The Best Sunrise on Earth

Evening in the Sahara

Tanger

Rabat, Capital City

Gorges de Todra

The High Atlas Mountains

Marrakesh, Morocco

Marrakesh was more of a touristy town but I'll just add some pics of it to see the architecture & a few cool sites...

Morocco

So we pretty much traveled to every place in Morocco, the only major city I didn't make it to was Fes. Anyways, I flew into Casablanca on Thursday, and somehow made it to the train station in the city. It was very hard to get around in Morocco because the only languages people spoke were French & Arabic. We somehow got helped by a cab driver for free while standing outside of the train station. We weren't even going to talk to him because people said that if anyone helps you out in any way, you have to pay them. ...like showing you where the bakery is, or some stupid shit like that. About 99% of this is true, but we somehow got some free information & a cheap ride to a hostel in the city.
Casablanca was a pretty cool place, right outside of the city, there was extreme poverty like none I've ever seen. A guy from England that was living there told me that the average daily wage in Morocco is 40 Dirhams, which totals out to be about 4 Euro. Anyways, we saw this huge Mosque about 5 km outside of the city and it was the biggest building & plaza I've ever seen. The plaza was about the size of maybe 6 or 7 Super Wal-Marts and the Mosque was the size of 1.
The food was wicked cheap there, in every city. A whole meal costed about 3 Euros with a huge bottle of water and the shops & hostels were cheap also. I got a chess set made out of marble & handmade chess pieces for only 120 Dirhams (12 euro), but it would've sold in the U.S. for probably $60-70. For breakfast, we usually got a big baguette that only costed about 10 cents. I ate so much bread & water there that I don't know if I want to see bread for about a month....

First Day Germany...in Mannheim

So with only 2 hrs of sleep in 2 nights, I finally made it to D-land at 7:30 this morning (1:3o am Eastern time). My plans were to take the train an hour south to Mannheim to drop my bags off at my friend Charlie's apartment. He goes to UT also & is studying abroad along with an internship in Mannheim for two semesters.....

Back to the flight....Luckily, the guy that was sitting next to me on my flight had to go in the same direction that I did and he offered me a ride to Mannheim for free....sounds shady I know...but he was a pretty cool guy. Aaron Bishop, a member of the U.S. aid, is on his way to Ethiopia for 3 years to help out with some accounting job. Anyways, he dropped me off this morning in Mannheim around 10am and I had to somehow get to Charlie's apartment with no phone & no directions.

I managed to speak with a German chick around my age, and she let me use her Handy (German for cell phone). After about 20 minutes of train & bus rides (that I slipped on without paying for a ticket), I finally made it to Chuck's apartment.

We sat around for awhile then ate lunch & saw the city. Mannheim is a huge place, very interesting though. We ate a cafeteria that had some excellent curry wurst with fries & soup/salad. .....and all for only 1,50 euro (almost $2). The beer here is wicked cheap also. ONLY 0,50 euro for a pint (64 cents)!!! And it has a higher alcohol content at 6.2%.

At 3:15am tomorrow (well tonight), I catch a bus back to Frankfurt Hahn so I can catch my flight at 6:50 am to Spain, where I will eventually make it to Morocco, Africa by Thursday. These posts are soon to come.

.......But up until 3:15 am tomorrow, there is a huge party that Chuck's university is putting on for international students, so I suppose we're going to go to that to have some fun.

As for now, I'm spent. Going to take a nap for a few hours.

Check back later for info on the party & the trips to Spain & Africa..........