anything that you might need can be found in this area.
Casablanca itself was quite nice. But we were yet to continue our journey further to the north of Morocco – to my home for the next two months, Rabat.
