The Morrocan Adventure featuring two clueless Antipodeans - Written by Alvin Zapanta and Produced Edited by Gil Rubin

Morocco Begins - Part 1

Road to Fez

Sunday, 5th of May, D-Day. Having just arrived from Melbourne I was already packed. Gil on the other hand, coming off his busiest week, had not. The taxi was on its way – there was still plenty of time. Gil and I are old friends from Auckland and this was the first time we would be travelling together. Could pen pals survive two weeks in northern Africa? The taxi arrived, Stansted bound, we were about to find out.

We arrived at the airport at 10am,plenty of time to check our bags, pass security and have a sit down breakfast. Enough time had passed by the time we arrived by way of windy corridors to our gate. There were no lines, no passengers – they’d gone. We approached the ground staff – “Gates closed” they said. “gate opens at 11am and closes at 11.20am, it is now 11.25, Gates closed” how did this happen? Up until this point we’d done everything right, we were on time! “Is there any way we can get on that plane?” we asked. “nope! Sorry” said the man with a look on his face that looked exactly like he could very well get us on the plane. You win this world – our lax breakfast of 24pounds got the better of us we checked at our boarding pass a last time – the flight departed at 11.25, we were in the wrong.

The ticket desk inside the departure terminal confirmed the next available flight to fez was not until next Thursday, four days later. This would not do. I came all the way from Australia and this trip had to happen. We needed a plan B. We walked out of the departure terminal back to the public ticket desk - a walk of shame I’m sure few people need to ever make – we needed to get to Morocco today! Back at home I don’t have the best track record of making flights on time – I thought this was a habit I had kicked, an expensive one I evidently had not.

Gil asked around the local budget airlines– we were in luck there were flights to Marrakech on this day. This only turned our original plans upside down – but there was no way we wouldn’t buy these new tickets at 220pounds! What had we learned? Be on time, for the new flights we were three hours early and we were already at the airport we weren’t stupid enough to make the same mistake twice on the same day – take 2 – we’ve got this! One facebook rant about the cost of a 242pound breakfast on the account of brand new tickets later and we were through to security for the third time today. We sat in the departure terminal stalking the flight schedules waiting for our gate number to appear – this time we were going to be at the front of the line no matter what no excuses. 2 hours later we were, and for the second time today we were excited again.

A young woman in line with us revealed that she frequently visited Morocco (as she had a Morrocan lover); she had given us a handful of tips about travelling from the airport at Marrakech. When we boarded the plane a man who must have overheard us talking in the line introduced himself to us. Dan, an older man in his early 30’s, had not been to Morocco either. There was something about the way he talked that made me not trust him, he did not have an honest face. The way he tried to make plans with us for the two weeks made him seem pushy and desperate. I could picture him as a British version of uncle fester from the Adams family. We didn’t trust him. Nevertheless we had the plane ride decide if we actually did. The plane ride was a relief at least we knew that today we would actually make it the country even though it wasn’t Fez. So far the money he had thrown down the drain included flights to Fez that we’d missed and the two nights’ accommodation that we had booked. 

Overlooking Marrakech

Detour: Marrakech

When the plane landed Dan had woke up: “Do you guys have accommodation?” he asked. We had decided after the four hours that even though we probably trusted the fella, we didn’t really want to be travelling with him. This was after all a trip between old friends that was a long time coming and we didn’t need the extra excitement of someone who possibly could have killed is in the Atlas Mountains on top of it. In retrospect he probably wasn’t a serial killer but still this was our boys’ trip for two, not three. “Yeah, we have booked a hostel” we answered. “You don’t suppose I could come along?” he followed up. We like to think we are good people, so in the end we agreed to meet up with Dan outside after getting our bags and make our way to the accommodation.

The first thing I remember about Morocco was the dry heat. I had experienced heatwaves in Melbourne but this heat was different. We walked across the tarmac and into a building into customs. “That Maori guy’s from new Zealand” Gil pointed out a stocky guy who easily looked of Maori descent, he had familiar tattoos and of course it’s easy to assume that a Maori would come from New Zealand, “So what!” I replied; “So, I’m going to go say hi to him” Gil said. We follow the guy into customs, I filled in my arrival card and Gil made some small talk. We all know Gil is about the friendliest person you will ever meet and even in a country new to both of us he could still make time to make some new friends. After a while he returned to report on the encounter. As it turns out the guy was Samoan and not Maori (though Gil asked if his tattoos were Maori ones though they were cleary Samoan), an honest mistake but funny enough to have us both in stitches. Some people watched – but with the start we’d had to the day – we were taking every opportunity to laugh.

We exited, Dan was waiting, outside the terminal smoking a cigarette. He joined us as we walked along the path, “Big Square 200dh” shouted the taxi rank operator. We ignored him and kept moving (as we knew this was the price for tourists). We saw a bus for 30dh each to the big square. We were weighing up our options. The Big Square, Le Grande Place in French, or Jemm el Fna in Arabic is the main hub of the Marrakesh medina. This was where we needed to go, our accommodation was here. The question at hand was would we pay 200dh to get there, something that the Lady (with Moroccan lover earlier) said was enough to get you from one city to the next, we found out later this was true (as we got familiar with the lay of the land).

What we did find though was the bus stop for the big square at the foot of the taxi rank. We met Matt, another very English tourist. These guys are everywhere. After a chat we discovered he had been to Marrakesh before and was also on his way to the big square too. It was possible we could all chip in for a taxi if it meant it was gonna be cheaper for us all and as important – faster than a public bus. 100dh was the best Gil could haggle for four people to the share. What I didn’t really know about Gil was his ability to speak French. I certainly couldn’t speak Arabic so it was a very nice surprise to learn that Gil was actually good. He would argue just good enough. To this day I maintain had he not lived in the south of France and picked up the language our trip to Morocco would have been worse than it really was!

The ride to the square was a shock, both of culture and of mild regret, we just befriended the two most intense and annoying English tourists you can imagine. These fellas were friendly but way too intense for me to spend any more time with them after the taxi ride. Dan, the potential serial killer, and Matt the stereotypical English geezer had to go – or we had to ditch them. Matt was not unlike Dan in lots of ways. He was also in his early thirties and volunteered quite the back story. This time last year he separated from his wife. Unsure of what to do with himself he made his way to Marrakesh for some time out. This year he mentioned not much had changed in his life since his separation and once again, as we met he made a second pilgrimage to Morocco. Originally Gil and I planned on renting a car to travel the country at our own pace, we needed to book car shortly after we found our beds. Luckily the taxi ride to the square made our decision for us. With cars weaving in and out of lanes, indicators were only novelties. Scooters and motorbikes weaved in a similar yet faster fashion. There was no way we were gonna drive around horse and carts on top of those vehicles. Driving a car was OUT! It wasn’t happening and for our personal safety this was definitely a good decision. The taxi came to a sudden stop, we arrived at what we were told was the foot of Jemm el Fna, we paid the taxi and casually stepped into the grounds. The sun was quickly setting and I grew more unsettled. The smell of horse shit and people who had been out in the sun too long filled my nostrils. The smell of food cooking and my day’s sweat from the heat and stress did the same. The square was filling up with people by the hundreds, there must have been just under a thousand people here. The sounds of more scooters, people, instruments and snake charmers was apparent, this was Marrakesh. Without a clue where to go I was panicking and my heart racing. We walked along, the intense Brits meters ahead of us, local men yelling hotel and riads in our ears. We had organised our hostel and just needed to find it. I wished all these people just pissed off. A reality check, this was Morocco. At this point nothing bad had really happened. I was happy to be in such a place with my best friend but this is not what I had expected. Why was this so hard? “This is what you get” I told myself. We decided on Morocco so anything that happened from this point in was exactly what we deserved. I am usually calm in most situations, but not being able to speak the local language or communicate with people really put me at a disadvantage. I trusted that Gil would get us to safety, I had no other choice. We managed to ditch our British friends by going into the nearest hotel to ask for directions to our own. We didn’t mean to ditch them at this point but turning away for 5 seconds was enough time to lose people in this place even if you didn’t want to. Crowded streets with hundreds of people would do that. The next half an hour I found myself thinking about what happened to Matt and Dan? Did they make it to their accommodation okay? Did they try look for us when they realised they had just lost too amateurs in a crowd of Moroccans in the hundreds? Gil told me to snap out of it “We’ve lost them, don’t worry about them anymore”.

At the hotel we were pointed in the right direction of our hostel but no sooner after speaking with half a dozen people. The locals all had different ideas about where a popular local cafe was. It wasn’t until we spoke to the guide of an American man that we really got into the true direction of our hostel. The guide was Moroccan, he took my passport wallet with our passports along with the address of our hostel and disappeared into the crowd. My natural reaction was to secure our passports and run after him. In my state I wasn’t keen on chasing a thief in the dark. But again Gil told me to calm down. At this point I hadn’t yet learned who to trust. Usually I would trust just about anybody. But after landing in Marrakesh this particular afternoon I knew I had to do the exact opposite, trust no one except Gil of course.

The guide pointed us in the right direction again. It was night now and we didn’t know how far we needed to walk and how long it was going take to get to our hostel. On the broken information we received we kept walking – deeper into the medina. The more we walked the more stressed I became, this is what you get.

We had followed our directions to a point which lead to a fork in the path. None of the paths were lit, it was officially night and we needed to make a decision. We were surrounded by people who were staring back at us. “Equity point” a homeless toothless man called out. My ears pricked up, equity point was the name of the hostel we had booked in Marrakesh. “Gil, let’s follow this guy. I think he knows where our hostel is”. My better judgement got the better of me and I desperately wanted to trust this guy. The first person who I thought knew where our hostel was. He took us through some dark medina alley ways. It was dark I was hungry and I didn’t care. I was happy to follow him but the entire time was Gil, four paces behind me and cautiously following the toothless man. In my head he was helping us, later Gil confirmed he was cautious as this toothless man could have lead us to a back alley to a gang to rob us. I wasn’t thinking! I need to step it up next time.

We walked down some more dark alleys to the sound of French tourists walking in the opposite direction to us, “Ca va?” gil greeted them “is this the way to equity point?” they confirmed it was and for the first time this evening we both were relieved. These tourists didn’t have heavy packs like we did. This was a good sign since it meant their bags would have been at a hostel. The man took us to the barred wooden door which looked not unlike every over door down these alleys. This was apparently the hostel. His guidance was apparently not free and we parted with 5dh with the knowledge that we might have to pay every person who showed anything. I noted this and we rang the doorbell. The other side of the door was sanctuary for the 
night.

Alvin - backstreets of Marrakech

Equity Point.

Through the barred wooden door was the reception of the Equity Point hostel. This place was definitely a gem hidden deep in the Marrakesh medina. The path to get to the hostel is deceiving in that the hostel interior which was fitted with traditional Moroccan art and furnishings in contrast to the Medina path which was dirty, unpathed, unfinished and dusty. This hostel by contrast was a modern Moroccan palace all as if you walked into a different area code. We were greeted by an older gentleman we only assumed was the manager, a European man named Xavier. He stood about 6’2” with shaggy grey hair and glasses. We couldn’t place his nationality at first it was evident that Xavier had travelled many times in his life and he had picked up a few languages on the way. His French, Spanish and English were all very fluent. “Can I help you boys?” he asked. When Xavier asked for our passports I didn’t hand them over straight away, but Gil told me – “These are the good guys (so it is fine)”. The stress left my body it finally sunk in, we are safe! We organised our booking and were then given a tour by a young man from the Ivory Coast, Dan.

“Come this way, I will give you a tour and show you to your room” said Dan as we walked through windy corridors all decorated with Moroccan art. It was like walking through a page off lonely planet. Equity point was the real deal, this place had a pool and over two dozen rooms spread across three stories. The upper terrace made way to the starry Moroccan sky as well as boasted a view of the rough roof tops that made up the medina skyline. Although not as tall as a skyline you can find in London or Melbourne the medina low rise was just as if not more breathtaking. We definitely were not in a Western country anymore.

The next morning, Gil approached this South African woman (that we had seen numerous times already), his own heritage being the conversation starter, Marci actually ran a local tour company. She was easily the most important person we’d met this particular morning. She was leaving Marrakesh on this day but we were able to organise a tour of the Medina with one of her guides. We had made zero plans of things to do and places to see so meeting Marci and organising a tour seemed perfect. I asked her for a lighter again before we got ready for the tour and she was kind enough to give me her spare.

atop the hostel

Ali’s Medina tour.

We made our way down to reception at 10am where we were to meet Ali our guide for the day. Ali was an older Moroccan who seemed very well educated. Fluent in Moroccan, French, Berber and English his level of intelligence was not hard to grasp. Showing tourists around the Marrakesh medina was his bread and butter. Ali spoke about how the perfect (Muslim) ‘man’ is one who is humble, but not afraid to ask. He implied he was one of these good Muslims... despite the fact that he didn’t ask his opposition tour guide about the information he was giving – he told him he was wrong. In terms of being humble – he boasted how he took some of the British Royal Family around Marrakech for a few days, and that he had done a stellar job. Therefore a man who was seemed humble upon introduction Ali was sure the one of the proudest Moroccans we had met so far. He was as nationalistic as he was as passionate giving showing people his proud town. The tour started with the various souks or markets which were grouped by the type of trade or craft. After about an hour of weaving through tight medina walkways we had seen and heard the history of Marrakesh’s local blacksmiths, rug weavers, shoemakers, woodcarvers and herbalists. The area also boasted an old university which was now a historical site to be walked by tourists and tour guides alike and a modern museum. It was with a local woodcarver (apparently the 2^nd best in all the land) that we experienced haggling for the first time. We came across two identical wooden boxes carved from cedar wood. We convinced ourselves that we would never see such craftsmanship in a wooden box again and that we had to have them (though we saw these ‘magic boxes’ in all the other towns we ended up going to, and Gil’s box – a present for a friend – was badly put together and somewhat broken). This is perhaps why Abdullah the woodcarver was more than happy to oblige us. This was our first time haggling and apparently we were in good hands as Abdullah talked us through the process. It is simple – the seller gives his optimal price, you come back with the counter bid, he meets you lower than his initial price, and then you meet him on your final offer. Then the ball is in his court, whether he wants to accept this offer or not. So it started, 1200dh was his asking price, 400dh we replied back. The look on his face was of disappointment or maybe this was how he lured tourists in for a profit. 950dh was his final offer – this was more than double what we were willing to pay (as we had both mismanaged our money situation – and didn’t have much money in the bank as we were both waiting to get paid our most recent salaries). Gil had even said to Abdullah, “We actually don’t have any money right now”. He interpreted that as – we didn’t have any liquid cash on us (as Europeans have bags of money in comparison to Moroccans) – “So you can pay by Visa”. After much lengthy discussion and laughter, certainly a sign of disrespect according to Abdullah, we named our final price of 450dh. Abdullah was not in the least impressed, but explained that perhaps we would spread the word of his crafts and he would one day make his money back. We didn’t though. We stopped Ali’s tour in the middle of Jemmel Fna, the square we had finally conqured. We’d seen some of Marrakesh, and due to logistical events it was time for us to move on. That afternoon we walked with Ray about 5km out of the city to the CTM bus station we booked tickets for our next city and the next part of our adventure – Essaouira.

Market Spices

Road to Essaouira

The next morning we had breakfast for the last time with Ray at equity point. He was on his way to Essaouira too but received some bad news about his friends back home, so he was still tossing up whether to go back or not. When we left Marrakesh we never saw him again so we could only assume we made a pit stop back to Ireland. This same morning we met possibly the most interesting and unexpected character of the entire trip. A Libyan academic who was in Morocco on conference to present on the Arab Spring, he never introduced himself by name unfortunately (but he looked like the main guy from Allo Allo – and had an amazingly characteristic chuckle to go with it). Nonetheless, it had been many years since I sat in lecture room but this hearing this man’s views and opinions on the Arabic political climate was more than enough to take me back inside the university lecture halls. For instance, the night before he spoke of how he bumped into Libyan Generals in Marrakech, who used Morrocco as their refuge, as they had probably committed some really awful acts under Gaddafi (and probably wanted for crimes in modern-day Libya).  I wished we had stayed another day to talk this person more but it was onward and upward for us – West we would go to the sleeply coastal town of Essaouira. We were really happy to leave Marrakesh and even more happy to do so in style all the way to the national bus station. We decided to take a horse and cart past the taxi ranks for 100dh, a financially challenged personal victory against local taxi syndicate. We waited at the bus station for our bus and watched the tourists pack into the terminal; these people were heading in the same direction as us. Our bus pulled up and five hours and one pit stop later (where Gil experienced a heat-wave he had no idea of, since living in London for a few years) – we were on the Atlantic coast.

Horse&Cart to the Station

Living in a London Paradise; a trip to Paris; and the invasion of the Romanians in my home in North London.

Back in London, I found a London Paradise called Hackney Wick. There I subletted a room, until I found my permanent residence. I was living with an actor/beat-poet, a fashion designer, a singer and two crazy Italians. Next door to my place was a film-maker and a Dj for example, as there are people of all creative professions in this arena. It is an isolated community in East London, situated next to the revamped area of where the Olympic site is being built. It overlooks the new Olympic village across the Canal. This area is filled with factories and abandoned warehouses, as this is where much of London’s production took place when England actually use to make goods. Now it is filled with these creative people in the warehouses, who have transformed them into loft apartments. You have people in their 30’s who act like they’re in their late teens. It’s a good vibe, a cool place, removed from society where you can be forever young! It is also the cheapest, most well valued accommodation one can find in ‘London proper’ for such a large living space and a massive rooftop terrace. More importantly for me it is another slice of London’s amazing landscape that I’m happy I’ve experienced, and it is probably the most special.

Soon after moving into my new place in North London, I went on a trip to Paris to retrieve the last of my things in Europe to install into my new residence. I met with old friends. A sound engineer who had a liking for 20+ years aged Scotch whisky; a banker from a working class home; a film-maker who has a short film at the Cannes film festival this year. I stayed with couple made up of an soon-to-be Osteopath and a training Graphic designer. My ‘banker’ friend had college peers who were all from the upper echelons of society – he was not. He did not have connections, like for example one of his peer’s mother, was the daughter of the BNP Paribas chairman. Nonetheless this lad was extremely smart; he even did some study in China and picked up Mandarin, one of the many languages he can speak proficiently. He lived just by Place Monge, a very cool BoBo area where I went out for a drink with him. BoBo is the term for Bourgeois Bohemian. He was living with his girlfriend here. A BoBo he is not, a BoBo his girlfriend is for sure. BoBo is characterised by people who are upper-middle class, but vote Left Wing, buy organic food and generally care about the environment. It’s like a new fashion – people with money who have a conscience. He though likes money; he never had much money like your regular BoBo but now he has made it in a world of big bonuses and big pay-checks, why should he subsidize his income further when he had nothing to begin with. He accused me of being a BoBo – I found this to be absurd but I was not surprised. True I have the many makings of a Bobo – I’m a well mannered, compassionate, observant, 25 year old boy. Sure my parents have given me everything I’ve required and brought me up in an comfortable stable environment. BoBo though I am not. The main reason being, though my parents have the class and makings of a Baby Boomer Bourgeois couple, wealthy they are not. Wealthy in love, yes, in culture too, even in richness of experience, but never in monetary terms. So my mother teaches yoga and buys organic food; my father has pledges large sums of money to Africa; my brothers are vegetarian and don’t buy branded clothes; but this is all due to their morale code not because they want to adhere to a fashion. My family members are just ‘good’ amazingly caring people (for animals, for the planet, for the impoverished, for the world in general). Perhaps this social liberalism has rubbed off on me.

However since living in Europe I’ve become cynical about Liberal Cosmopolitanism for example. I’ve moved further to the Right. Though my family all vote for the Green Party (a left-wing socially conscience party from New Zealand), I feel I’ve moved to the Right. Voting for the Left is fine when you just have to worry about a population of 4.5 million people and there are enough resources to go around. But when the NHS (National Health Service) in the UK is hugely in debt for example, and you have to cut social schemes which are mandatory to the betterment of society – there is a problem. My experience starts when I initially lived in a housing estate in London. I saw (white English) families on welfare (for an eternity) and I didn’t like it. They were wasters; the 19 year old daughter had a kid, the uncle was a coke-head, and they were given a flat for free, while I paid an expensive rate for a box-room. In France, on my walk home from the train station I saw the same North African youths doing nothing, just hanging out on the same street corners smoking and drinking every day. Inspiring it was not. I have a problem with the EU – you have Europeans from Poland to Spain who come to the United Kingdom to claim benefits – though they have never contributed to the society or even have no resemblance of caring for Britain. This has put a huge strain on the more developed European societies such as the UK, Ireland, Germany and France to name a few. This is perhaps why Marine Le Pen, the right wing leader obtained nearly 20% of the vote at the recent 1^st round elections in France. Yes the vast majority (probably 90%) of Europeans who come here such as the Polish and the Spanish, come to work, and only claim benefits to get a start in a position where they can care for themselves. All my Spanish, Polish, Romanian, and Italian friends work, as most of my friends here aren’t British, and I love the mixture of people that live in London. But I’ve seen and knew of many Jamaicans in the area of Camberwell (where I once lived) who didn’t have a job or were ever going to get one. They are afforded these things from the British, due to the exploitations by the Commonwealth Empire in years previous. BoBo I’m certainly not. A BoBo is someone who has lived in harmonious circumstances, and can smugly look over to the poor and care because there is a bit of guilt there and makes them sleep at night better, that though they drive a Prius or holiday in Greece regularly – they still give generously to charities. I on the other hand have not always had that luxury, once you’re thrown into the ‘deep end’ you see the absurdity of it all – that my tax dollars (on my miniscule wage) are making people better off who have never and will never work a day in their lives. They are better off than me. I believe in equality. I believe in democratic freedoms. But I don’t believe in supporting filth. I guess I’m bitter, as I’ve always worked low paid, low skilled jobs, but sweated my ass off, and have found myself in an inferior economic situation to people who have never worked. I see a whole in the system and I feel like I’ve been a victim of it!

Nevertheless, I love my life in London. I’m poor yes, but there are opportunities everywhere, and experiences to enrich my life every week. Acting has been my latest thing. I played a lead in a short film which was about a love triangle. I was in a commercial as an Extra for a Japanese beer. I played a French Policeman in a 1960’s Film Noir. I had a casting to be a Red Bull presenter, and also to play a small part in a Bollywood picture – neither role did I succeed in getting. Now I have an interview for a tour company; I’m going to be working on a Pakistani fashion show in Kensington; so I’m just generally getting myself out there in fashion, media, and film! I’m doing things, most things I’m not being paid for. But the more experience I compile, something will finally happen where perhaps I don’t have to work another low skilled, low paying job again!

To conclude this political diatribe, which can be characterized with the new people I’ve met in my life and the new place of residence where I find myself. I’ve made a very good friend, a man a couple years older than me, a Romanian. He has never worked a ‘proper’ day in his life. He has been afforded scholarships to continue his tuition in the USA, Belgium, Germany, and now England. This is because he is brilliant. Brilliant at bullshitting to be awarded such scholarships but extremely intelligent as well. And so the inspirational people I met on my latest London journey were all his friends, all of whom were Romanian. Now Romanians have perhaps the worst reputation of all European nations. It was also fitting that they were arriving on Mayday, workers’ day, the day that pays homage to all social unions and their workers; since my move from the Social Left side, I met a group of people who were not of this class or never needed such an implemented apparatus in their lives. All in their mid-late 20’s, they were brought up right after the fall of Communism and the end of the dictatorship in their country. This group of Romanians were the most intelligent company I’ve ever dined with at a BBQ. They were PHD students from only the top universities in the world, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, and one who would be attending Yale next year. Each person had a 3^rd fluent language along with English and Romanian of course, be it German, French, Spanish, Russian; one guy spoke six languages. I was quite out of my depth. Even though there were two guys who were not academics, one was a proper theatre performer who was on a large salary with a theatre company whom he travelled with in France, and the other was a former successful painter, and now a fashion designer. These two guys were the real thing. Due to Romania and Bulgaria being the last two nations to enter the EU, they have been blacklisted making it harder for them to obtain a student allowance, to be accepted to universities, to study, to work and generally harder to get government assistance. So these two guys, from modest Romanian homes, squatted in Paris. Squatted, because they didn’t have the money to pay rent as they were not afforded any government assistance. Nonetheless, both have made it out of (technically speaking) impoverished circumstances. These two are the real ‘Beat’ generation, the real people ‘On the road’. 

See cliff-notes                                                                                                                                          *1*                                                                                                                                                       *2*

Conclusively however, my point here is that, these Romanian academics at the BBQ, are here in Western Europe because they have the intellectual capacity and determination to successfully be assertive and participatory in society as opposed to being a strain. The two Romanian former squatters, did what they had to, to make it in the society they found themselves. If you come to a country and don’t intend on bettering yourself I don’t believe you should be afforded a ‘free ride’. These two Romanians had no choice and look how successful they have begun. Now to be fair, these probably are exceptional cases, and there are probably many people who don’t make it and end up on the streets forever, thus causing more problems for society. Therefore the welfare state in the long-run does more good than the eventual harm that would ensue without it. Such as having people on the streets having to steal, beg and borrow, because they have to get by. So maybe my right-wing feelings are not as proven as I thought, and perhaps I should retreat to my Leftist routes... However, Europe’s most affluent major powerhouses – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are becoming over-crowded and it is on the working class majority who have to pick up the cheque for those who come here with nothing. The philosophical question posed here is, is its one duty to take care of those who are in an inferior position to you even if they don’t have much in common with you (and are foreign). Should it be a moral obligation of yours? I’ll leave you with this question that I believe highlights the whole issue besetting Europe today.  

*1* - The theatre performer owes people lots of money for debts he has never covered because he needed money to get by in times of need; now he lends people money who are in the position he once was – so perhaps this is a vicious cycle in-itself. Whatever the case may be, he is a man who is experienced much, and is extremely generous because he knows what it’s like to have nothing. Another point is, he begged and squatted for many years, but obtained a Masters degree after four year of study – that is a legend!

*2* - The former painter prodigy sold works for several thousand Euros at 17 years of age in Romania. He now designs clothes; works in a clothing store in Shoreditch, and resides in Hackney, while he is preparing for his 1^st year of art’s college. A legend in the making perhaps.

Back in the ‘home-land’ after a 2 year hiatus

Not much really changes in New Zealand after two years. Sure a rugby world cup has been won surmounting to added pride of being kiwi; while a major disaster struck, an earthquake has decimated the country's 2nd biggest city. To me however it is still how I remember it. The air is still clearer; things are still cleaner; everywhere is generally cleaner; my friends still the same (just a bit more grown up); my family routine is the same; and most importantly my perception is still the same: NZ is a beautiful place but it is just too far from everything else, and though it doesn’t have the stressors of living in somewhere such as Europe – there just isn’t enough going on for me as a ‘young person’. Nonetheless it isn’t a bad place to be in the summer; even in Auckland the biggest city: beaches, forests, and other nature things are within a 30 minute (drive-time) radius. Moreover you have a pick of great art and music festivals, with the most incredible locations, in areas that are sparsely populated. WOMDAD (World Of Music And Dance), takes place on a lake in the town of New Plymouth, while I was lucky enough to go to the Splore festival for the 2^nd time.

Splore a music and arts festival really was indicative of the beauty and open psyche of New Zealand. It takes place every two years at the amazing Tapapakanga National Park, with beaches and forests flanking the activities taking place in the various venues. Two years ago it was one of my last experiences before I initially left New Zealand. Now I’m leaving again but more the wiser and I appreciate New Zealand even more after being overseas. It is such a great festival to be at, while you feel most of the 10% of the Green voting electorate is here, New Zealand’s biggest small party and 3^rd biggest in the country. You had families young and old, with punters and couples young and old – it was a festival that didn’t discriminate something for everyone. Dancing to great Djs of all sorts, and listening to great singers such as Eryka Badu was just one facet; there was yoga and meditation workshops; and live art sprawled everywhere.

Here is a video, whereby on the 0:15 second mark is a bunch of mimes that were promoting the ‘Fluxus Funhouse’, an event company whom my friend runs; I volunteered to get in to the festival at half-the-price to take part as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGQzkr7cUfA&feature=share

Now as I write this in my parent’s garden with the birds and secadas chirping away, in North Shore surburbia, I know I’m going to miss facets of this beautiful place. There are many places in the world where New Zealand’s beauty can be matched but in different ways, but there are few places in the world with such a civilized small population that sparsely populates beautiful areas that are not commercial and over-priced. For example, unlike the Cote d’Azur or Lake Como Italy, we have beauty that can match such iconic spots, like Russel and Lake Taupo but in New Zealand they’re not nearly at the same market value whereas they are emptier in comparison. And it is this fact that I believe why New Zealand is special. Nonetheless, my next venture to Europe is for a five year period, as opposed to the two year period previous; this is what I’m looking forward to most, to make my mark and continue my euro adventure.