Tag: French


Jul
2010

The Bike Effect: Tunisia

categories: Travel

Downtown Tunis, Tunisia.

A little cafe on Avenue Habib Bourguiba. The waiter offers me a “personal discount” on my coffee because of something I’ve come to describe as “the bike effect”: my rig looks bad ass resting next to my table, and here the travel-worn, custom-grub adventure bike is out-of-place enough to mark me as an adventurer, a traveler, not just another tourist who comes on the ferry from France for an afternoon-in-the-medina to say “I visited Tunisia!” It’s not just literally that a bike is “open to the world” – it opens the very soul of the rider, and affects the first impressions of others in a mysterious but undeniable way.

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Jun
2010

الجزائر : owT keeW

categories: Travel
الجزائر, al-Jazā’ir, week two
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I left Oran late, after meeting new friends and really new friends in town. One random Christian Berber student taught me the phrase “asabi3 alyad mokhtalifa” – “each finger of the hand is different.” Allah loves wondrous variety!
“You sure you want to leave today? It’s five pm already….” Yes, I have to leave – my psyche is already out there pedalling.
“Aren’t you worried that you don’t know anyone down the road?” No. That is comletely normal. Adventure!

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Jun
2010

enO keeW : الجزائر

categories: Travel
الجزائر, al-Jazā’ir, week one
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June 7. The visa begins, but I am still in Spain, pedaling more kms than ever before, under a hotter-than-ever sun.
I reach Almeria with plenty of time to spare, and give my rig a tune-up on the rambla, amidst an angry protest against Israeli terrorism and Spanish arms manufacturing.
The ferry terminal has a little makeshift mosque. Huge groups of Arabs and a few Europeans; ninety percent take the ten o’clock for Morocco, leaving me feeling quite hard-core alone with the Algerians.

The midnight boat boards at one and leaves at one thirty.


Apr
2010

Being a guest in Morocco

categories: Travel
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The hospitality of rural Morocco continued to impress as I slowly cycled south. So much so, I began to wonder if I would need my tent(or my cooking pots, or my spice kit, or my campstove, or my sleeping mat, or any of the self-sufficient gear I schlepp everywhere) at all in this country – or would it be like this in all Islamic countries? Is this a Moroccan thing, or a Muslim thing? I was welcomed to the country numerous times with “American? Ah, then this is your country!”
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Mar
2010

Welcome to Morocco

categories: Travel

Regatear. To haggle. One of the big words I learned in Sevilla. “Desde el ferry, Charlie, start haggling even at the ferry to Ceuta,” advised my friend Alberto.

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I’ve never been good at haggling – in Mexico I figured even if I was getting ripped off, it was still cheap, so I never worked up the guts to talk anyone down. But now, with a long stretch of Africa ahead of me, and a much more highly developed thriftiness than ever before, I figured it was time to learn. (more…)


Apr
2009

Black Cats and Bulots

categories: Travel

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The plan was to zip back up to Maastricht to see a couple of people, then turn right around and rush across France and the Pyrenees a thousand miles in three weeks for La Criticona, the world-wide critical mass in Madrid. Once back in Limburg, I would only check in with Paul, a Belgian sailor mate I met while sailing across the Atlantic, and meet up with Patrick Buckley, son of the Irishman who welded my bike frame, who I’d promised to visit if I were ever in the Netherlands, then quick head back South. (more…)


Apr
2009

Bruxelles: Belgiuque

categories: Travel

When you travel slowly, as you do on a bike, you can notice the little changes.

Sailing for two months from the Caribbean to England, the temperature of the air and water decline ever so gradually, day by day, a natural change that is unnoticable except in hindsight.
Approaching the border of a different country, one can detect shifts of dialect in the simple words of neighbors, like a bleeding language buffer on either side of the invisible line – especially in Belgium, where both Dutch and French are official languages of the state.
Geography follows this gentle course as well. (more…)