Melantrys’ Page

Monday, May 28th

Thanks to the fabulous genes my father unkindly passed along to me, I was starving for most of the day.
Well, I should be thankful that I merely inherited a general tendency to travel nervousness and not the exact same thing he has.
That way I hadn’t really been able to eat anything, as my stomach kept tying itself in knots. He can eat all right, but he soon goes and vomits it out again.
Better half unfed and hungry than bulimic and hungry…

The lady at the baggage check-in thought that it was rather unusual to
a) travel all alone and
b) to Syria.
Not a usual choice for a holiday. Hm. Maybe I should have given her my travel guide book. Loads of tourist things to do listed in there.
And anyway, there was a Caesar to meet.

The new safety regulations were still bearable. Only two people asking after liquids (or cosmetics) in your on-board luggage.

The guy at the x-ray thingy admonished me to next time only bring one jacket (one was my hoodie/zipped sweatshirt…) but thankfully that was only a joke. When he started to struggle with the clasp of one of the outer pockets of my knapsack I told him that those weren’t working too well. He complained that I surely had caused that on purpose, just to annoy him. I agreed and said I had ’specially smashed them with a hammer.

While we were boarding Türk Hava Yolları flight number 1528 and settling down in our seats some mildly annoying folk music was being played over the speakers.
In self-defense (most of the senses not involved with reading shut down when I’m absorbed in a book) I started reading “Fragile Things” by Neil Gaiman which I had bought at the airport.
My stomach seemed to be unknotting itself somewhat, so I was starting to look forward to the on-board meal.

Take-off was about 20 minutes late.

The food was………. adequate. A mixed salad of (German aka curley leaf) parsley, some red leaves, rucola, spinach (?), and something dreadful. Couldn’t bring myself to finish it.
The main dish consisted of rice with corn and some dreadful spice, rubbery carrots, spinach and red and yellow peppers.
As an aside I had a small wholemeal…… bun (Brötchen!), Becel diet margerine (no, thanks) and the brand of breadspread that I usually buy myself, only I’d have never picked the “Olivera” flavour of my own free will.
Dessert was a peeled, sliced orange. Ever tried eating that with a fork? You should try it; it’s fun.
Oh, and I had a coke.
My stomach had quit its games for the moment, but still I could hardly eat up, so the meal was adequate indeed.

Remember my romantic babbling about what Amman looked like from above? Well, it seems that every bigger city looks breathtakingly beautiful if seen from above by night. İstanbul as well looked as if someone had scattered a big handful of jewels. Only in this case not across some hills but over a flattish surface.

Sometimes I think airport personel exist to make people’s lives miserable - at least the ones responsible for flight plans (or for filing lost luggage reports…). At Atatürk International Airport in İstanbul they had changed the gate for my flight to Damascus. Oh, well.
After having located the gate I asked my way to an eatery that accepted foreign currency. Service has its price, it seems, so I paid a staggering 3.64 Euros (around 4.85 US Dollars at that time) for a generously sized plastic cup of coke. I was a bit thirsty, and I needed something to wash my aspirins down with, as I was having a splitting headache.
To make the day (or rather evening) brighter I was suspecting that I was starting to smell like a skunk. Changing from a chilly plane to a warm one (during the landing) and an even warmer airport without the opportunity to throw off some clothes before finally staggering into the toilet is not my thing - nor is washing at a sink in a public toilet without any deodorant around anyway. That was a long and totally dreadful (content-wise) sentence.

Well, it can’t have been so bad, actually.
Back at the gate a boy sat down on my left with his little sister on his lap. After absent-mindedly kicking me a few times (she was fidgeting around on her brother’s lap) the little girl started telling me stuff. In Arabic. And didn’t find it the least odd that I was babbling back incomprehensible gibberish (English).
She pointed at my festival bands, pulled at my left sleeve, fingered my tattoo…. all the while talking with me.
Her brother spoke a bit of English and told me that his sister didn’t understand English (no, really?).
I also learned that they’re Iraqi.
After a while they got up and went over to the rest of the family again, the boy telling them excitedly about his chat with the foreign tourist. He kindly started his account in English, so I could follow some of it.

Food on board the second Türk Hava Yolları flight was…… hm.
It was a slice of something truly dreadful on a salad leaf. I didn’t even taste it, as the taste it had transferred onto the pepper slices was more than enough to nip any curiosity in the bud. There was also a slice of tomato and a few slices of grilled eggplant.
Dessert was melon and orange.

Furthermore every passenger got a card with about the same formalities I had to fill out on my visa application form already.

Later at customs (much, much later; long, slow queues), that card was to be handed over to a guy who stamped it with hardly a glance and gave it back to me while handing my passport to the other guy at the pc. That other guy entered some stuff (probably along the lines of “Ugh, what a scary mug shot; this woman surely is a terrorist and needs watching”), then he handed it back to the first guy to stamp.
Even so the guy standing right beside the booth needed to look at my stamped visa before indicating that I could move on and wishing me a pleasant stay.
A guy a bit further on inquired if I was from Turkey. I told him I had come in via Turkey but was from Germany. He also wished me a pleasant stay.

Thanks to the slow procedures my luggage had long arrived, hooray!

For a while now Caesar had been making fun of my preferring written chats over voice chats and joked that we’d need pen and paper to converse on this holiday of mine.
So…. I unpacked the three notes I had prepared for him…

Hi!

It’s so good to finally meet and talk in person!

:p

… grabbed my belongings and trundled to the exit.
I tried shoving the notes into Caesar’s face but he was too distracted by my arrival to actually read them there and then.
He did ask to see them again in the taxi though and was sufficiently amused.

We got off at the square in front of Bab Touma (the gate, not the part of the Old City - although both pretty much amounts to the same). Caesar let Amer, the guy renting me my lodgings, know we had arrived, and he came to pick us up a while later. He tried to wrestle my luggage from Caesar, but Caesar hung on to it.
Men.
Arab men.
*rolls eyes*
I think that he regretted the hanging on rather soon while we were following Amer through the maze to the house.
It was the middle of the night, I was tired, and it felt like we endlessly hurried through small streets, taking random, confusing turns. Soon I’d have been unable to find my way back to the square.
All the while Amer was making small talk with the both of us and pointing out points of interest like his own house (and I can’t shake the feeling he made a detour just to be able to pass it…) - as if I at that point had any clue of where I was….
Finally we arrived at a white metal door, which he unlocked. He ushered us in, showed us the rooms and the roof, handed over the key and left. Caesar organized something to drink for me, then left as well.

Tesbah ala khair.

.

Tuesday, May 29th

My lodgings were in the Old City, the original Damascus, so to speak.
That part of town could be out of some old movie, you know, the kind in which the hero is being chased through some quaint Arabian city and finally loses his pursuers in the maze of small streets. Totally cliché.
A few of the streets are even too small for a car to pass through.

The house… sure has seen better days. When you entered the building there was an open (knocked out?) doorway immidiately to the right which led into some kind of store/junk room. It also smelled a bit musky.
A couple of metal steps led up to the first floor of the building which contained the bathroom and the bedroom. The bathroom could have been a bit nicer.

stairs up to first floor (complete with Alien blood stains)

water heater & wiring

And, no, I did not electrocute myself while using the water heater and the shower…

A steep open metal staircase (Did I mention that I was afraid of heights?) led to the second floor containing the kitchen and air-conditioned living-room.

stairs up to second floor

stairs seen from above

Please note the sink on the wall for later reference.

kitchen sink & stove

stove, fridge & washing machine

the living-room

The cable you can see in the background belongs to the air conditioning by the way.

tv and stuff

The bottle in this picture is a mysterious water bottle which had been left behind by some former resident of the house…

Even steeper than the stairs was this metal ladder that led up to the roof and that you could only use if you closed the toddler safety gate at the top of the stairs, as that gate would otherwise peek out between two of the rungs and trip you up.

ladder and open toddler gate

The aliens are coming to get me, aargh!!!!!

the… er… sofa

The roof was searing hot and for some reason the light there also seemed brighter than in the street. It was the ideal place to dry your washing. I always left it for about two hours, but I think it could have been dry even earlier.
The sofa…. might have been a cool idea at some point, but today it’s certainly not a good place to sit down in. Not that this obvious fact kept Caesar from sitting down anyway - in a rising cloud of dust….

I wasn’t living alone in my lodgings though. Maybe it had to do with Caesar’s persistently referring to the place as a mini-house, I don’t know. Fact is, I was sharing it with a small colony of mini-ants, most of which were dwelling in the kitchen. Yes, mini-ants. They were totally pale and spindly.
I already killed a few of them in the first night. And a mosquito.

My first night/morning was rather dreadful. I tend to sleep through basically anything, but a combination of tiring journey and new surroundings seemed to be keeping my sleep light. There was a constant rush of people and cars outside which woke me up way too often during the course of the morning. Evil people. They should have been flogged.

While I was jotting down notes on the above, someone outside seemed to be giving a guided tour in French.

Around noon Caesar arrived at the house. He had felt compelled to do a little shopping for his honoured guest, the crazy cute little man and trundled in laden with oil, veggies and soap.
We headed out of the maze going past the Omayyad Mosque. I wish people would make up their mind about how to spell that period in English. (The most official Jordanian web pages spell it Umayyad.) Crazy Arabs.

Anyway, on the other side of the square in front of the main entrance of the mosque stands a lonesome Roman arch - all that has been left of the Temple of Jupiter. This arch now makes an impressive entrance to the Suq Al Hamadiyya.

Roman arch at the Suq Al Hamadiyya

After having taken the above picture (and one of Caesar ) we went over there and entered what at first glance strikes one as a rather small bazar (or more correctly suq), a huge roofed passage lined with shops running from this arch at the one end to the Citadel at the other. But the suq is not restricted to that passage; every once in a while streets branch off on both sides that then either peter out and turn into regular city streets (mostly the case on the left hand side if you’re walking from the mosque to the Citadel) or intertwine with each other in a small labyrinth (on the right hand side).
You can buy just about anything from icecream over shoes to head scarves.
And ugly socks.
It seems that everywhere several vendors are gathered in one place, there’s always one or two waving ugly socks at you. I came to the conclusion that this must be some kind of suq rule.

After having traipsed around a bit we went to a Commercial Bank of Syria branch to exchange the US Dollars I had brought because some hotels only take Dollars. Amer was ok with either 400$ or 20,000SP (Syrian Pounds), so I figured I might as well go and get the Pounds myself and make a small win. According to their receipt I should have gotten 20,180SP. The cashier gave me 20,000. When Caesar went back to complain he got another 150.
Cheating Commercial Bank of Syria bastard.
Apart from this annoyance it was baking hot inside the bank. I must have lost 5kg in sweat while counting and recounting my money.
But they had some nice potted plants on their stairs (sorry, no pics).

For lunch I had some “special” vegan hommus at a fast food joint, which looked frighteningly creamy but didn’t contain any milk products.
I am still seriously pouting at Caesar and the waiter for finding it amusing that I was being afraid of the food. Buh, evil Arabs.

On the road in front of the Parliament building a group of people were chanting “Bil rooh, bil dem, nifdeek ya Bashar” (Our blood, our souls, we sacrifice for you, oh, Bashar), the same thing Caesar said people used to chant for Saddam, only here for Bashar of course.
Unfortunately they were done doing that (sounded impressive) by the time I had my cam out. But I filmed a bit of song and dance (from afar). Enjoy.

Amazing how all those people spontaneously got together to celebrate Bashar’s re-election…

On our way back to the flat someone shouted after us from a café. It was Amer, who invited us to tea and coffee. He was sitting there with an Australian woman whom we briefly chatted with before she took off again. I guess much to Caesar’s annoyance Amer used the opportunity to show off a bit with his German skills, but we soon switched back to English.
Afterwards he took us over to his shop, where I gave him the money for the rent. Just because I am German, and because he knows it’s done there that way, he thought I should get a receipt. Which he expected me to write. Ok, hehe.

We continued on to the flat. In one of the small streets a girl asked my name, and I gave my usual “My name is (Melantrys), and what is yours?” response. She gave her name, then demanded to know Caesar’s. I was about to tell her, starting with calling it a boring name compared to mine, when the lying bugger unashamedly told her that his name was Francesco. Tch.

Amer had told us to expect a cleaning lady.
What we actually got was a plumber who put the mat/towel from in front of the bathroom (flakes, the same all around the world…) into the sink on the corridor wall opposite the bathroom. (Remember the sink from the photo earlier?) Then he - basically - tore the tap (that hadn’t been yielding any water) out of the wall, helping along this slow and laborious process by hammering out chunks of plaster. Hence the towel, so the sink wouldn’t get blocked. When he was done he threw the liberated tap into the sink as well.
Then some kind of problem seemed to arise and he and his helper/apprentice/winner of the Against All Common Sense Award left - but not before the young man had given in to the urge to lift the towel, shake the old tap and plaster into the sink and throw the towel on top of the mess. The burning question that he left me and Caesar with was: WHY?????

A while later another guy with a big wrench arrived who fixed the tap in no time.
He was accompanied by an associate of Amer who seemed to be the announced cleaning “lady”. The guy made a token effort of tidying up a bit in the kitchen which - thankfully - included heaping the mysterious bowls of food that had been in the fridge onto a tray and handing that tray to a boy who had come in bringing a bag of cement.
After stashing the cement bag under the kitchen sink the cleaning “lady” left with the promise to come back to fix the satellite problem (the tv kept saying that it was getting no signal, and everything was plugged in and turned on).

We waited and waited, and no sign of the cleaning lady/satellite repair man.
More as a joke than for real I suggested arm wrestling to keep us entertained. Caesar agreed though.
After a loss he blamed it on the moving table cloth, removed it and got himself one draw and another loss.
The poor man.
The poor Arab man.
*laughs a bit in a good-natured way*

At 6 pm we decided we had waited for long enough and headed out again.
I still didn’t want to buy ugly socks, thank you.
We saw yet more festivities to celebrate my arrival at Damascus (idea © Caesar), er, the outcome of the elections.

fountain & Bashar

Bashar on yet another building

After the fireworks that ended the party, or rather during the fireworks and trying to escape the noise, we went off in search of a falafel place. It was a longish search but in the end we were directed to one eatery where I got a falafel sandwich with heart-shaped falafels.
Damascus wasn’t just happy I was there, it was also in love with me. Wow.

We walked for a bit until Caesar admitted that he was tired and worn out and wanted home. (The poor man had been working all of yesterday after all, then picked me up at the airport in the middle of the night.) So home we went.
Caesar checked for monsters under the bed and stayed a bit, read my travel diary, had his picture taken and whatnot.

Caesar reading my diary

After he had left I headed into my bedroom where I eventually discovered that the ant colony consisted of quite a large number of the spindly ones and a few normal sized ones with a big head (like the one I took a picture of in Amman, together with the Red-Arsed Fly) and not just a few.
Their trail erupted from one of my jacket’s button holes, went across the jacket, a piece of the sofa, my jeans leg and down the sofa and in the direction of the door. Furthermore everything I lifted off the sofa (my travelling bag, the jacket, the jeans, the bag with the electronics…) had ants crawling underneath it.
I’m not much of an ants expert but these at least seemed to be mainly night active.
Yes, I squashed a lot of them, but far from all.

The new tap had ceased working by the way…

I undressed and crawled into bed. It wasn’t all that late (I think?) but still I found myself unable to continue the diary.
So instead I sent Caesar an SMS about the ants (which he apparently never got) and SMSs to my friends C. and A. Sadly I dozed off while writing the last one, so I merely managed to send it at some point, while totally forgetting about the smiley I had wanted to include and my name. Fortunately A. is a clever girl and SMSed me on my German number the next day, asking where I was roaming around again.
Unfortunately I was out of credits, so an answer had to wait.
Whoops, I’m running ahead of the narrative…
After I had managed to send off the half completed SMS, switch off the lights and crawl back into bed, someone called me to tell me he had arrived home safely. Which puzzled half asleep me quite a bit as it felt like he had left a very long time ago. Yet I managed to mumble something about ants and poison before hanging up and falling asleep for good.

This weekend my sis and me went to see 28 Weeks Later (more interesting but rather graphic official trailer from FOX; contains zombie-like creatures and blood) at the Cinemaxx in Bielefeld.

There is a school of thought that insists that Bielefeld doesn’t exist, but so far I didn’t care much about that cos we either had gone to the cinema in Bielefeld anyway, or we had been hallucinating a lot of good movies in some non-existent place.

Getting there was already a bit confusing though this time. There was a bypass halfway between Gütersloh and Bielefeld. “What’s so confusing about that?” I hear you ask. Ah. The bypass was announced on some sign a bit before it actually happened, depicting the road ahead as blocked and showing a bypass to the right of it.
Mildly confused we drove past a bypass sign pointing away to the left at the next crossroads. When the road ended we were forced to take the bypass for trucks which also turned off to the left. Er?
Close to Bielefeld the bypass was done with/ended, which they announced by a crossed out bypass sign. Only… for persons not constantly driving to Bielefeld from all four corners of the earth it might have been helpful if the sign had also mentioned that this meant we were on the road again that was blocked due to repairs…. but heading back to Gütersloh again! Fortunately my sis recognized the huge building opposite the petrol station, so we were able to take the correct turn after a detour across that station without confusedly driving back to Gütersloh again or something (you can use the road in that direction, just not in the other one).

So, ok. After the movie it was kinda late and we wanted to drive back home. (Keep in mind that we were still in the middle of the city and nowhere near the bypass outside of the city limits.)
Left the park deck, went through the roundabout, made the right turn……. drove past the next right turn leading onto the highway sort of road leading out of Bielefeld, as it was crossed out on the sign. Road closed, bugger.
We kept on going on the basis that a big road should have signs later on that’d help us find another way out. Not really…. the road was leading to Herford, which was definitely the wrong direction.
Sooooooo I turned the car around. The road to the highway thingy was closed coming from that direction as well. We kept going until a sign told us that that road was also leading to Herford. Er?
At some huge crossroads my sis urged me to take a right turn, as she thought she recognized one of the buildings there and might have a hazy idea of where we were.
And soon enough we were able to follow signs leading to “all directions”.
Next up came a turnoff onto the highway thingy… which was crossed out.
A car with a Gütersloh plate followed it anyway, so I followed him on the basis that if the road was really unpassable he should hopefully know how to get back home, and we could follow him.
Only…. it wasn’t closed.

Drunk with relief we hit the highway thingy, with an old song by the Eagles playing itself in our minds…

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
‘Relax,’ said the night man,
‘We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!’

But we made it, we made it!

*sniff, sniff*

“Damn, why is this flower so much smaller than the others…?”

bzzzzzzzzzz

“Another of those weird small ones…”

.

Aren’t bumblebees cute…?

Monday, August 28th

Well, Monday had been reached even before I boarded the plane, so I will continue the story here.

After an uncomfortable flight (the young man I was sitting beside seemed to grow sideways when being asleep, which he unfortunately was for most of the flight) I easily managed to change planes at Schiphol Airport. The lady at the travel agency had been right - 50 minutes was actually more than enough time to make the transfer.

As on the way from Düsseldorf to Amsterdam, we had a Fokker 50 for the flight back from Amsterdam to Düsseldorf.

Fokker 50

A short time before take-off there was a strong smell of jet fuel, and when the flight attendant came by the couple across the aisle asked her about it, but she said that was due to our being above the engine, absolutely normal, no worries, and that it would disappear in a minute. Which it did. Neither did we catch fire or anything.
They handed out the same non-vegan cookies as on the first flight. Well, this way daddy got a culinary souvenir as well, and not just aNarki.

At Düsseldorf airport I waited at the luggage conveyor belt until a young man approached me and informed me that there was no more luggage from my flight and told me where to report the loss.

There, the man at the counter either wanted to make sure that no-one could ever accuse him of making promises he didn’t keep, or he simply was an asshole. He vaguely alluded to the possibility of my luggage appearing again, for which remote eventuality I should fill out this form here and describe my lost piece of luggage. At the same time someone from the same flights was reporting his luggage as lost one clerk down the counter, but “my” clerk stolidly refused to consider and offer a helpful comment on the possibility that this meant that our luggage had merely stayed behind at Schiphol due to lack of time and that it might be on the next flight. The way he kept talking I should have considered my luggage gone for good.
“What are you still doing here, staring at me with that shell-shocked look, woman? Begone from this place!!!”
He didn’t actually say that, but it was obviously on his mind…

I dejectedly slunk off and phoned up Frenzie (and woke him; I am so sorry), in the hopes that he might be able to get more solid information from Schiphol Airport, but they were being as “helpful” as the clerk at Düsseldorf. Maybe airport personel gets a special training?
Well, at least this meant that I didn’t have to lug around a lot of weight on my train trip back home.

Fortunately the problem had indeed been the too short transfer time. Or maybe my luggage wanted to see more of Amsterdam. It must have had some adventures for sure because when the delayed luggage delivery man brought it around 11pm it was partially soaked. I was sure glad that I had wrapped all of my books into plastic bags (to protect them from being rubbed against the rest of the contents of my bag with the “open” sides and suffering damage that way by rough treatment of my luggage - who considers them throwing the luggage into puddles….?)
Ah, whatever. I had my luggage, and after around 40 hours of being awake I blissfully fell into bed.

.

Concluding remarks:

Just a few things that were not really bound by any time frame, but which I noticed and want to share with my attentive readers…

At that time a certain shoe form was the height of fashion in Iraq, so there were quite a lot of people wearing those shoes in Jordan as well, including - I am sad to say - the Kid. The shoes were longer than the foot, narrowing down in the tip and curving slightly upwards.
The thing I just couldn’t get into my head (quite apart from the fact that those shoes were ugly as hell) was this: In a country where the worst possible insult/suspicion is that a person is a homosexual…. How can totally gay shoes become the height of men’s fashion????? Poor, confused Iraqis….

Talking of confused people and footwear (Do I see you smirking at me mentioning that the Kid was wearing those dreadful shoes as well, aNarki?) there is a certain type of German male - mostly above the age of 50 I’d say, but also those younger ones that are past 50 in their mannerisms - who will always wear their sandals with socks. Preferably those fugly men’s socks with this sort of plaid pattern. Maybe they even wear socks in bed; I don’t know.
I mean, if it’s too cold yet for sandals, wear real shoes; and if it’s 30+°, for god’s sake, give your poor feet some air and leave the socks off! Sandals were made to wear on bare feet! Old German men! Always being too proper. Such an embarrassment!

…

You can imagine my shock and confusion upon discovering that aNarki is an old German man…

Tuesday, August 22nd

Hhhhhhm, it seems nothing much happened on this day, at least according to my notes. Although someone else might beg to differ…

For lunch I tried the vegan Indian meal at the Mecca Mall food court to have some variety. I soon wished I hadn’t. The food was rather hot (as in spicy) but still not hot enough to cover the taste. The taste of….. yucky fat meat? Now, even if that was just some odd aroma and not for real, it pretty much grossed me out.

In the evening we went out with the V-Knight again. While we were sitting at a falafel place aNarki got an SMS he had been waiting for all day: his lady’s family had ok’ed him as their future son-in-law.
Drunk with joy and relief he invited the V-Knight for dinner and me for drinks….. at Burger King.

Before going back to the hotel I got the usual private “internet café” service at aNarki’s family’s place and took a few pics of his mom’s cat R. giving me the evil eye.

.

Wednesday, August 23rd

After a nourishing breakfast of…

… hommus, Iraqi bread and Dr Pepper…

… the day could begin.

Extensive research had shown that decent pubs were rumoured to exist in Swefiya. Something to look forward to concerning the evening.

Having learned from yesterday’s experience I rather ordered the Chinese lunch at Mecca Mall. Hhhhhhm, just rice and veggies, nicely flavoured, no weird spices…

Morbid Smile was hoping to catch me after all, now that she was going back to Amman again for her flight to the US. She was told that she’d make the trip next week, and would get the exact schedule tomorrow.
Next week would have included Saturday and Sunday already of course…
But Fate did not smile upon the chance of us meeting each other, so we were hoping in vain.

The evening took aNarki and me through Fresh Waffles Street and to an Irish Pub. A real pub. With no attentive women hovering around any men. Yay!
And what a pub that was!
The interior was typical Irish Pub design. Dark wood everywhere, and Ireland-related memorabilia on the walls. I’ll show you the toilets later…
The drinks prices were as high as in the… non-pubs… we went to before, but at least they served alcohol for alcohol’s sake.
Unfortunately they did not have Snakebite on their menu, so I courageously ordered a Tequila Sunrise (You’re asking what’s courageous about that? Well, the last time I had Tequila Sunrise was at a private party where I accidentally inhaled some of it and almost choked…), which was really nice (the drink at the pub was nice, not me almost choking to death at that party…. although it’s a funny story nevertheless…).
I ordered a second one which was nice as well, but contained…. hm, maybe the triple amount of tequila.
When I had finished that one I felt like one more drink, but if they had brought me another ‘Sunrise like the last one aNarki would have had to carry me back to my hotel. So I ordered a pineapple Bacardi Breezer - a flavour we don’t have over in Germany.
Tipsy to exactly the right level we left the Pub after that one. That is, we left the pub, but it was me being tipsy. Poor aNarki.

Did I mention the toilets?!?!

Hm? What did you say? Oh, you’re still wondering about the Fresh Waffles Street? Well, that one street we had to walk through was filled with the smell of freshly baked waffles in one place. aNarki told me it always smells like that there. As there is no restaurant or café in the vicinity there must be a private household continuously busy with baking waffles…?

I did mention the toilets, didn’t I?

.

Thursday, August 24th

I don’t quite recall what it was that kept my personal entertainer away from me; I think he had to finish writing that report of his.

After having spent enough time inside of my apartment and staring at the tv to get thoroughly bored out of my mind I decided to head out to Mecca Mall. I did some window shopping and also some real shopping at Al-Afghani. After all, I had promised people to bring souvenirs.
Laden with half a dozen sand bottles and other trinkets I hastily slumped down at one of the rare free tables with a coke I had bought.
While I was sitting there, kicking my heels, I witnessed something I found rather fascinating.

Two men had repeatedly passed by on their (fruitless) search for a place to sit. Finally one of them already went and got their lunch, in the hopes of finding a table by the time the food was done.
They didn’t of course. It was a very busy time of day apparently. I had to repeatedly shoo people away who wanted to nick my second chair. And I just knew that if I gave it away we wouldn’t manage to get a new one when aNarki arrived.

The two men talked to one of the guys sweeping the floors. He disappeared and soon appeared with a table, which he squeezed between two others. A while after that he brought two chairs as well. One of the men gave him some money. As they were a couple of meters away and the Jordanian Dinar was not that familiar to me after the time I spent in Amman, I can only definitely say that the note was blue, but not whether it was a 10 or a 20 Dinar note. Still, even for 10 the table and chairs would have been way too expensive…

When aNarki told me he was on his way I SMSed him and told him where I was sitting and asked him to already order the Chinese meal for me in passing. I was starting to get a bit hungry, but I wasn’t going to get up and leave the table of course… Naturally, my enthusiastic host did that for me.

some random people at Mecca Mall

Afterwards we did the usual internetting.

Later we went out with the V-Knight again. We spent some time in Wakalat Street, and ended the evening with a nourishing meal at Burger King.
Apparently one of the guests - or possibly an employee, considering it was still there when we left again - had arrived on a rather… simplistic means of transportation.

donkey

Well, actually I am fairly sure the donkey had nothing to do with the Burger King at all…
I took this photo because of the all-round absurdity of the picture: the donkey tied to a post and standing right behind the entrance sign.
We did pity the poor animal though, having to stand there for hours, with nothing to do but to stare at the wall.

.

Friday, August 25th

As it was Friday, it was restaurant time again with the family. At the excellent falafel place close to aNarki’s parents’ home of course. *drools*

lunch

Afterwards we went to aNarki’s parents’ place.

I have no clue why we started talking about German movies. Anyway, that topic always makes me state that the only really good German movie to speak of is “Das Experiment” (The Experiment), not least of all because the scenario is all too likely. Up until then I wasn’t even aware that the plot of the movie was loosely based on a real experiment. Reading up on it sure kept us busy for a time…

When it was time for dinner we bravely entered the packed Mecca Mall food court (it was Friday….)
Of course there were no tables/seats available. Well, there were, but only the ones reserved for certain restaurants and none of those for general use.
aNarki sneakily bought us the right to sit at a table belonging to a place selling fries and similar by buying a round of coke. (He assured me it was better not to eat there anyway, as people eating there tend to feel… unwell… later on.) Good thing I was eating the Chinese meal again.

When I was done eating we headed up to the cinema and watched The Sentinel.
Not necessarily a DVD I’d buy, but it was sure entertaining enough for an evening out at the movies.

As most of the afternoon had been devoted to researching disturbing experiments I had some late night internet time, catching up on emails, blogs, etc, before heading back to the hotel.

.

Saturday, August 26th

The fact that my holiday would soon be over hit me very hard that day. My first scribbled note for Saturday is “don’t wanna go home”.

aNarki was expecting his professor to call, and thus didn’t really wish to go anywhere. As the call just didn’t come, we went out for a late lunch at Mecca Mall after all.
Of course he called shortly after my food was done. Murphy’s Law.
My host insisted that I take my time and eat up but I still did my best to hurry.

It was still rather early and I had no real plan what to do, so aNarki took me home with him, picked up his papers and left me to use their comp with his parents hovering in the background and making sure I didn’t starve/die of thirst/get bored from lack of company. I was catching up on stuff on the net, like I said, still aNarki’s mom asked me at one point if it was all right if she left me alone for a while to go and pray. Arabs. Totally crazy über-hosts.
Besides, I wasn’t alone; I had a grumpy cat to keep me company…

R., being annoyed at me taking photos

At around 8 I decided to go back to my hotel and rest a bit. Of course aNarki was done with his meeting with the professor when I arrived there. Figures. He also remembered his attempt at playing my personal bodyguard for the duration of my stay in Amman and almost got a heart attack upon hearing that I had walked back to the hotel on my own. In the dark. Oh dear. All 200m of the way. Goodness.
Well, he had to see his grandparents anyway, so I stayed at the hotel and read a bit in one of my new books. (*laughs and waves at Lynnette* Yes, I can even sit in a foreign country and stick my nose into a book. )

It was around midnight when aNarki finally returned, but as I was still awake he insisted on taking me out for a late dinner at MacDonalds.
When we returned from there, we found a dead, er, sleeping cat.

sleeping cat

.

Sunday, August 27th

We were up way too early. But first of all I wanted to check out of the hotel this morning already to save the money for one more day of rent, and secondly aNarki had to take his slightly corrected papers to his professor.

So we carried my belongings over to aNarki’s parents’ place and dumped them in a corner of the living room.
Then we took a taxi to the professor’s hotel to drop off the papers. Security there was rather tight (including a metal detector at the entrance), as the Days Inn - quite apart from being a way more high class establishment than my apartment hotel - had been one of the three hotels that had been hit by almost simultaneous suicide bombings in November 2005.

Days Inn

That done, we met up with the V-Knight and headed out to Downtown Amman.
They tried out a strange alien weapon on the V-Knight and aNarki, but as soon as we left this particular spot, things got back to normal again…

Downtown

I still needed a souvenir for the Muffin Man, and I am sure he would have appreciated a pin with Saddam on, but I really did not wish to pay people money for selling them…

We ambled through several streets, browsing stores and looking around.
At one point we passed a ghetto blaster that seemed to be playing some kind of speech. A couple of streets further on we walked into Muslim Brotherhood territory. Innocent tourist me didn’t really notice anything, but both aNarki and the V-Knight ambled nonchalantly on while announcing that we should better leave. Now. (Not only were they accompanying a half naked tourist lady, they themselves were looking way too western as well…) We tried to do that, and even succeeded, although the side “street” aNarki dragged us into was more of a dark, murky trap than the street. We passed the ghetto blaster again and the guys informed me that the voice emanating from it was, basically, preaching jihad. Nice…. neighbourhood.

We found more friendly streets lined with DVD stores. I say DVD stores. What they were selling was pirated copies of movies. For 1 to 2 JD, which is really rather cheap of course.
In one store I really should have taken a picture or even made a small movie. Of the special… customer… browsing one of the shelves.
This big cockroach kept walking up and down that one DVD shelf…
We kept staring at it, part in disgust, part wondering if the store owner really didn’t see that creature, or if he just pretended that nothing was amiss. The other customers didn’t seem to mind/notice either.

Talking about icky things, at one point the V-Knight took off for a bit on some errand of his own while aNarki and me went into a restaurant. I had to powder my nose, but rapidly decided against it after having taken a peek at the facilities… Right. In funny countries (like Turkey, France…) you shouldn’t be surprised if you encounter those kind of toilets where you basically hunker down over a hole in the floor. But… the whole room was reeking of excrements, and it wasn’t difficult to find the source(s). Brrrr. It’s amazing for how long you can go on without using a toilet, even after you thought you really had to go.

Ohhhhhkay, after the V-Knight had joined us again we walked the streets for a while longer, then decided to head back home again.
It took us quite some time to get a taxi, which the guys attributed to the fact of us being too western for Downtown.
We did manage in the end though.

In the evening aNarki, the V-Knight and me walked through - yes - Fresh Waffles Street to the Irish Pub.
I hope the guys derived some pleasure from watching me drink Tequila Sunrise. Well, I sure enjoyed it.
Hm, I also ordered something to eat. What was it? Something with pasta? I so totally forgot. I do recall though that someone put cheese on it despite our little talk about veganism, so unfortunately they had to fix it twice.

Ok, so this is the moment you have been waiting for since “Wednesday”, eh?
This day I took some pictures in the Ladies’.

the sinks

interesting bench

A two-seated bench in the style of the above is standing in front of the pub by the way…

Toilet with double roll facility for the user in double need?

Or maybe one roll was for number ones and the other for number twos…..?

Anyway, here’s one last picture from the pub, showing my companions and me:

me with clowns

Well. Then we went back to aNarki’s parents’ place and killed the little time that was left until aNarki’s cousin arrived to take me back to the airport.
As check-in happens right at the smallish entry hall at this airport we had to rather hastily say good-bye, while trying to stay out of the way of fellow travellers.
aNarki must have been meditating very long that day, as he not only returned my good-bye hug but courageously insisted to “do it right” and make it a double hug. Brave man.

I gathered my belongings and went through the security checkpoint. My cabin luggage got an extra search as my electronics collection (plastic bag with charging cable for cell phone, charging cable for camera, second cell phone, charger for rechargeable batteries, rechargeable batteries) must have looked suspicious. After checking in my luggage and getting some mysterious tag for my cabin luggage I rode up the elevator to the gates. As aNarki had told me I had a good view of the entry from the elevator and could give him and his cousin one final wave.

At the cabin luggage checkpoint above they waved me out for a manual check. I fished out the plastic bag, opened the knots I had tied to keep it shut and handed the plastic baggie and the open backpack to the man doing the search. He hardly glanced at my electronics collection, but went through my other stuff, including the little zip pocket inside the backpack.
Safety-pins, hair ribbons and Jordanian coins seemed to be familiar to him, but my tampons had to be inspected closely. Can it be that this dude seriously didn’t know what they were? Or did he think he could embarrass me by taking them out and giving them an intense stare? We shall never know, as I didn’t bother to ask.

After a long and boring wait for the designated gate to be opened we got shooed over to another gate.

Finally, on board the plane, the people beside me were trying to argue with the on board personel. Unfortunately the passengers didn’t speak English, only a bit of German, while the personel belonged to the rare few Dutchies who seriously don’t speak German. I interceded and explained to them that the family had been under the impression that the seats they had booked would all be in one row. Well, they were, but with the aisle seperating one of them from the rest. That explained, I was of course the ideal “victim” and got asked if I was willing to switch places with the isolated family member. I wasn’t, really, as that meant switching a window seat for an aisle seat, but I agreed anyway.
Which confused the guy bringing the food later on a bit, as my meal was reserved for the other seat number of course.
Talking about the food… that was nothing compared to that on the trip to Amman. Some boring veggies, a dreadful and tasteless rice cake… brrr.

Yes, yes, yes, I know this comes a bit late, but better late than never. I am determined to finish this before the start of my next holiday and promise that I’ll try to be faster in posting about that trip.

David, I am sorry; this post contains a lot of photos and will proabably take a while to load.

.

Sunday, August 20th

On Sunday aNarki picked me up from the hotel and took me to his parents’ place where he intended to get some of his work done.
I guess me huffing down his back (figuratively speaking) was distracting enough for him to give up on that thought pretty soon. Er, sorry?

Sooooo we headed out to Gardens Street, where we successfully roamed the Philadelphia Bookshop. And this time I bought books (”Marker” by Robin Cook and “The Vanished Man” and some short stories, “Twisted”, by Jeffery Deaver), not marbles and ugly pottery!
While I was paying up, the lady at the register complimented me on the tattoo on my arm and told us that she had recently been to America and had almost got one done herself.

Drunk with delight (well, me at least…) at finally having found some books we stumbled out again into the sunny day, and aNarki informed the V-Knight of our whereabouts.
Then we stood in the sun and waited for the young man.
And waited. And waited…
After a while venerable me slumped down onto the pavement, announcing to the world in general that I didn’t care what people’d be thinking; my back was killing me.
Then we waited some more.

After the young man finally had arrived, we (aimlessly?) ambled about a bit, then ambled through the University Bookshop, where I aspied a weird book by Stephen King, called “The Colorado Kid”, which I bought, of course.
Stopped to eat the usual falafel and stuff.

The guys took me to their favourite CD store whose owner seemed to be disappointed that I don’t share aNarki’s love for Old School metal stuff. Unfortunately that shop is situated underground in some passage with a lot of shops. It was a normal warm day, and the air was not really fresh down there. I could fight it off for some time by inconspicuously cozying up the the fan, but then my old trouble made itself felt, and I had to get out into the fresh air in order not to faint. Bad, bad blood pressure….
We sat on a ledge for quite a long time, cradling soft drinks, until aNarki went back down to collect the shopping. A while after that we got moving again.

For a sense of variety we went to another mall that evening, the Amman Mall, and almost stayed until they kicked us out.

The view I had over aNarki’s and the V-Knight’s shoulders

slightly lower view

aNarki’s ear and what he did to my straw…

Well, they did dim the lights, so we figured we’d better leave…

As our idea of late night seemed to differ wildly from that of the people running Amman Mall aNarki and me went to his parents’ place for a bit of internetting after parting with the V-Knight.
aNarki’s parents returned from the pre-wedding party of a relative, laden with food, and fed me Iraqi bread and Iraqi baklava.
When I mentioned this in my chat with my Turkish/Kurdish/Martian colleague A. he ordered some Jordanian baklava. Greedy colleague.

I guess at some point I returned to the hotel.

.

Monday, August 21st

On Monday my travel guide/entertainer/host joined his parents in attending the actual wedding of said relative.

Not willing to be called a bad host for “deserting” me, aNarki had arranged for Attawie and me to have a girls’ day out.

Attawie picked me up at my hotel, and we took a taxi to Downtown and hence the Roman Amphitheatre.
The taxi driver was being overly helpful and even gave Attawie his number, so that we could call him to pick us up again when we were done.
Then - us being dumb little women - he tried to take a lot more money for the drive than was his due. I didn’t understand a word of course, but Attawie sounded rather…. vehement.
When the idiot had taken off with a more reasonable amount of money in his pockets than what he had demanded we agreed that we’d take any taxi back but his.

At the entrance they didn’t just check the tickets we had bought at the booth across from it but also told us we could not bring the drinks we had just bought and opened onto the premises with us. A guide generously made an exception and tried to suck up to us. We got rid of him - for the moment - and went into the Museum of Popular Tradition and the Folklore Museum which are situated on opposite sides of the theatre ground and are frankly absolutely boring.

Outside again we climbed the steps all the way to the top, which already mildly set us to simmering in the midday heat.

view from the top, part 1

view from the top, part 2

From there we aspied some more ruins on top of the hill opposite the theatre:

Jabal al-Qala’a or Citadel Hill

Downstairs again we asked the sticky guide what that was, and he said it was the Citadel, and that he’d give us a guided tour for only 10 JD. He had just talked to that Australian couple over there and offered them the tour for 20 JD, so we should be discreet about it.
Yeah, and I am the Queen of Saba.
We declined, accepted his card and fled the premises.

Attawie still had the water she had brought along, and ever thirsty me stocked up on soft drinks. Then we set out in the direction we figured the ruins must lie. The directions we asked some way away from the theatre (to avoid lurking guides) confirmed the guess.
The street was already rather steep, and when we finally reached the spot where the hill started for real - read: the only way onwards was up some stairs - I realized that unfit me would have to admit that she was close to collapsing and needed a rest. Just when I was about to open my mouth to do that Attawie sank down in a spot of shade halfway up the steps. Either the lady is as unfit as me, or I am not quite as unfit - yet - as I thought.

A look back

The way ahead

Then the stairs ended and only pure hill remained for us to climb.

wooden bridge

As we didn’t try out the above construction, our search for an easy way up drove us more and more to the left. Which was good as it later turned out. Very good indeed.

Finally we reached the top and found the ruins we had seen from across and below.

look back at amphitheatre down in the valley

look across a comparatively small section of Amman

the columns that had lured us to the hill

We repeatedly contacted BT - who Attawie said is a fan of ancient ruins as well - to lure him to where we were, say good-bye and give him a few photo CDs. He tried to make it, but sadly couldn’t squeeze it into his hectic “finally preparing to leave for the US” schedule. Well, it was a pity, but what can you do? If the time is too short, it is too short.

The whole top of the hill contains ancient ruins. Unfortunately a lot is really mere ruins and has been reduced to rubble, i.e. the low remains of a few walls. We looked at everything anyway.
I so wanted to take pictures of lizards, but the buggers were just too fast…
At one point we walked around a corner and into a “room” and were hit by a very nice smell that literally filled up all available space. I could have stayed there the whole day, just breathing…
Here’s the cause:

staghorn tree

Determined to explore everything there was to explore, we peered into several (litter-strewn…) wells and the occasional unexplained hole (litter-strewn…) in the ground.
From one of these a cave seemed to lead off, but it was impossible to see into it. Attawie jokingly suggested I should climb into the hole. Well, people who know me better wouldn’t suggest a thing like that if they didn’t mean it…
I threw a stone into the vegetation growing at the bottom of the hole as hard as I could, and as it landed with a satisfying “thunk” I carefully lowered myself into the hole.
The red arrow shows where I stood.

bottom of the hole & the cave

Attawie “kindly” took this terrible picture of me while thinking about whom to call for a rescue mission.

exploring

I pointed my camera into the mouth of the cave and took several pictures. Ok, the climb was a nice little “adventure” (and I am sure Attawie could amaze loads of people by telling them about the crazy German blogger lady that climbs into suspicious holes in the ground… ), but it turned out it hadn’t really been worth the effort, as all there was to see was rubble, cobwebs and…. right, rubbish.

cave behind hole

The most well preserved ruin (that has also been rebuilt in places) is the Umayyad Palace, which looks a bit like churches tend to look in Muslim countries. (*is thinking of the Ayasofya or Hagia Sophia in İstanbul for instance*)

Al Qasr - The (Umayyad) Palace

the new roof of Al Qasr

Inside we saw a couple of women from Iran on a sightseeing tour as well. A real ladies’ day, hehe.

In a small room off the main hall we saw what I tend to see as the real tourist attractions: the little everyday things that you forget to expect when being on holiday. Or the funny “flaws”. Like this one:

broom

Like I said, the lizards were too fast for me but Attawie spotted a weird insect sitting on the wall above an arch under which we had to pass. Any suggestions what kind of insect this might be?

الذبابة ذات الطيز الأحمر or Red-Arsed Fly

Back to the regular tourist sights.
In one corner a piece of floor was fenced off to protect the inlaid work on the floor that was in the process of being unearthed.

inlaid floor

A little way downhill lies the Jordan Archeological Museum, which is a really good museum - not like the ones at the theatre. After having been severely fried by the early afternoon sun, we entered this museum at around half past four.
Unfortunately it is forbidden to take pictures there.
At the entrance we realized our good fortune concerning our climb up the hill. Entry to the museum is included in the fee payable at the ticket booth further down the path. As we were past the booth everyone assumed of course that we had paid, and didn’t ask us to produce the tickets.
And seeing how badly the ruins were littered with no-one bothering to clean up that mess I refuse to have a bad conscience about it. We didn’t litter, so the free entry was our just reward.
The time in the comparatively cool museum was a nice rest - quite apart from the interesting exhibits - but still I was rather dead and melting. Attawie looked a lot fresher than me, for which she should be spanked.

After leaving the museum we climbed down the hill again and caught a cab back to my hotel, where Attawie lounged in my living room while I had a quick shower.

She accompanied me for a quick shopping trip for some necessities, then we went to Mecca Mall for a late lunch (and to cash 2 more of my traveller cheques).
Our conversation wound down a couple of notches as Attawie was tired and I was developing a splitting headache.
So at around 7 pm already we lumbered back to the crossroads close to my hotel where we tried to get a taxi. An older man with a towel on his head (who either lives or works there; I saw him quite often at that corner) shooed us a bit further down the road, saying something about that being a better spot. Then he stopped a taxi and called us over. Attawie got in and drove home; I lumbered back to my hotel and collapsed onto my bed.

… of the sky after a hail/rain storm shortly before sundown. Everything outside was cast into a weird murky red light.
The cam is doing its best to show you…

A few more pics I took yesterday…:

Ok, here we go, you nosy person.
Hope everybody else ain’t gonna be bored.

So, we got ourselves this greenhouse.
And now we gotta dig down to be able to build up.
Well, I say “we”. The sad truth is that I have been doing most of the digging.

Ok, David, the above shows the spot where the greenhouse will be standing - hopefully - soonish and where we had already been digging to the discussed depth of around 40cm (in some cases even less…). They had been predicting rain, so I had covered the holes and yesterday only uncovered those I intended to dig to their complete depth of a good 80cm. In the end I finished 6 of ‘em.

And this is the frame that’s gonna get fixed onto/into the foundation blocks.
…. The other way around of course….

Last, but not least - one finished hole. If you look closely, you will notice a bit of stone at the bottom of the yellowish line of soil. It’s sort of in the center of the picture. Oh, the joys of digging!!

I guess this could have been written in a more fascinating way, but
1. this topic doesn’t really fascinate me that much, and
2. I am rather bluh in the head (and in my back), especially after having finished with the holes today after work.

Yay.