From Europe to Africa it’s just 13km or 1 hour. I took the ferry from Tarifa to Tangiers. Gazing back across the Straits of Gibraltar to the mountains of Andalucia you immediately comprehend that Europe and Africa are actually not a tale of two continents, but one!  I came to Tangiers in 2004 and it was great wandering through its white Medina and drinking lots of the à la menthe in its tea houses. But actually I should have come much earlier: During its period as an „International City“ in the first half of the last century. all kinds of people flooded into Tangier, lured by its amazing light and cosmopolitan parties. I would have loved living there during this time, sharing Tangiers with writers, spies, criminals, exiles, addicts and other eccentrics like me. The city became renowned for its anything-goes culture. Paul Bowles wrote  his hallucinatic “Sheltering Sky”.

After Tangiers I turned further south and took the train to Fes and Marrakech,  apart from Isfahan and Sanaa my two of my favorite cities in the Islamic world, In Marrakesh, the High Atlas and the Sahara were just beyond. Africa! I loved Marrakech, eating on its Djema el Fna (restaurant no. 61) and loosing myself  in the maze of shadowy alleyways of the Souk. There I learned one of my most valuable travel lessons: Browsing lantern shops, rug stores and babouche stalls I was constantly under “je suis votre guide”-attack by an army of touts. One after the other tried his luck with me, shopping itself became impossible.  Finallly, a  young boy advised me self-assuredly: “Just take me. One mosquito is better than many mosquitos”.  He saved me.