Need a break from work...

So it's a good thing it's christmas!!! Before I start complaining though, I wanted to share some pictures from Gibran Tueni's funeral of last week, which was a weird mixture between burial and festival. At first - we went there around 10 in the morning - the crowd was only moderately large and gathering in front of the An-Nahar building. A band was playing cheerful music. The man on the picture is obviously Tueni, and the caption reads "The difference between darkness and light...is the word", in reference to his very outspoken opposition to Syria. (That's right, I am asking you to note my improved Arabic skills(!), although I am not sure about the word 'darkness', I more or less made that up because it would be the logical opposition to 'light'... :) )
Then it got bigger and bigger though, and it was really quite hot waiting in the sun with a big crowd of people. Although the Tueni family and the families of the two people killed with him had explicitly asked for no partisan flags to be displayed at their funeral...people could not resist, obviously. Instead, some daring teenagers climbed to the top of this crane in order to wave their flags at the risk of death - Progressive Socialist Party, Kataib, Lebanese Forces were all there, basically the youth organisations of Lebanon's big sectarian parties operating at the national level. This is of course a somewhat sad metaphor for what is happening in Lebanon in general in terms of sectarian politics. I will come back to this in a minute with another example. This, however, is what I call an impressive victory sign:
As the morning wore on, the crowd grew thicker and finally it became obvious what everybody had been waiting for - the three coffins were taken to the An-Nahar building once all family members of the victims and a bunch of political figures had arrived. From there they (the coffins) were carried by procession to the nearby St Georges Cathedral for the funeral service.
Well, and since then everybody has been slightly on the edge, there were a few days of heavier-than-usual military deployment and of few people on the streets. Some people (the youth movements of the 'March 14'-bloc, i.e. mostly Christian and in opposition to Syria) were going to resurrect the permanent camp in Martyr's Square that had been set up after Hariri's death to protest the killings that are going on here, and to protest Syria in general. However, I go by there often when I go running and haven't noticed any major signs of it so far. Hmm...
The last weekend before Christmas was very intense in terms of work, we had a workshop in the mountain resort of Ehden, which is extremely popular in summer but almost empty during the winter.

Unfortunately the batteries of my camera died after this picture, so I cannot show you some of the more cheerful vistas of Ehden, which is really quite pretty. The next mountain chain after the one you see here is already all covered in snow, and that's were most of the skiing resorts are. Anyway, so this workshop was really exhausting but ultimately a great learning experience. We (i.e. my employer) were supposed to assist in the foundation of a new youth movement aimed at overcoming sectarian differences in Lebanon and the feudal structures that still dominate politics here. Sounds great, doesn't it? The problem: this youth movement is doing exactly the opposite, by perpetuating sectarian divisions (these people are really hardcore Christians and I doubt any of them have had a lengthy encounter with any Muslims - not a small feat considering more than half of the population here is Muslim) and employing the exact feudal family structures they claim to fight against. How this works is: whoever has the highest ranking within the family context (in this case, whoever is most closely related to or most friendly with the Moawad family) is king and gets to dictate everything everybody does (in terms of politics) without ever seriously being questioned. It was so depressing to witness this first hand, especially since this was a bunch of young people who could really try and change things if they wanted to. Well, maybe they'll do some good things for their own community, but I really have my doubts they'll be doing any of the other peacy stuff they're talking about.

Finally, MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day after

Today has been a lot more 'normal' than I thought it would be. Last night especially I thought the whole place was going to, I don't know, change? Go crazy? I was walking around trying to find a store so I could buy a phone card. Impossible! The place was like a ghost town, there wasn't a single person in the streets, all the shops were closed, no cars, just the thrash cats hanging around. Scary!!! The most frightening thing was the silence - something that seems completely impossible in Beirut under normal circumstances. But yesterday my whole neighbourhood was silent.

Today was a bit more lively although I did see the occasional tank in the street on my way to work. It also helped to know that other parts of Beirut were not as shut down as my neighbourhood yesterday. This is because the area I live in, Achrafiyeh, happens to be Gebran Tueni's constituency. So people were demonstrating their disbelief and shock here more than elsewhere I suppose. I actually found out today that at some point yesterday morning, while we were all in the office practically looking down on the hospital across the street, Tueni's body had been taken there for a while, before it was transferred to another hospital. I find that a really strange idea too. But on my way home from work today, I observed one man having a foot massage in a beauty salon, so things can't be so bad I guess.

On TV, I was watching part of a mourning ceremony that was taking place in a church in my neighbourhood. Marwan Hamadeh, the minister who survived a car bomb, was there, as well as Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese forces, and Nayla Moawad, the minister of social affairs who is at the same time president of the foundation I work at. I don't know why I'm writing this down, but it seemed really odd to see all these people, who are starting to look familiar now, and two of whom I have seen in real life already, appear on television when they were really just a few hundred yards away from where I was sitting on my couch. Gebran Tueni's wife was there also, she looked in a terrible state and like she was going to faint any minute.

What makes things seem even more unreal is the fact that every single Lebanese TV station - perhaps with the exception of Al-Manar, Hizballah's own broadcaster - has dug up every tape they have of Gebran Tueni and they're constantly broadcasting it. When I switch on the TV, he's right there as part of a talk show or giving an interview. His newspaper Al-Nahar is also re-publishing every editorial he ever wrote. For me, who had never seen him when he was alive or read his articles, this makes the whole situation even weirder than it already is.

A general strike has been called for tomorrow and the funeral is going to happen. Meanwhile, everyone keeps waiting for the Security Council debate on the second Mehlis report and there's a major government crisis here in Lebanon. Hizballah's ministers have suspended their participation in the cabinet after it adopted a motion that calls for an international investigation into all the recent car bombings. Looks like they're more or less keeping it together, at least the government hasn't resigned yet.

"Tu vas faire quoi maintenant?"

That's the question everybody is asking everybody else right now, because really, nobody knows. I got to work this morning and found the TV switched on, with everybody crowding around it as they came in. The entire office spent about 2 hours there to find out what had happened in the car bombing that shook the city around 9 o'clock. Most of my colleagues had heard the massive explosion too, except for me - I don't know, I was blissfully unaware and walking to work as I usually do in the mornings, climbing up the stairs to Sassine square and then going down from there towards Hotel-Dieu, the big university hospital that is directly opposite our office and I didn't hear a thing.

When the news came in that Gebran Tueni had been killed in the bombing the atmosphere changed. Before, there had still been a slight chance that it might have been an industrial accident, as the explosion happened right outside a factory. Or that there was some non-political, simple explanation behind it all. But the fact that this anti-Syrian MP had been killed unfortunately took away the simple way out and made it obvious to all that this was indeed a politically motivated murder, one that might spark off who-knows-which consequences, and that the whole ugly beast was rearing its head again etc.... One colleague had known the victim and is quite close to the family and she was in tears and so distraught. Everybody, in fact, was in a state of shock although no-one was willing to admit so much. But the feeling of 'please, no, please don't let this happen to us again', this tiredness and anxiety and outrage were quite palpable.

Trying to go back to work after this was near-impossible, most of the phone lines were down and everybody had other things on their minds anyway. All morning ambulances and security personnel were arriving at the hospital opposite and sirens were screeching constantly, with virtually no other traffic (by Beirut standards anyway). Around two o'clock the word spread that there would be a non-violent protest march outside the An-Nahar building in downtown - An-Nahar is the newspaper of which Gebran Tueni had been editor. So a bunch of my colleagues decided to go down there and I went with them. Traffic was chaotic and as we were sitting in the car driving down to the protest, a colleague got a phone call from her boyfriend who was panicking. From his balcony, he had just observed a service taxi being stopped and its Syrian passengers being dragged out of the car and beaten up by an angry mob. And you bet there was nobody there to stop them from doing so, not even police or security services.

By the time we got to downtown, part of the protest was dissolving already and lots of people carrying orange flags - supporters of Michel Aoun, the General who recently returned from France - were marching up to Sassine square to stage a separate protest and possibly look for more people to beat up. The remaining crowd outside the An-Nahar building was quite small, perhaps a hundred people or so, and almost all of them belonging to some party - the Phalanges and other Christian groups. They were waving their respective flags and chanting 'Fuck Syria'. After five minutes (actually maybe before that even) I felt the desperate urge to leave: I don't want to blame anyone, I don't want to be a voyeur, I don't belong to any of these movements, so what the hell am I doing here? Luckily my colleagues had reached a similar conclusion around the same time, so we all left again and ate lunch together at the office.

Seriously, all of this is so weird. A general strike is being called for for tomorrow. We'll see what happens.... I guess the coming days and weeks will bring more upheaval and more crucial decisions and events. The UN is debating the second Mehlis report tomorrow. And I'm asking myself the question: which theory makes more sense? Are the Syrians doing this in order to sow fear and anxiety in Lebanon, hoping to destabilise the situation and then once again move in here to 'guarantee security'? That would be a fairly blunt calculation, but then they aren't exactly well-known for their tact and subtleness when it comes to political strategies.
Or is someone trying to pour oil on the fire and to ignite the already enormous potential of hatred towards Syrians here - underlining the fact that Lebanon has been a victim of their designs for so long and that it needs to 'regain its full sovereignty'? This is of course the political demand that all Christian factions - and some others, of course - have been making throughout this year, and it happens to be what the U.S. wants as well. How convenient then that this reminder of the situation comes right before the debate on sanctions against Syria etc. that is to be held at the UN tomorrow. If I were a fan of conspiracy theory, I would find supporting evidence for the second theory in the fact that it barely took an hour or so after the bombing for orange flags to appear on all lamp posts on the major road outside our office - and they look official, not just improvised.

But then, I'm not a fan of these theories and honestly I have no idea what just happened here today. There will be a whole range of explanations as there usually is with such things. What I know for sure is that everybody is afraid for their future, their jobs, their security, their perspectives because nobody knows what's next. I will keep you posted!!!

Amman and back

On my first trip out of Beirut since I've been here, I went to Amman (the capital of Jordan, just because I have been asked this question before :) ) from Sunday to Tuesday to finally meet my colleagues at the regional office of the Naumann Foundation (my employer). To get over there I took a shared taxi from Beirut which takes about six hours, including getting in and out of the car a bunch of times because you have to get your passport stamped to leave Lebanon, then to enter Syria, then to leave Syria, then to enter Jordan..... my passport looks very colourful now with lots of stamps in it. The Syrian border guys forgot to charge me $8 for a transit visa because they thought my multiple entry visa from a year ago was still valid. This was much to the amusement of my fellow passengers who were happy to see the Syrians look incompentent, with the general verdict being that Syrians are stupid and "unable to understand anything" anyway. This bit of racism aside, they were very friendly people and saw to it that I, as the only foreigner, did not get confused by all the passport stamping and one of them would always accompany me to the customs counter.

After crossing Syria and passing through Damascus (horse-drawn carts and motorcycles going the wrong way on the highway), which made me feel very 'homesick', seeing it buzz under its usual cover of exhaust fumes, we got to Amman and a colleague picked me up and took me to my hotel. All hotels and restaurants in Amman now frisk everybody going in, but women only get searched if there's a woman frisker on duty which is not always the case. So listen up, female suicide bombers out there! Ok, I know it's not funny, but this policy makes no sense at all.

Basically, I spent most of my time there either at the office - everybody is very young and nice and seems to have a great sense of humour - or the Grand Hyatt Hotel which was bombed four weeks ago. Not that you would notice - it looks exactly like any other grand hotel of that sort, complete with a stylish Christmas tree made out ouf stacked wood painted purple in the lobby. Impossible to fathom what the scene looked like only a month ago...

The point of being there was a conference organised by the Naumann foundation and the Arab League on reforms in the Arab world. Very interesting. My favourite was a guy from the ruling party in Egypt who took 15 Minutes to basically state that there was a crucial difference between 'reform' and 'change'. You don't want change because nobody knows which way it'll go. Instead it's much better to have 'reforms' and to clearly limit what they can do. Well, at least he was being honest... But cynicism aside some of the discussions were quite good and everybody seemed happy at the end. I also thought it was pretty cool one Palestinian delegate in his fifties was wearing khaki Chucks. And the food was great!!

I also went to all of Amman's trendy bars (2 - two) in one evening - I guess that's why it's also called "The Hashemite Kingdom of Boredom" by a friend of mine... But Jordan is supposed to be really beautiful and you can do lots of hiking in the mountains or desert. I think I'm going back sometime.

On the way back to Beirut there were no direct taxis, so I took one to Damascus (with a couple from Turkey who were taking a bus to Istanbul from there, takes about 2 days...) and changed there to take a taxi to Beirut. This process took about 8 hours (more stamps) and was kind of tiring because I hadn't had time to eat anything all day and had to spend the ride to Beirut practically sitting in some teenager's lap and with a very unfriendly taxi driver. But I got back in one piece no problem and full of new impressions.

What happened to the cat

Yesterday I was walking home from work and came across a terrible sight. This orange, stripey cat was lying in the street, on its side, flipping its tail. At first I thought it was just having a nap or something, but then a car passed really close to it and it didn't move. Apparently it had been hit by a car and couldn't get up anymore to walk out of the road. I walked up to it and saw that it was bleeding and having difficulty breathing and was probably in a lot of pain.
So what was I supposed to do? There were lots of people around and everybody was ignoring the cat. I considered picking it up but then what would I have done with it? I looked at the shop owner who stood nearby and was looking at the whole scene, but he just looked away.

Finally, after pondering this for some time and feeling really helpless, I walked away because I decided that I personally could not help the cat (except maybe hold its paw while it was dying, but then I don't know if cats appreciate that kind of thing and plus, it was in the road) and that nobody was around to help it either. Basically, I just left it there to die!! Later, I was telling myself that not very many people have pets here (most of the cats in the neighbourhood live out of the thrash cans, although there are some pet cats and I have seen at least one pet dog), and that there were probably no vets around who could take care of a cat.

However, I was feeling bad about this line of argument later because I, of course, never tried to find a vet and help the cat but just walked away. And, come to think of it, people have bloody plastic surgery here all the time and everybody in my neighbourhood has servants (Filipinas who in the morning get to wash the shiny SUVs their employers drive and go shopping with their 'masters' in the supermarket in the afternoon, pushing the heavy trolley while the master selects the products for them to carry), so why wouldn't there be pets and, by implication, vets as well? I just didn't want to deal with it because I didn't want to look like a stupid European who cares too much about pets when that is not part of the culture here.

Am I going to burn in hell (who wants to meet up there)? Are all cats going to hate me now? Does it make a difference to the way the world is going? Does it matter at all? What would you have done in my place??

It's a Wednesday



I don't know, I'm not feeling creative for a headline here. Things that have happened recently - I've overcome, more or less, my down phase of last week (I feel so odd posting things like this on a web page, but then I guess that's what a blog is about and I've been going on about it...) and anyway I have lots of work now to keep me busy! I'm organising two events, i.e. conferences and stuff, in December, and I'm also supposed to have designed and conceptualised a calendar teaching kids about human rights within the next 10 days. One of the conferences is about the European Neighbourhood Policy - it's supposed to get people from the government and civil society together and come up with recommendations for an action plan for this policy. And the other one.....is meant to help found a new political movement, but then this sounds so weird. It's all about capacity building and all of that. You know what I mean...

So last week I went to see this concert inside the "Dome" I was talking about before. It actually looks quite nice on the inside, but when you see this thing from the outside you really wonder how it can still hold up. Apparently they've had a huge techno party in it a few years ago which is now famous for the amount of drugs that were abused there. I tried to take a close-up of my favourite musician, the very cool grandpa bass player, but unfortunately it didn't really turn out.

I've also been to a two-day conference about Euro-Mediterranean relations. The food there was quite good and they gave away lots of freebies, but as far as the outcome it was pretty much zero if you ask me. The Minister of Telecommunications was there to talk about the fight against terrorism - he recently escaped a car bombing himself. It was a little odd because when anybody talks about terrorism in Europe, people usually talk about definitions, or networks, or other grand concepts. This discussion however was very much focused on details - which security service is listening to which kind of phone conversations? Strangely, there was also some French General there who was talking about security services in Europe. According to him, terrorism is of course something to worry about, but at least we should count ourselves fortunate because there are no more wars between "great powers" - as he put it, "la guerre a prise un bon coup derriere les oreilles". Thank you for this opinion! I'm sure it went down well with the car-bombed Minister or any other people in the audience who have any kind of war experience. Anyway, I mostly think the discussion was STRANGE. A colleague of mine told me today she saw me on TV when this event was broadcast (the TV people arrived and left together with the Minister), sitting in the audience and looking bored.

I also went to the famous Gemmayzeh cafe to smoke Argileh and have Lebanese food the other day - good stuff! (Luckily I can eat again by this point).

Bluesy Beirut days

So far I've been mainly talking about positive experiences here, but of course I wouldn't be telling the whole story if I didn't talk about the negative ones. They exist and have been bugging me lately, starting with the fact that it's impossible, as a foreigner, to walk anywhere without people staring, observing, occasionally even - this goes especially for old men - stopping on the sidewalk to get a better look and be able to spend more time staring. I've already told you about the security guards everywhere. I could also tell you about food problems: my stomach has had a hard time adjusting and I haven't really been able to eat anything apart from plain rice for the past week. Or about getting ripped off by taxi drivers, or the feeling of exposure to mortal danger that any pedestrian constantly experiences because people's driving over here is insane. Such 'normal' adjustment and culture shock problems are probably something most of us have experienced, and they're a bit of a bitch at times. What's really confusing me at the moment though is my situation at work, where I feel pretty lost with the tasks that have been given me as I receive no guidance, orientation or instruction by anyone. Still, I'm expected to figure everything out and be reliable and deliver on time (and to pretty tight deadlines). This seems very hard to do when around me, everything looks like chaos, I can never find the people I'm supposed to work with and the way people interact is hard to get used to. It seems that often people use a tone of voice which would be considered really rude in Germany, but it's normal here and nobody means anything by it. Conversely, this means if you want to get anything done at all, you have to be quite 'rude', in any case very determined and not put off by occasional setbacks ('Yeah yeah, I'll call you back, we will meet later today' for example is not at all a reliable statement but calls for further insistence on a meeting apparently...). And then there's of course the language barrier: sure, everybody speaks foreign languages, but all social conversations here at work, for example, are held in Arabic and it's frustrating to think that I've spent so long trying to learn this language and I still can't understand anything. I'm taking private lessons now though, so I'm hoping things will gradually improve, along with getting used to the other issues I've been talking about.

To distract myself from thinking about this stuff, I've been going to a bunch of cultural events recently. There was a lecture last week by Gayatri Spivak, the queen of postcolonial studies, at the Lebanese American University (another elite institution for sure). It's really weird because she seems to have this unique gift and charisma and everybody walked out of her lecture - essentially a plea for supporting 'the humanities' (i.e. studying languages, cultures, literature) as a counterforce to globalisation which makes everything alike and stamps of difference - thinking, wow, that was great, finally somebody has made sense of it all and explained the world and it's not so complicated after all. But the more you think about what she said, the less it makes any sense and you realise that a lot of it is basically hot air, or her talking about her own publications, achievements, basically about herself. With a week of hindsight and several accounts by people who went to a seminar she held the next day, I would even venture so far as to say a large part of what she said was bullshit. And yet, I clearly remember sitting in her lecture feeling all inspired and motivated. Never experienced anything like it. I suppose she would make an excellent populist and could whip up people's feelings for any idea. As she was keen to point out herself, someone once said to her that she could probably teach the phone book and people would think it was inspirational.

So as far as believing in the forces of good in the world, Gayavatri Spivak was not such a great help for me either. I've also gone to see a play by Rabih Mroue, apparently a really happening Lebanese director, called 'Who's afraid of representation?'. It was great and definitely the best threatre experience I (not very much into theatre and not having much of a clue about it) have had in a while. I think the main issues in it were how art deals with painful experiences - and being in Lebanon the main experience referred to was the civil war. How people deal or not deal with it seemed to be what this play was exploring, and it was done in a very clever and ironic way. The one I went to was the second performance, and interestingly (and sadly) it had been censored after the premiere. Some friends who went to see the first performance said that one recital of a poem which was quite sexual was taken out, and also several references to differences between religious sects. Instead of the original poem, the director had then put in a very cynical one which talked about a five-day festival (i.e., 'Homeworks', the festival the play was being performed at) with lots of sheep being slaughtered and blood spilt and animals being cut into little pieces and the whole barbarian mess then being loaded into a helicopter and dropped from above to fight the tanks that are threatening us, or something like that. It probably doesn't make a lot of sense this way, but when they were reciting it it was really funny and an amazing way for the directors to get back at the censors, as my friends were explaining to me. So compared to Spivak, this was definitely a lot more fun despite the heavy topic and all.

Tonight I am going to see a famous Lebanese Oud player give a concert in the 'Dome', which is a completely destroyed cinema from the 1960s which miraculously survived the civil war and is smack in the middle of 'Downtown'. I am sure in Germany safety regulations would prevent anybody from even going into this building! :) The concert is part of the Independence Day celebrations. Yesterday there was a military parade near my house and I was woken up by a bunch of explosions which were probably military salutes or something. Ok that's all for now, I will continue to keep you posted...

Lebanese humour...and security

Maybe some of you have seen the slogan of the so-called "cedar revolution" (of course nobody calls it that here except some very nationalist activists I think; it's either the 14th March movement, or the 8th March movement, depending on where you stand on the issue of Lebanese-Syrian relations). It's these posters or stickers:

Now check out the latest advertising campaign by a well-known French fashion store chain, to be found all over town at the moment:

Pretty funny, these Lebanese.... Btw: I took this last picture just outside the supermarket near my house. One of the approx. 15 security guards (a very lucrative economic sector in Lebanon, it seems!) at the door noticed me doing this, so I had to leave my camera with the security at the entrance. I mean, what are they thinking??? It's a supermarket!! Am I going to snoop around to check whether they've clandestinely imported avocadoes from Israel and then publish the pictures to denounce them? This is crazy. I tried to engage the security guard in a discussion about this, obviously to no effect. Ever since I was physically assaulted by several "security" people at the marathon for trying to take a shortcut around the nonsensical, omnipresent barriers after the event was over, my patience with all things security is really running low. Maybe I'm just paranoid but these guys really do seem to enjoy holding up female foreigners. But it's no use because it's everywhere and for a good reason I suppose, so everyone has to put up with it and accept it. Still...

Corniche pics








Went a bit mad there.... so nice though!

I never seem to be able to figure out how to create a headline for these posts. Hmmf. Anyway! Got lots of things to tell you and a bunch of pics, which I will have to put in at a later date because.... never mind!
So today I ran the "10 K", as they call it, read: 10km run, as part of the Beirut International Marathon. 17,000 people ran in it as well, but it felt more like 170,000!!! Major crowd event!!!! It was part of a charity run for work, raising awareness for a project that tries to get kids out of work and back into school. So we weren't timed but happily running along with some colleagues from the office (Lili wenn Du das liest: meine Zeit war ungefaehr so wie bei unserem ersten Lauf, allerdings war es hier auch ziemlich heiss und sehr huegelig... ;) ) and it was quite an experience. Great fun to be part of it!! Also running as official teams were the Bank of Beirut (they must have had about 200 people), SonyEricsson, just about every business in Beirut and even (!) UNIFIL, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon as well as various branches of the security services (identified by their black tank tops with 'Security Forces' printed on them). Everybody was in for the advertising space! It just so happened that today was actually the first really warm day since I've been here, about 26 degrees I think and it was quite a hike up the steep hills here at times - and there was an especially evil climb of about 300m just before the finish line....!
Hmmm, what else... on Friday I went to a major club called Basement. I have to say it's been a very long time that I've partied like I do here. It just feels like everybody's out there to have 100%, no-inhibitions-whatsoever parties. And so far it's always been really great fun, even if the music may at times have been questionable.... especially at this pub we went to beforehand, which was playing nothing but R&B non-stop and at top volume, making any conversation virtually impossible, and which appears to be a favourite hangout for hip hop style dudes.


Before that I went to have dinner at 'Flying Pizza', decorated entirely in 80s style with a lovely Versailles-garden wallpaper completely covering one wall and a model chopper hanging from the ceiling. Apparently the owner used to be a pilot and the place was frequented by air hosts&hostesses back in the day. Or something like that. In any case it's a really nice place!


And the other evening there was a lecture by Rashid Khalidi, a historian who now teaches at Columbia Uni in NY, on 'Iraq & American Empire' held at the super-elite American University here... everybody's favourite quote of the evening was that George W.'s administration was 'faith-based and fact-free', and he had lots of similarly witty and scorching rants to give about the administration, the U.S. media etc. Very entertaining, if not really a big revelation.
Otherwise I'm trying to figure out where I can take Arabic classes that won't cost a fortune - I literally haven't spoken a word of Arabic since I've been here, especially in Ashrafiyeh you can get by without ever knowing the language it seems. I really have to do something about this. I try to pick things up by listening to the radio and watching TV - I figured watching the Smurfs in Arabic should be about my level. But even there I don't understand very much and I definitely need some teaching and lots of practice!!

Life at my new office

Hello again, it seems that my working life is now picking up speed. The way people work here is quite different from what I'm used to in Germany. Everything seems totally chaotic, but there must be a hidden system to it because there's a lot of work and it's getting done. I will continue my investigation of how this system works. (Er, actually I can update this thought right now because a colleague just came in for a chat, and according to her, there simply is no system and things are actually totally chaotic. Well. Hm. I'll follow up on it...). This morning, lesson 1: don't show up at the office too early! I thought I'd demonstrate my motivation and diligence by getting here before 9 a.m., but I had to sit outside the door on the staircase for 15 minutes until somebody got here.

I went to have lunch at a nearby shopping mall with some colleagues and was kind of appaled at how un-Middle Eastern things can be here. Where's the authenticity, guys??? This place could have been anywhere, Milan, London, Berlin, probably Buenos Aires for all I know, or Phoenix, Arizona. Although I doubt that women there have this special Lebanese look, the highlights, the expensive accessories, I don't know, somehow it's very characteristic and recognisable. In any case I find it hard to believe this place is only several hours by bus from Damascus, which is an entirely different world.

Well, and now I'm going to walk back over the hill to my neighbourhood... I am thinking of stopping by the Virgin Megastore inside the same shopping mall. The most recent guidebook to come out is "A Hedonist's Guide to Beirut", written by the Arts&Culture editor of the local paper, The Daily Star. So it has all the fancy restos and bars for sure. Hm, I'm not so sure this is the kind of info I need, because these things travel by word of mouth anyway. The book I need is, "A Political Scientist's Guide to How This Place Really Works" (ideally containing a step-by-step guide "Publishing your stuff on Lebanon"), or, alternatively, "Finding a meaningful job with a decent salary in Lebanon" (mind that I'll only work at this place for 2 months), including sections on "How to avoid typical foreigners' mistakes" and lots of other helpful tips.

If any of you come across things like this on amazon or whereever, do let me know!!! For now, I'll leave you with the view from my office window of Beirut hills in the setting sun, cheesy-weez:

Dear friends,

I have now arrived and started a new life over here in Beirut. As I promised, I will tell you my stories and send you pics (Bilder & Geschichten) of what I'm doing over here. Let me start by showing you a view of the Corniche, Beirut's beach promenade. That was actually not the picture I wanted to put here, but it took about half an hour to upload this so I'm not gonna change this now. Pretty though, no? This was the day after I arrived at 4 a.m. in the morning and took up residence in the chichi Crowne Plaza Hotel, where I got a room on the 15th floor with a sea view. (Will include a picture of that below.) So I had a day to catch up and adjust to the amazing speed of events, which took me from my normal life in Berlin to a completely new story here in Beirut, all in the space of barely two weeks. My new motto is 'why not?'. Many thanks again to all the people who helped me organise things before I took off and are now storing various items of my stuff, carried my beloved Vespa down the stairs or drove me to the airport!!!! :) And also, sorry once again this is all in English ---- aber sonst muesste ich alles zweimal schreiben und das wuerde wahrscheinlich dazu fuehren, dass ich gar nicht schreibe. Ich hoffe, das ist o.k. fuer Euch bzw. uns alle in der globalisierten Welt und so....:)

Ok, here we go, this is the view from my hotel room across Beirut at 4 in the morning. It looks a lot nicer than the day view actually, although that's not bad either. But anyway, to stop rambling on..... The second day I was here was also my first day of work, and I felt a bit overwhelmed by it all, especially as I had to take part in a bunch of meetings and process large amounts of information. I also met the Minister of Social Affairs, Nayla Moawad, which I hadn't known was part of the agenda that day, and I felt very inappropriately dressed sitting in her office (the other people there where having a meeting, I was basically just present). I was so confused by it all that I took the security guard at the entrance to be a participant and shook his hand, until I noticed how surprised he was and that he was carrying a gun. Just for the record: for the next two months I will be based at Rene Moawad Foundation here in Beirut. I will be doing some stuff for them and will also be helping to coordinate some projects for Friedrich Naumann Foundation, my official employer (i.e., I report to them and they pay me money). If it all seems confusing to you, rest assured that it does to me at the moment, as well. It'll all become clearer in time, I'm sure....

Ok, so I had to move out of the Crowne Plaza eventually of course (after two nights), and this is where I live now. This is Paul's apartment, and Paul is a friend of a colleague's of mine (I have met neither Paul nor the colleague who is based in Amman, but both of them are incredibly nice and helpful, for sure!!). Very nice place and all mod cons, I have to say, including a huge flat screen TV and surround-sound DVD and all. It's also located close to my work (I work opposite Hotel-Dieu, the big French hospital...) in the lovely Achrafiyeh area. A very pretty and fancy neighbourhood with lots of designer stores and funky bars and restaurants. The main clubbing area around Rue Monot is a 5-minute walk from the flat. Way to go, Paul!
My building is actually fairly modern-looking (and has a small but ugly Phalanges-logo sprayed on outside), but to give you an idea of what the 'hood looks like, here's a pic of the building across the street....(see below).
Erm, this is really addictive and I could tell you lots more stories (e.g. how I took a picture of a random, futuristic-looking high rise building and a soldier came walking up to me, machine gun dangling from shoulder, to say something with his forehead all wrinkled up and looking serious - and then he turned out to be joking. How funny! Or how I got lost walking home from the supermarket, or the adventure of taking a taxi and all these things....) but more later....I'll show you some more pics instead:


This is the building I was talking about.... and there are lots like this one around.
And this is a pic from my birthday, the first day I was here, when I went out for drinks with my friend Yasmin in Gemmayzeh:





Well, will write more soon....see ya!