Monthly Archive for January, 2009

Werken enzo…

Published
by
ploenk
on January 28, 2009
in My Job, My Life, My Thoughts and Written in Dutch
. 3 Comments

Ik ben tijdelijk verdrietig. Want misschien ‘kunnen ze me niet meer betalen/hebben ze me niet meer nodig’. Ik werk al tien maanden bij dit bedrijf, maar straks kan het van de ene op de andere dag over zijn, omdat ik via het uitzendbureau werk… Dan ben ik werk- en geldloos. Dat wil ik niet.

Ik zou kunnen solliciteren op een andere baan binnen dit bedrijf, want ze zijn erg positief over me. Maar ik heb geen zin om bij dit bedrijf te werken in een andere functie. Want die zijn niet leuk. Dit bedrijf is niet mijn ding. Deze branche is niet leuk. Vind ik.

Ik zou moeten solliciteren op een leuke baan, zoals ik in mijn goede voornemens al schreef. Maar ik durf niet. Vorig jaar ben ik daar ook een half jaar mee beziggeweest en dat was zeer tijdrovend, zeer energierovend en ook nog eens very disappointing. Geen leuk vooruitzicht.

Dus ben ik nu gewoon tijdelijk verdrietig. Ik zeg al drie weken tegen mezelf dat ik nú écht moet beginnen met zoeken, vinden en solliciteren, maar ik kan het gewoon niet opbrengen. Nog niet.

Misschien dat de sollicitatieworkshop en de competentietest van het UWV me wel een duwtje kunnen geven, maar die laten nog even op zich wachten. Dus eet ik ondertussen maar gewoon veel chocola. Een deugdelijke oplossing, dacht ik zo.

A visit to the Hammam

Published
by
ploenk
on January 22, 2009
in My Travels and Written in English
. 1 Comment

On our last day in Morocco, we go to a hammam. We’re both a bit nervous, since we don’t know what to expect. At least we know it’s a decent hammam, since N. goes there all the time.

When we arrive, a smiling lady tells us to wait in the lounge. We encounter our first obstacle when the lady wants to dry our jackets somewhere. She doesn’t speak English and we don’t speak French. So it takes a while to understand that she only needs our jackets, and not us, nor our sweaters. After a minute, another woman sends us to the dressing room, where we have to strip naked, put on a robe and slippers and put our clothes in a locker.

Now a young woman brings us to a little warm room. We have to sit down on the warm stone bench, only wearing the flip flops, so we don’t slip on the wet floor. We have absolutely no clue on what is coming next. Because of the language barrier, the girl just does her thing. She takes the olive soap, grabs L.’s arm and starts to soap her in. Then it’s my turn. She leaves us for a while and we stay seated on the hot bench, unsure if we should lie down or not.

The lady and the girl come back (and I can’t help to notice that they wear ridiculous leggings). We each lay down on a bench, and they start to scrub us with the kessa gloves we brought. Ouch! Really, ouch! Rolls of, supposedly, skin, appear out of nowhere. I still say it was mostly soap, but everybody else insists it is skin. Yuk.

To finish it off, they throw warm water on us to get rid of the rolls, soap in our hair and empty more baskets of water over our heads. An hour after we stepped into the sweet smelling building, we’re pink and clean. This feels good! When we open the door again, the smells of the city drift in our face and so does the rain. So much for the 1001 nights feeling, it’s time to go home again…

Essaouira

Published
by
ploenk
on January 21, 2009
in My Travels and Written in English
. 1 Comment

On our second day in Morocco, we decide to take a bus to the coastal town Essaouira. We love it from the moment we step foot in it. Peace and quiet all around. We go into an art shop with lovely paintings. But buying art is difficult and even though the prices are lower than at home, it’s still not cheap. So we walk on. We check out the harbor and take a lot of pictures. It’s impossible to keep the seagulls out of them, since they are everywhere!

Then we walk into the medina. A medina is a walled part of the city, with many narrow maze-like streets inside, full with shops and restaurants. You could say it’s the city center. Here, the calling from the sellers is less loud and demanding than in the souks in Marrakech. It’s almost relaxing to walk around here and look at all the goods displayed on little tables. Of course, it’s still a challenge to buy something for a decent price, since the Moroccans love to bargain, while haggling is not my strongest ability…

We enjoy ourselves, even though the sun has gone, until, it starts to rain. At first, we stubbornly walk on, I mean, we’re from The Netherlands, we are used to rain! But the rain is stubborn too, and the drizzling turns into pouring. We flee into a little restaurant. We’re looking outside the window to see when it’s safe to go out again, but the rain doesn’t stop. The rest of the day, we walk from restaurant to restaurant until it’s time to go to the bus again. We’re flabbergasted. We came to Morocco for some sun, and all we get is rain!

The rest of our days in Morocco are also dark and rainy. We walk around with scarves, sweaters and winter jackets; it’s unfair!

Zakenmannen in de dop

Published
by
ploenk
on January 20, 2009
in My Thoughts and Written in Dutch
. 2 Comments

Bij de uitgang van de Albert Heijn staan een paar brutale jongetjes. Als er een klant met veel boodschappen naar buiten komt, vragen ze met een engelengezichtje: “Heeft u voetbalkaartjes?” Ik sta er van een afstandje even naar te kijken. Er is één jongetje dat heel gemeen kijkt en de rest steeds wegduwt zodat ie zelf vooraan staat. Ik besluit dat ik mijn kaartjes aan het jongetje met de groene jas ga geven. Hij is degene die stilletjes achter de jongetjes met zwarte jassen staat. Hij is verbaasd en blij als ik hem op z’n schouder tik en de kaartjes aan hem geef. De rest is ook verbaasd, maar niet blij: “Nou, dat is niet eerlijk!”. Ik fiets zonder iets te zeggen weg en hoop dat ze hem met rust laten.

Things in Morocco

Published
by
ploenk
on January 19, 2009
in My Travels and Written in English
. 2 Comments

In addition to the things you do, there are some things which are. These things need some further explanation. Such as the following.

Men

You can’t get around it, Morocco is a country owned by males. They are everywhere. And they want you to know it. Their main purpose in life is annoying, bothering, harassing female tourists. They can’t keep their mouths shut. In Arabic, French, English, and sometimes Dutch, they talk, beg, ask, shout. They will stand right in front of you, walk with you if you don’t stop, or grab your arm if they’re really bold. If you ignore them, they’re upset, but if you don’t, they’ll definitely upset you. It’s tiring. Even with ignoring everybody, you get irritated. If it’s not by the voices, it’s because of all the honking. Cabs, mopeds, cars, they all honk to get your attention. I don’t think there is a woman in the world who will like Morocco for its people. The country is fine, but they should kick out all the men!

Traffic

Also something you can’t get around in Marrakech is the traffic. Or actually, you can! Without traffic lights, or any other noticeable rules, it’s easy to cross the street anywhere, anytime, as long as you’re not afraid to get hit. The streets are broad, the streets are crowded, but crossing has never been so easy in my life. You look left, walking or stopping, depending on whether you think the car, moped or bicycle will let you walk first or not. When you’re in the middle of the road, you look right and resume the walking and stopping in the same way. Fun! Also fun is the fact that this is the first city outside NL where I’ve seen so many cyclists on the roads, although I would be very afraid to cycle here!

Food

You can get mint tea anywhere. Prices vary, but the concept is the same. You get a small teapot filled with mint leaves, hot water and sugar, 1:1:1. With it comes a small tea glass you fill yourself. This tea is too sweet for my taste, but when you leave out the sugar, the mint flavor is just too strong, bitter. These mini glasses are the funniest when they come in a ‘beer glass shape’. Because if you are a pro and you’re capable of pouring the tea from high above, the tea also resembles beer, to match the glass. When boiled, the water is safe, but you better not drink from the tap. So we drank a lot of mineral water too, which I also drank after brushing my teeth. It’s a weird habit you acquire!

With tea, you should of course eat pastries. I saw patisseries where you would have to pay 20 euro for a pretty chocolate pie, but we kept it to the small shops where you could buy pastries for 40 eurocents per piece. And I bet they were just as good! We ate a lot of pastries these days. But only because we also drank a lot of mint tea of course!

We had lunches at our hosts place. Real Moroccan and Lebanese food, made with fresh ingredients and a lot of love. Rice or couscous, potatoes, vegetables and meat, exactly how a meal should be. We only ate lunch in a small restaurant once. It was not good. Not spicy, the potatoes were not fully cooked, the olives were bitter and the meat was only bone. I guess we picked the wrong place…

A fun thing is the following story about yoghurt. Our hosts told us this after a conversation about the untrustworthiness of Moroccan people. They bought plain yoghurt for a recipe. When N. put it with the other ingredients and tasted it, it turned out it wasn’t plain yoghurt, but yoghurt with banana flavor. Meal ruined… And when they went back to the store, the employees told them it was no big deal, because ‘banana flavored yoghurt is much nicer than plain yoghurt”. Doh! When we went to the supermarket on our first morning, I bought four little cups of vanilla yoghurt. I bought these instead of the big bottle, because when I shook the bottle, the yoghurt sounded like milk. Guess what, when I opened my first cup, the yoghurt wasn’t solid either. I didn’t bother to go back to the store.

Back home!

Published
by
ploenk
on January 19, 2009
in My Travels and Written in English
. 3 Comments

Marrakech was an adventure, that’s for sure! But will I ever go back?
I don’t think so…

The arrival

After a tiring day of four trains, a plane and a bus, we arrive in the busy center of Marrakech. We are supposed to meet our host there. In ten minutes he’ll arrive on the square next to the Koutoubia Mosque. After thirty minutes, we call him. Yes, he’s there, he says. We don’t understand he didn’t find us by now, two girls with backpacks on a square full off Muslim men, how hard can it be?!

We text him and he says he’s near the white chapel - where we are as well. When we call him again after a while, he doesn’t answer his phone anymore. We text him again and he sends us a text back, saying his mom is sick and he’ll meet us later. Wtf?! It’s already later, 1,5 hours to be precise!

We leave the Koutoubia square to find a hostel, after texting our host-for-the-following-day that we’re stranded and are looking for a safe place to sleep.

On the famous Jemaa el Fna square, people start to harass us, logically, with our backpacks still on our backs… The henna women are the worst. One of them grabs L.’s hand and starts drawing. I have my hands tucked in my pockets, but another woman continuously tries to pull them out. “NO, I don’t want henna!” “OK, only talk then”. When I don’t understand her English, she gets mad, I see so much hate in her eyes…

When L.’s hand is full of henna, the woman wants her to pay 200 dirham, which resembles 20 euro’s, or like 60 tompouce-like cakes… L. refuses, of course. But now the fun is definitely over. When we sit down to check the map, N. (our host-for-the-following-day) calls us and says we should take a taxi to Marrakech square where she’ll pick us up then.

When we’re standing in front of a Mac Donald’s, almost thinking we got stood up again, she and her husband pull up in a nice car. Our saviors in difficult times have arrived!