I just wanna dance!

So, I finally make it out of the city! And I think I did myself pretty well. I guess four days in Beirut will do that. Yep, that’s right. I went to Beirut, Lebanon this weekend…and I had a BLAST!! Seriously, take any misconceptions you might have had about this city and throw them completely away. Beirut is such an interesting intersection of cultures, with strong French influences (they colonized the country until the 1940s) and an equally strong Arab culture. It’s hard not to get lost in this city and never want to leave (and with the booming nightlife you’d never want to sleep). Granted, it does have some visual battle scars from the past 40 years of tension (bullet holes in walls, blown-out buildings, tanks...nothing all the unusual), but that really doesn't play out in how the people act or how the city feels. I really felt like this place was everything in one. People speak English, Arabic, and French (it was great having a friend of mine who spoke French with us). The architecture is a mixture of Puerto Rican plantation, Arab Souq, French colonial, and Los Angeles beachfront. The weather was perfect (a great respite from the cold and rain in Amman). And the people are great – never a harsh word among them.

Why was I in Beirut this weekend you might be asking yourself? Well, this past Monday was the Prophet’s birthday. Prophet's birthday = public holiday = no school. You get where I'm going with this?! Since weekends here are Friday and Saturday (not the usual Sat/Sun), we decided to skip school on Sunday and take a long weekend. Three friends and I grabbed a taxi on Thursday after class. Destination: Beirut. It actually isn’t as easy as it sounds – a few problems along the way – but we did get there and back all in one piece.. more or less.

To travel to Lebanon, you need to get through Syria. So yes, that means I also went to Syria this weekend. Any typical Jordanian traveling the route from Amman, Jordan to Beirut, Lebanon would take around 4 hours by car. Unfortunately, I am neither typical nor Jordanian, meaning it wasn’t quite that easy for me. The US has not normalized relations with Syria, creating huge obstacles for any American wanting to enter Syria. We got to the border expecting a wait, but we weren’t prepared for the 6 and a half hours of boredom that we had trying to get a transit visa through the country. Yep, 6.5 hours. Seeing as we got to the border at about 4pm, we didn’t really get out of there until 10:30pm, the time we had expected to arrive in Beirut (good thing we had bought a huge box of cookies right before the border -- they consoled us during our wait). Our driver, who by now was extremely angry that he had had to wait with us, proceeded to speed close to 200km an hour through Syria to Lebanon. The Lebanese border was easy. Then an hour later, we were at our hotel. 2:30am, exhausted, angry, but really stoked for the next 3 days. That was the general attitude of our group when going to bed.

Three days really isn’t all that much time in a completely new country where everything is new and exciting. We saw the American University in Beirut, which could probably easily rival Berkeley in beauty. It's a gorgeous campus, and it sits right on the Mediterranean, meaning all views look either west to the sea or north to the snow-capped mountains. I guess I shouldn’t transfer for my senior year of college, but it is really tempting to want to stay for at least the rest of the semester. We walked along the Corniche (the street lining the ocean), saw Hamra street (a really popular street with lots of shopping), walked downtown (an area lined with shops and restaurants), went to a club on Monot Street which played mostly Arab music (AWESOME I know). And that was only Day 1. Well, I guess technically it was already well into Day 2 by then, but that's just semantics.

Our second day was a little calmer. We started it off at a great French bakery, which we proceeded to return to every day after. The best breads and croissant I’ve ever had, with French jams and a real cappuccino. Talk about starting the day right. We saw the Martyr's Square, a tribute to the past Prime Minister who had been assassinated, toured the National Museum (this place has art and history dating back thousands of years), walked part of the Green Zone – the de-militarized zone during the war, ate dinner by the ocean, took a ride on a Ferris Wheel for about 45 minutes. No joke, the ride attendant was crazy and wouldn’t let us get off. We had convinced a friend who was scared of heights to get on the Ferris Wheel, promising to only go around twice before telling the attendant we wanted out. Well, we went around twice and told the guy we were done. He then proceeded to smile at us…and walk away…while we were still on. At the time, not so funny as we were left alone on the Ferris Wheel. Looking back, hilarious that we had been abandoned on this rickety, creaking machine. After that, another exploration of the nightlife. Just a tip, people don’t start going out until…2am. Before that, everything is pretty empty. It’s said that Beirut is where people go to party in the Middle East and I believe that to every degree after this past weekend.

The next day…oh the next day. We decided to head out of Beirut to see some of the ancient ruins and mountain views. We found a taxi and told him our plan, which he agreed with. After hitting our first destination, Gbeil (a city near the water with really old ruins), he proceeded to hijack us and create his own plan of what we should do. Oh, so maybe hijack is a bit of a strong word, but our driver was now in charge. He made all of our purchases, told us what to do, decided where we were going to eat dinner (and what we were going to eat), and decided to forget about all traffic laws. A bit crazy. But definitely an experience to put down in the books.

The next day (Monday) was time to come home. This time we only had to wait four and a half hours at the Syrian border (WOOHOOO!!), but due to some regulation with our driver or his car, we couldn’t enter Jordan until 7pm. So we decided to detour in Damascus for an hour and a half. Just enough time to see the largest and most famous Souq in the city (Souq Al-Hamadieh) and the Mosque located in the center of it. We only got through one wing in our hour and a half, so this definitely deserves another go around. So much to see and do in Damascus. It has such a long history that dwarfs anything we have in America.

So, all in all, a good weekend. Minus the part on the drive back when our driver wanted us to smuggle alcohol across the border. But no biggee…he was still able to get his cigarettes through. On the whole though, probably my best experience abroad so far. Beirut is an awesome city and offers everything you would want to do in the Middle East. It is ridiculous to think that a country with such a arduous history still has so much vibrancy and energy. I dare you all to rethink what your perceptions of the Middle East. I know I have, and I know that the learning has only just begun for me.

Let’s see where next weekend takes me!

The American University of Beirut. This picture really doesn't do it justice.

Downtown Beirut. The big clocktower. Lots of stories here. Not enough time to write in blog.

The Corniche. Med Sea behind, snow-capped mountains to the North. Oh yeah, and the group of people I was with. Accompanied by my host-bro and host-cousin(?).

The same street at night. This pic taken from atop the Ferris Wheel.

A gorgeous mosque in the background, and a church right in front. A great juxtaposition of the religious culture in Lebanon.

Gbeil, the outlying city we went to. Sits right on the water. You can see the ruins on the right.

The Souq in Damascus. This picture shows absolutely nothing because this place is HUGE!