Travelling And Smoking

Some things just don’t go together: George Bush and intelligence tests. Dieter Bohlen and groove. Heroes in tights. Sea and calm. Others are absolute dream teams: chips and ketchup, white wine and water, Ray Liotta and broken mafia characters or travelling and smoking.

I always smoke a lot when travelling. Maintaining an age-old tradition. Back then, on the Eurasian steppe: a biped smells smoke. Even back then, smoke meant: “Go travelling or your balls will burn!” So quickly reduce the take-off weight and set off for new destinations. I’m standing on the observation deck of Nuremberg Airport. The smoke trails behind the jets.

For years I’ve only travelled with friends. That’s fine, but it’s not really travelling. You always have someone to chat to and a bit of home on hand. If things go really badly, there’s also someone who restricts your freedom to travel so drastically that a trip to the bar seems like two months of Easy Rider. You don’t have to get to know anyone and can spend most of the journey with your eyes closed – preferably in the passenger seat.

Travelling alone is different. There’s no one there except the road. This is sometimes quite unclear, especially if you don’t speak the local language – or in France, even if you do. It’s 180 kilometres from Agadir to Essaouira. There are buses, and even homepages. The biggest ones show nothing but MySQL error messages. Looks like I’m travelling, because I have no idea how to get to Essaouira.

The taxi to the Inezgane bus station leaves a big hole in the till. The bus for the remaining 180 kilometres to Essaouira is practically nothing. I find it straight away at the three-lane bus station, which is stacked several hectares high with hundreds of blue petrol taxis. Inside, a CIA agent dressed as a Blues Brother beats up a Muslim in a Moroccan blood opera. This really fires up the bus driver to an estimated top speed of 140 km/h. At some point, I see a hole in the wall of the switchbacks. 30 metres below is a truck. Only one car overtakes us on the whole journey.

Stopover. TurboTagine. Air Berlin only serves one bagel on medium-haul flights, and that was eight hours ago. Arrival in Essaouira around 10pm. My map section goes exactly from the lower bus station to the hostel. But my bus stops at the upper one. All the streets are clearly signposted. Exclusively in Arabic. After what seems like an eternity, and two soaking T-shirts, I find the hostel in the centre of the medina. The gate to a 400-year-old pirate cave opens and I realise immediately: I’ve come to the right place again…