"Casa - perle blanche du Maroc " a Casablanca Travel Page by CliffClaven

Okay, it is perhaps an exaggeration to call Casablanca - an industrial metropolis with a population of nearly four million - the white pearl of Morocco. But it is a city that has a hold on the western imagination. There is the dark, Bogart-inspired Casablanca, with Rick leaning on the piano in the smoke-filled cafe. And there is a lingering idea of white-walled houses glinting under the North African sun between an arid desert and a steel-blue ocean. Nice image, except that the desert offers no rolling dunes but uninspiring scrubland with a few mangy goats, and the ocean tends to be dirty and grey with several container ships moored offshore.

Old Cliffie was sitting in a pub - where else? - in Glasgow when a classified ad in the paper caught his eye: 'English teacher wanted in Casablanca - phone this number'. Five minutes later he had another pint and a job in Africa. A week later, as he was leaving Glasgow in his little red car - the big red cars came later in life - he stopped for a hitchhiker.

Hitchhiker: See you, pal, where're you heading?
Old Cliffie: Well, actually, I'm going to Casablanca.
Hitchhiker (after thoughtful pause): Is that anywhere near Manchester?

Old Cliffie let out his geographically-challenged passenger near Manchester and four days later rolled off the ferry into a dense African fog, caused by the meeting of the cold Atlantic and the warmer Mediterranean in the Strait of Gibraltar. The little red car rolled southwards for another few hours and finally reached Casablanca during the Friday evening rush hour.

Of all the cars in all the world.....