I have a hard time thinking of Casablanca (and Alexandria) as real places. Weird.

Right? t /Jesse

Eritrea sounds marvellous. And in typical fashion I will forget everything except old and poor, which doesn't say all that much. I remember more about how the people look and dress than anything else. Maybe because the fruit of a lot of my father's travels was pictorial. I still have some national costumes burnt into my brain from 30 years ago. Oh, and folk tales. That was the other thing he brought back a lot. While shopping for friends in Nairobi I was stunned to see some of the very same books he'd bought us as kids. Surreal step back in time.

::sigh:: Calgon? Take me away? While walking and cleaning up my email inbox after doing a long-overdue errand, I smacked my head into an overhang while taking a corner. Luckily I didn't break the skin, and I just filled a prescription for the one painkiller that does anything. So mostly I feel inept. Real inept.

I have a hard time thinking of Casablanca (and Alexandria) as real places. Weird.

When we were in Morocco we wanted to go to Casablanca just because. We had no real plans to stay, just to touch the ground and move on. I don't remember what city we were in going through the bus station again and again, unable to find the Casablanca bus, until someone told me that Moroccans don't call the city Casablanca. They call it (sp?) Dar Bida, which means "white house", just in Arabic. The bus with the guy in front yelling "Dar Bida! Dar Bida! Dar Bida!" was very easy to find.

We spent maybe one night there, ate at (probably one of a dozen) Rick's Cafe, and moved on with our trek. It just didn't seem as interesting as the other places on our list.

I have a hard time thinking of Casablanca (and Alexandria) as real places. Weird.

What David said.

That was an interesting article, Hec-- it's amazing to think of these places as frozen in time. One of the research books I have is Havana Before Castro and the most fascinating section to me is the one on the Havana Riviera, the hotel that was Meyer Lansky's baby, that opened in 1957-- the book has side-by-side photographs of the hotel circa '57 and fifty years later, in '07 and literally, next to nothing has changed. The dining room and lobby, in particular, are almost chilling.

One of the research books I have is Havana Before Castro and the most fascinating section to me is the one on the Havana Riviera, the hotel that was Meyer Lansky's baby, that opened in 1957-- the book has side-by-side photographs of the hotel circa '57 and fifty years later, in '07 and literally, next to nothing has changed. The dining room and lobby, in particular, are almost chilling.

It made me think of Havana, too, Barb. I love those cities and places that get stuck that way. Or wind up being caught between some legal borders like Kowloon City was in Hong Kong - a complete anarchist city within a city.

Berlin before the wall came down, or Trieste sliding back and forth between countries but really kind of a city state.

I'd like to go to Rabat, in Morocco, because part of it is the old port city of Salee, where the pirates the Salee Rovers sailed from. My ancestor the pirate was one of the leaders, and I'd like to go there and say, "Yeah, I'm descended from Murat Reis."

We went to Rabat just so we could take the high speed train. Uh, there were a lot of great-looking places in Morocco, and we only had so much time. That was another touch-down and leave visit.

In Obamamaniac website news, Yes We Can (Hold Babies, Obama in full politician mode holding/kissing/shaking hands with babies and other kids.

It made me think of Havana, too, Barb. I love those cities and places that get stuck that way.

The history geek in me loves the idea of it, the other history geek in me is saddened by the reasons why something remains that way. And of course, for me, Havana and Cuba as a whole are going to touch a whole other nerve. One time, at an RWA national conference, I had another writer come bopping up to me, all eager to talk to me because I was first-gen Cuban-American. She seemed shocked that I had no interest in traveling to the country. (She herself was Arab, emigrated to Canada, so she held Canadian citizenship and was at the time, living in the Caymans, so she had easy access to Cuba.)

She seemed to think it was okay and even the only way to experience tourism, by seeing a city that hadn't evolved since 1958 and she had a hard time understanding why that unnerved me as much as it did. She even had a list on her website that answered questions about why she enjoyed traveling to Cuba so much where she acknowledged that yes, Cuba was a police state, but wow, it was soooo cool and the shopping was awesome because you could buy the authentic cigars and take them home and resell them at a 300% markup and the ultimate in gansta cool was a $1.00 Ché hat, and really, people didn't have it so bad at all, despite the fact that there were soldiers with guns watching over everything and people had to be careful what they said.

And when I asked her if she'd been anywhere that tourists weren't allowed or if she'd noticed that most natives weren't allowed in the places she visited, unless they were working there, she looked at me blankly and replied, "Why would they want to? They live there."

::facepalm::

Yet, this was the same woman who got offended that people couldn't tell the difference between Arab and Persian and that of course, everyone should know the way you could tell them apart was that Persians spoke Farsi.