Casablanca last and first

Clocktower and entry to the medina, a local market with few tourists:


Mauresque (French-modernized Moorish architecture) of Casablanca:


This morning I said goodbye to fellow travelers (Bye Tom and Marlena and safe travels back to Poland! Thanks for your good company and see you in New York!!), and I ambled my way back on my delayed train from Marrekesh to Casablanca, to where I arrived to this country and from where I will depart tomorrow mid-day. Casablanca is not a touristic city, and it is so refreshing to be out of the tourist limelight.

I know there is a Moroccan hospitality underneath all of what I experienced, not at all what I experienced, that which has been completely snuffed out in persons having anything to do with the tourist industry. And so is the problem with so short a visit, no time to dive down, to go deeper, to make connections beyond those people seeking me (and all other visitors) based on the perceived abundance (of mine) of what the person needs and wants, i.e., money, which I think is less for greed and more for survival (I think).

I have come to appreciate Morocco for what it is not and what it is. It is not a restful, contemplative place to relax and recharge. It is a chaotic, engaging and at times outlandish mix of antiquity and modernity whose people are laboriously engrossed in the struggle of being and of life.