11.11.08

It seems to becoming a bit of a running tradition to write blog entires while on flights.  I’m willing to bet it's a combination of being bored and strangely contemplative at 40 thousand feet up in the air.  What ever it is, here we are again.  This time flying somewhere between Madrid and Istanbul.  We just left Fez this morning after finishing up shooting that episode.  All seemed to go well, but as ever, it's always a work in progress.  Fez was quite a place.  On the one hand it was what I expected in a Moroccan city, but on the other, when you are actually there in living color, it seemed to take on more than I could envision.  The city itself is divided up into three main parts:  the new section which I think is from the 1500-1600’s or so, the French section which is really the new section – the result of the French colonizing the place in the late 1800’s, and then lastly – but in our case mostly – the old section which most people refer to as the Medina – the City.  This is the heart of Fez.  It is right now celebrating 1200 years since it's founding in the late 700/early 800’s.  The Medina is supposedly the world’s largest urban area without motorized vehicles.  On record it has around 100,000 people, but locals know that it is more like 300,000.  I am sure reality lies somewhere in between, but there is no doubt that if you added up all the people that live there and all of the people that go there to work and to shop, all of the tourists (which fortunately there aren’t all that many), it probably does lean towards the 300,000 side of things.  Much more on the Medina later.  We (the “we” being Nicole – our shiny new director, although she is more the pro at this stuff than me with a number of episodes under her belt at Bizarre Foods -  and myself), arrived in Fez after a total cluster - - - - of a trip to Morocco, ending up by having to resort to taking a taxi from Casablanca all the way up to the city rather than flying because of a 9 hour delayed flight on a crappy airline (lets just say that the flight started out with them trying to repair what seemed to be the engine before we even left).   There we met up with Ian (our cameraman’s name is Ian which makes things interesting, especially for two people who – up until this point in each of our lives – have been quite used to being the only Ian in the crowd).  He was with me on the first trip, and fortunately it sounds like he will be the camera “A” guy for the whole series as we seem to work and travel well together which is honestly a really big deal.  Anyway, last time I saw him, we were sprinting to catch our separate flights out of Mumbai three weeks ago.  It was here that we also met with our local fixer (literally a person that takes care of everything –  getting cameras repaired, translating, situations explained, palms greased), Reda.  After dinner and a nights sleep, it was off to the Medina to get things started.  The hotel looks out over the whole Medina – in essence a large walled in city literally jammed with peeling yellow stucco brick buildings and green and ivory tiled minarets sticking up all over the place (Fez is known for it's numerous mosques).  To go into the Medina is truly like stepping back in time.  I know, it's a trite thing to say, but I’ve been a lot of places that seem like they are back in time, but it’s different here.  Here you drive in through modern Fez passing by Mercedes and Audi dealerships, McDonalds driving along brightly lit, tree lined boulevards.  Not so in the Medina.  No cars, and no motorcycles allowed.  The Medina is centered on the ridge of a low hill in the city, the streets range from 6ft to 12ft wide, and every inch of space is being used for merchants' stalls and booths, repair workshops, craftspeople, knife sharpeners, restaurants, houses, tanneries.  They are crowded with people going about their daily lives navigating the rising and falling, ever turning back on themselves streets, dead end alleyways, tiny doorways that open up onto traditional two and three floor atrium centered homes.  All of this has been standing here and being added to and taken away from for over a millennia.  Donkeys carrying all manner of things from garbage to food to linoleum literally plow their way through the people – locals as well as the occasional dazed and confused busload of tourists, people pushing carts up and down the hilly streets.  It's not a question of “if” you will get lost if you jump in on your own, it's  a matter of when.  Because the streets are so tightly packed and the houses and buildings go straight up on either side of you, everything looks the same, the streets rise and fall slowly and always curve off into a crowd with identical and at the same time completely unfamiliar side streets veering off slightly one way, cutting back directly another way, narrow alleys that might lead you to light or a dead end after a few unadvised turns.  I guarantee that if you headed off from one entrance and alternated taking left and right turns at any point, it would take you five minutes to by totally and utterly screwed.  All modesty aside, I’m someone that has had pretty good success navigating some of the trickier bazaars of the world, and with that traveler’s smugness in my mind, I thought I new my way back from a little walk we took into the Medina, and rather than taking a turn 15 feet to the right ahead of me, I took the right turn that was next to me and quickly was off track, fortunately to be called back to the correct route by Reda.  The Medina would become our siren call for the next few days.  Honestly at night from our hotel perched above, looking out over the couple lights that stay on in the Medina, you could almost hear it calling you, but don’t even think about it.  Only the occasional light, and completely empty except for people wandering around that most likely don’t have your best interests at heart.

This was our home base for the first three days doing all sorts of things that seemed to constantly test the things that I would be willing to tell the CDC that I did, lest I be quarantined to living in a bubble for the rest of my life – I’m only partly kidding here.  Then off to a couple remote villages to meet with a group of people known as the Gnawa then on to another village to take part in a big horse riding rifle ceremony  in the foothills of the Atlas mountains with some Berber villagers.

The three of us – that is Nicole, Ian and Ian seem to be working quite well together (Nicole didn’t miss a beat fitting in with the two of us), and as long as my soy-half-caf-lattes and daily five o’clock hot rock massage appear on time and, of course actually hot, things will stay just fine between all of us.  Again, no revealing the show so you are forced to watch, or have just happily realized that you have no desire to watch.  Either way.  

Now it’s off to Istanbul to shoot another episode.  I’m willing to bet our next meeting will be on the plane ride home, so until then . . . I don’t know. . . enjoy whatever it is you’re doing.  It's time to land in Istanbul.