The Reunion Part I - Geneva, Switzerland to Casablanca, Morocco

After three contrasting months apart, The Earthbound Astronauts have finally reunited! We’ve only been on the road for five weeks, yet we’ve had the pleasure of traversing through eight distinctly different countries. It’s been an adventure-filled reunion, so this is only Part I of our unpredictable voyage. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it!

To listen to the Part I podcast click HERE!

Switzerland – Geneva – September 30^th – October 1^st

After being apart for three months, we were both enthusiastic to start the next phase of our journey. Meeting in Geneva was convenient for us both as Casey had been travelling with his parents in Switzerland, and Geneva was only a short two-hour train ride away from Lyon, where I had been stationed for the previous two months. We jubilantly met at a prearranged hostel both invigorated by the unknown of the coming months. Casey was excited to be no longer travelling solo, whilst I was ecstatic to be on the move once more. Wanting to celebrate our once again formidable duo, we ventured into Geneva to enjoy a meal. Having been forewarned of the exuberant pricing in Switzerland still did not prepare us for the blatant extortion encountered! Unfortunately for us, pricing was relative to the heightened salaries received in Switzerland, those with heavy financial restraints, such as ourselves, were reduced to the common European travellers meal: a baguette, cheese, salami and a lukewarm beer.

Meeting Casey’s parents at The European Organisation for Nuclear Research or ‘CERN’ was a very exciting occasion. We were able to join them both for a tour of CERN and find out about the enormous subterranean particle accelerator and the recently confirmed Higgs Boson, a concept that is still outside my scientific grasp. It was a great event to share with Casey’s dad, David, as he has a great passion for physics, and this facility is at the forefront of research in this area. As we sadly farwelled both Aleysha and David, it marked the true beginning of our journey.

A combination of rejuvenating motivation along with Casey’s resent success hitchhiking, spurred us on an adventure to hitchhike from Geneva, Switzerland to Barcelona, Spain. Catching public transport to the Swiss-French border, garnished with our packs, we climbed a small fence leading to the highway, casually strolled across the border checkpoint, placed our packs down for but a second, barely having time to lift the iconic hitchhiker thumb and a car pulled up. Knowing the broad direction we wanted to head in, AKA west, the driver asked us where we’d like to go, we said Lyon (a large city in the general direction of Barcelona), when he said he wasn’t going in that direction we naively insisted that any ride was a good ride, even one that smelt so strongly of cheese… We had a great time chatting to our new Hungarian friend about his new life in France; however, it soon became apparent that we were not heading in the direction we’d initially intended. We ended up in Chamonix, a small town in the shadow of Europe’s tallest mountain, Mont Blanc. Surrounded by snow-capped peaks, luscious forests and typical French buildings, this charming town is what dreams are made of. Contemplating our new situation, we separately had the same idea of travelling into Italy. Astonished at our already distorted plan (a habit we cannot seem to break), we changed our tact and now waited on a highway, not so far away from the Italian border, waiting for our next willing lift.

Italy – Genoa & Cinque Terra – October 2^nd – October 5^th

We were eventually picked up by a really nice Italian-speaking Albanian, who was kind enough to drive us past his own small town to Aosta, a town with a main train station. We drove through an incredible part of Italy, with valleys dotted with various castles and villages, which seemed to be untouched by the progressive modernization witnessed in larger cities. Unfortunately, our new friend was unable to speak English, but this gave Casey an opportunity to put his freshly practiced Italian to use. He was incredibly hospitable; he even bought us a beer and refused to let us pay for it! From the train station we headed to Genoa, a port town, where we would enquire about a ferry to Spain.

We arrived into Genoa at night with no organised accommodation. Not believing this to be a problem, we were turned away from numerous hotels and hostels either due to unavailability or extravagant prices. We swallowed our pride and stayed at the cheapest we could find, even though it was considerably more then we were expecting to pay. When enquiring as to why there was such a shortage of accommodation, we found out it was due to the famed Genoa annual boat show. What would a trip to Genoa be without going to the fabled boat show! It was amazing to see the yachts that were on show. Casey and I definitely didn’t quite fit the part when it came to prospective cliental, yet we boarded some of the more modest yachts and were still able to dream about potential future travel opportunities.

Determining that we had a few days before we were going to board the ferry to Barcelona, we headed to Cinque Terre, a portion of coast on the Italian Riviera. Cinque Terre consists of five distinctively unique villages, all vibrantly coloured. Each village sits in a small cove, with the buildings carefully teetering on the sharp slope of the surrounding tumultuous terrain. It was beautiful to see these still lively villages in an incredibly well preserved and prosperous state. Returning to Genoa after a fleeting visit, we boarded the 20-hour ferry across the Mediterranean to Barcelona.

Spain – Barcelona, Tarragona & Granada – October 6^th – 12^th

As we arrived into Barcelona it was obvious that the city was going to live up to it’s impressive reputation as a culturally rich and vivacious city. Every street or small alley was bustling with life, a combination of luminescent light, erratically scattered boutiques and restaurants, and people eager to enjoy the temperate ambience. Having discovered that a friend from home, Sam, was going to be in Barcelona at the same time, we decided to meet. As Sammy had been in Barcelona for about a week before we arrived, he acted as our pseudo-tour guide, attempting to enlighten us about Gaudi, a famous architect whose eccentric and imaginative buildings have become icons of Barcelona. Shamefully, Casey and I were unaware of Gaudi before our arrival and were naively curious about this ‘Gaudi’ character people continually referred to as if it was common knowledge. As a trio, we trekked up to Montjuïc Castle, where we are able to see the incredible immensity of Barcelona and it’s surrounding satellite towns.

Even though Barcelona is well known for pickpockets and petty crime, we had no issues. The only act of theft that we experienced was due to a lapse in our concentration, forgetting to ask the price of mediocre paninis in what seemed like a legitimate panini business, which resulted in blatant daylight robbery! This was a sore moment for us both, especially when we sent Sam into the same shop a day later to enquire about the price, to find out there had been a significant price reduction… Having enjoyed our time with Sammy thus far, we invited him to join us through the remained of Spain and into Morocco. Even though there had been a slight ‘salting of game’ whilst we partook in the infamous Catalan nightlife, Sam whimsically decided to joined us.

We headed to the historical beach town, Tarragona, to see Margherita, a friend of Casey’s from his exchange to Italy eight years earlier. Tarragona is primarily a student town and Margherita, who was there on the Erasmus study exchange program, was kind enough to accommodate us for the night and expose us to the energetic nightlife of an Erasmus student on exchange. This was but a brief visit to Tarragona as we were eager to arrive in Morocco. Finding it difficult to plan a direct route to a port town where we could board a ferry headed for Tangiers, we organised an overnight train to Granada through Valencia, where we had the pleasure of waiting until the early hours of the morning for our connecting train.

Arriving in Granada with no idea about the city, we walked around attempting to find accommodation, which, again, was quite an ordeal. Eventually, we found a nice pension run by a very friendly elderly non-English-speaking lady we fondly nicknamed ‘Nonna’. The room was barely big enough for one person, let alone three, and this was before Sammy decided to covert the room into a Chinese laundry. Granada was quite an old town, and we had arrived (unbeknown to us) on National Day. This explained the lack of accommodation and the continuous parades consisting of marching bands and officials garnished with lavish medals and medallions. Granada was the point where we started to notice influences from North Africa. The main area of Granada was full of exotic stalls selling spices, clothes and various other memorabilia. Again, we were only in Granada for a night as we were attempting to arrive in a port town the following day and make our way to Morocco. We awoke the following morning marginally later then anticipated, which raised the anxiety levels slightly. Whose fault this was is an ongoing argument… However, we were able to board a train to Algeciras where we boarded a late, and somewhat delayed, ferry headed to Tangiers, Morocco. After about three and a half months we fondly said goodbye to Europe and were excited for the next stage of our journey, North Africa and the Middle East.

Morocco – Tangiers, Fes, Marrakech & Casablanca – October 13^th – October 21^st

The ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar was a swift yet symbolic passage from one continent to the next. As we left the Tangiers port terminal we were asked if we wanted buses or taxis into the city. However, we had done some research earlier and determined that a reasonable hostel was within walking distance and refused all offers. We started walking down a highway parallel to the port for what seemed like an immense distance before we started to question our whereabouts. It turned out that we had arrived into the second port of Tangiers, approximately 50 kilometres from the actual city. We swallowed our pride and returned to the port to enquire about catching a bus to the amusement of a collection of drivers that had offered us lifts earlier. It was nearing midnight as we arrived in Tangiers so we decided to stay in a quite reasonably priced four-star spa resort hotel. This luxury was quite a change from the accommodation we were accustomed. We had not intended on spending much time in Tangiers as we’d heard it was predominately a port town where Moroccans head to indulge themselves in taboo or illegal activities, so we decided to head to Fes.

Boarding the train to Fes was an experience in itself. We boarded an already crowded train with our large bags, the only remaining space was located next to the rancid bathroom at the end of the carriage, and this was filling fast. As we gathered in this confined space, we realised that standing for six hours in the sweltering heat was going to present us with another ‘unique’ experience. Obviously realising that the train was at capacity, they decided to add some additional carriages, and we were luckily able to secure a compartment before it too become obscenely crowded. Fes turned out to be what we imagined an incredibly authentic Moroccan city would be like. We had booked a hostel within the medina, the old town enclosed within a medieval fortification.

Within the medina, buildings were all constructed using the same yellowish clay into simple rectangular structures arbitrarily mounted upon one another. The small streets and alleyways were almost impossible to navigate as they unpredictably wound around and through buildings with smaller capillary streets branching of into small squares or to other indistinguishable locations. It turned out the train had been so crowded because people were returning home for an Islamic holiday, which became evident by the heightened activity within the medina. We were witness to donkeys hauling peculiar products into the labyrinth of the medina, sheep being delivered to a multitude of butchers and continuously directed to illusive tanneries. Seeing a sheep being delivered on the back of a donkey is an unusual sight at the best of times. Fes was also an interesting location as Sam and I were unlucky enough to encounter bed bugs, our first and incredibly unpleasant encounter with these brutal parasites. Casey was smugly impressed he avoided these macroscopic terrors, yet a few days later, to Sam and my enjoyment, a few bites did appear.

After we’d visited Fes, we headed to Marrakech, much more of a tourist-centric city, which did partially subtract from the appeal; however, the city was still an amazing spectacle. The highlight of Marrakech is a large market place that has numerous performances, snake charmers, orange juice stalls and restaurants. At night, the market was flooded by lights and truly came to life as people bustled between all the interesting performances, most of which seemed to involve men dressed as women… I, unfortunately, was slightly unwell during our time in Marrakech and didn’t have the pleasure of visiting some ancient tombs and a castle, but Casey and Sam visited the sights and raved about the intricacies and the impressive atmosphere of the structures.

Preparing to leave Morocco, we headed to Casablanca where Casey and I were going to catch our flight to Jordan and Sam was going to fly to Paris. Casablanca seemed like a very plain city, so we were glad we had not afforded it too much of our limited time. We headed to the Casablanca airport, said our goodbyes to Sam who we’d greatly enjoyed travelling with for just over two weeks, and boarded our plan to Amman, Jordan. We did get to enjoy a stopover night in Cairo airport that resulted in us both passing out at a table just outside of our boarding gate while we waited for a flight to Tunisia to board. An interesting image: Two westerners sleeping quite ungracefully at a table as a large group of Tunisians board their flight, many of them impressively carrying their possessions on their head…

And that is the end of The Reunion Part I! It is difficult to believe that this all happened within the space of three weeks. I’ll leave you with a quote by Ernest Hemingway that has helped me keep things in perspective, “Never mistake motion for action”. As we continue to travel I reflect upon everything we have done and everything we hope to do both while travelling and beyond. The Reunion Part II is only a few days away, so keep your eyes open and as always, keep posted.