Before I start to write about Beirut, I need to get this off my chest: Cyprus Airways’ logo is a goat with wings. A flying goat with wings. What airline company uses goats? KLM has a swan, a graceful and beautiful animal which, above all, actually flies. Other airlines have swallows, eagles and owls, all very understandable choices for airline logo’s, so why the goat? I wrecked my brain while checking in at Schiphol, and then it came to me. They want to reassure us: “if we can keep a goat up in the air, this plane will be a piece of cake…” It’s genius.
So we, a group of media students from Webster Leiden (plus a lone International Relations student: me), arrived at Beirut airport yesterday night at 23:00. We were received by a couple of students from the LIU (Lebanese International University) who, after dropping off our stuff off at the hotel, immediately took us to a restaurant/bar to enjoy the INCREDIBLE Lebanese cuisine. Fried chicken in a lemon vinaigrette sauce, salads like I’ve never had, sausages in cinnamon sauce, all topped off with wodka-lemon-tabasco shots (?!) with an olive inside. The only way to survive a shot like that is if you have an ice-cold beer ready to extinguish the burning sensation in your throat. Thank god for Lebanese local brew.
As the reader understands, it only took one meal in Beirut for me to consider moving here forever. Either that or convincing the nice lady from the restaurant to come and live with me in Amsterdam.
This morning, slightly hung over, we made our way to the LIU campus to meet our fellow Lebanese media students. We discussed our projects for the coming two weeks. As an IR student working from the “sideline” in the Netherlands, it is immensely interesting to be right here where the action takes place. I’m in the arena now, and I want to know how people think about the issues in the Middle East, their front yard so to speak. Beirut is a city with a history of conflict, and I am curious how they deal with this. I will firstly be conducting interviews with students and people on the streets to see what they think about Israel, Hezbollah, America, Iran, nuclear weapons. Perhaps they will get angry, perhaps they are not interested at all, and that on its turn would be very interesting…
Anyway, in the coming weeks you will be able to follow all this via this blog… Now it is time for a nice hookah:)
How did you find the time to have a hookah during sunset, when you’ve been there only one day? Was it before or after you had a “slightly hung over” meeting with your fellow students? Anyway, have a nice time and take care of yourself,
Arie
enjoy..X