Hard at work in Marrakesh

Posted Monday, April 02, 2007, 11:43 PM by Lonely Planet

Baxter Jackson reports in on his experiences as an author...

On my first day in Marrakesh, over mint tea and tajine (a Morrocan stew of sorts) Paul and Alex - with characteristic 'colour, flare, attitude, and authority' - dished out the inside scoop on being a Lonely Planet author.



The romantic notion that most of us have of this profession (even Mick Jagger named it as an alternative career in a recent interview) came face-to-face with deadlines, long hours, and personal relationship reality.

Friends? What friends? Email, messenger, and Skype mean most relationships are virtual. If you're actually working, you're on the road anywhere from 40-60% of the time, so there's a reason they call it Lonely Planet.

Easy Jet and other budget airlines have lowered prices so much that they have helped transform Morocco into Europe's Tijuana. Casinos, Ibiza style nightclubs, legit pornography, and even a thriving gay scene make the pink city decidedly libertine by Islamic standards. Still, the wide-eyed and scantily-clad Easy Jet set scuttle through the clogged arteries of the old medina leery of their first encounter with the dark continent.

Much to their delight and that of the locals, at the heart of the ancient city is a mish mash of classic orientalism called Djemaa el-Fna, Arabic for assembly of death. The square, which isn't square at all, pulsates with its lifeblood of snake charmers, acrobats, soothsayers, match stick men, and street musicians. That so much life could spring from a place of so much death (executions were common in medieval times) is testimony to the city's ability to re-create itself and continue to be a major draw even in a post 9/11 world.

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