In some cities, like in Cairo, I’ve felt that there are so many places to visit and document that there’s no possible amount of lifetimes that could be used. But this past weekend in Cairo, I decided to take a page out of Benjamin Orbach’s book, “Live from Jordan,” and make sure that I’m making use of my time in the Arab East to reconnect to the people and culture itself, instead of just the worn bricks and carvings that have often formed a basis of my travels. They’ve been around for hundreds if not thousands of years; I have time to see them. The days of my stay in the Arab world, however, are dwindling, slowly but surely.

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.

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

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When I returned from Europe to Jordan almost exactly one month ago, I came back to a different social scene that when I left. School got out at Whitman a week after I left, and most of my fellow teacher friends had left, including the two Jons, my neighbors up the street. With Whitman no longer being in session, I haven’t need to stick to a traditional schedule for any work all month, and have been jumping between relative boredom and exciting adventures.

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.

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One of Dani's pictures from the top of Hafelkar, an easily-accessible mountain overlooking Innsbruck

Note: to get a birds-eye view of the city as I saw it from the top of Hafelkar, download this Google Maps .KMZ file with some extra details added in!

Using my encyclopedic knowledge of Salzburg after three days of living there, getting back to the train station with my heavy bags in hand was an easy task. My Salzburg card had expired the previous day, so unfortunately the 2 euro buses were a luxury that I didn’t feel were justified by the relatively short hike from the hostel to the station.

On the train, I shared a six-seat train car with a 30-something year old Viennese woman named Isabella, who was on her to Innsbruck to visit her Italian boyfriend who worked in a casino. She and I spent the two hour ride in animated conversation about Austrian and EU politics compared with Jordanian and American, and the always-lamentable state of American “semi-apathy,” a term that I described to a Madison newspaper several years ago as the common mindset with liberal university students where they believe that voting for Barack Obama will somehow create world peace. “I don’t need to talk about the antiwar effort,” they’d tell me apologetically over their bottles of Jack Daniels while reaching for their television remotes. “I’m voting for Obama; he’ll take care of this terrible mess in Iraq.” Isabella rolled her eyes sympathetically.

My journey to the mountain city/town of Innsbruck was in place long before I had considered visiting Salzburg. A coworker of mine at PTEE has many ties to the community of Innsbruck, and even got married there a few decades ago. Without exception, all of his children have gone to school in Austria, and two of them live in an apartment on the outskirts of the city, with the mountains pressing so close to them that it seems like the sun is actually rising later and setting earlier! After securing their permission, my coworker invited me to stay at their place and relax between my weeks of hostel-jumping, an offer I could not refuse.

I had been in communication with his son, Dani, for a few months before coming and we had thought we’d be coming into the train station at the same time from different parts of the country. But as I sat there on my bag after Isabella had directed me to the front gate, it became readily apparent that there was no one coming. I halfheartedly tried the payphones, but in this age of mobile phones, they appeared derelict and two of the three didn’t even produce a dial tone. I was too shy to ask to borrow someone’s mobile, so with Dani’s email describing how to find his house by bus (thank goodness) I set out to attempt to find my own way through the city to his residence.

The bus drivers helpfully deposited me on a street in the sunset-streaked suburbs, but I could not find any sort of house numbers. I wandered with my luggage up and down the street for half an hour before finally finding a tiny side street that appeared to lead to an apartment building with the right number on it. I rang the unnamed buzzer, but no one answered. Feeling the need to search for a bathroom, I left my luggage and ran up and down the street, hunting for any sort of public building and sticking my head into a Catholic church with some sort of choir concert going on, but once again my efforts were stymied. I curled up on the porch of the building, attempting to think of anything but liquids, and it was about then that a dark-haired teen-aged girl happened by and unlocked the door. She didn’t speak any English at all, but I knew how to say “Dani” and “handy” and apparently she understood that I wasn’t insane and wanted to use her “handy” (the German word for “mobile” or “cell phone”) to call her neighbor Dani.

He greeted me enthusiastically over the crackling connection and explained that his train had been two hours late but he’d be there in fifteen minutes or so. The girl brought her mother out, who invited me into their home (and their bathroom, thank goodness) and then started feeding me some sort of breaded fish and pastries. I learned that they were a Muslim family from Turkey, but they’d been in Austria for over a decade, speaking German to the outside world but maintaining their cozy Turkish-speaking customs within their own walls. Dani showed up a few minutes later, slapping me on the back, and was promptly handed a plate of food as well.

I immediately liked the tall, shaggy-haired young man, who has the same fast-talking, easy-going mannerisms as his father Robert. He explained that his sister was gone for the weekend, and that we’d have the place to ourselves. He showed off the apartment to me, filled with bric-a-brac from America, Jordan, and Europe. As Dani had grown up to American parents in Jordan but spent years in Austria, he spoke all three languages with fluent ease and told me he was learning Swahili at the moment. As the sun vanished over the tops of the mountains, Dani smiled slyly at me and started whipping up dinner for the two of us: Pork sausages wrapped in Pork bacon, stuffed with cheese. “I had an idea that a dinner like this might appeal to you,” he grinned.

It's almost like he could read my mind. More likely, he was remembering what it was like to come from Jordan to Austria!

After dinner, he and I sat at the kitchen table until after midnight, discussing religion and politics of Jordan, America, and Austria. I was impressed by his straightforward ideas on spreading Christianity to a disillusioned population of Austrian youth, and doubly so by his goals of using his future degree in medicine to aid impoverished African nations. I thought back to Robert’s own efforts in Jordan over the decades and realized the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree! As we finished off the bottle of Chimay beer that I’d brought from Belgium, we consulted about what I should spend my two days in Innsbruck doing. He wrote up some maps and made some recommendations, then told me to set Sunday afternoon aside for a mountain climb! I could see the moonlight twinkling off of snow even in the darkness outside, and thought of hitting those slopes in my hiking boots was really exciting.

The next morning, we had breakfast out on the balcony, and then while Dani began studying for his final exams, I started off on my own. I visited the “Rose Chapel” (not an actual name) that I could see from my bedroom window on the hill south of the city, giving my first chance to look out over Innsbruck. After taking a few pictures and descending, I retraced my bus route from yesterday and beelined straight for the Tourist Information center to purchase the familiar-sounding “Innsbruck Card,” which would give me free access to all museums, cable cars, and public transportation – an identical list to the Salzburg card I had used a few days ago.

That church spire you see here from the steps of the Rose Chapel is two buildings away from Dani's house

Although I’d never heard of it before, the most famous landmark in the Tyrol region of Austria was only a block away from me. “The Golden Roof” is apparently featured on Austrian coinage, and is so beloved by its people that precious cement was used during World War II to build a massive silo around the front of it to protect its ornate, shimmering shingles (which are actually made of copper, not gold; I doubt they would have lasted for 500 years if that had been the case). The roof was pretty, to be sure, and there were some excellent carvings around its edges, but I found the museum in the same building much more interesting. I spent a couple hours wandering through its well-labeled halls with my audio guide, listening to the narrator describe the life of Emperor Maximilian I, who had loved Innsbruck and was known for watching sporting matches from the deck underneath the Golden Roof. His rugged looks, famous broken nose and reputation of a sportsman were part of the legacy that made him known as the “Last Chivalric Knight.”

The museum tour ended with the cryptic note that although Emperor Max wasn’t buried here in Innsbruck, his descendants wished to honor his love of the mountainous countryside and made a massive cenotaph here in Innsbruck. It was a five minute walk from the Golden Roof building to the Hofkirche that housed the large and empty tomb. The original plan had been to move the Emperor’s remains to this location so that the dozens of life-sized favorite ancestors and Max’s heroes could watch over him, but instead the tomb was kept empty, with the last statue kneeling on the top, broken-nosed face bowed toward the cross. Emperor Max, who had asked that his hair be shaved and his teeth torn out after death “in the way of the martyrs of God,” would have approved.

The left bank of bronze statues in the Hofkirche, looking towards the alter

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Salzburg! In the Mirabell Gardens from the Sound of Music, with the Hohensalzburg fortress behind

It’s bedraggled and after two days already seems like the stiffness is going out of its joints. But for only 7€ to defend me from the nonstop downpour thar has been coming down in the beautiful Austrian city of Salzburg, it was worth it. The silhouette of Mozart emblazoned on the side is a cute touch.

Hala, Mai, and myself arrived in Salzburg on the first of June, after spending all night traveling and waiting in cold train terminals. Let’s be honest; they weren’t that cold, but considering all of us are used to the Jordanian temperatures in June, I was afraid the girls were going to freeze to death. I was ordered by Mai’s mother to take care of the two of them while we’re all in Salzburg together, and I’m a man of my word!

From Frankfurt, we said goodbye to the rest of the choir group as they busily attempted to distribute their overweighted baggage among each other (this is what happens when you load up on high quality European beer in glass bottles!) and easily found our train down to Munich, where we would transfer to Salzburg. Unfortunately, I misread the signs as to which station in the city we should get off at, and instead of disembarking in Munich’s main station with its transfer to the neighboring country, I haplessly herded everyone off into some podunk village at the edge of the city limits, and its meager, dreary station with one shack on the platform to defend against the wind.

I left the girls huddled in the room in the corner with our only other cohabitant, a bearded old man wrapped in blankets that looked like he had settled in for the long haul. I ventured out to try to find something to eat and drink, and rapidly discovered the predicament I had put us all into. I quickly attempted to figure out how to use the on-platform ticket dispensing machines, and only ended up paying for and printing off two extra ones for a total of five tickets. It was 2.4 euro per ticket, to go to the next station over.

When I got back to our lean-to, I found the girls giggling and laughing and dancing the Jordanian wedding dance, debka, in a circle around the concrete floor, perfectly coordinated and practiced despite their muffled appearance under layers of sweaters. The old man was no where to be seen, but as I took my spot in one of the hard benches, I saw him through the fogged up window, smoking a cigarette and staring into the room with a flabbergasted expression. I rightly figured that it was probably the first time this shack had seen two Jordanian girls dancing a wedding party dance. I caught the man’s eye and shrugged emphatically with a small smile. He nodded back appreciatively, eyebrows raised.

We finally caught our trains, first to the main station and then onwards to Salzburg. After checking in our bags at the Yoho Youth Hostel (although our room wasn’t ready yet because it was only 9 AM) we decided to get started with our sightseeing. The sky looked ominous, but I scoffed at it and when the girls asked me if I had brought an umbrella, I said – “of course not!”

It was a short and light-weighted meander back to the train station without our heavy luggage, but my goal was firmly set in my mind: pick up some of the “Salzburg Cards” that the hostel had touted as being a great bargain for tourists. And were they ever! We each bought 48 hour cards for 35 euro apiece, but besides granting 100% free admission to every museum and exhibit in the city, or free admission to the mountain trams, they also provided free bus service as well. I’m sure that over the course of the next few days, with all the things we visited, we would have ended up spending easily 3 times that to see the same amount.

Our first stops were the Untersberg mountain and Schloss Hellbrun, the former famous for its views and ice caves, and the latter for its mischievous hidden water cannons, oft unleashed on unsuspecting tourists. However, the former was bound to be disappointing because of the clouds; we were only about a third up the mountain before our cable car was utterly shrouded in mist and we could see nothing but blank whiteness in all directions. The girls enjoyed playing out in the snow briefly at the lodge on the top, and I looked forlornly at the sign that said “Ice Caves, 3 hour walk.” The tram operator told me with deadpan seriousness that to attempt the walk up the semi-frozen path, up the side of the mountain, in the whiteout, would be courting certain death.

Mai plots evil mischief that she can wrought with that snowball. I had to quickly put the camera away and arm myself in turn!

The Hellbrun schloss (which means castle, in German) was much more inviting, however. The three of us were part of a small contingent of English-speaking tourists, and at first I’ll admit I grumbled mutinously when the guide shoved a loud and rambunctious gang of German middle school students in with us. “There goes my peaceful enjoyment of the park,” I muttered. However, the children turned out to be an amusing boon to our visit because our guide through the Trick Fountains clearly had an ulterior motive. He would shout out instructions to their group in German first, instructing them where to stand or sit or walk, then switch off his microphone and murmur to us in English where we should stand to watch the fun unfold safely. As most of us older people were carrying cameras of varying expensiveness, we appreciated his candor. For the half an hour tour, we watched the kids get blasted by hidden jets as they shrieked with surprise, and then mirth. There were tricks like hidden jets hidden in their chairs, hidden in the tips of a deer statue’s antlers, hidden in fishes’ mouths, and in every archway and pathway we came through. Other nifty tricks involved a “birdsong” room that was entirely created by water pressure moving through an old-fashioned tooth/wheel music box. That was the really incredible thing though – of course, electricity didn’t exist when the palace was built, so every fountain and water trick was powered entirely by pressure and valves. I left feeling very impressed by the engineering behind the place!

Feel pretty safe and confident there, eh kids?

At least, until the jets of water shoot out of the seats into your rump

By the time we returned to Salzburg itself from the country castle, it was starting to drizzle, and then as we wandered through the famous Mirabell Gardens, it was coming down hard enough that I was worried about taking my camera out from its pouch. After posing in several Sound of Music-esque positions, I grudgingly admitted to my companions that they had been right, and that I definitely would need to get an umbrella just to be on the safe side. We were only a block away from Mozart’s living quarters, so it seemed fitting that his profile should adorn the black umbrella I purchased.

After we returned to the hostel and finally checked in officially, Hala wanted to nap but Mai and myself were still interested in doing more hiking. The brooding dark green mountain of Capuchinberg was right outside our hostel window, so we decided just to walk up that and see how far we could go before nightfall at nine. It made for a wonderful climb, starting from the lower hills covered in strange Catholic dioramas depicted the various stages of the crucifixion of Christ. Each one of these diorama boxes had a crumbling, faded-paint statue or two within, and in the fading evening light, was downright eerie. The shadowy forms of three crosses with slumped figures on them, when we came across them suddenly, was a little too much!

We spent the last hours before darkness scaling the mountain, searching for the best lookout points over the city, with the imposing white shape of the Hohensalzburg (high salt castle, literally) visible over the river, almost at eye level with us because of our height. Amusingly, the highlight for Mai was coming across a chamois goat reserve, which she got so excited about that she seriously debated climbing the fence and trying to go over and pet them. “I’ve never been this close to a wild animal before!” she exclaimed. Luckily she was too short to make it over! At the top of the mountain, we had a few minutes to absorb the beautiful view over the city, finally unimpeded by trees over our heads, and with the Frankinburg castle behind us. I sheepishly admit that I had forgotten my new umbrella back in the room, and when the skies suddenly opened up again, Mai scolded me good-naturedly and gave me her hat for protection, “or you’ll catch a cold I’m sure!” We scurried down the mountain in the dwindling daylight, past huge slugs and orange-and-black salamanders that sloughed wetly across the asphalt paths. Mai and I stopped to stare at them with equal fascination; creatures that require that much moisture to survive just aren’t common in Jordan! We made it off of the mountain with 3 minutes to spare before the sun went down and shrouded the city in gray, impenetrable mist.

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I’m really starting to wish I had brought my laptop with me. There’s a definite dearth of open wifi access points in the buildings we’ve been staying in thus far rendering my iPod touch moot. I thought I could get by with just borrowing my friends’ laptops but since there’s no wifi in the housing I usually can’t do that either.

So for the second time i’ve dusted off the WordPress application from the iPhone app store and hooked it into my blog. Nothing fancy and I won’t be able to upload any pictures til I get to a place where I can dump the 860 off my camera from the past week, but this slow and tedious method of entry will have to do.

Ugh, I just realized this text editor doesn’t even have an automatic URL making system. Again, ah well. Mub’da’iyen, as we say in Arabic. Let me see if I can type it and it will work on this little keyboard… مبدئياً. Yep, no problem.

Anyway, this link here will lead you to the official musica sacra photography page. For some reason they call us by the old name “Aswatuna” instead of “Dozan wa Awtar” which is what we use these days. You can search for our particular concerts between May 22 through 25 I believe, and they’ll be updating it for our concerts tomorrow and the day after in Belgium, where we’re sitting at this moment.

Hopefully I’ll be able to update more frequently from Austria but I can’t count on it!