Tangier is legendary to people of a certain generation. A haven for artists, beatniks, deviants and the sort of people you generally boast are part of your cultural heritage while simultaneously refusing to let them into your home.
On the negative side there was a depraved, drug addled degeneracy living side by side with all this creativity and free expression. On the positive side there was a depraved, drug addled degeneracy living side by side with all this creativity and free expression.
The cause of Tangier’s status as a free wheeling, anything goes location was the fact that for several decades during the twentieth century it was ruled by a combination of several European countries who used it to experiment with policies they could never have got away with at home like absolutely free trade and minimal taxation.
Or to be blunt Tangier’s status as an artistic Mecca completely depended on the sort of colonial occupation that is now considered quite a bad thing. The Europeans handed the place back to Morocco in the 1950s and Tangier sank to a squalid crime riddled hole. Which is pretty much what it always was but now without the artists.
However Tangier is now on the up. The government has invested a lot of money giving the waterfront a facelift and setting up industries in the city and now nobody needs to make a living robbing, selling drugs to or ripping off tourists unless they really want to.
Into this freshly rejuvenated city came our little bus load of tourists. Those who had been here before marvelled at the improvements those who hadn’t simply assumed it had always been like that. We would get the opportunity to get lost in the Medina later but first there was a picnic in a park stuffed so full of eucalyptus trees that you could have imagined you were in Australia.
After a stroll around a suspiciously clean Medina we made our way to Cafe Hafa which is famous as a place where artists hung out when artists hung out there. It opened in 1921 and doesn’t seem to have been renovated since. The views over the harbour are stupendous and the over sweetened mint tea is free. At least it’s free if the waiter plonks it in front of you and then wanders off. Apparently he returned demanding payment about fifteen minutes later but we’d left by then.
But the real attraction for us was the Tangier train station where an overnight train waited to take us to Marrakech. I bunked in with my guide and the only two other males on our tour. As we waited for the train to leave we were entertained by a Frenchwoman having a meltdown because she thought booking a berth entitled her to a compartment by herself. Both our guide and the train conductor agreed that the French are irrational, demanding pricks (sorry Alison) and on that note of agreement we rolled into the night.
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