Have just got back from a short trip to UK and Morocco and wanted to share my thoughts about one of the most beautiful places I’ve stayed in.
I’ve been in Fes, Morocco for a few days and I stayed in the Medina – the old city, organic, smelly, bustling with life, more than nine thousand small alleys turning it into a one gigantic labyrinth.
But this post is not about the Fes or the Medina, is about the house I’ve stayed in. (website here).
Alaa, an Iraqi architect, and Kate, his wife, an internal decorator from Norway, have turned the old palace of Dar Seffarine from a two decade abandoned house into a beautiful place. One can feel the soul and love that’s been put in the decoration of the house, and this, for me at least, is a precious feeling.
Not once I had the feeling of being in a hotel, but in a home, sharing dinner (delicious by the way) with friends and fellow travelers.
Dear Alaa and Kate, thanks for a very special time.
I was in a sort of a pseudo-philosophic mood these past days and since I’ve always had trouble tackling the BIG questions (who we are, where we are going, what is the nature of man, is Microsoft better than Apple, etc you get the picture), I thought I’d take on a simpler one and determine why do I travel.
For one, it’s the job I do, but that’s not really the point, what I wanted to understand is why I travel volontarily, and then I was just curious to know why people travel in general.
For me is harder and harder to find significant differences in the places I go to. Sure, there are always the cultural differences, different food, different climate, different races and so on, but when it comes down to it, we are all pretty much alike. We all want the same basic things and to a certain extent, we all have the same basic values.
Still, apart from being a deterrent for travelling, for me is actually an incentive. I love the humanity, the bond that I feel ties us all in, and the limitless possibilities for communicating. I also manage to feel “at home” in most places I go to, and I take them for what they are. Of course, these are all additions, and the main reason for travelling, for me, is to see, and experience.
See and experience what?
Well, there are beautiful landscapes, great food, beautiful cities, historic sites, beautiful wildlife etc. Sometimes, there are difficult conditions that must be overpassed in order to get to experience these beautiful things – lack of roads, wars, malaria, political conditions, etc But still, it’s just great to see how beautiful this world is. So basically is about enjoying something special. Special or beautiful? Hm.
So with this kind of hippie-makelovenotwar-singkumbaya attitude I was browsing the net looking at info about places that i would love to go to. Then I found this:
Simply to see a country where the Cold War is still being fought, where mobile phones and the internet are unknown, and where total obedience to the state is universally unquestioned is, for many, reason enough to visit.
That’s a really long way from any reason I thought anyone would have for wanting to travel to a country, but maybe I was completely wrong. Is the social voyeurism the ultimate travel rush? Go all this way to see how some people live under dictatorship? I mean, not go there in spite of the dictatorship, but because of it? And I’m not talking about undercover reporters or human rights activists, but about regular people? Apparently so, since the quote is from Lonely Planet and they have a reputation for knowing pretty well what people want.
Ok, I grew up in a communist country so maybe this thing just pressed the wrong buttons. But certainly made me wonder where exactly the whole “travel” concept is going.