#exploretheworld | Morocco

It’s my fifteenth birthday and the first day at a new school. A new beginning, again alone among strangers, again on my birthday. I’m wearing my new converse, the first original ones, a special edition I still have. I’m entering the class room, most of the others are already there, and next to the door in the first row you’re sitting. And you seem to be different. I like your hair, you unisex clothes and your charisma. The place left to you is still free, and I sit down, I want to get to know you. Really. A few minutes later the first day of school starts and we have to write our names on a coloured paper. Yours was bright yellow, I remember it like it was yesterday.

Almost seven years elapsed and the ocean rushes behind us, Sazu, the dog is running in front of us and then behind us and the sun is shining of clear blue sky in Morocco. In the meadows around us are bright orange flowers blossoming and right now you’re telling that this is your favourite orange. I think that matches you and immediately I have your name tag on my mind. You are colours, the bright ones, you’ve always been and it’s so cool that it hadn’t changed.

Friday, 10^th February 2017, I booked my flight for Tuesday. You invited me a few months ago, but I had to wait for my new passport. I’m excited, somehow I’m took by surprise by myself. Admitting, I’m in doubt if it’s a good idea, but I’m pushing them far away, ignore them, I still have three days to organise everything. It will work, at least I have a date for Valentine’s Day, right?

Tuesday, 14^th February 2017, I’m waking up after a way too short night, can’t manage half of the stuff I wanted to, but at least I’m at the railway station on time. And I’m less excited than I thought I’d be. I’m more like bored at the prospect of three hours on train and three flights. But still I’m happy, always, when a journey begins, a new adventure I recognize how much I miss being on the way. Landscapes passing, thousands of strange faces on one day, recalling language skills I learned years ago and spending waiting times with books and great music. Notice familiar details in strange areas, because in the end every train station, every airport, every city resembles the other.

Shortly after 9.00 p.m. local time I’m arriving at Rabat, I’m a little bit nervous, asking myself if you’ll be there picking me up, or if I’ll standing there without a sleeping accommodation on a strange continent at the end of the day. But you are there, and it was a little bit like there hadn’t been six years between now and the last time we met each other. True friendship. Five minutes later we knew that three days will be way too little time – not only to see everything, also to catch up on all the conversations we missed during the last years.

And so my first holiday abroad Europe started with a walk through the night and it was after midnight as I finally collapsed into bed and there was not a single minute we didn’t talk. Exchanged stories. Told, and exchanged opinions, compared beliefs. Sometime at three o’clock I fell into bed.

The next days were like that, with blue sky, sound of the sea, palm trees and road trip feeling, even if these three days were way too short to experience Morocco. But it was enough for a first impression. I fell in love, especially with Essaouira, a beautiful harbour town near Marrakech.