5,000 kilometers to travel to Morocco: in the Netherlands, this MRE journey is disappearing

Writer Abdelkader Benali has just made the journey again with his family. After traveling approximately 2,500 kilometers from Morocco, he arrived in Amsterdam at the end of a journey of nearly 5,000 kilometers 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 hardly get out of it until arriving in Morocco. Today, families make more stops, sleep in hotels, visit cities along the way, and carry fewer belongings.

A ritual that is now entering the museum

This change is at the heart of the “Onderweg naar (t)huis” exhibition, presented at Amsterdam’s Van Eesteren Museum until September 6. It tells the story of the preparations for departure, the road, changes in the landscape, the gifts being transported, and reunions with family in Morocco.

Among the objects on display is a jacket with numerous 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.