Navigating Tangier’s Labyrinth
Map
Tangier, Morocco
Not only was I outside, but I was also moving quickly in the sun, turning corners and following curves without thinking. Instinctively, I took a left at the Cafe Centrale, for decades one of the city’s prime people-watching spots, feeling closer to my goal. Maybe it lay up those jagged stairs, or past that unfamiliar mosque or through that arch where the hooded woman was filling a bucket of water from a pump, but it was close. I could tell because I didn’t recognize anything — it was all new.
At last, I reached the top of a final set of stairs, looked around and understood: I’d been here before. There was that same hole-in-the-wall grocery store selling disks of bread, and across from it the old men with wire-frame spectacles sitting on the bench, and beyond them the micro-neighborhood where every child kicking a soccer ball had smilingly mimed the motion of a key in a lock to let me know the area was fermé (closed), every street a dead end. I sighed, starting to sweat. I knew exactly where I was. And I’d failed, for the zillionth time in the last few days, to get lost.
To some of you, that may sound like a strange mission. But the simple fact is, I haven’t been lost since my first trip abroad, almost 30 years ago. It happened during a fireworks show at Tivoli, the grand amusement park in downtown Copenhagen. In the excitement I broke away from my father, and when the explosions died down and the crowd dispersed, I realized that I didn’t know where he was and, worse, I didn’t know where I was. And with my blond hair and blue eyes, I was indistinguishable from a typical Danish child. I blended in. I was lost.
Since then, I’ve developed a good sense of direction. I’m not unerring (just ask my wife), but I never lose track of how to get back to where I started. A sense of direction is something you can’t turn off. Every detail, from the angle of the sun to the direction of the wind, contributes to a mental map that your brain builds subconsciously. It’s like learning to read: Once you know how, you can’t not do it.
Which is why I’ve lately been wondering, how does it feel truly not to know where you are? Are the guidebooks, GPS devices and Internet forums pointing us in the wrong direction? In our efforts to figure out where we’re going, have we lost something more important?
Hence this new series, “Getting Lost,” in which every few months I will try to lose my way all over the globe, from developing-world megalopolises to European capitals, from American sprawl to Asian archipelagos. (For the moment, I’ll avoid deep wilderness and deserts; I want to survive.) It’s a challenge that requires special preparation — that is, nonpreparation. In the past, I’ve researched destinations to death, zooming deep into Google Maps and uncovering unusual restaurants in the darkest corners of the Web. Now I am avoiding maps. I am shying away from Chowhound and Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree forum; I will not ask my Facebook friends who they know in Moscow or Addis Ababa.
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I am, in short, trying to break free of the constraints of modern travel, of a culture in which every minute is rigorously planned, and we grade destinations based on how they live up to our expectations. I want to have no expectations. I plan to show up with neither hotel reservation nor guidebook; instead of devising my own itinerary, I will let the place itself guide me, and in doing so, I will, I hope, find myself caught up in moments I never could have imagined.
Hours in Charleston, S.C.
CHARLESTON still has its cannons aimed at Fort Sumter, where the Civil War began, and has elected the same mayor, Joseph Riley, since 1975. It even has some of the country’s most aggressive historic preservation. But that doesn’t mean this charming Southern city has nothing new to offer. There are new galleries on Broad Street, and a festoonery of restaurants, bars and boutique bakeries have transformed the once-struggling design district on upper King Street. Charlestonians, governed by laws of hospitality as incontrovertible as those of gravity, cannot help themselves from sharing their new finds, even if you are “from off,” as those who grew up on this once swampy peninsula refer to outsiders.
Charleston Travel Guide
Where to Stay
Where to Eat
What to Do
Go to the Charleston Travel Guide »
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