Morocco

Harry’s Morocco is a single day in Casablanca on a long layover, with a specific job: buy cold-weather kit for a trip he won’t name yet.

Obs: this source has auto-generated subtitles, so several prices are spoken without a stated currency and names are rendered inconsistently. Amounts carry the unverified marker where the unit isn’t clear.

Observations

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• Moroccans are the best hagglers he has run into. He says it outright, in the middle of losing: they are very good at this, and he has been out of the game too long. He walks away from a football shirt and gets ten off a two-hundred asking price.
• The walk-away works, and he confirms it does — but not as well here as elsewhere.
• French is spoken as widely as Arabic in Casablanca, which he notices when a shoe cleaner answers him better in French. Sellers he meets switch between Arabic, French, English and Spanish.
• Prices are higher than South Asia, which he says is expected, and still reasonable.
• Sellers are persistent but not aggressive. His summary of the medina is that people are kind, not too pushy, and simply want you inside their shop.
• Football is enormous — possibly bigger than in the UK, which he says is a hard bar to clear. Raja Casablanca is the local club, and every conversation goes through a team.
• The hammam is claimed here as Moroccan in origin, which is what he is told on the day.
• Arab, Berber and French influences run through the architecture — French colonial buildings and mosaics on the same streets as the old medina.
• Warnings he was given didn’t match what he found. His hotel receptionist told him to hide his phone while walking; he says it doesn’t feel like that kind of place at all, while noting that this is exactly what people say before being robbed.

Places

• Casablanca