Under the 2nd largest waterfall, courtesy of Nelle's waterproof camera

It’s odd, but before I came to Jordan I had no knowledge of the beautiful semi-tropical canyons and verdant palm expanses of the Dead Sea basin that are known as ‘wadis.’ A wadi, which is Arabic for ‘valley’ can be used for naming the famous Wadi Rum that is one of the prime tourist camping sites, but is used more frequently for the numerous warm rivers and springs that slowly meander their way through the sandstone crags of the mountains that descend towards the lowest point on Earth.

After the fun three-day camping experience that we had in Wadi Hasa several months ago, I’ve been anxious to get back out there again to see more of Jordan’s wadis before departing. Most of my friends that were present for that hike have since departed back to America, but Nelle and Jeff were happy to indulge my entreaties for a hike, and two weekends ago Nelle selected Wadi Himara from her dog-eared and water-smudged wadi guidebook.

Wadi Himara

Wadi Himara means “Valley of the female donkey,” but its claim to fame doesn’t tend towards braying asses but instead to the massive 80 meter waterfall that crowns the end of the journey. I couldn’t find any pictures of the waterfall online prior to the hike, but Nelle assured us that friends of hers had hiked it last year. With the addition of Liam, an English friend of a choir friend, our band of four was complete, and we started off early on Sunday morning from Amman in Nelle’s rented car.

Like my visit to the neighboring Wadi Zarqa’ Ma’in in late June with my Arab friends, we had some difficulty determining which one of the yawning, unmarked canyon entrances that strew the coastline of the shimmering Dead Sea was the one we wanted. Thankfully we had Nelle’s guidance and descriptions to assist us, and we even found a fairly wide shoulder to park the car on before leaping over the bridge wall and tumbling into the scrub brush of the wadi below us. Thick concrete shield pillars greeted us only a few meters in, with entire trees splintered and crushed into their gray teeth – a testament to the sheer awesome force of the floods these wadis see in the rainy springtime month.

However, there was nothing to fear now – a few minutes later and we found the pathetic trickle that the river is reduced to in the blazing summer months. No danger of being swept away like we had worried about in Hasa in April. Just like that wadi, we were greeted by nervously skittering little crabs, waving their claws at us angrily before they would scurry away under boulders. Small waterfalls from little streams joined our meager river as we walked eastward away from the sea.

The waterfalls got progressively larger as we continued, including one large enough to have possibly stymied our progress if not for some other kind hiker’s installation of a nylon rope. That’s not to say that we couldn’t have reached our end destination, as Nelle proved – she climbed up over a nearby mountain instead and reached the other side with only an extra five minutes expended.

She almost got up to the top, too!

And there it was, in front of us! Maybe. Although huge and impressive, it didn’t look like it was 80 meters tall, or else my knowledge of the metric system was badly flawed. We snacked on apricots, dried sweet dates, and water in the shadow of the fall as Nelle informed us that this one was only the first of two, and the other one was supposed to be larger – although none of us could imagine a taller waterfall than this in Jordan! To reach it would be much harder: we’d need to backtrack and find a path through the noontime sun, up the side of wadi, and rejoin the river on the higher plateaus above this waterfall.

From my panoramio collection (click to check it out)

The next phase of the hike was just as tiring as Nelle had predicted. Some distance back before the rope-guided smaller waterfall behind us, we found an area where the wadi’s walls sloped enough to be climbable, and slowly and cautiously scaled the 100 meters to the top across gravel and scree that threatened to toss us into the rocks below with every step. We drank from our water bottles greedily as the sun burned directly above us, but at the summit we could see much further east than before – towards a green, shadowed and gigantic rock wall still a kilometer distant. If we squinted, we could see a narrow white line flinging itself from the heights and vanishing behind some lower cliffs. It was the waterfall, we knew – and if we could see it from here, it had to be gigantic.

See that tiny shaded valley in the upper left corner? And the even tinier white line if you click to maximize? That's it!

It took another half an hour to cross the baked and shattered plateau and get back into the cooler and shaded streams of the wadi. Interestingly, I noted that most of the rocks around this area were of a pitted and lightweight volcanic variety, and recalled reading that millennia ago, there had been an active volcano in lower Jordan – secular scholars claim that it was responsible for the destruction of the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah of Biblical times, the ruins of which are supposed to be only a few kilometers from where we were now standing. Even more telling were the black rocks that jutted impudently from the regular sandstone. These rocks had the lines of magma flows, and the “popped bubble” surfaces that said they had once been subject to a heat so intense that the stones themselves had bubbled in the heat, only to have those thin stone membranes popped by the elements in the proceeding centuries.

Popped-bubble volcanic rocks trapped in the wadi, which might have been first carved by a volcano, before the water...

Back inside the wadi itself, it was exciting to see the distant waterfall growing ever-closer as we ascended and descended the cliffs, watching it appear and disappear behind the trees and stones. The warm water was clogged with green algae in every side pool, much more than what we had encountered in Hasa. It was obvious that the strength of the sun in these months was the cause. The strong-smelling glop forced us to tread carefully as we climbed trees and rock walls through the wadi; none of us relished the thought of falling into one of those stinking pits.

If the smell was strong, it was matched by the beauty and tranquility of the tallest waterfall in Jordan when we pushed through the last of the oleander bushes to reach the iridescent blue pool at its base. We could barely see the mouth of the fall from here at its base, and the August-thinned gush of water came down and struck the rocks at the base with loud and echoing force. From what I could see of the clearness of the pool before Jeff and Liam rushed across it to reach the fall, it was filled with a grayish, vertical-growing species of algae that hung motionless in the water and looked at first like miniature towers jutting from the bottom. As soon as the silent water at the shore was disturbed by our feet, though, a thick cloud of blue-gray silt and muck rose from the bottom like we were walking through the Nile delta in flood season.

al-Waterfall Akbaaaar!!

On the far side of the pool, under the waterfall itself, Jeff and Liam had already started inspecting a strange formation that had slowly grown out of centuries of mineral and sand-filled falling water. From a distance it looked like a huge pockmarked piece of pumice, but upon closer inspection, its slick surface was made out of loosely-compressed sand particles that were slowly forming stalactites from the cliff wall towards the pool below. We debated eating the rest of our lunch in the cool depths of the cave that this formation had created, but the small size and the unceasing dripping water forced us to backtrack a few dozen meters back into the wadi to relax under the shade of a huge and ancient palm tree surrounded by oleanders.

Jeff and Liam inside the sandy, silty inner chamber below the fall

On the way out, we traced the water to the top of that first waterfall we had snacked under, which no looked quite tiny in comparison. Because of some ledges blocking our full line of sight, we couldn’t see all the way down to where we had stood a few hours earlier, but Jeff’s GPS told us that it was definitely the correct spot. I could see a new-looking rappelling hook bolted into the stone next to us, and recalled that the wadi book that Nelle had brought with us mentioned that a more adventurous mode of travel than we had used was available for the wadi. As we hiked away from it, the gap in the mountain where it went over the cliff disappeared from us like an optical illusion.

Can you spot the top of the second largest waterfall in Jordan?

Now the tricky part was getting out. There were some scary moments when climbing out over the cliffs again, namely because it seemed that we were climbing across the disintegrating face of a sand castle. It wasn’t sandstone, just chunks of gravel held together with sand. I could see already that parts of this cliff had fallen to the wadi below, and was happy that there were no apparent hiker bones sticking out of those clumped piles of rubble.

Liam and I naively decided not to follow the wadi guide from this point on, and take a second wadi offshoot back to the car, instead of climbing back down the slippery, shale-covered mountain like we had come up. As we discovered only five minutes later when we followed the dried stream bed to a series of massive waterfalls, there was a reason why the book didn’t mention another way out besides rappelling or climbing over the mountain. However, now we were alone and Jeff and Nelle were no longer to be found. I grinned wryly over at Liam. “Remember, it’s impossible to get lost in a wadi hike – there are only two directions to go.” With that in mind, we climbed up onto the mountain plateau again and headed due west towards the car along the top, instead of dropping back down again beyond the waterfalls.

We actually ended up making it back to the car 50 minutes before Nelle and Jeff, who had left their mobiles behind in the car. I (correctly) figured that Nelle was worried about us, and was hanging back in the foothills waiting for us, even though we had long since passed them by on the easy path along the summit, before dropping down next to the bridge by the highway. With our water exhausted and the car keys with Nelle, Liam and I slumped in the slowly elongating shadow of the rental car and swapped theories on Arabic dialects and accents, and then comparing varieties of British and American accents.

The car was, of course, blisteringly hot when we climbed back inside, but thankfully we were only 10 minutes away from the Dead Sea mini-mart near the hotels that could sell us bottles of ice cold water. I explained apologetically to the tired and thirsty looking shopkeeper why we looked so odd, and we all made sure to duck down low in the car to slurp our precious water, as there was another hour still to go before sunset and the fast breaking.

Wadi ibn Hammad

We had so much fun that we made rapid plans to repeat the hiking experience a week later, this time to the distant Wadi Ibn Hammad in South Jordan, only a little ways off from Karak and its Crusader castle. Although we could have chosen to take one of the city buses to Wadi Himara thanks to its popular location on a major highway, I elected to rent another car for this week, using the company that Nelle recommended to me. After a delicious Ramadan Iftaar feast on Saturday night (the name means ‘opening’ or the breaking of the fast) at the home of my translator, Wamidh, and his wife, I was ready to take everyone south for another hike.

Joanna, returned from summer vacation in America, took Liam’s place in my rented car. Whitman’s first day of school was on Saturday as well, and I was there to check the computers and greet everyone before picking up the car and visiting Wamidh. Together, the four of us sped southward along the familiar Desert Highway, leading towards the familiar borders of Karak. Nelle with her book and memory from a previous visit, guided me from there down poorly marked country roads that led to poor concrete-block homes, then farms, then nothing but steeply descending mountain passes.

The rented Hyundai bumped over the drainage ditch for a lithe little stream at the bottom of the wadi, and I parked next to a squat little concrete building advertising bathrooms and tea. As we unloaded our bags and lunch from the trunk, a slender and dark man with a neatly trimmed goatee emerged from the building’s shadows. Introducing himself as Aqubda, he was obviously unprepared for our Arabic rendition as to why we shouldn’t have to pay 5 JD per person for entry into the Wadi. We’d all lived here for years, the famous Karak castle was only 1 JD, it was Ramadan, the month of Generosity – we laid it all out on him (or at least Nelle and I did). Aqubda gestured helplessly at the entrance tickets in his hand, marked ‘five dinar’ on one side, and ‘واحد دينار’ (one dinar) on the other. He knew we could all read it. He relented eventually and gave us the discounted admission of all of us for 11 JD. From what I’m told, Wadi Mujib – the most famous of Jordan’s water-filled wadis – is charging 16 JD per foreigner these days, so expats living in Jordan should enjoy the remaining unspoiled and free wadis while they can. Ah Jordan – I’m going to miss never paying full price for anything!

Just beyond the building, a flight of crumbling concrete steps led us down into the wadi bed itself, and after a minutes and curves in the deep canyon, the building was lost from view behind curtains of ferns, palm trees, and stones. Ibn Hammad is called by Nelle – and several guidebooks and websites – the “most beautiful” wadi in Jordan, and we were about to find out why.

Just a moment after stepping into the wadi, and Jeff is already dancing in the water

Only a few minutes in, I was agreeing with Nelle’s assertion that this tropical wadi had to be one of the most beautiful in the country. She smiled and said that we hadn’t even seen the amazing part yet. Thanks to the long car ride, it was already one in the afternoon and we stopped for lunch by the river once we were safely out of offending-range from building. Already, the wadi walls had crept up around us to five or six meters to shadow us, and a large boulder in the creek provided a helpful back rest. As we were eating, I examined the dripping moss and ferns coating the walls, probably never touched by direct sunlight and growing mightily thanks to water oozing out of the stones themselves. I believe the entire area must be honeycombed with hot springs and wells, much more than what we could see in the river next to us. The volume of water rushing past was far greater than anything we had seen in Himara last week.

Lunchtime in Ibn Hammad

Not far along the easy path downstream (the small stones and climbs were nothing compared to what we had encountered in Wadi Hasa), we passed into a strange, shaded area and I felt water striking my face. The chance of rain in August was unlikely, so I gazed upwards to see a pockmarked, mineral-encrusted stone ledge extended above us, in such a way that it almost formed an arch from one bank of the canyon to the other. Warm, salty water was streaming gently from somewhere within the monolith, cascading down rough stalactites and ferns to create an unceasing drizzle onto the river below. Nelle still smiled secretively as the other three of us commented on the spectacular sight – there had to be something somehow more lovely further down.

A few minutes more led us to the “tunnel,” a dark crease in the rock of rare golden pillars sunbeams and for a hundred meters, mineral shelves like the early solitary one ruled like grizzled sultans, towering above our heads. The palm trees growing out of the walls above us had soggy bark stained black from years of water exposure, and the air became moist and humid in a way I’ve never before experienced in Jordan. The walls were painted creamy red from quietly burbling jets of water, spitting water rich in iron and thermophilic bacteria which painted sunsets on the stones before mixing and vanishing into the tumult. Everywhere, water dripped onto us from the rocks above, and sometimes in particularly bright cracks in this moist underworld I could catch glimpses of the roots and lower extremities of dusty dry trees growing on the wadi banks 10 meters above our heads.

The four of us posing in front of the shadowed cleft into the amazing tropical tunnel

The roaring in the distance was magnified by this shaped tunnel we journeyed through, but finally we found ourselves on the edge of a small but energetic waterfall, where the colors changed from reds to greens of all hues, encrusting layers of minerals onto the sandstone. I scratched at one with a fingernail, breaking of millimeter-thick layer of this green shellac to expose the damp sand underneath. Above us, mingled with the throaty voice of the waterfall, I could hear faint squeaks and saw dim shadows moving in caves of the shelves – a bat colony, although I never saw one exit.

In my distraction, the other three had already slowly lowered themselves over the rocky edge of the 2.5 meter fall and were waiting for me. I tossed my bag with my camera down to Jeff, and thus unencumbered by weight and electronics, flung myself over the waterfall edge instead, landing in the waist-deep pit carved out by the water’s patient knife. The others were already ahead, playing with a cold sprinkle coming from one of the shelves, laughing and dodging as they tried to catch the cool drops on their faces.

Now THAT's using your face!

In another five minutes, the wadi began to widen again and brighten, and we emerged from the humid tunnel back into the regular wadi. Glancing at my watch, I couldn’t believe we’d only been in that incredible place for 20 minutes from end to end! Squinting into the new sunlight, we continued along a few last bends in the canyon before we exited the deep wadi, finding ourselves on a wide delta with the river, now small-looking compared to this openness, continuing on through the underbrush of oleanders and bamboo.

It had only been two hours since we started our journey, and Nelle told us that when she had come last year, they’d turned back soon after this point to head back up the trail. However, Walkingjordan.com had told me that there was a waterfall worth seeing another kilometer downstream, so with my encouragement, we continued, sticking close to the high left wall’s shade. It wasn’t long afterward that we came across almost a dozen thick black pipes snaking their way over the high wall and coming down to drink greedily from the stream. The Bedouin farmers who had presumably brought them in had rigged up ingenious wire and rope systems to hold them in place, and it had apparently worked because some of the pipes looked positively ancient, faded to almost white and caked over with years of seasonable algae grime. Regardless of the pipe’s age, each one of them was punctured in many places, sending gouts and streamers dancing into the air like a child’s sprinkler toy. All around us they hissed and gurgled, sounding for all the world like real snakes instead of lookalikes, and finally around one corner their bulks vanished over the hill again and we were left alone with the river again.

Pipe snakes winding through the lower wadi

We weren’t entirely alone, unfortunately. Jeff suddenly gave a shout of surprise, and as we crowded around him, he hurriedly yanked off his shoe and sock, taking with them a writhing gray segmented worm that he told us had apparently bit him a moment earlier. Sure enough, a small red mark was rising up from his ankle, and we all anxiously checked our own feet, ankles, and calves for unwanted passengers. I horrified my companions by describing some of my mother’s animal patients; dogs that have had parasites gnaw pockets under the fur and skin to create an abscess-cocoon. It definitely wasn’t a leech, but a parasitic worm that could burrow into your skin was much more probable – and worrisome. Leeches sounded great by comparison; I mean, they couldn’t be that bad if they had been used by doctors for centuries!

It might be small, but those little suckers are mean

After another half hour of walking – now avoiding the water a little bit more, after Jeff’s worm removal – we came to the waterfall, set among huge bleached white stones that were too large to climb down anywhere but a dozen meters beyond the waterfall, requiring us to double back to reach the falls. While not even in the same league as the two behemoths we had seen in Himara last week, the volume of water was many times greater. Like inside the tropical tunnel earlier in the day, the rocks around us created and echoing chamber that made the roar of the falls almost deafening. We took turns braving a short and slippery climb to a rock outcropping inside the waterfall, listening to our voices broken and refracted by the tons of water crashing around us so that it sounded like we were speaking through an oscillating fan. It was easy to leave the perch: a quick slip forward and the water rocketed me out of the ledge on the soaked algae to land with a semi-painful splash a good four meters away. I winced, got up, and felt a sudden sharp pain in my ankle. For one agonized moment I thought it was broken, then glanced down and grimly pulled off the gray worm that was tightly attached to my skin.

It was time to head back out and back home. After being thoroughly and relaxingly pounded by the crashing waterfall to our hearts’ content, we quickly ventured back across the pipes, the wide delta, and back into the wadi and the tunnel. The sun had begun to set by this time, and the wadi was pleasantly cool and the colors were muted by the coming darkness. After reaching the other end of the tunnel, Jeff motioned back to us that men were coming down the path. Nelle and Joanna fretted a little bit about the fact that they were wearing somewhat revealing clothing – we didn’t expect to see any Arabs here in Ramadan – but surprisingly enough, the dark skinned group had a woman. Then we saw why – the last man in the group was wearing a yarmulke skullcap on his head. It was a Jewish travel group! More and more, it was obvious to me why the Fidel Castro lookalike in Wadi Hasa had casually asked me if we were Israelis – they love to come over to this side of the border and hike. Nelle’s travel book is written by an Israeli, in fact.

Back at the parking lot, the now-shirtless Aqubda was waiting for us with a smile and a pot of sugary black tea. You’re not fasting for Ramadan? I asked him, and he gave me a look like I was a little slow and said “in this heat? Do you think I want to die out here?” He explained that he and a fellow Karaki partner took 4-day/night shifts out here to guard the place. He liked the work, but it was boring – especially in Ramadan. He was very happy to chat with us for fifteen minutes! As the five us sat drinking our tea around a beat up card table at the edge of the wadi, a vanload of young men pulled up. Aqubda told us his friends had come from Karak to have iftaar with him – even though technically there was nothing to ‘break’ in his case!

The cool night air on the drive back to Amman was aided only slightly by the old car’s air conditioning, and we were all still so energized and excited from the trip that no one napped (not even me, the driver!) and we just chatted about friends and family back in America. I still had the car for another day, until mid-afternoon, so I suggested that if anyone wanted to join me for a last trip to the Dead Sea, we should do that tomorrow morning.

———

That was almost a week ago now, and my skin has still not recovered from the drubbing it received from the sun. I’m sitting at Whitman now, putting the finishing touches on this post, and whenever I shift or shuffle in my chair in front of this lab computer I’m running tests on, I feel like my skin is crackling like seared bacon on a grill. And now I’ve gone and made myself hungry. It’s tough to get these blog posts out in time when you don’t have internet at home anymore – it’s been gone for almost a month now – but Wajih told me yesterday that he’ll let me borrow his 3G cell modem USB device until I return to America in a week.

Jeff and I floating along. Those shoes I'm wearing, like my back, were totally destroyed from the excursion

You haven't heard anything until you've heard the high notes in "Prelude in C" hit in a perfect falsetto

After the full-house all-out success of 2009’s Ramadan Quiz night, my choir, Dozan wa Awtar, decided that we’d pull off the same feat a year later, except with available seating for another hundred guests. Last night, we had a great show at the Action Target shooting range/go-karting club just south of Amman’s city limits.

Although we started selling tickets weeks ago, there were some times when it was touch-and-go about whether we’d be able to sell enough tickets to be able to justify the concert to our always-generous sponsors. Last year we had no trouble, but this year, Ramadan’s movement of two weeks earlier means that school isn’t yet in session again, unlike last year. Both foreigners and Arabs alike with the means to justify 23 dinars per person for a dinner and a show often leave the country in the summer, and I was unable to find a single friend still in Jordan who was able to go.

I couldn't imagine a better place to hold an iftaar show - looking out over the distant lights of Amman

Thankfully, the fact that our choir is still majority Arab, with large families and strong familial ties, meant that we were able to pull through in the nick of time and get the sales we needed. Action Target had a great stage set up for us (although it was probably not for us but for their singer a few nights ago, the “Voice of Jordan” Omar Abdullat) complete with outdoor seating, below-lit palm trees, and a bar that was still serving alcohol – amazing. I saw more than a few people in the crowd casually and furtively emptying silver flasks into glasses though; ahh, the tradition of Ramadan fasting and the government closing all liquor stores and most bars is only equaled by the tradition of circumventing these laws, both religious and secular alike.

All and all, we were there from around 5 to warm up and get ready til 11:30. The sun set at exactly 7:25 and people immediately dug into the buffet line of pastas, Chinese stir-frys, and of course the required Arabic mezze appetizers like hummous, salads, and kubbeh. Still no mensaf, though (the traditional Jordanian dish) – frankly, I’m always disappointed when these massive restaurant/catered iftaars can’t carry the national dish. Haven’t seen a single one do it thus far.

Seating was done in big tables of 10. If you didn't bring quiz night teammates with you, you could make some new friends at your table!

The quiz aspect of the night’s events started soon after the meal, with the full choir only doing a few small numbers and the majority of our time onstage dedicated to solos or duets of popular music. We had musicals – both Western and Arab – and Disney music to sing. Amusingly enough, apparently Egypt’s massive film industry translates Disney classics into Egyptian colloquial and so we had people doing “Bibbity Bobbiby Boo” and “Hakuna Matata,” in Egyptian. For that reason, we were sure to remind people that their quiz night teams should definitely be made up of people from both cultures – what a great way to foster intercultural cooperation!

Personally, I did “Kiss The Girl,” from The Little Mermaid. Some of the women in the choir volunteered to be the “sha la la la” girls in the background, doing their own little dance, and Um Tulip provided a couple snorkel headpieces, too. By the time I had practiced this piece and our choreography, I was sad that we were only doing little bits of each song…I wanted to sing the whole thing!

I'm standing on the remains of the south-western guard tower, with the walls of the High Court behind me

Both of the trips were hastily planned – in fact, I had forgotten about Karak Castle for at least a year until a friend from New Zealand that I met in Nazareth last month, and then again in Amman several weeks later, mentioned that he had visited it. Hearing stories about his casual trips around the area, without even knowing either Semitic language, made me remember that I could certainly navigate Jordan’s cheap and plentiful bus system, especially to a relatively large city like Karak.

What I didn’t count on was how long I’d spend waiting for buses! The combination of it being early, being the Friday holy day, and Ramadan fasting having started on the 10^th, meant that I almost spent as much time waiting for buses to leave, as sight-seeing! Notice that I say waiting to leave, as opposed to arrive. Not for the first time, I’ve realized that the reason why a two hour, 90-km journey from Amman to Karak costs less than $2.50 is because they will simply refuse to leave the bus stop if they’re not at 95% capacity – at least! When I pay $50 for a one-way ticket from Beloit to Chicago O’Hare, I’m paying for all those empty seats, too. Money is one thing that most bus-riding Jordanians do not have a lot of…but time to burn, waiting in these dark, musty buses, is plentiful.

I arrived at Karak at 9:30 AM, having left my home at 7. My neighbor Marwan warned me to get to the bus early, because there might not be a second one ‘til the afternoon! He was almost certainly correct – I shudder in sympathy to think of the poor souls who arrived at the station mere moments after we left at 8:15 – the driver estimated nonchalantly to me that between empty and departure, he’d been waiting for passengers for almost three hours.

It amuses me to think that the first and only previous time I’d been in Karak was over two and a half months ago, when our band of eight foreigners passed through briefly on our way to Wadi Hasa. I remember drowsily wondering where the famous castle was in the quiet city, and then getting distracted by something else. We stopped at the same station, and the driver pointed up…and up…to where worn stones palely shimmered in the morning light. The castle had been directly above my head some 150 meters, had I bothered to look up! Download this Google Earth KMZ file to see Karak from my perspective.

I strolled leisurely up the quiet hill, listening to the sound of sheep calling to each other in the valleys surrounding the city. The call to prayer had been hours ago, and the next one would be in another few hours. During these sleepy times when no smoking, eating, or drinking were allowed, many Muslims stay indoors as much as possible, parked in front of fans and trying to keep as much moisture and calories within. I saw some laborers building a shed in the shade of a taller apartment, looking like it was about to topple off of the edge of the hill, and caught the slightly nasal-sounding accent of Egyptian slang. It seems that nothing keeps them from working, Ramadan or not!

The admission was only a single dinar, the same as what my guidebook from 2006 told me. The ticket seller informed me that in his twenty years of working in Karak, he’d never heard a foreigner speak such good Arabic, to which I replied “praise God for curing your deafness,” but I probably messed up the wording on this complicated phrase and I don’t think he caught the joke. I promised myself I’d write it in the blog later so at least someone would.

For my first few hours in the castle, it was only me, the twittering birds, and a few grumpy-looking old Bedouins who looked as if they’d rather be sleeping instead of adding to the castle’s authenticity as a post-Crusader outpost. Apparently, after the glorious Salah al-Din (better known as Saladin to us Westerners) conquered the castle in 1187, it was re-used by governors and even by visiting Sultans during the Mamluk period. The more I read about the chivalrous and noble Kurdish warrior whose name means “the Righteousness of the Faith,” the more I’m impressed by him and his impeccable manners and character, especially compared to how embarrassing underhanded and foul the European invaders often were. In fact, it was the overseer of Karak Castle, the traitorous and sadistic Reynaulds, that earned Salah’s greatest ire by violating a treaty and attacking peaceful caravans trying to pilgrimage to Mecca, and after the castle’s capitulation, Salah personally decapitated the Frenchman – the only time in the Crusades that the Islamic leader executed a surrendered foe. Legend says that several years earlier, during a failed assault of the castle by Muslim forces, Reynauld’s heir was celebrating his wedding night in one of the towers, and after Salah inquired as to which tower contained the nuptials, he forbade his men to attack it.

This 2x2 meter model of Karak and its high-ground castle are prominently featured in the small museum

The wedge-shaped castle is situated on the southernmost corner of the fan-shaped city, and after walking all around it, both inside and out, I could see why attack was almost impossible with medieval weaponry and a patient siege was the only way that the Arabs eventually won. Arrow slits line every wall, and the small but tidy museum inside the castle walls showed pictures of the various defensive weaponry the Crusaders had at their disposal. After making the rounds through the museum and around the “lower court,” I went up some steps to the castle’s “high court,” a long, dusty plateau on which I could still see the lumpy remains of rocks and air pipes into the warrens below. Those rooms themselves were as dusty, dim, and rough-looking as I’m sure they were a millennium ago, and it was lucky that it was a sunny day or I probably would have been banging into more of the walls and possibly causing the whole structure to collapse on me. I could dimly make out ancient torch-niches on the walls, and sincerely wished they were still in use!

After climbing up to the high point of the Mamluk fortress on the southern edge of the castle, I called my friend from choir, Yanal, whose ancestors are originally from Karak. “Guess where I am?” I cheerfully told him as I looked out over his city. “My beautiful Karak!” he gasped to me over the phone. “If only you had told me you were going, I would have driven with you down there!” He extolled to me the virtues of Karak and Karaki people as proudly as ever, as I chuckled and agreed with him on every point.

I wasn’t alone all the time. As I was leaving the sunny stones of the high point of the Mamluk fortress on the southern edge of the castle, I came across a busload of Italian tourists who were loudly commenting on the place and chain-smoking; a forbidden activity during Ramadan which I’m sure didn’t do anything to improve the tourism Bedouins’ mood. I ducked down into the open-air court of the  Mamluk palace under the defensive fortress quite literally – they had apparently been rather height-impaired sultans, and I whapped my forehead on the archway stones here several times – and examined the mosque and gathering rooms that the Sultan would have employed during his visits here from the Cairo capitol of the Mamluk empire in peacetime after the Crusades. Another advantage of these numerous hidden underground passageways is that I felt I could safely withdraw my hidden bottle of water and take a few quick drinks without being rude!

The interior of the Mamluk palace, from the regular stones of the High Court above

Before I left the castle, I found the tourist police chief in his office just inside the gate before the moat, and asked him about the mysterious “underground passageways” beneath the lower court that I’d read on a sign in the museum. That’s all locked up right now, he said. Well, is it possible to get the man with the key to open it for tourists? I asked. He looked at me like I was a little slow and gently reminded me that it was Friday afternoon in the first week of Ramadan. He’s probably home sleeping, like I wish I was, he snorted. So, I left satisfied that I had seen almost all of what was available in the castle, but of course as with all historic sites in the country, wishing that there were more signs and descriptions on placards throughout the building – there had only been four in the entire place outside of the museum. Most of the information which I’ve repeated for you here came from the two Jordan guidebooks I brought with me.

The mostly-crumbled north-western corner of the palace has had some fairly obvious reconstructions made...

I took a roundabout trip through the center of town to snap a few pictures of the bronze statue of Salah al-Din that sits in the square, and then meandered back down to the bus stop to play the waiting game again. It really is impossible to get lost in Karak; just keep walking until you are about to fall off a cliff, and then just walk around the hill! The waiting game this time around was in a large tour-sized bus, and it was for almost an hour and a half before we started the trek back to Amman. And when we returned, there was only an hour left before the evening’s Iftaar, or fast-breaking, and I knew I was lucky to find a taxi driver. A tall glass of ice cold water back at my apartment never tasted so good after a day of Ramadan touring, and there’ll hopefully be a lot more to come over the next few weeks!

Click the picture above to go to the Amazon review page with the video

I made a video review for the book at Amazon. It’s the first time I’ve ever made a video review for anything, and although it took me quite a few takes to make it look like I wasn’t brain dead and a gibbering idiot, I think it turned out okay, thanks to the magic of Windows Movie Maker (which is actually a terrible program and an embarrassment to the otherwise-great Windows Live suite of programs).

But Coke is not common here in Jordan, even though the penetration of tiny 6×6 meter mini-markets into Amman, called “dukkans,” is incredibly high, at a rate of probably around 3 per city block. Without fail, 9 out of 10 of them will stock only Pepsi, their beloved “Beebsee.” I don’t know why they had to pick the one that has two instances of the letter that doesn’t even exist in Arabic. The Tulip family has heard me ponder this lack of Coke before, and gave me some possible theories.

Decades ago, back when all sorts of international trade deals to bring Western products to the Middle East were being signed, Israel and Coca-Cola became affiliated together, and Pepsi went to the Arab countries. Now, with Palestinian refugees and their descendants making up over half of the residents of Amman, old grudges die hard and Coke is still seen as a symbol of Israel. The industrious Palestinians are known as the merchants and importers of Jordan, and own a disproportionate percentage of the dukkans that provide soft drinks to the citizens. I’ve asked about the lack of Coke, point-blank, to some of my local dukkanjis, such as Marwan. Without fail, the response is always “The people don’t ask for Coke, they only want to drink Beebsee.” It’s a classic example of chicken-and-egg. When the markets only sell Pepsi, and the buyers are all either Palestinian or grew up around Palestinians, it’s easy to see how this one-sided market got started.

A Coke can with Hebrew writing, from last month's trip to Nazareth. And I thought the Arabic script of كوكا كولا was hard to read!

I’ve found myself craving Coca-Cola for the past few weeks. I think I can attribute it to my trip to Nazareth in northern Israel/Palestine in mid July, where I was surrounded by the usual unsubtle signage of the Middle East; massive billboards advertising for Coke that I hadn’t seen in months. I know one dukkan in my neighborhood that sells Coke, and I’ve been buying a two liter every few days. I have been watching his fridge stock and can tell that I’m the only one who’s buying the bottles so I know exactly when to clear my throat politely and remind him that he needs to buy new stock. I guess there’s one advantage to being the only Coke drinker in the neighborhood.

I was in the Shemeisani district yesterday afternoon, killing some of my copious summertime before the third choir practice of the season in the evening. Astute readers may remember that I wrote about the bustling business and banking region of the city in late 2008, because Entity Green had its first office in a tall building on its main thoroughfare. I had just finished eating a particularly salty kebab at the Damashqi Schwarma (Damascus) stand, and although they of course had Pepsi available, I decided that I needed a Coke. I wandered down the familiar main street of Shemeisani, looking in the dukkans I used to frequent for an elusive red-labeled bottle instead of the never-ending lines of blue.

Five minutes of walking through the sultry afternoon heat became fifteen as I re-circled the streets, trying to find more dukkans that had either sprung up like unruly dandelions in my absence or that I’d missed two years ago. My mind was now grimly set towards Coca-Cola, and I cast a baleful eye over the rows of 7-Up, Pepsi, and the Arab-made soft drink called “Shani,” which like most things here contains enough sugar to render a camel into diabetic shock. Three dukkans became four, and then six, and as I walked farther and farther up through the dusty blocks, finally eight dukkans. The owners, sweating in the heat and slumped in lawn chairs under dirty old fans, regarded me curiously as I gazed into their refrigerators. “Beebsee?” they queried me helpfully, and then politely apologized when I asked them if they had Coke hidden in some other cooler. “Beebsee is best!” a few reminded me with a friendly smile.

I knew that somewhere in the heart of Shemeisani there was a full grocery store and mall, but I’d never been in there before, and the large residential zone I was in now on the far edge of the district was utterly unfamiliar. I asked some lounging Egyptian construction workers crouching around a massive bowl of fu’ul whether they knew where the store was, and although they did, a passing young man offered to take the finicky foreigner straight to it. The man was a few years younger than me, in a stiff looking suit, and with a briefcase under one arm. He told me that he had just graduated from university, and I correctly guessed that he was touring the banks and looking for a job. We had only been a few blocks away from the Food City supermarket, and with his guidance, I was inside the blasts of the air conditioning within ten minutes.

I had been walking for almost fifty minutes now in this mad search for the fabled Coca-Cola of Jordan, and I rasped at the security desk. “SOFT DRINKS.” A tall man immediately leaped up and took me directly and proudly to a Pepsi product display located in the center of the store, making a Vanna White-esque gesture towards it. “The other brand,” I told him in Arabic. “I need Coca-Cola.” Startled, he led me to a second, smaller display in the back of the large supermarket with the familiar red highlights.

I picked up a two liter and cradled it lovingly. The man probably thought my brain had melted in the heat and he gently tried to put the bottle in a plastic bag for me right there in the aisle, which I equally gently prevented him from doing. I have searched for this bottle for almost an hour through eight dukkans, I told him. “But Beebsee is better!” he protested, then “…are you an American?” “Yes.” I replied. “My people need Coca-Cola to live.”

Feeling some sort of combination of proud and embarrassed, I made my way back to the other side of the district, clutching my bottle visibly in front of me like a trophy pheasant. I had drank a quarter of it by the time I made my way to the Umnia mobile telephone headquarters a few blocks from the Union Bank that hosts our biweekly practices. I had the Umnia “Double Turdo” Wimax device in my backpack, and now that my six months have expired since I wrote that blog post, I was returning the now-useless device to get my deposit back.

It wasn’t until I had walked back to the bank and settled down to wait the last hour before practice, that I discovered that my headphones were missing. With their unique spring-winding system that coils itself into a small drum when not in use, my brother gave them to me for Christmas in 2008 and I hated to lose them. I pulled myself out of the chair in our practice auditorium and started to retrace my steps back towards the Umnia office. I guessed what had happened; the carabineer clip on the headphones had suddenly gotten very loose over the past few days and I figured that it must have fallen off of my belt buckle somewhere in the past few minutes.

As I turned off of the side streets to rejoin the main highway, I saw two children playing in a parking lot that I had cut through on my earlier journey. I had seen them earlier, too, and the younger one was still on his tricycle. He couldn’t have been more than four years old. He was busily wrapping some black wires around his handlebars. I came closer to him, and sure enough, he had the headphone’s case in one hand and was tugging on the wires to try to get more of them out of their spring-case. A few more moments of his tugging and I probably would have been too late and I wouldn’t have bothered trying reclaimed useless twisted wires, but I crouched next to him and demonstrated how the plug fit into my iPod. The little boy looked up at me in quiet open-mouthed silence. The older boy came around the corner. He was probably about six or so, and he confirmed that this was his little brother Ala’a, and his own name was Ahmad. I explained to the boy how I had dropped my headphones, and showed him the iPod. Ahmad immediately crouched next to his brother and began to unwind the wires, and then handed me the completely undamaged headphones with a big smile. The two boys went back to their games and tricycling without a further glance back at me, and within seconds had pedaled and skipped away around the corner of the building and were out of sight.

It’s been an extremely hot summer, and the government has apparently been initiating mandatory power shutoffs to random neighbors to take pressure off of Jordan’s power plants. The Tulip family up the street had one a few nights ago, and my turn came last night as I was re-heating some spaghetti. I sat there in the dark with only the dim light of a cheap flashlight and the glow of the gas jets heating the water for the noodles. Thankfully it was only for an hour. The neighborhood kids, shouted with joy and there was applause up and down the street.

It’s going to be an interesting weekend. A friend on Facebook just posted this excerpt of an email from the American embassy here in Jordan.

On Saturday the Ministry of Education intends to release the results of the summer high-school exam. Families throughout Amman often celebrate when the results are announced, and for some the celebration is exuberant. Groups of young adults may drive around in cars blowing horns, and some individuals may shoot celebratory gunfire into the air. Please do not be surprised if you hear gunfire.

Ah, Jordan! I’m going to miss your gunfire-laden celebrations.

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

If I had to guess, it would be because the blog content I used for it to create this analysis was from my previous birthday/biking related entry, which has a few Arabic words that I wrote their English transliterations out. I mean, “shish tawooq” isn’t quite as much of a mouth-twister as “Cthulhu” but perhaps that’s where they got the idea.

I do enjoy his writing style and books though, so I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment.

My birthday two weekends ago turned out well; a few Cycling-Jordan  friends came out to see “Inception” with me, and then some EGT and choir friends came to the bar for dinner and some drinks afterward. Came back home by 11, read a little bit of the fifth book in the “Dune” series, and went to bed. A relatively quiet birthday but it was a good, relaxing day.

My third Ramadan is going to be starting in only a few days now. In the two years I’ve been here, it’s moved up the calendar almost a month, as lunar holidays tend to do. Unlike Western or Jewish lunar holidays though, the Islamic calendar is never “reset” back so that you can rely on holidays falling in a certain Gregorian month – it’s always moving. In another half-decade, Ramadan will be falling in the spring months instead of in the blazing summer. If I were a fasting Muslim that was abstaining from even drinking water during the holy month, I’d definitely be looking forward to that part of the lunar cycle!

The guys assemble for their first song as the late King Hussein of Jordan watches over them serenely

It was great to be doing a choir event again. My summer has been relatively low-key so far, and part of that is due to the lack of work and lack of choir events. Dozan has been on summer hiatus since the Germany trip returned, and it’s strange to have my Monday and Wednesday nights back again after so much meticulous practicing for those proceeding three months! Thankfully, Dozan will be re-convening for the fall “Quiz Night” in just a couple days now, so we can all go back to having our bi-weekly choir fix again. Last year’s Ramadan Quiz Night was such a big hit that it was almost a given that we’d do it again for 2010.

For this “mini-concert” with the Whiffenpoofs, we didn’t have our full Dozan choir assembled (many people are gone on vacation) but we sang a few Arabic songs for our standing room-only audience. That was only about 12 minutes, though – the majority of the concert was of course for the Whiffs. After listening to them sing for an hour, the history and tradition that comes from a 101-year-old senior-class choir group with dozens of recorded albums and the pick of the thirty-something other a capella groups on the Yale campus.

For their rendition of the Flight of the Conchord’s “Most Beautiful Girl (in the Room)” they picked my fellow Austria-traveler Mai from the audience to be the butt of their perfectly-harmonized complimenting/teasing.

We had a good old college-style party for them at a friend’s house the next night, after they came back from a day’s touring down in Petra (what else would you visit in Jordan if you only had one day to sight-see?). It was relaxing to be able to kick back with the guys when we were all in casual street clothes instead of dressed up in tuxedos and suits!

Today’s my 24th birthday, and I’ll be taking it easy thanks to being sore and stiff-jointed from yesterday’s Friday Ride of 90 kilometers. The Cycling Jordan guys insisted that I join them down at the company farm in Madaba for the post-ride barbecue that the beginner biking group has every Friday evening after their 25km ride. It was a great day, with 60km of hard uphill riding in the morning, and then 30km of gentle Madaba farm roads in the afternoon, with kebab, shish tawooq, and ariys to top it all off. I have to ask myself; I can’t believe I’m leaving Jordan and the delicious food behind! I need to open up a Jordanian restaurant back in Madison, I think.

Abu Khalid and Ahmad the farm's guard grill the Ariys (flatbread with kebab meat inside) and shish tawooq (grilled and seasoned chicken chunks)

The book I’m describing was written in 2002 by an aspiring young American Jew, during the uncertain times between September 11th and the beginning of the Iraq war. My parents got it for me for Christmas, and I started reading it after finishing “Three Cups of Tea” while I was in Europe. I finished it while in Nazareth, and it definitely will be on my list of books to recommend for anyone who’s interested in viewing this most varied of Arab countries. Ben Orbach stayed for almost a year in Jordan, although it was cut short by the embassy’s request in March 2003 that all American civilians get the heck out of Dodge because of the start of the war. I got a chuckle out of every chapter in his book, mostly because I could nod my head and say, “brother I’ve been there and you’re preaching to the choir.” However, as Orbach was here in Jordan to study Arabic formally and on a research grant, the other half of his chapters, which are written in a format of letters back home to his family and friends, are packed with useful insights on culture, the separation I’ve oft-noticed between the “club life” of West Amman and the “sell you a chicken through your car window” of East Amman (it’s happened to me before). He has some especially good thoughts on the Palestine/Israel conflict, made all the more poignant because of his religion, upbringing, and family living in Israel. Lastly for me, it’s a jaw-dropping moment to realize that in the space of seven years since he wrote these letters home, prices for most common services and goods have doubled in price. Now that I’ve finished it, I’m going to be leaving my copy here in this apartment in Jordan, in the hopes that whatever foreigner (and Philip, God willing) that follows me will enjoy it just as much and for similar reasons. Here it is on Amazon.

When I left on the “Trust Bus” early on Saturday morning, I paid 30 dinars for a one-way ticket to Nazareth, which seemed like a good deal to not have to deal with negotiating other transport once crossing over the Sheikh Hussein river border in the north. I was the only passenger on the bus for three hours; only me, the driver, and the luscious air conditioning. I didn’t know yet that Amman was about to be suffering the worst heat wave of the year at 41 degrees – but I’d be enjoying downright chilly climates at 38 degrees instead, ha ha! At the Jordan side of the border, the bus was loaded up with another dozen Arab travelers and I discovered that this wasn’t just a tourist transport, it was the actual ‘general transport’ bus for people waiting to cross the border.

With more people to entertain than a single drowsy foreigner, the driver switched on Arabic dance music and the mood turned downright festive. Teenage Arab girls in typical western capris and t-shirts splashed duty-free perfume on each other, and four plump middle-aged women in the full conservative black dresses and head scarves took turns yelling “Ohguhd. OHGUHD YALLA!!!” futilely at their hyperactive young children, trying to get to them to sit down. The Jordan River was much wider up here, closer to the Sea of Galilee that is its main source of water. When I saw it last year at the King Hussein border crossing, and at Jesus’ baptismal site even farther south, there was basically no water to speak of in the ditch that used to be a river.

Once over, our bus sat and idled in the shade for another 40 minutes before a bored-looking Israeli woman wandered over, shined under the bus for anything explosive with a long mirror, and waved us over before returning to stand in the shade. The customs and scanning procedure for me was the same as last time – I was immediately singled out for being the only Caucasian on the bus, brought to the head of the line, and then questioned as to my purpose in Israel, purpose in Jordan, what all these weird Central Asian visas in my passport were, and my father and grandfather’s name. I was tempted to add, “and my great-grandfather’s name was Ali bin Saddam bin Usama” but managed to restrain myself. The process took about fifteen minutes for me; longer than it had taken with my parents last time. I guess a single young male traveler coming through the “irregular” northern border was grounds for suspicion.

On the other side of the fence outside, I found the second transport system that the bus driver had arranged for me, an elderly Arab Christian man from Nazareth named Abu Hattem. He didn’t speak English, but was joined by his droop-mustached and dry-humored friend Riyath, a Muslim Nazarene. The former was generally quiet and easygoing, but Riyath introduced himself to me in English by saying, “You’re American? The Arabs in Israel don’t like Americans; you won’t find any that do. Not here or anywhere else. Not after what they’ve done.” I chose not to disagree with him from my own experience but explained my work in Jordan to him and Abu Hattem, who smiled encouragingly at me in the rear-view mirror. As we talked, Riyath seemed to warm to me and admitted that like most Arabs, it was our government that he disliked but he had no problem with Americans who wanted peace and justice for the Arab people.

As we drove past Bet She'an, the Israeli community, Riyath pointed out at these roofless wrecked ruins of houses. "That used to be the Palestinian village of Beisan. But not too many people know its name anymore."

When I asked the two of them what their religions were (not considered a rude question in the Arab world; I’m constantly asked it all the time), Abu Hattem quickly responded that he was a Christian, but Riyath seemed to take offense and instead told me to ask whether someone was Arab or Israeli and whether they wanted peace for all people or only for some. He seemed to get wistful for a moment, then as we pulled into Nazareth’s crowded city market, he looked back at me over the seat and said, “Zakariya, you must remember that for us, Israel is our father and Palestine is our mother. They are all we know and they are both in our blood now. This is not the West Bank or Gaza. I love both my father and my mother. What else can I do? But I wish that my father took better care of all his children.”

I was left standing there at the base of the famous Catholic basilica, not entirely sure where to go next. Thankfully, as I was wandering through the market, avoiding being sold anything (I only had my backpack with me; no room to really take anything back to Jordan), I overheard a family chatting nearby in Arabic that sounded touristic in nature. I asked them if they knew where the Fouzi Azar Inn was, and the adult woman in the group said to me in flawless English, “Where are you from? We’re from Canada, but Nazareth is my hometown. I’m Ieeyan.” She introduced her kids, niece and nephew to me and told me it was great to see another North American traveler visiting the less-traveled parts of Israel.

This is the first sign I saw after stepping off the bus near the towering basilica. From what I'm told, it used to be 70% Christian, 30% Muslim in Nazareth but now those numbers have been reversed and the Muslims are making a strong effort towards further conversions

With Ieeyan’s advice (and her Nazareth-smart knowledge that it was Azar with an aiyn letter, not an A-sounding letter) I was able to easily find the hostel, get checked in, and get a desperately needed shower. Interestingly enough, I ran into Ieeyan’s clan again just an hour later at the Orthodox Church of St Gabriel, just a few blocks away from the hostel, where they were debating sampling the holy water from the spring that by Orthodox legend, Mary was drawing water from when she first heard the angel speak to her to give her the Good News. Before the Orthodox bishop kicked us all out for Saturday mass, I had a chance to sample the water, collected for sampling purposes near the door. Lukewarm and not very appetizing for sure; I guess it’s the spiritual thought that counts.

As we exited the church, squeezing past a couple bearded and droning priests swinging incense, Ieeyan asked what I’d seen so far in the city, and recommended that I see the Salizian Hill on the western side of the city, to get a view out over the city. In fact, why don’t you just join us; my niece and nephew still live here in Nazareth and we’re taking their car up there now; we can fit you if we squeeze, she suggested. So, that’s how I ended up squeezing into the front of their tiny hatchback and being taken up the narrow streets of Nazareth in grand tourist style, up to the top of the hill, where we could see all the way across the valley into the nearby town of Natserat Illit, which was easy to pick out from the several skyscrapers and shining towers of glass. “That’s where all the Jews choose to live,” one of the kids said, gazing across the two-kilometer span between the hills to the other city. “The Arabs stay where they’ve always stayed in their old homes in Nazareth.” They explained to me that although it was an ironic coincidence, “Illit” is pronounced like “Elite” in English but in Hebrew merely means geographically higher, as opposed to higher status. I mused out loud whether it was intended to have the double meaning in English and Hebrew, and there was a wry chuckle of knowing agreement from the group.

As it was Saturday, the Jewish holy day, shops were closing up early and as the sun went down, there wasn’t too much available to do in the city. I went back to the hostel and napped in the dorm room bed I had acquired a few hours earlier, enjoying the cool stone around me. The Inn is named after its last male owner, Mister Fouzi Azar, who died in 1980. The Azar family used to be quite wealthy before 1948, when most of their vast land holdings in the area were liberated from Arab possession by the new Israeli government. Fouzi later could have gone to court over it to ask for recompense (it wasn’t offered up at the time) but ended up being too proud to accept any money for it and refused to say that he had “sold” his land to anyone. After his death the Azar house fell into disrepair for fifteen years, until an Israeli hiker, Maoz Inon, asked Fouzi’s five daughters and grandchildren for permission to turn it into a hostel, which they gave on the condition that it would bear their father’s name, because there had been no male heirs for the Azar name and it had died out with Fouzi. It was a neat story, related to me and some other spellbound tourists in the sunny main sitting room by Fouzi’s granddaughter, who now acts as the day manager for the hostel. Maoz Inon was also there too, and he and the Arabs chatted together in cheerful English about how things were going and doing some cleanup procedures together. If only the West – and Jordan! – could hear more about such amazing stories of benevolent cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians like this to create new businesses like this.

Suraida Nasser, Fouzi Azar's granddaughter (back to wall, closest to picture) tells her family history to guests

I didn’t nap through straight to the next morning, but got up and wandered a bit around the lively borders between the Old and New cities with a New Zealand tourist that was also staying in the hostel. I taught him a little Arabic and we sampled the incredibly delicious and expensive Palestinian schwarmas being sold on the street corners. In Jordan, a little schwarma-wrap sandwich is usually about the equivalent of 84 USD cents, and is 2 centimeters in diameter. In Arab communities here though, they are massive, meat-stuffed spheres the size of my two fists balled together and you can choose a variety of delicious toppings to put on them, like onions with sumac powder, cabbages, red beets, olives, pickles, tahini sauce, and even some stalls will have a zingy mango chutney sauce. Of course, they’re also about eight times more expensive, but I made sure to eat at least one per day. I wish I could find a shop that sold schwarma like that here in Jordan, but I guess it’s just one of those things that will stay on the other side of the river. I wondered the same thing after I came back from Egypt in regards to koshri, and I’ve heard there’s one restaurant on Gardens Street that sells it, but I have yet to find this mythical place.

Besides the meat and some "starter onions" everything else on the counter is basically there for the stuffing. Delicious!

The most famous and eye-catching structure on the Nazareth skyline is the Basilica of the Annunciation. Like so many things in the Holy Land’s religious armada, there are two of them. I had visited the Orthodox Church’s small church the previous day, but the Catholic church is obviously the more well-known of the two. I was taken on a tour of the old city that morning by Julian, an American volunteer who’d been living in Nazareth for a month, working at the hostel and giving tours. In fact, with the exception of Suraida and a few others, almost the entire staff of the Fouzi Azar is volunteers. He pointed out the dozens of internationally-donated mosaics and artwork from countries all over the world. Notably absent were any other Arab countries, but the USA had one of the largest donations, a three meter tall fresco of a steel-wrapped Madonna in a solar wreath of light and fire. Because it was Sunday, there were Arab church services going on in both locations, and although we were able to stand in the back of the huge basilica hall (seriously; it was like one of those southern American mega-churches, except attractively designed) when we came to the door of the Orthodox church, we were shooed out by a priest. The basilica actually had two layers; one for the church and another for the “grotto” where the Catholics believe Mary’s home was.

Julian snapped this shot in the dim sunken chamber housing the shrine of Mary's grotto. Directly above us was an opening in the ceiling from which we could hear the hymns clearly.

After Julian finished the tour, he returned to the hostel and I prepared to take a trip to the north and visit Lake Tiberius, better known in the west as the Sea of Galilee. The hostel had a list of bus routes and times, and although I thought I was sitting in the  right place, I was worried because all of the times and locations were written in Hebrew, which everyone seems to be able to read except for me.

The bus stop I sat in was across the street from the Orthodox church, and when I entered the only other waiter was an elderly Arab man wearing a ski cap and a faded blue dress suit who pantomimed asking for a cigarette. I sat down at another bench, and he got up and walked shyly towards me. “My name is Saleem. Everybody love me,” he muttered. And then again. And again. I nodded politely and agreed with him that yes, I’m sure everyone did love him. A young Middle Eastern woman with long curly black hair sat down on the other side of me and watched this exchange with some curiosity. Saleem returned to his original position and muttered quietly to himself. I watched the traffic honking and waving to Saleem. “Ya Abu Beeb!” several of them cried. “Yalla ya Abu Beeb!” called young men in a car with a blaring stereo. A lot of drivers of both cars and buses greeted him in some way, and he returned each one with a wave and murmured “Ahlan, ahlan,” which means “welcome.”

It was obvious that Saleem/Abu Beeb wasn’t going to be entirely helpful in determining bus schedules; he asked me where I was staying and I told him “Fouzi Azar’s house,” and he stared off into space and commented that he hadn’t seen Fouzi in a long time; and where had he gone? When the girl next to me took a phone call and chatted with a friend in Arabic, I took a chance and asked her in English if she knew about the bus schedule. She stared at me, wide-eyed, and said she didn’t speak English. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to get rid of me, but I figured she couldn’t be too conservative if she didn’t have a headscarf and had sat down next to a foreign man. In any case, she was talking to the wrong foreigner if she was trying to dissuade me from talking to her, because of course I then asked her the same question in Arabic.

The woman turned out to be quite helpful in fact. She said the schedule to the city of Tiberius wasn’t written, but she took the time to call a friend to see if she knew, and told me that it would be coming in twenty minutes. We chatted, and she told me her name was Tarneem, an Arabic word that means “hymn” and usually implies Christianity. When she asked me what my religion was, I took it as an opportunity to ask her the same. “I used to be Christian, but I converted to Islam a few years ago,” she replied. I was surprised, but didn’t press the issue further and she said that she was happy with the choice. “It didn’t use to matter what you were,” she commented. “The Israelis building Illit up there makes everyone’s tensions higher.” Before my bus came, she left me with a last wry joke. “You see how the Star of David for Israel is made of two triangles together. The triangle pointing upwards is for the Jews, and the one falling downwards is for the rest of us.”

On the hour-long bus ride to Tiberius, the only other people on the bus before me were two women, one from Taiwan and one from America. The American introduced herself as Lillian and joked with me that she recognized me as a Midwestern person right away by my accent. A classical Hebrew teacher back in the states, Lillian was a very interesting Jewish woman for me to talk to. I learned a lot about Israel and Judaism through her and the questions that she had about it to, picked up during her month-long visit to family. It was great to find someone so open-minded towards Arab and Israeli communication, and she was even talking about trying to find future ways to visit the West Bank area to see it for herself. Even though she told me, “I’m probably one of the worst people to ask about Judaism!” I found her to be quite educated; asking a fellow tourist and information-hunter is always one of the best conversations you can have.

I only had a few hours in Tiberius, and I was lucky to have Lillian because almost everything was solely in Hebrew; there was no English or Arabic written anywhere that I could see except some safety signs in English near the sea. We jumped a fence near a burnt-out ruin of an old mosque, and we were on the rocky beach of the Sea of Galilee. I was still badly burned from my bike ride on Friday, and hadn’t brought my swimming trunks with me. The two of us rolled up our jeans and waded out knee-deep into the water, as silvery-brown little fish flitted away from our feet into the darker shadows of larger rocks, just out of reach.

Then they came back and started sucking on our toes. It was amusing.

I wish I could have chatted for longer about politics and religion with Lillian, but it was rapidly getting dark and the last bus was leaving in only a half hour. We grabbed an Israeli beer at a “deck pub” sticking out into the sea, and then I literally had to sprint, stomach sloshing slightly, back in the general direction of the bus stop, keeping my eyes open for the familiar green-colored Egged buses. I made it back with only seconds to spare before the driver pulled out, and I thanked him in Arabic, and then in Hebrew for good measure just in case, thanks to a few key words that Lillian had shared with me.

And that was supposed to be the end of my last full day on the other side of the river. But it wasn’t. Abu Hattem, my original driver from Saturday morning, had told me that he’d take me back to Jordan on Monday afternoon for 180 shekels, or about 33 dinar. However, thanks to the hostel and a travel guide I’d met, I discovered that there was a national bus leaving every morning at 8:30, for the cost of 75 shekels. So, instead of leaving on Monday like I had planned, I paid 70 shekels for a third night at the Fouzi, canceled my ride back with Abu Hattem, and made a reservation for 75 shekels for Tuesday morning. I ended up saving 35 shekels, too.

As I  mentioned at the beginning of this article, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do with my extra full day in the city. Some of my coworkers at Whitman had recommended the “Nazareth Village,” exhibit near the south end of the old city, so I thought I’d walk over and give that a look. The village is a modern reproduction of what esteemed archeologists think 1st century Nazareth may have looked, and the land was donated by the hospital up the hill. They didn’t think there was anything special about this particular hill, but after they started digging they were reminded that in the Holy Land, everything is built on something when they dug into a thousand-year-old terrace system for a vineyard. That’s where our guide started our little group off, showing off a cross-section of rocks and soil depicting how the ancient Israelites used buried limestone “steps” to guide irrigation water down to each lower step so that none was wasted, a method that Palestinian farmers had also been using for centuries. People don’t realize how these agrarian peoples like Palestinians were connected to the land that was taken from them; after a family sets up a hugely complicated network of buried irrigation channels, covers them with soil, just being told “Okay, just go somewhere else to farm; no big deal,” is just about the worse thing imaginable.

I noticed that our guide seemed to be speaking in fluent Arabic to the various older actors working the looms, carpentry shop, and fields, and that he had a small wooden crucifix swinging from his neck. I was surprised he was speaking Arabic, because in his cargo shorts, t-shirt, and crew cut, I figured he was another American volunteer like at the Fouzi Azar Inn. As everyone else trooped out of the weaving building, I paused and asked the elderly woman at the loom whether our guide was an Arab. Oh yes, of course, she answered. His name is Majad (which means glory). He’s Christian then? I asked, pointing at my own crucifix on my neck. The old lady smiled as she worked, glancing up at me. “Sweetie,” she said to me Arabic, “all of the people at this village are Christians. Hurry and catch the group and Jesus be with you.”

I had a chance to chat with Majad after the tour; he took me out to see the tomb exhibit that I had missed seeing before. He explained that he’d been going to school at university in Arizona for several years and had a lot of family in America, which explained his almost complete lack of recognizable accent. As an Orthodox, he was curious about some Lutheran traditions, which I explained to him as we stood in the shade of a large oak tree shading the small cave door of the faux tomb. It’s interesting; it seems that no matter what, I end up engaging every person I’ve met in Palestine/Israel in a religion discussion, whether I meant to or not!

That evening, Julian took myself and some of the other newer volunteers out on a hike out to the city limits, for the purpose of showing the route of the Jesus Trail to the other volunteers so that they in turn could assist tourists with the hike, which begins in Nazareth. The Jesus Trail is another project of the aforementioned Maoz Inon who created the Fouzi hostel, and there’s a lot of crossover between hostel guests and trail hikers. I had a chance to check out the website and some of the large, detailed maps of it they had pinned to a wall in the hostel; it looks and sounds like a beautiful way to spend four days hiking through the north wilderness and retracing some of Jesus’ best known visits around his homeland.

The three other people that went out were a Jewish girl visiting Israel on the Birthright tour, a tall and lanky Dutch guy with a lot of tattoos, and a friendly Mexican girl that had checked me into the hostel on Saturday afternoon. Because of her darker skin and hair, combined with my tiredness, I had figured that she was an Arab and repeatedly tried to speak with her in Arabic to be polite while she was showing me around the hostel. It wasn’t until hours later that I discovered that we were from the same continent and she had no idea what I was saying, just nodding politely. Maybe she thought I was an Arab. Anyway, the five of us clambered up the 400 stairs that lead up the Salizian Hill just behind the hostel, with me doing my best to not ask too many questions of my Nazareth-savvy companions and just enjoy their conversation and the cool ambiance of the early evening.

We stopped for 1-shekel popsicles at the top of the hill, which in the heat and humidity, seemed to end up more on my hands and face than anything else

It took about forty-five minutes for us to reach the edge of the city, and the same to return. As we descended back down the hill the way we had come, dogs barked at us from inside the jumbled houses piled on top of each other on the hill, and I could hear the sound of children playing in the darkness behind the walls and the sound of old men talking and most likely smoking argeilleh or playing cards. In the darkness, we all needed to be careful to watch our footing on the steps and not step into the half-meter wide gash running down a lot of the stairs, where a century ago donkeys had been walking up and down this hill carrying heavy bags of goods.

After we returned, I watched a movie with my hostel friends before calling it a night around midnight. I was quite drowsy when I stumbled up out of the Old City the next morning at 7:45, but thankfully I had scouted out the bus station after leaving the Nazareth Village yesterday and the traffic wasn’t so bad that early in the morning. I had coordinated my last few shekels perfectly, down to my tenth of a shekel coins (about 3 cents USD) to be able to pay for the bus, and the Israeli exit tax. The ticket office refused to take my small shekel coins though and only wanted banknotes instead. The bespectacled little man flatly handed them back to me, explaining that he didn’t like them, and then reached into a drawer and dumped another handful of small change into my hands. “Give that to the border guards; they’ll have a use for it I imagine.”

It’s probably a good thing he gave me that change because an hour and a half later, I stood incredulously in front of a smirking twerp who had just told me that it would be another 4.5 shekels to leave Israel. “I just checked the government website yesterday!” I protested. “It says it’s 94 shekels for the exit tax, not 98.5!” The extra is for our commission, he smiled at me. “What commission,” I growled; “there’s a sign over your desk right in front of me that says in big green letters, ‘no commission’.” His smile seemed to get wider. “Well, now we take a commission.” So much for my shekel-perfect planning, even with the extra ~2 shekels from the ticket seller. I was about to tell this guy where he could insert his extra shekels when a young German guy next to me in line nudged me and said “Here man, take these extras I have.” Thank goodness for his random kindness; otherwise I would have had needed to pay with my credit card and I’d have 96 worthless shekels still with me now back in Jordan. But sometimes, it’s not about the places you’re visiting – it’s about the people – Israeli, Arab, and everyone else I met this weekend. It was a great trip, and I learned a lot – definitely more than I thought I would and from many different sources! It’s the kind of trip that I think Benjamin Orbach would be proud of.

One final note: I didn’t find much information about it on the internet (possibly because of their horrible, flash-based website that couldn’t be searched by Google properly) but if you’re in Jordan and want to take advantage of the lowest priced round-trip ride to Nazareth and back, it’s only 30 JD with Nazarene Tours. I got the business card of the contact on the Jordanian Side, it’s Ahmad al-Musri and you can reach him at +962-79-692-7455.

There’s been some changes at EGT. Lillie left the company to return to America for school, a few days after I came back to work, and at the end of June, Jeff left as well. Dan, my housemate that joined me at Philip’s place back in early February, also moved out while I was away and so I came back to an empty house again. He still works at EGT in the composting and agricultural department, so I still see him, but it’s weird to not have him around, listening to new and interesting music I’ve missed out on for the past two years, and cooking up massive pans of sauteed onions on the beat up old stove.

They don't like being photographed too much, so I promised them I'd only put it up if I was clearly the silliest looking person in the picture. I win!

He left me with ideas on how to be a better cook, though. Dan would tease me a little about my OCD tendencies to try to cook things exactly to a perfect recipe, down to the half gram, and after watching him cook up simple yet tasty dinners for four months, I decided that my immune system is probably up to levels high enough that I could chew through uranium, so making some less-organized and regimented food concoctions would be a good way to amuse myself with some extra time. Besides Dan’s Famous Sauteed Onions, I’ve been making spaghetti variations and other types of pasta with raw tomatoes. They take a long time to cook and prepare compared with my two-year-old habits of just walking up the street and paying a JD or two for a pile of schwarma (and I still do that most of the time) but the pride is definitely there.

I was coming back from church two weekends ago, and my friend Omar gave me a call and invited me over to Books@Cafe where he was having a beer with a friend of his. He informed that he had been offered a job in Dubai, and was taking it. Omar was our champion cyclist in the past two Dead 2 Red races from the past years, so myself and our fellow cyclists were very sad to see him go. He left a few days ago, but not before I went with him and some other friends to Wadi Zarqa Maa’een near the dead sea. The four of us had a great time, but when we reached a steep wall in front of us at the end, with an even larger waterfall rushing over us. A group of rough looking men were relaxing in the spray of the water, wearing faded t-shirts and cutoff jeans. They proved to be helpful though, and showed me how to climb halfway up the waterfall and where to take the four meter jump into the water below.

To atone for losing Janelle's camera two months ago in Wadi Hassa, I brought my own NOT waterproof camera for this trip and it survived just fine (it was close at times)

We had to turn around after that and splash back through the water for another 2 hours to reach Omar’s car at the dirt and gravel lot by the Dead Sea highway. I rejoined the Cycling Jordan community after not being with them in rides since the Dead 2 Red in March – that was definitely a good change! I just went on a long 82 kilometer ride this morning, the same route that I called one of the unluckiest bike rides imaginable last year. This year’s was much more smooth, and although I did get sunburned (those three weeks in Europe destroyed any slight tan/dark-skin sun protection I used to have) it wasn’t nearly as bad, and only two people got flat tires and only one needed to turn back. Good enough odds to bet on!

Tomorrow I’m going to be taking a short weekend trip back to Palestine/Israel to visit Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, two locations that I would have seen last year with our choir trip in September if the Israelis hadn’t decided to essentially cancel it at the last moment. Apparently, there’s a direct bus line that goes from Amman, to the north crossing, “Sheikh Hussein Bridge,” and then all the way to Nazareth, for 30 dinars. I’ve booked my hostel stay for two nights and I’m looking forward to having one last visit to the Holy Land.

That brings me to the biggest change of the summer…my decision to return to America. Some contracts and work didn’t go through as planned, plus I was starting to get homesick after the trip to Egypt in April, so after I returned from Europe I officially booked the plane tickets…the first one-way flight I’ve booked in two years. I found the most budget tickets I’ve ever seen – $520 to fly from Amman, to Riga, Latvia, to Copenhagen, and then to Chicago. Considering that it was $400 cheaper than the next available option from Turkish Air, I figured the strange flight plan was worth it. I can only hope that they don’t attempt to harvest my organs during the flight, or else I might need that extra cash to attempt to buy them back again.

With Jeff, Lillie, and myself all departing from EGT, it’s really made me stop and think and look back on the two years we’ve all been together, putting the place together – literally and emotionally. Classes and buildings have expanded like wildfire, and we’ve added departments left and right. Wajih is talking about who he wants to hire to replace me; he says that the technology required to manage and make sure the center has its tech running properly requires someone full time, not just once or twice a week like I’ve been since last July. It makes me proud, very proud to have been part of such an awesome group of dedicated people, working for something like assisting refugees struggling here in Jordan.

In my opinion, the place has slowly been changing over from requiring constant foreigner support and adjustments to its own well-balanced, routine, and organized system, managed almost entirely by talented Arab administration like my former translator Wamidh, Ahmad, Wajih, and Khalil, not to even mention the accounting team and the recycling team. I think if Philip was here with us now in Jordan again, he’d be particularly pleased with that aspect of what EGT has become – self-sufficient, and able to run itself without foreigners flying halfway around the globe. Technically, with every month that passes, I think that we’re “needed” at EGT less and less to provide organization and ideas for the running of the company. That’s just my opinion of course, and I’m only there twice a week these days.

It’s time for me to spend my last two months preparing for the return that has been booked and sealed for September 8th, 2010 – the day before my dad’s birthday! Finding and training replacements for PTEE, Whitman, and EGT will hopefully go smoothly. There’s so much to see and do still before I leave, and going to Nazareth is one of those things. Something tells me that these fifty-eight remaining days are going to go by way too fast, just like I said two years ago when I bought another set of plane tickets…

Standing on the hill behind the Schönbrunn Palace and concert stage on the first evening

First, I have to say shame on you Vienna for not offering the ‘City Name’ Card the same way that Innsbruck and Salzburg do. Although I’ve enjoyed my time in the city and the weather has been at Jordan-levels of lovely, it’s been a lot more difficult for me to see things within the city because of the comparatively high prices. I spent the first day, poised with umbrella in hand (the forecast said rain, although it didn’t, and after being caught unaware in Salzburg, I don’t get fooled again) searching for sights to see.

Daniel was right about being over-castled, museumed, and churched in Vienna (several new words I’ve invented, I see). My hostel was only about a 10 minute walk from the edge of the old section of town, and when I reached the large main street separating the official “old” from the new, a huge statue of either Brahms or Beethoven was there to greet me. I could see several church steeples poking up through the trees and buildings ahead of me, each one of them more ornately coated with carvings than the previous, like monstrous upside down ice cream cones. I didn’t know what to see yet, or where to go, so I basically tried to find the tourist information center, just like the previous two cities, and take it from there.

Inside the center, my somewhat cross-eyed desk clerk handed me a packet of information describing the “Vienna Card.” He asked me how long I was staying in the city, and I told him it would only be for two days. “You don’t want one of these cards then,” he said. “They’ll only save you a euro per exhibit you visit. You won’t recover the cost on them unless you are visiting a lot of places.” I pondered it a moment, and told him I wanted to buy the 18 euro card because of the free transport services too. He looked at me severely (or he may have been looking behind me severely; I couldn’t quite tell). “Listen to me son, if that’s all you want, just get the Transport card for 10 euros and you can ride wherever you want.” His advice seemed sound, and it sounded like he was bored enough that he was willing to keep arguing if I objected, so I bought the Transport card and for the first time, let the city keep its odious tourist card.

With my new and extremely detailed street map in hand, I laid out my plans for the next days. There was a place called the Prater that looked interesting, an Islamic Center on the other side of the Danube river, and of course the two massive castles, the Hofburg Palace and the Schönbrunn Palace. Other than that, I figured I would play it by ear and see what I could find!

I used my new transport card to navigate the clean and well-labeled metro system northward from the old city to the Prater, in what was originally a hunt to find an open grocery store but when I saw a massive Ferris wheel over the trees, I figured that since I was in the area I would visit it (as you can probably tell, I was much more relaxed in my sightseeing now that I didn’t have a card granting me automatic free entrance everywhere). The small park linked to above is home to the world’s oldest Ferris wheel, the Riesenrad, which was built in 1897 and rebuilt after its almost total destruction during WWII. For eight euros I took a ride on it, looking out over the old city to the south and the modern skyscrapers on the north side of the Danube to the other side. The afternoon sunset was catching the glass on the Milennium City tower, almost blinding as our conglomeration of ancient spokes and hub rotated slowly for 20 minutes. I shared the cabin with an amorous young Italian couple and a half dozen American women who seemed to be quite concerned about the safety of the wheel (the Italian couple had more important things to think about, such as making out as much as possible in one corner and completely ignoring the scenery).

The Prater's eldest attraction rises above the garish entry gate

Grocery store not yet found, I settled for an expensive slice of pizza in the amusement park before heading back to the metro station and going to the Schönbrunn Palace. The station was close to the palace, but after taking a couple hours that evening touring the massive and free public gardens behind the Palace, I’m surprised the city didn’t just bite the bullet and build the station directly into the massive grounds. The palace itself had been closed for hours, but I was surrounded by tourists, joggers, and mothers with strollers enjoying the perfect weather and neatly manicured lawns of the grounds.

To my joy, the Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra was setting up on stage a couple hundred meters behind the church, and although tickets weren’t free to get into the seats, the speakers were large and I wasn’t the only casual tourist leaning against the fence watching the activities. It looked like only a half dozen people had actually purchased tickets and were sitting in the first ten rows, but I’m sure they were having the time of their lives. Cameras zoomed about on cables suspended over my head, and the setup crew for the stage sat on boxes near me and chatted amicably with the Austrian joggers (I assume it was amicably although of course I had no idea). The show started a few minutes after I arrived, and I stayed for 15 minutes leaning against that fence and watching them warm up, and even as I journeyed on to continue walking up the hill pictured at the top of this post, small hidden speakers all over the grounds carried their beautiful chords to my ears, iPod-less for one of the rare times in the trip.

The Gloria secondary hall looms high above as the Orchestra warms up. The music was great but their PR needs to work on attendance!

I knew that I would be coming back again to tour the palace itself, so I made my exit via a side route from the grounds, and spent another hour trying to find a working metro line that would get me back to my hostel. It’s interesting to note that while I was in Vienna, the metro line I was using happened to break both days I was there, but while I was in Cairo two months earlier, there was nary a hitch in metro operation. I sat there in the thankfully well-ventilated train cars with dozens of other bored-looking commuters, wishing that I understood what the voices on the speakers were saying and relying on momentary descriptive kindnesses from the other passengers who saw my bafflement and explained to me that something was broken, again.

Another interesting thing I’ve noticed about all the buses and metro lines throughout Austria (and it was the same in Bavaria, too) is that all of the ticket lines are entirely unmonitored. The turnstiles at the metro entrances have had their ticket collectors removed, and the ticket boxes are just credit card/euro-handling machines that makes it very easy to go for hours of travel without ever interacting with a person. There are signs up that state that to use the metro without a ticket is subject to the choice of an 80 euro fine or an immediate arrest, but they don’t mention that this is only if they catch you. Throughout my 10 days in Austria, using buses everywhere else but the metro in Vienna, I didn’t see a single ticket checker. It was the same way on the short-ride train on the first day to go from the small Munich station to the large one – and that was the one I bought 3 extra tickets for it because I thought I had accidentally stamped the first ones too early! Waste of 7.50 euro, but oh well. I never risked it myself; leery about 80 euros or arrest and with too tight a schedule to risk either of them, but I know that other people had less qualms and got away with minor lawbreaking without a problem. I couldn’t imagine the same system being enforceable in Cairo or New York City, could you? It makes me curious as to what Austria’s mindset about this was when this idea was brought up; as it’s obvious there used to be ticket collecting machines.

I want to give my approval to the hostel I stayed at both nights, the Believe-It-Or-Not. Although I was initially (quite) worried about what I was paying 50 euro for as I climbed cracked and crumbling stone steps inside an unmarked old apartment building, the good reviews on Hostelworld.com proofed correct when Michalis the Greek attendant buzzed me and I saw how the apartment had been completely renovated in a very modern style. Frankly, it looked more like your suave buddy’s apartment in Upper Manhattan than a hostel. Like most of the Europeans I had met so far, Michalis enthusiastically inquired about life working in Jordan, especially when he found I had connections to refugee programs. It’s very interesting but there’s just general public-service wish with many of the people that I ran into, who apparently view refugee work as a high calling. I handed out some business cards and website names, and hopefully they can find some interesting information.

The Believe-It-Or-Not was a great place to stay for 2 nights. It’s one of the rare “all inclusive” hostels that provide you with every necessity as part of the regular price. The Yoho had like most hostels charged me for shampoo, but here there were just dispensers for it in the bathrooms. Free laptops, a big flatscreen, and wifi were in the sunny open central room. Free coffee, uncooked pasta, cookware, juice, milk, and even a bottle of wine were all there to greet the 12 of us – and that number is fully booked. There are only two rooms, an 8 person and a 4 person. I was staying on the “second level” of the 8 person room, an obvious new edition reached by a spiral staircase. But the Believe-it-or-Not got it right: plenty of power outlets. It seems to be a mental plague throughout all hostels I’ve stayed in previously that don’t realize that the formula is # of people X 2 for the minimum number of outlets. We have to charge our cameras and mobiles, after all.

A hostel so good, even Edward Norton stays there! Jesse, a fellow American tourist, displays the breakfast spread.

After  a tasty breakfast of toast and cereal the next morning, I returned to the Hofburg castle that I had seen during my walking tour the previous day. Photography was allowed in the first half of it, the Royal Silver Collection, but not in the second half which was a tour through the life of the troubled Empress Sisi, the second-to-late empress of the Habsburg Empire and wife to Franz Joseph. As always, the useful and ever-present audio guides were interesting and informative, and the Silver Collection was a unique and powerful message to the size and age of the Imperial court, with sets of hundreds of silver and gold table sets, a 30-foot long center table spread, and beautifully painted porcelain tablesets (after the silver and gold had been sold to fund the battles against Napoleon), each one entirely unique. The description of the “Foot Washing Ceremony” next to a set of steins and a wooden washtub was very cool; apparently the emperor and empress chose 24 elderly paupers per year and then washed their feet and gave them a royal meal and gifts in the palace. Just as good was the story of Sisi, who apparently became world famous after her assassination for her anguished melancholy and her beauty. They even made a movie about her and spelled her name wrong! The audio guide did a good job giving what would otherwise be a regular “castle tour” into a more personal experience, talking about the good relationship between Franz and his wife, and how much he loved her, even as she slipped into deeper depression. Each room that we were walking through became more than just an old palace-turned-museum, but part of the story of Sisi and Franz…not to mention the countless generations before them, which were not neglected of course!

Apparently, this method of napkin folding is a "Secret of the Austrian State" and only five people in the whole world know how to do it. It's still used for state dinners even now.

I used my metro card to cross the Danube river after the castle, because I had read about an “Islamic Center” in Vienna that I thought would be neat to visit. The stations here on this side of the city on a Tuesday before the end of the workday were basically empty, and I was able to easily find the Islamic Center/mosque from its shining white minaret , visible from the other side of the river even as we were crossing over. In front of the quiet building, I found three Arab gardeners, chatting with each other and planting marigolds. From their carefree, jovial conversation and laughter, I (correctly) deduced they were Egyptians before I introduced myself to them in Arabic. “An American that speaks Arabic, here in Austria?” one of them chuckled. “What a strange journey for you!” They didn’t know too much about the center itself, but they told me to go ahead and go inside; no one would mind. Like always, I removed my shoes as I stepped into the prayer area, and sat on the rich carpeting thinking for awhile and staring at the river, visible through the trees to the southwest. There was an Islamic lesson taking place; a covered muhijabeh woman speaking German to a group of young girls and boys seated on the carpet in front of her. They were just finishing up, and as they all rose and the children scattered to play outside, I hailed the woman with a “Salaamu Alayki” which she returned with a smile. She was Turkish, not Arab, like Daniel’s neighbors in Innsbruck, and we couldn’t really communicate, but I expressed my pleasure to her as best I could about seeing girls and boys studying in the mosque together, something that would never happen in Jordan. She knew a bit of Classical Arabic from prayers, but couldn’t have a conversation in it, so I dug deep in my memory to attempt to express myself in the most common Classical phrases I knew. She of course thought I was German and kept trying to talk to me in her second language, although I tried to explain I was an American, like I had with the Egyptians outside. It’s been such a long time since I couldn’t speak Arabic two years ago that I had forgotten how frustrating it is to not be able to communicate when there’s no one bilingual there to help you.

The three Egyptians, hard at work. It must be great for them to be surrounded by so much water and green; they told me they'd been here for 14 years.

Outside again, I asked the Egyptians who the administrator, the sheikh of the building was. They pointed to a well dressed man in a business suit and dark shades, walking towards a large Mercedes. “He’s a Saudi; just came a few months ago to run this place. No one knows much about him; he keeps to himself.” I walked up to the man, who was unlocking his car, and stuck out my hand in a friendly manner and told him, in Arabic, that it was good to see that Muslims living in Austria had a place to go for worship, and asked him how many Muslims there were in his mosque. He regarded me through his shades and asked me where I was from, then after hearing my response asked me in perfect English, “Who wants to know, and why?” He answered my questions briskly and efficiently, then excused himself. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at his reaction – when Americans speaking Arabic and inquiring about mosque attendance rates in Europe show up at an Austrian Islamic Center, it’s natural and in fact a bit obvious why a sheikh would be unsure of his visitor’s intentions.

After a few more hours of touring the relatively unremarkable museum housing centuries of obsoleted royal furniture (it was part of my combo ticket that included the Habsburg and Schönnbrun), I returned to the hostel. The wearies of travelers fatigue was definitely starting to catch up me after all this traveling and I was feeling a little ill. I made myself some pasta and retired to bed early.

The next day, as I packed up my suitcase to leave a European place of lodging for the last time, Michalis told me to go ahead and just leave all my bags here while I was doing my last sightseeing at Schönbrunn and he’d let me use one of the lockers (also free, but I thought it was technically for guests who were still paying money). With a lightened spring in my step and feeling better, I entered the massive tourist pack that is Schönbrunn in the morning and waited for half an hour to get into the place. No photography, of course, and although they tried to evoke Sisi and Franz’s love story like the Hofburg had, it wasn’t as effective and in the end the castle was a fancy and very, very large set of beautifully furnished rooms. The audioguide wouldn’t even let us rewind, unlike any of the other ones I’d used, which was obviously intended to hurry us through as quickly as possible. I found this annoying since I’m the kind of person that likes to catch everything the narrator is saying and because of the crowds, that was often difficult. Oh well. Most of the windows were shuttered, but occasionally as we rounded a corner we’d see the beautiful gardens that I’d visited two days ago, or the smaller private gardens that were a separate extra ticket that I didn’t have.

A look over the 'Privy Gardens' that I hastily snapped from the window before the Gendarmes carried me and my camera away

That was all there was too it, and after selecting a few last “Tastes of Austria” from the local grocery store before I left, I retrieved bag from Michalis’ care and bought the out-of-city train ticket that would take me to the Austrian airport. I had to do a bit of shuffling, as my luggage had somehow grown almost seven kilos over the twenty-kilo limit. By the time I walked back to the checkin counter a third time for a reweighing, I was wearing three pairs of pants, four shirts, and I had a sweater tied around my waist in a jaunty fashion. This is all going on with three cans of fine Austrian beer in me and it’s almost thirty degrees outside. The sympathetic check-in woman let me go with my bag still almost two kilos overweight, and I begun the return home to Jordan, heading north to Frankfurt first.

It almost became a rerouting through Israel, though, when they announced over the plane’s loudspeakers that we were going to be delayed by an hour. They read off everyone’s connecting flight and when they mentioned Amman, they said that a flight had been booked going from Germany to Tel Aviv, and then to Amman. I looked down at the black and white, Palestinian keffiyeh I was wearing around my neck and decided I really would rather not deal with the chance of being further delayed by interrogations with the child soldiers I’ve dealt with before at the Jordan/Israeli border. When we touched down, I sprinted across the entire airport and through a large underground terminal transfer line to reach my gate with 5 minutes to spare. Unfortunately for everyone else, they held the plane on my behalf (sorry everyone) because the tickets had already been rebooked going into Israel and my luggage needed to be transferred and reloaded. I sat quietly in my seat. A couple of cute Arab girls a few seats away from me were wearing keffiyehs much like mine, and they looked over at me when I sat down and smiled broadly. I decided I had made the right decision.

It was past two in the morning when our plane touched down in the familiar desert airport of Queen Alia, and I settled in with my luggage outside the terminal for what I assumed would be a long wait until the first Amman/Airport bus arrived at 6:30. I happened to fall into conversation with another man waiting for the bus, a Jordanian named Mohammad who worked with Arab refugees in Norway who was coming home to visit. He was middle aged and quite cheerful for someone non-caffeinated, and after talking for awhile, he asked a sweeper nearby where we could find some coffee, as it was probably obvious that I was quite sleepy. The sweeper said, “Well, there’s shops inside, but those are for the tourists [his eyes swept over me briefly] – if you just want coffee, there’s a little restaurant behind the terminal that has…regular prices.” Mohammad happily bought me several coffees and a Pepsi as we talked about working with refugees, his opinions on life in Europe, and of course our respective families. He even was able to hunt out a bus that was leaving at 4, and helped me load my numerous bags into the back of it.

The sun was mere minutes away over the horizon as we started to tear back towards Amman and the towers that I could see framed in the glow of the morning. The driver switched on the radio and tuned it to al-Athan Fajr, the morning call to prayer. The full bus behind me was suddenly filled with whispered and murmured sounds of people quietly repeating Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem…in the name of God, the Ever-merciful and All-merciful. Goats were grazing out in the scrubs of grass out in the gravel and sand a few feet away from the road. It was good to be back.