From the beer thirst

05.03.23 Meski - Midelt Do you know beer thirst? That is by far the worst form of thirst. It's not just that dry feeling in the mouth that extends down to the stomach and makes swallowing difficult, but also the thinking. Even worse are the accompanying delusions of freshly poured glasses with this delightful brownish sparkling barley juice and a soft, delicate foam crown on top. These fantasies are almost worse than the thirst ...

When beer thirst catches you, there is no escape. I know that. When I was young, I used to drive for miles, cycle or, worst of all, march for a bottle or can of cool beer in such cases. You must not misunderstand this now, we are not talking about addictions, dependencies or similar terrible things. This is about thirst. Beer thirst, to be precise. I can talk about it in a relaxed manner, because the beer thirst and I, our time together is long gone. If I just smell a beer, I get terrible headaches. There's a reason for that. My father explained it to me. When I asked him for advice in my desperation back then, he said: "Listen, my son. Every man can drink a certain amount of beer in his life. You have to imagine it like a barrel into which you pour beer after beer. At some point, it's full. Nothing more fits in. It overflows and that can be terribly painful. I'm afraid, my son, your barrel is full."

That made sense to me. Since then, I haven't been drinking beer anymore. Well, the barrels of the men and women I travel through Morocco with here are not yet full. I'm afraid they are far from full. They have certainly already consumed a lot of beer in their lives, but maybe their barrels are bigger. In any case, all of them have been hit by a tremendous beer thirst these days. This is surely due to the fact that in the past 45 days they have used up their huge supply. It was certainly the largest supply the Sahara has ever seen, but eventually it runs out - yesterday it happened. Now good advice was needed ...

Our guides are responsible for good advice. Hassan knows one of those rare shops in Errachidia that is allowed to sell beer, wine and even spirits of all kinds in Morocco - where alcohol is strictly prohibited. Well, this Errachidia was conveniently located on our way to Midelt, where we want to stay overnight today. Good old Hassan drew a map for Ricci especially, so that we could find the shop immediately, but either the description was in Arabic, or Ricci and Irmi were holding the sketch upside down, whatever the case, this El Dorado, where wine and beer flow, was just not to be found.

Disappointed - everyone except me! - we stopped at a large supermarket and replenished our food supplies, because we didn't know how long our search would take, filled up with a few liters of diesel fuel out of a mixture of anger and despair, just to have the feeling that there would be something useful to find here in this area.

By then, we had already been on the road in Errachidia for a good hour and a half and covered 25 kilometers. Errachidia is a whopping 100,000 population, mind you. And we had explored streets and neighborhoods that respectable citizens of this city only know by hearsay. In the parking lot in front of the supermarket, a remarkable decision was made in a very spontaneously convened emergency meeting - I was sitting in my motorhome and followed it in a relaxed manner with a cup of tea: Volker took over the lead of our convoy. I assume that there were practical reasons for this. Since everyone knows that Volker suffers most from beer thirst, there was hope that he might have instinctively picked up the scent of the El Dorado. And indeed: It didn't take more than 15 minutes and we were standing in front of the ominous shop. In these 900 seconds, our ten motorhomes surely broke 100 traffic rules together. We stood in intersections and roundabouts, parked incorrectly, ignored no-parking zones, blocked exits, and crossed one-way streets in all directions - we did things that you only do in beer thirst.

But the most important thing: In the end, we found our El Dorado. Many were relieved, some happy, others satisfied. I was just glad, because I can remember very well what a horde of thirsty beer drinkers is capable of without beer. My barrel is still not full ...