Bombed building from civil war

Whats the first thing you think of when you think Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon?

Chances are: "war zone", "Destroyed", "unsafe", "terrorist". A website called Lebanon News: Under the Rug Swept features the Looks Like Beirut Certificate which notes  the times "people compare Beirut to destruction". For the world forgets that the Lebanese Civil War ended. It was a horrific war which claimed too many lives and did indeed destroy swathes of Beirut. But the war stopped over 20 years ago.

Today, Beirut is becoming the place to visit. Lonely Planet and the New York Times added the city to their "must visit" lists, I got my chance last month when I attended a volunteerism conference at the UNESCO centre in Beirut.


Landing in Beirut is jaw dropping. The planes make their approach from the water and the images of sparkling Mediterranean, snow capped mountains and residential towers fill your eyes. The rock formations above and below are known as La Roche (The Rock).




Visually, Beirut is stunning both naturally and architecturally. One of my favourite activities was running along the waterfront known as "The Corniche" (left) Filled with walkers, runners and pushcart vendors, moving through the area was always beautiful. I always had amazing views of snow capped Mount Lebanon and the Mediterranean as I ran.

Beirut has a vibrant, crazy mix of new and old buildings, some bombed remnants and archaeological digs of showing the many layers of settlement (see below). Beirut has been settled for 5000 years and controlled  by Phoenician, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader and Ottoman empires.

Roman Ruins in Beirut

There is a revitalized downtown with office buildings, churches, mosques, souks (markets) and restaurants (left) most of which has been  rebuilt since the war.

Infrastructure across the city varies. Some of the poorer suburbs lack footpaths. Traffic signals are distributed unevenly. Driving follows a unique set of unwritten rules.

Beirut's public transit system is very underdeveloped.  Buses ply mysterious routes and taxis hound pitilessly anyone the drivers suspects of being a tourist. See previous blog "Never Never Trust a Beirut Taxi Driver". I suspect if there had not been a civil war, Beirut might have financed a light rail or metro line across the city with a station at the airport. Petrol was very expensive sitting around $3.00 a litre ($10 a gallon).

I loved the Hamra street area, seen by many as the heart of Beirut connecting downtown Beirut with inner Western suburbs of Beirut. Its very close to the American University of Beirut.  Before the war, Hamra was viewed locally as the "Champs Elysées" of Beirut with tourists and intellectuals making it their home.

Today its been renovated and is home to great and reasonably priced high street shops (such as H & M where I stocked up on clothes) and stand alone retailers, coffee shops full of university students, restaurants with locals and tourists, and Lebanese young men driving up and down in their  cars with windows down and music up (they do this in Australia too!). The atmosphere was very vibrant.

The food in Beirut was of amazingly high standard with very good service. The food always seemed fresh and flavoursome. There are foods from all over the world but I only ate Lebanese foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner including:

• Kibbeh (meaning ball in Arabic). Made of  crushed wheat or rice and chopped meat,  it is seen as  Lebanon's  national dish.
• Ackawi  a salty white cheese salty or not depending on choice .
• Fattoush salad ( toasted pita bread with cucumbers, tomatoes, mint and hummus -blended chickpeas dip)
• Falafel - small deep-fried patties made of highly-spiced ground chick-peas
• Fried cauliflower
• Kunafi shoelace pastry dessert stuffed with sweet white cheese and a sickly sweet syrup
• chicken skewers  marinated in olive oil and lemon

I found people were super friendly (even the taxi drivers after you had negotiated price). Greeting people in Arabic and then switching to English and or French worked well. The exceptions to the friendliness were some of the many security guards and army soldiers one saw. Some were welcoming and some were forbidding. The presence of so much military hardware and personnel while there to protect did, however,  feel oppressive sometimes. Taking photos at times was frustrating because so much photography seems forbidden. You of course cannot take pictures of soldiers  check points, tanks, barriers, guns and military signs. This makes almost any picture downtown tricky because the downtown was full of these things.  One soldier appeared from nowhere and stopped me taking  a photo of a fountain downtown (oops here it is).


While everyone hoped for it, in many of the conversations, Peace still seems very fleeting and fragile. No one felt confident it was ever coming to Lebanon. When people talked openly about the war, they all blamed someone else for it.  In the meantime  Beirut parties hard! Enjoy! I cant wait to come back.

Nothing prepared me for the taxis of Beirut.
I have shared my peeves about taxi rides from Hell before.  When I arrived at Lebanon's Beirut airport, my pre arranged transport did not show (I found out later that someone forgot to book it!). My cell phone did not work and I could not find a working pay phone in the airport. So I stupidly headed to the door of the airport hall following a sign which said "taxis". There appeared to be no order or logic to the line up of taxis of drivers outside. ie in most cities some sort of offical or unofficial taxi queue exists and a passenger knows which one to get into. This does not apply in the Indian cities I have been to and clearly not in Beirut. I said to one driver where I wanted to go and it was on for young and old. Drivers came from everywhere surrounding me: "Taxi, Taxi", "where you want to go". I gazed forlornly at a line of "official taxis" beyond the now teeming mass of "official" and "unofficial" taxi drivers. A bidding war had started for my wallet. "$50", "$45", "$40", "$35". "No sir don't go with him- he is not official airport driver". "Monsieur Monsieur, I am real official". One man showed me his very obviously home made "Official Airport Taxi Driver" badge.

Beirut seems to have more taxi drivers than any other city on earth. I am not sure if its a function of the high unemployment rate in Beirut. Everyone with a spare car seems to have turned it into a taxi. And every driver needs to come with a warning label attached.

Plan A - Duck and Cover
In the meantime, the taxi drivers gathered around me vying for my attention had reached a fever pitch and two had come to blows over who was going to get my attention. I was so stunned, furious and exhausted after 30 hours of travel, that I told them all to go jump, turned on my heel and walked back into the terminal. Some followed me and I told them where to go too. After going to the "Mens" and collecting my thoughts I snuck out another exit and thought about a new plan.

Plan B -Go Official
There was a security booth next to the taxi rank. I marched up to the taxi rank, greeted the soldiers in the booth and asked them in French if they could help locate me a taxi. The soldier nodded and my spirits soared. He stepped out of the booth and in a loud voice shouted "this man needs a taxi". It was like throwing a sacrificial lamb to a flock of starving wolves. Gesturing, yelling taxi drivers dropped everything and ran to me standing there with a massive label over my head: "Dumb Tourist". Some were my original taxi drivers!   I was stumped - This is not a place I often find myself in when travelling.

I retreated a second time for the airport terminal and bought myself lunch in the airport cafe.

Plan C.
I knew that the hotel taxi would have cost $25 so I would find a taxi that would charge me $25. So out I came again. "Riveria Hotel $25, I kept repeating. Some drivers shook their heads: "Non Non $35 minimum". I stood my ground. The crowd of drivers disappeared to stalk other victims.

You are not alone
A small group of Japanese were surrounded. Like me they ran back into the terminal for safety where they hovered vacillating. You could see they were thinking "Return to Japan to face Nuclear fallout would be better than this". A group of Dutch arrived and were also chased back into the terminal. They did march out and entered into fierce bargaining as a group and vanished in a van. In the meantime, streams of people following drivers with pre booked cars passed.
Every now and then a taxi driver would venture up to me; "$35?" "No $25". Interestingly, the row of taxis in front of me didn't move. Lebanese people know better than to catch taxis and the tourists were in a state of terror!

Plan D- Stand Your Ground
"Finally, a driver who had been standing in front of his mercedes taxi near me for some time, said "Okay Riveria $25". I nodded and he grabbed my luggage and headed away from the mercedes.  I said "Hey, this is not your car?". He said "non". and pointed into the distant car park. I marched up, grabbed my bag and said "well then you are not taking me." This started a loud conversation between the drivers in Arabic.  At this point a man came up and said "we are very sorry for the way we have treated you today". He pointed to the Mercedes that I thought I would be riding in and said: "that is my car and I will take you to the Riveria for $25".
I said "this is your Mercedes". He nodded.
I said "and you are a licensed driver". He nodded .
I said: "You know where the riveria is?". He nodded.
"And you will take me for $25"?. He nodded.
"Okay , lets get out of here", I said.

As a driver, he turned out to be a nice guy. I even gave him a tip-let that get back to the other drivers!

Comparing War Wounds
When I got to the hotel,  I compared taxi horror stories with other guests. One guy had paid $40, another $45. One woman had paid $70! One woman had retreated from the drivers and had huddled in the terminal and managed to use her cell phone to call the hotel to send their official car. She felt relieved to have made it. The war may be over in Beirut but for besieged tourists to Lebanon, there is some work that needs to be done. The Egyptians at the Conference I was attending declared that their taxis were better than the Beirut ones - and Egyptian ones have a bad reputation!!

I avoided taxis after that. The taxis didnt avoid tourists. They would regularly stop and call out to peopple they thoght were tourists: "Taxi taxi" or honk their horns for attention or both.This seemed to happen to others, more than it happened to me. We decided to catch a taxi  from a shopping mall to our hotel, a 4km drive. The taxi driver looked at the four of us and with no shame asked for $50. I exclaimed with disgust and walked off. He dropped the fare to $20, then $15, then $14.

Beirut is a fun, fun city- its taxis are apalling. One of the side effects of the war is that any public transport initiatives were set back. There are no buses to the airport. Beirut has no streetcar/tram or metro system. If it was a European city which had not experienced such devastation in its war, I imagine it would have both. In the meantime, tourists and visitors remain victims of the taxi drivers of Beirut.

I will add to this post some pictures of Beirut each day.





Building shelled in the civil war

  




towards the Mediterranean

 



I assume new tower because of war damage

  








Display in shop made out of soap





glassware







I have no idea why these boys were dancing on the Corniche

In downtown Beirut

 


fountain where i was told not to take more pics



Woman feeding cats on the Corniche



costumed waiter

Roman ruins near Martyr Square