5,000 kilometres to get to Morocco: in the Netherlands, this journey by MREs is disappearing

Writer Abdelkader Benali has just travelled the route again with his family. After approximately 2,500 kilometres from Morocco, he arrived in Amsterdam at the end of a journey of nearly 5,000 kilometres round trip, reports AT5.

His ten-year-old daughter quickly showed how much habits have changed. The family had not even gone past Breda on the way there when she complained of nausea and was already asking to take the plane.

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In the past, Benali explains, the principle was simple: get into the car in the Netherlands and practically not get out again until arriving in Morocco. Today, families make more stops, sleep in hotels, visit cities along the way and transport fewer belongings.

A ritual that is now entering the museum

This evolution is at the heart of the exhibition “Onderweg naar (t)huis”, presented at Amsterdam’s Van Eesteren Museum until 6 September. It recounts the preparations for departure, the journey, changing landscapes, the gifts transported and reunions with family in Morocco.

Among the objects on display is a jacket with many pockets that Benali once found embarrassing. It made it possible to keep Belgian, Luxembourgish, French, Spanish and Moroccan currencies, as well as ferry tickets and the various papers needed during the journey.

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This need to transport so many things has also diminished. Families can now send belongings by coach, while air travel occupies a much more important place than it did forty years ago.

The road to Morocco still exists, but it is no longer experienced in the same way: more stops, less luggage and children for whom several days in a car are no longer necessarily a given.