Lebanon – the next week

January 2^nd, Beirut – January the something or other.

The next day we checked out of the grandiose and palatial accommodation we had occupied for the last three days. We were debating staying in Beirut or heading north. The main allure of staying in Beirut meant we didn’t have to lug our backpacks around the country with us. Lebanon is a very, very small country. It is approximately 240Km north to south, therefore you can pretty much explore anywhere as a day trip. So, we reasoned, why bother heading into the country when we could day trip from Beirut. Natalie had also offered us a place to crash, but it was quite far out of town - she was maybe moving flat the next week, but still away for the time being. In the end we got a taxi to the Charles Helou bus station and – unbelievably so – it was raining. That clinched it. We walked back into town for five minutes and checked into the Taalal New Hotel.

This turned out to be a chilled out and relaxed back-packer’s hostel. The two guys that ran it were very cool and there was always an eclectic bunch of people hanging out in the communal area downstairs. We decided to stay for a day until the storm had blown over. We headed up to the Beirut Museum for the afternoon. We were still recovering from our New Year’s eve soiree, and my liver was still throbbing, but we soldiered on. In contrast to our recent archaeological excursions in Syria the artefacts on display included the Iron age, Bronze age, and comparative archaeology from Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Phonecian, rule through various periods. This was, of course, before the invasion and occupation of the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Ottomans, the French, the British… Indeed many of these artefacts were a testament to how much history, and how much cultural influence the Levant has seen.

We headed back, walking in the sunshine this time. Interestingly enough the buildings pock-marked with bullet holes and shrapnel blasts are now been covered up and rapidly rebuilt. There is a lot of money in Lebanon and the evidence of the last civil war is being brushed under the infrastructural carpet of progress – as it should be. Who wants to dwell on the past? Probably not the dispossessed Palestinians, who are now living as second-class citizens in semi-permanent camps in Beirut, Sidon, and Tyre, amongst other places. As we were walking back we chanced upon a cinema showing the Golden Compass – the adaptation of Philip Pullman’s first installation of His Dark Material’s trilogy: The Northern Lights. It was a reasonable film, though it sorely lacked the genius woven into the tapestry of the tale told on paper and was a bit too rushed – rather like the recent Narnia Chronicles. But it was nice to be in the flicks again and the special effects, as always, appealed to my geeky side.

We got back to the hotel and decided to go out for food in the nearby street of Germayze. This turned out to be a hedonist’s treasure trove of bars, cafes, clubs, shooter-bars, and an-any-sort-of-excuse-for-selling-alcohol–bars. Even just after New Year everyone was out partying and revelling hard. We had found our home for the next ten days.

… Marcus and I are out having dinner with a group of Lebanese people we have met. We are sitting in a very plush restaurant in a very chic shopping mall in Beirut. We are dressed like complete gippos: by this I mean Marcus and myself. When you are travelling you just don’t have clean clothes. And your cleanest clothes are stained, ripped, and generally something that would turn your mother as white as a sheet if she thought for one moment you would wear them out to dinner. Sorry Mum! Lebanese food is very similar to Syrian, Jordanian food. We are all deciding what to order, but nobody is taking the bull by the horns, so to speak. I am just taking a passive role in all of this so I have decided to not to say anything. The girls decide to order everything on the menu. Everything… I am known for having quite an appetite. Rachel spent Christmas week remarking that I have two hollow legs. But everything on the menu will be quite a challenge. I am talking to a girl, Zeina, and asking her about her favourite drinking holes on Germayze street. However, I can’t say Germayze for some reason. I keep saying Gemayerza. Zeina patiently corrects me for the third time but she is having trouble keeping a straight face…

The next seven days seemed to pass in a haze of late nights and long lie-ins. Most days it rained. Most days we lay in bed and watched TV late into the afternoon whilst the storm raged overhead, waiting for it to pass. It never did though. And each day for some reason the drinking hour got earlier and earlier. We got to know the people staying in the hotel and spent the evenings clubbing with them. We met an Ozzie called Rob who knew Adele and Rach from Damascus. He had travelled to Beirut with a girl called Alison. Alison had met Leah in Hamas and she told her that Marcus and I were in Beirut and to look out for us; our reputations were proceeding us. It was a great backpacking route through Syria and Lebanon because it was small enough for everyone to know everyone. We also met Julia, a Dutch girl studying to be an anthropologist, and her friends Tamara and Steph who turned up a couple of nights after her. We all had a great couple of nights partying. We went out one evening to a club called BO18. This was a bit to 18-21 something for my old bones. You could smell the hormones in the air. The guys outnumbered the girls in a ratio of probably 5-1 and the girls in our group got hit on so blatantly and repeatedly they ended up going home out of sheer annoyance. We had a good boogie though and every now and then the roof opened: retracting back like the entrance to the jungle missile-silo in a James Bond movie. It was quite something to suddenly realise that you could see the stars overhead. Marcus, Rob, and I stayed on and we partied until the early hours.

… We are in a shooter bar on Germayze St. We have been ordering a colourful and varied range of cocktails. Mind-benders, bubble-gums, B-52s, slow comfortable screws, brain haemorrhages, Osama Bin Ladens. The bar is tiny, the size of an old-school chip shop. I am chatting to some Lebanese people and Rob and Alison. I notice a barman come in from another place down the road. He nips behind the bar and grabs a bottle of Absolute vodka. I watch as he pours out two, sizeable, shooters for himself and the barman; then another two; then another two. At this point I am laughing in disbelief. He notices me and declares I am far too sober. I get a triple vodka shooter for free. Whoo hoo… I think? Suddenly I notice a guy tapping on the window. The head barman from the other bar has come in search for his errant bartender. The shooter maniac exeunts sheepishly waving good-bye to us all. Steph and Tamara are now dancing on the bar…