Daytrip: Lebanon
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Beirut,
Lebanon
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
The tiny country of Lebanon is the smallest soverign state that I have visited. It's no longer North to South than Edmonton to Innisfail, and only a bit wider than Calgary to Canmore. So everywhere in the country is an easy day trip (unless you count a visit to the Palastinian refugee camps: easy to reach but that's where easy ends).* So beyond day-tripping to Sidon and Tyre, I managed to squeeze in visits to Tripoli and Baalbek. That is, on days when I could rouse myself from bed and turn off the Olympics, live on Eurosport Satelite TV.
My arrival in Lebanon marked six weeks of travel since I left home. All of you who have travelled extensively know that six weeks of moving from one place to another every couple of days is exhausting. And yet, with my flight to Poland on the 29th of March and so much yet to see looming over my head, I don't want to waste any days doing nothing (as my body so desperately wants).
I may have changed my travelblog's title from whatever it was to "Putzing my way towards Cairo," acknowleding that I am moving a bit slowly at the moment, but I am still going somewhere and not putzing around in Beirut indefinately. That said, putzing is easy to do, with Satelite TV, a good book exchange (I took the time to read Tom Wolfe's _I Am Charlotte Simmons_) and a social life! Such a change from the meditative nights in Turkey (when I had lots of time to update my blog).
I was very lucky to have company in Tripoli. Bus rides can be pretty dull by one's self (sometimes I talk to locals, but you never know who's going to claim to be Mujahadeen!) I joined Arnika, Britta, and Chris to explore the inner depths of the Tripoli souq.
One of our first stops in the city was the great mosque. Both of the German women (you guess which of the three - Chris doesn't count as a guess) had to don goofy robes that looked very much like hospital gowns; of course for women to visit any mosque that is standard practice.
At this mosque, we met a 50 something Tripolian named Ali. He wore a purple and pink track jacket and offered to be our guide. He said that, after having fled for 20 years to Europe duing the civil war, he is so happy to return to the city of his birth. He loves it so much that he volunteers as a tour guide to show off Tripoli to the world. Well we wondered about the 'volunteers' part.
After a quick conference, partly in German, we decided that what the hell, why not have him guide us around. It was a good choice. He took us to see some stuff we would never have otherwise noticed: a few mosques, the interior of a woman's gown store that boasted a 900 year old ceiling, and a soap maker who uses traditional methods to fabricate soap - just like the ancient people of Tyre and Sidon. The soap maker did a little demo of how he shapes soap into spheres, and I had no idea how labour intensive it was. He wouldn't show us his manufacturing process (it's been a family secret for generations upon generations) but we did see bars of freshly made soap. To dry them, they are stacked in 5' high conical towers. You don't want to play Jenga with those.
Our tour finished at a local establishment. Ali ordered a number of appetizers for us before we tipped him and he left. Our meal was good, although a bizarre conversation ensued about what exactly should be done with the whole vegatables heaped on our table. These were some of Ali's appetizers, and we couldn't decide whether or not they were ornaments or meant to be eaten. We settled on the latter and my backpack played doggiebag, and no surprise they appeared on the bill. We saved the veggies for a BBQ back at our pension in Beirut.
Tripoli has one crusader castle, that of Ramond St. Gilles (the name shouldn't mean anything to you). This clever chap brought a company of 300 men to a mountain pass which gave Tripoli its prosperity: Once upon a time Tripoli was important because it was the port next to a road through the difficult-to-cross mountains of the Lebanon Range. Old Raymond stationed his company at this pass, and because it was so narrow, not even a football field wide today (even with a road going through it), he managed to defeat two armies and establish a base that became the castle. Arnika and I paid the admission and the other two waited outside - that was, until the castle gatekeeper took pity upon them and let them in for free!
Our Tripoli experience came to a close upon traversing a flea market on the street. It sold nearly everything under the sun, including household furniture and all sorts of junk (but not hot tubs). Koranic recitations played from loudspeakers at a music stand. We caught a bus back to Beirut. We got on last and had to sit on the folding seats in the aisle. I sat next to Mahmoud, who taught me to say the arabic numbers one through five.
The bus was stopped at one of the numerous police check points, and Britta began to tremble because she didn't have her passport with her (which could have meant T R O U B L E!) but the police did their check half-heartedly and didn't get as far back in the bus as she sat!
Back in Beirut a BBQ at the Pension Al Nazih was getting underway. A few wonderful people had been preparing all day, but by seven o'clock I was wondering if it would ever get started. I had forgotten that Beirutis tend to go for later dinners. By nine pm a lot of food was singed on a coal fired bbq, and all the guests at the pension were on the mini balcony on the roof. We feasted on humos, sipped on Arak, and dined on wings and filets until we could dine no more from stomach fatigue.
Of course the usual suspects were there. These "usual suspects" are not usual suspects in any sense, except in being the people whom I'd met in the last few days. See anyone even a few consecutive days while travelling and you think you are old friends! They were therefore the people around me whom I knew better than those who had just arrived.
A glass of Arak later, I knew everyone else pretty well, except one snooty person who writes for a well known magazine. I learned one interesting thing from this snooty person. Posted in Beirut to write an article, this snooty person's article must be submitted as a final draft to the editors of this magazine six weeks in advance to permit for fact-checking so the magazine doesn't get sued. Good thing I don't write for a magazine. Heaven forbid I cite any facts! This is all hear-say and off-the-record stuff!
I was going to go to Balbeek the next day, but something prevented me from getting out of bed in the morning. I had arranged to go with Alex from Helvetica, but at 10.30 the Arak and I hadn't settled our disgreements. I bid him adieu et bonne chance pis bonne chance. I made my own version of reading week, I guess.
The day afterwards I managed to get there and the trip annoyed the heck out of me! Every traveller has this experience at some point in his or her travels. The city that I was in could do no right and nothing to endear itself to me. But I will not get into that, it was my problem.
The ruins of Balbeek are spectacular and massive, in the geological sense of the word too. I was alone at the site. Columns, columns, I think I have seen them all by now, but the worlds six biggest columns are at Balbeek. I also saw a temple bigger than the Parthenon in Athens, and in better shape too (when I saw that, it had been pulled to pieces for repair, the temple was shrouded in a scaffold, and the columns were lying in neat blocks nearby!).
But the haze of resentment of three consequential rip offs (not much money but really frustrating) really hindered my enjoyment of the site. One for the bus ride. Again for some chips because there was no street food that I could find. Again the dual pricing at the site admission really made me seethe. And how pathetic am I, unable to enjoy the best of Lebanon's ruins because I was ticked off about a few dollars. So, it was time to go back to Syria where instead of getting ticked off about dollars, I could get ticked off about pennies...
Let me just add that Lebanon was great for a lot of little things that make lousy anecdotes: the hotelier Hassan who insisted that Eminem was British. Stewart's "strudel" joke every time he heard German, and his French accent every time he heard French, even though he is fluent! All of the locals on the bus who said hello to me and pointed me in the right direction. Molly's pub, which played exclusively queer music but had a straight clientele. The dozens of kids who say hello to strangers. Ali's hilarious english expressions that were a bit off colour, if only because English is not his first language. My short visit with Jon. Arnika's stories of travelling elsewhere. Getting ripped off in Solidere and then shrugging, because Syria has put me so far ahead of budget! The story of Chris and the minibus driver who demanded more payment than he agreed upon. That night at Torino's. All of the Pension guests whom I talked to. Eurosport TV.
* The photographers in my pension showed me some photos they took of a camp they visited when I was off elsewhere. Each picture tells a thousand words, but the sum of all those is just "squalor."
