03 Dec 2017

Beirut

In the first two weeks of October 2017 I visited Lebanon, just so I could continue my writing projects on here. No, really!

Okay, fine: I flew there to visit my friends Andrew and Angie and I did not have any prior notion of what Lebanon would be like, nor any intention of writing about it. My main aim was to spend time with my friends and start building up some flabby insulation for the coming winter. Since Lebanon isn’t the most common destination for tourism and tends to be on the news because of the other t-word, upon my return I was asked the same questions by several people. Consequently, I figured I’d dust off my text editor and make sure I could answer the next friendly question with the immortal sentence, “Just google it…”

So here is how this is going to happen: I’ll throw in some random headlines and a bunch of photographs that in no way relate to the heading under with they’re posted. You’ll do your best to be both amused and informed.

Is it safe?

This was probably the most commonly asked question about my trip. Weirdly enough, I hadn’t really given this much thought beforehand. On the one hand the whole region is somewhat famous for being a bit tense at the best of times. On the other hand, my friends were already living there and so surely that meant there was no reason for concern. Somehow it did not occur to me that my friends work in security and refugee aid, respectively.

I did check the foreign departments’ website just to see about visa requirements and there was a tersely worded travel warning which I read as “Beirut is totally fine, don’t worry, just maybe stay away from the borders if you can, mmmmkay?”. The fact that Beirut is small enough to consist mostly of borders didn’t really concern me at the time. Nor did the fact that Lebanon is on a number of lists which mean I had to declare my trip to my employer. Most of those lists are not exactly of the best-of kind. Speaking of lists… Wikipedia: List of attacks in Lebanon

But none of that really seemed to matter. When I flew in, my arrival wasn’t any different from other countries. Beirut it

It must be incredibly full of refugees, right?

Statistically speaking, yes. Lebanon has taken in about XYZ million refugees from Syria. It also harbors about XYZ million Palestinian refugees, many of whom have been in the country since the XXs.

What did you do in the desert?

Until next time,
Arne