No longer homeless!

January 28th, 2009 · No Comments
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It’s all very well making the sudden decision to move to Marrakech for a while, but there is the small and immediate problem of finding a place to call a home. Le Caspien hotel was fabulous and the staff were my new ‘family’. They fed me tapas at the bar each evening, taught me random French phrases, and the breakfast chef even created a special heart-shaped omlette for me one morning. But it’s not the same as having your own place.

After tapping our Marrakech contacts for local information and knocking on the doors of several rental agencies, I launched into the weird and wonderful world of appartement meublé à louer. The word meublé was key; I needed somewhere with furniture. But it was also where the weird element came in. Moroccan furnishings can be tough on the European eye. You are often confronted with vast swathes of wild, clashing colours in flamboyant designs which, if you are not careful, could swiftly necessitate a lie-down in a darkened room to sooth your sudden migrane. Not an ideal environment for chilling out after a days work. Not for me, at least. Other apartments presented more obscure reasons for rejection; a cave of a bedroom, painted deep purple, with red light fittings (help!); a kitchen with nothing but a sink and a hob – which was, bizarrely, hidden behind the freezer; an entire apartment of cold, pale blue shiny walls; and one in an apartment block completely surrounded by building sites.

But then, just prior to the on-set of despair, I found it. It’s a simple 2-bed place in downtown Guéliz. There are no crazy colour schemes, the kitchen looks functional, there are no fussy, brass bathroom fittings, and there is even a fireplace. It’s sure to have some idiosyncrasies, but I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks when I move in. For now I’m in a temporary apartment and that’s just fine (it is also safely free from lurid colours!).