Wednesday, December 12th
Today we headed south for Madaba. The town of Madaba is about 60k south of Amman. In hindsight we could have used Amman as a base. Had we done that, however, we would have never have ended up in a hotel with an absolute nutjob presiding over its management. So it was a worthwhile endeavour in the end.
… Merryl and I are in our room, in El-Haramein, in Damascus. We are trying to tidy up and things are rapidly deteriorating into mayhem. Merryl is doing the tidying and I am getting ready to shower. She is adhering to her organised nature, whereas I am trying to extract my toiletries from the mess that has exploded from my backpack. “Where is my toothbrush?” I posit my question to the general aether, feigning exasperation.
“It’s on the shelf, by the wardrobe.”
“Uh, ok.” Silence ensues for two minutes, during which I rifle through the clothes she has just folded: “Have you seen my towel?”
“It’s hanging on the end of the bed.” She is now exasperated.
“have you seen the toothpaste?”
“It’s where you f*cking left it!” She is cracking, but she is also getting the joke. She is trying to be angry and not to laugh at the same time. It’s not easy. Her face is torn, the lower half a smile, the upper part, knotted eye-brows. I suddenly realise I have no idea where my flip-flops are…
We grabbed a quick breakfast and checked out of the hotel. We decided to walk to the station, rucksacks, backpacks, and all. It turned out to be a little further than expected, but at least we managed to see the roman amphitheatre as we had to walk passed it. We had planned to get a servise mini-bus. It transpired that public transport worked slightly differently in Jordan; it isn’t very good, basically. Servise taxis do operate however, and they are slightly cheaper if you are travelling in a group. So a taxi it was.
…The taxi driver pulls over on the main road. “Madaba.” He announces. I am looking at the map dubiously. It is Madaba alright, but it doesn’t look like where we want to be.
“Can you drop us at the hotel?” I ask.
“Madaba!” he says once again.
“Yes but can you drop us in the centre?” Marcus asks him. There is no point showing him the map. It doesn’t make any sense to us, and we can read English.
“Yes, yes, yes!! Centre”. He points to the ground. It’s not though and we all know it. We exchange glances and eye-brows are raised. Our driver however is suddenly keen to get rid of us. He is already out of the cab and is dragging our rucksacks onto the roadside in the hot, sunshine. It will take us nearly forty-five minutes to figure out where we are and find the hotel we plan to stay at. In the meantime our driver finishes unceremoniously dumping our baggage in the gutter and leaps into his car and drives off. My large backpack, which was leaning against the boot, remains upright for a moment, teetering precariously, and then topples over. We sling our gear on our backs and start to walk. “Welcome to Jordan!” a dismembered voice shouts from the shade…
We got dropped off on the outskirts of town then located, and checked into, the cheap hotel recommended in the LP. It was a little pikey looking, especially the showers, but it was cheap. We have switched the way we do things now. Marcus takes single(which is usually more
expensive) and Merryl and I take a double, and we split the costs three ways - as much as I miss the early morning farting competitions that Marcus and I have, I don’t think Merryl would appreciate them in quite the same way - so the arrangement works out nicely. The lady who owned the hotel did not look like she was the full shilling either. This, too, is not uncommon. However she had a kind face. Her cousin who also helped run the hotel, now he was a different story: He was a fine-fettered fruit-cake. We had barrels of fun with him. We dumped our stuff off in our rooms and chilled out for a little while. By then it was time for lunch, and a late one and that. We took the good book with us and went to discuss our plans for the next couple of days.
… “I have a big car. It is leaving tonight at midnight.” The hotelier-cum-taxi-driver-cum-german-expat-cum-more-than-slightly-touched-old-man is trying to get us to go on a tour. I thought I’d successfully dumped him with Marcus, but Marcus has refused to talk to him anymore, after he asked him, after seeing him arrive in a taxi – and pitching the same midnight tour at him -, if he had a bicycle with him. He is now giving me his full attention. I explain to him I don’t want to go on a tour tonight. We are walking across the road, through town, up toward the L’Eglise de Saint George. There is a restaurant we want to check out. Ever since we have left the hotel the man has followed us. He never stops talking and I am beginning to realise he doesn’t understand English nearly quite as well as he speaks it – or at least he chooses not to. I have told him several times we don’t want to go to the restaurant he is trying to bring us to. He is now trying to take me up the stairs to it. I look back at the others and pull a face. “Shall we just go with it?” They don’t really mind, they are happy to do whatever. But then they don’t have to talk to him. We are shepherded up to the restaurant. The old man is now asking me when I want to go to the airport…
Lunch turned out to be pretty good. It was shawarmas all round. Across the road, in the L’Eglise de Saint George, a funeral was taking place. A huge crowd of people were in attendance. A
hearse sat in the car-park with a siren and lights on its roof. I believe it doubled as an ambulance and a police-car. We decided that today was too late to head off anywhere in a taxi, and besides we had the walking tour to do! It started in a restaurant up the road [for some reason the walking tours in the LP always start – as well as end – with somewhere that sells food; Ye know us well! It also seems to provide completely inaccurate estimates of time taken to cover distances. I think it is aimed at people over the age of forty, with limps]. The walking tour also included three museums, any of in which you could purchase a single ticket for all. We took in the walking tour, starting with the Hippolytus Hall. This is an ancient villa that has been transformed into a museum. It has an amazing set of mosaics on display [Madaba is famed for its mosaics and, along with the museum, it has a school dedicated to their creation – how cool is that learning the art of mosaic creation]. From here we walked down through this quiet, compact 
town. The sun was slowly setting and everywhere was lit up – in what we later came to recognise as being uniquely Jordanian – in a crimson and scarlet splash of wine-coloured sunshine. We walked along passed old Ottoman style houses and passed the Church of the Virgin Lady, where frescos, depicting Pope John Paul II’s visit in 2005, adorn the walls of the church . Shortly afterward we deviated from the tour route to see the most amazing sunset; although we did end up in a rubbish tip. Back on the road we then headed past the Madaba museum and convinced the curator to let us to quickly look around it in the fading daylight. It was pretty impressive, but it was undertaken with brevity and alacrity. Back on the road we headed further south, this time in the darkness until we reached the Church of the Apostles – the terminus of the tour. Again this basilica had a huge, and predominately restored, mosaic. It was very peaceful and very serene. We then headed home. One thing that struck me for such a small town was the amount of off-licenses. Every other shop was stacked with booze. It appears all over the world Christians remain huge piss-heads.
… I have just arrived in Oxford station with my friend, Jon. I rarely get to see him these days, as he and his wife, Sarah, are currently breeding a clan of Bowmers. He has travelled up from Bournemouth; I am coming home from where I am contracting at Egham. I jumped on the train 8:12pm at Reading: the train he was also on. It runs from Bournemouth all the way through to Edinburgh: the Edinburgh Flyer. I took the liberty of procuring two cans of lager. We greeted each other with a furore. It has been a long time, and we have much to talk about. Oxford feels crisp in the October evening. There is a clear sky above us, and Cassiopeia is shining brightly as we exit the station into the cool, fresh, night air. I shall be leaving the country in one week’s time. Marcus is to meet us here, first picking up Jon and I, and then Merryl, then home to my parents house to meet my mum, who has kindly cooked for us all. I am arguing with John as we travel negotiate the mayhem that is the Cowley Rd: it is fresher’s week, and it is anarchy. We are discussing religion. I am currently reading The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. It is a very interesting book and has set some powerful wheels in motion in my mind. Jon and I have often discussed the fundamental problem with marriage between Religion and Science, and I am drawing and highlighting some points from the book to him. He is accusing me of chunking down my argument into a local minima; because I have been brought up a Catholic - Jon is a NLP master practitioner, and a very persuasive human being. The skills he has learnt through NLP would, even one hundred years ago, be considered a dark art. They are pretty formidable –and his point is valid so I am not pushing it with him; although I am also not letting him get away with talking nonsense (we love to haranguing each other). I can’t possibly realise at this time, but these wheels, and this argument, in four month’s from now will help me find the answer to the question that has intrigued us for so long - walking along the Corniche, on a January night, in West Beirut, with Natalie and her friend Mohammed. For now though, we have a wild night ahead of us and Jon and I have our fond farewells to say…
I didn’t realise it but I was coming down with the start of something bad that night. I felt pretty minging walking home. We had a drink in the hotel and then headed out to the recommended place in the LP for dinner: Haret Jdoudna. It turned out to be quite nice food, and a convivial atmosphere. The live band were especially cheesy, however the best part was when an entire group of Jordanians did a Karaoke set. Watching them have at it was an interesting way of spending an evening.
Today we headed south for Madaba. The town of Madaba is about 60k south of Amman. In hindsight we could have used Amman as a base. Had we done that, however, we would have never have ended up in a hotel with an absolute nutjob presiding over its management. So it was a worthwhile endeavour in the end.
… Merryl and I are in our room, in El-Haramein, in Damascus. We are trying to tidy up and things are rapidly deteriorating into mayhem. Merryl is doing the tidying and I am getting ready to shower. She is adhering to her organised nature, whereas I am trying to extract my toiletries from the mess that has exploded from my backpack. “Where is my toothbrush?” I posit my question to the general aether, feigning exasperation.
“It’s on the shelf, by the wardrobe.”
“Uh, ok.” Silence ensues for two minutes, during which I rifle through the clothes she has just folded: “Have you seen my towel?”
“It’s hanging on the end of the bed.” She is now exasperated.
“have you seen the toothpaste?”
“It’s where you f*cking left it!” She is cracking, but she is also getting the joke. She is trying to be angry and not to laugh at the same time. It’s not easy. Her face is torn, the lower half a smile, the upper part, knotted eye-brows. I suddenly realise I have no idea where my flip-flops are…
We grabbed a quick breakfast and checked out of the hotel. We decided to walk to the station, rucksacks, backpacks, and all. It turned out to be a little further than expected, but at least we managed to see the roman amphitheatre as we had to walk passed it. We had planned to get a servise mini-bus. It transpired that public transport worked slightly differently in Jordan; it isn’t very good, basically. Servise taxis do operate however, and they are slightly cheaper if you are travelling in a group. So a taxi it was.
…The taxi driver pulls over on the main road. “Madaba.” He announces. I am looking at the map dubiously. It is Madaba alright, but it doesn’t look like where we want to be.
“Can you drop us at the hotel?” I ask.
“Madaba!” he says once again.
“Yes but can you drop us in the centre?” Marcus asks him. There is no point showing him the map. It doesn’t make any sense to us, and we can read English.
“Yes, yes, yes!! Centre”. He points to the ground. It’s not though and we all know it. We exchange glances and eye-brows are raised. Our driver however is suddenly keen to get rid of us. He is already out of the cab and is dragging our rucksacks onto the roadside in the hot, sunshine. It will take us nearly forty-five minutes to figure out where we are and find the hotel we plan to stay at. In the meantime our driver finishes unceremoniously dumping our baggage in the gutter and leaps into his car and drives off. My large backpack, which was leaning against the boot, remains upright for a moment, teetering precariously, and then topples over. We sling our gear on our backs and start to walk. “Welcome to Jordan!” a dismembered voice shouts from the shade…
We got dropped off on the outskirts of town then located, and checked into, the cheap hotel recommended in the LP. It was a little pikey looking, especially the showers, but it was cheap. We have switched the way we do things now. Marcus takes single(which is usually more
expensive) and Merryl and I take a double, and we split the costs three ways - as much as I miss the early morning farting competitions that Marcus and I have, I don’t think Merryl would appreciate them in quite the same way - so the arrangement works out nicely. The lady who owned the hotel did not look like she was the full shilling either. This, too, is not uncommon. However she had a kind face. Her cousin who also helped run the hotel, now he was a different story: He was a fine-fettered fruit-cake. We had barrels of fun with him. We dumped our stuff off in our rooms and chilled out for a little while. By then it was time for lunch, and a late one and that. We took the good book with us and went to discuss our plans for the next couple of days.… “I have a big car. It is leaving tonight at midnight.” The hotelier-cum-taxi-driver-cum-german-expat-cum-more-than-slightly-touched-old-man is trying to get us to go on a tour. I thought I’d successfully dumped him with Marcus, but Marcus has refused to talk to him anymore, after he asked him, after seeing him arrive in a taxi – and pitching the same midnight tour at him -, if he had a bicycle with him. He is now giving me his full attention. I explain to him I don’t want to go on a tour tonight. We are walking across the road, through town, up toward the L’Eglise de Saint George. There is a restaurant we want to check out. Ever since we have left the hotel the man has followed us. He never stops talking and I am beginning to realise he doesn’t understand English nearly quite as well as he speaks it – or at least he chooses not to. I have told him several times we don’t want to go to the restaurant he is trying to bring us to. He is now trying to take me up the stairs to it. I look back at the others and pull a face. “Shall we just go with it?” They don’t really mind, they are happy to do whatever. But then they don’t have to talk to him. We are shepherded up to the restaurant. The old man is now asking me when I want to go to the airport…
Lunch turned out to be pretty good. It was shawarmas all round. Across the road, in the L’Eglise de Saint George, a funeral was taking place. A huge crowd of people were in attendance. A
hearse sat in the car-park with a siren and lights on its roof. I believe it doubled as an ambulance and a police-car. We decided that today was too late to head off anywhere in a taxi, and besides we had the walking tour to do! It started in a restaurant up the road [for some reason the walking tours in the LP always start – as well as end – with somewhere that sells food; Ye know us well! It also seems to provide completely inaccurate estimates of time taken to cover distances. I think it is aimed at people over the age of forty, with limps]. The walking tour also included three museums, any of in which you could purchase a single ticket for all. We took in the walking tour, starting with the Hippolytus Hall. This is an ancient villa that has been transformed into a museum. It has an amazing set of mosaics on display [Madaba is famed for its mosaics and, along with the museum, it has a school dedicated to their creation – how cool is that learning the art of mosaic creation]. From here we walked down through this quiet, compact town. The sun was slowly setting and everywhere was lit up – in what we later came to recognise as being uniquely Jordanian – in a crimson and scarlet splash of wine-coloured sunshine. We walked along passed old Ottoman style houses and passed the Church of the Virgin Lady, where frescos, depicting Pope John Paul II’s visit in 2005, adorn the walls of the church . Shortly afterward we deviated from the tour route to see the most amazing sunset; although we did end up in a rubbish tip. Back on the road we then headed past the Madaba museum and convinced the curator to let us to quickly look around it in the fading daylight. It was pretty impressive, but it was undertaken with brevity and alacrity. Back on the road we headed further south, this time in the darkness until we reached the Church of the Apostles – the terminus of the tour. Again this basilica had a huge, and predominately restored, mosaic. It was very peaceful and very serene. We then headed home. One thing that struck me for such a small town was the amount of off-licenses. Every other shop was stacked with booze. It appears all over the world Christians remain huge piss-heads.… I have just arrived in Oxford station with my friend, Jon. I rarely get to see him these days, as he and his wife, Sarah, are currently breeding a clan of Bowmers. He has travelled up from Bournemouth; I am coming home from where I am contracting at Egham. I jumped on the train 8:12pm at Reading: the train he was also on. It runs from Bournemouth all the way through to Edinburgh: the Edinburgh Flyer. I took the liberty of procuring two cans of lager. We greeted each other with a furore. It has been a long time, and we have much to talk about. Oxford feels crisp in the October evening. There is a clear sky above us, and Cassiopeia is shining brightly as we exit the station into the cool, fresh, night air. I shall be leaving the country in one week’s time. Marcus is to meet us here, first picking up Jon and I, and then Merryl, then home to my parents house to meet my mum, who has kindly cooked for us all. I am arguing with John as we travel negotiate the mayhem that is the Cowley Rd: it is fresher’s week, and it is anarchy. We are discussing religion. I am currently reading The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. It is a very interesting book and has set some powerful wheels in motion in my mind. Jon and I have often discussed the fundamental problem with marriage between Religion and Science, and I am drawing and highlighting some points from the book to him. He is accusing me of chunking down my argument into a local minima; because I have been brought up a Catholic - Jon is a NLP master practitioner, and a very persuasive human being. The skills he has learnt through NLP would, even one hundred years ago, be considered a dark art. They are pretty formidable –and his point is valid so I am not pushing it with him; although I am also not letting him get away with talking nonsense (we love to haranguing each other). I can’t possibly realise at this time, but these wheels, and this argument, in four month’s from now will help me find the answer to the question that has intrigued us for so long - walking along the Corniche, on a January night, in West Beirut, with Natalie and her friend Mohammed. For now though, we have a wild night ahead of us and Jon and I have our fond farewells to say…
I didn’t realise it but I was coming down with the start of something bad that night. I felt pretty minging walking home. We had a drink in the hotel and then headed out to the recommended place in the LP for dinner: Haret Jdoudna. It turned out to be quite nice food, and a convivial atmosphere. The live band were especially cheesy, however the best part was when an entire group of Jordanians did a Karaoke set. Watching them have at it was an interesting way of spending an evening.
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