Amman is quite the American franchise. Not that this is anything peculiar of course. It fits in a line of other countries all having adopted the American brands of fast food, coffee bars and wholesale stores. But to me, as a Dutchman, it’s a feast of brand recognition (from American television shows! ;)) and a lot of brand discovery. In Holland, we only have McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, and Subway. Correct me if I’m wrong, readers.

If you know me just a tad bit, you’ll know that I love Starbucks. Everytime I’m abroad, I visit a Starbucks. They have a great one here near Abdoun Circle, with excellent facilities. Actually it’s the best one I’ve ever been to. And yes, the coffee and food are overpriced, but it’s the overall experience that counts. Nevermind this marketing babble. Furthermore, Amman houses ChiliWays (mmmm great chicken burgers), Hardee’s, Popeye’s, American Bakehouse (fantastic bread), and all the obligatory stuff like McDonald’s, BK, KFC, etc. Other market segments are also represented. I saw a Radioshack near 6th Circle.

Yet, there are also the great local and regional franchises. I’m a big fan of the Lebanese chain of Casper & Gambini’s. They make great fajitas for lunch. And yesterday, my all-time favourite icecream parlour (van der Poel IJs in Hengelo and Enschede, Holland) was thrown back into second place by a local Amman parlour. Nutella ice cream. WOW.

Imagine this.

It’s the first morning you wake up in a strange city. You don’t know where you are, and frankly, you’re only concerned with where you’re going. Your office.

You open your door and find that you’re surrounded by fog. Pale sunlight manages to creep through, creating an eery spectacle of light and water particles. Then, softly, in the distance, from a source unknown to you, you hear this tune. I remember my primary reactions were, ‘What the hell is that?’ followed by ‘Ok, so when is Chuckie going to slit my throat?’.

After a day or two of getting jumped by this sound in various parts of the city, I discovered the source. It’s a little pick-up truck driving around, selling gas cilinders to people. They used to just have a megaphone and scream about the quality of their gas, but this was forbidden by the government. Instead, music was allowed. So they came up with the tune. The only thing you can say for it, is that certainly is most recognizable.

Note: the wav file has been embedded in a ppt file. Just run it, it plays automatically.

Today’s weather: clear blue skies, pretty warm (16C), with a light breeze. Eeeexcellent. Yet, I’m inside right now with a great wireless connection at Books@Cafe, spending my Saturday — last day of the weekend. Books is a restaurant and a bar in the heart of Amman, on Bin Omar al-Khattab street, also known as Mango Street. Note that this last bit of information does not matter to any of the taxi drivers around. Basically, these guys only know how to drive to shopping malls and major hotels. This can be a bit of a pain, as you have to guide them yourself (not a viable option when you’ve been in the city for 2 weeks) or you have to call one of your more knowledgeable Arab friends to allow for an explanation of the route over the phone. Sometimes, I wonder if the taxi drivers just play ignorant to buy time and distance and with that, some extra Dinars. During the day they’re stuck to meters (getting you around the city for 1 or 2 Jordanian Dinars) but during the night they use their own prices. Welcome to the wonderful world of haggling.

Yesterday I met up very early in the morning (07:30 – early, considering I had a rough night with little sleep on Thursday) with a colleague, Layla. We were both inspired by last week’s bike tour of the Jordan Valley and decided to tag along with a few more. Yesterday’s route covered the same part of the Jordan valley as last time, but the wind had picked up considerably and made the trip a bit harder. Again though, the scenery was mind boggling. Pictures to come. While cycling through the agricultural parts of Jordan, you’re looking back at the mountains hiding Amman and at the West Bank with the city of Jericho in the middle. The farming people you encounter are very simple, speak no real English and live in Bedouin tents on the land, surrounded by their livestock and well-dressed children (Layla: “My God, is that kid naked?”).

Today’s an easy, relaxing day. I think I’m going to check out one of the walking routes mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide to Amman, taking me through the gold souk (the traditional Arab marketplace) and the downtown area.

Work hard, play hard.

Every weekday begins with an 8 hour working day, followed by an evening packed (19:00 - 00:00) with social activities. It’s a blast though. I’ve been traveling around the city a lot in order to see all the different hang outs, such as Nai (world famous, Oriental, royal, luxurious lounge club), Vinaigrette (a wonderful restaurant in the penthouse of the Howard Johnson hotel in Shmeisani, with an amazing view over Amman), Blue Fig (a very original restaurant/club in Abdoun), Starbucks (for those of you who know me, this makes absolute sense), Books@Cafe (great cappuccino and wifi, guaranteed easy Saturday morning), Fakhr el Din (luxurious restaurant with great Arabic dishes) and Kanabaye (gayest salsa club in town, serving a very mediocre amount of whiskey in a lemonade glass). All great hang outs with their own taste in music and clientele.

The bad thing is that a lot of the upper class clubs require early reservations for a table, because everything is based on the fact that you would really really want to sit down – and enjoy the narguila, the hubbly bubbly. Everything here is loungy. I haven’t been to a club yet that only had just a bar, a DJ booth and a dance floor.

Tomorrow is weekend. Let’s have a drink and dance. I’ll make the reservations!

Look at my nifty washing machine. If I turn enough dials and pull enough levers, my laundry might be teleported to Alpha Centauri Prime. What year is it?

On another note, I went cycling in the Jordan Valley yesterday. Twenty degrees Celsius, surrounded by beautiful nature and lovely people, my collegues. We biked around for about 2 hours, then headed back to a farm and had a nice lunch. After a game of Villagers & Wolves (yesssss), we drove back to Amman by bus. At night, I played football with Mohamad and kicked Jordanian butt in cooperation with a Brazilian guy.

More to come soon!

I’ve added some pictures from my phone, click on the Flickr link on the right hand side of the screen. Once I get the chance to head out for some proper photography in the weekends, look for better stuff!

So, after having loved those sheep brains, I went to work the following morning. It was absolutely pouring down rain and of course I couldn’t explain to the taxi driver where exactly the office would be. The problem with taxi drivers in Amman is that they only know the landmarks, and very very few street names. On top of that, street names have the strange habit of changing every year.

I told the taxi to stop and I got out, calling the office. I took shelter in someone’s carpark for a few, when it turned out that I had actually gotten within 50 meters of the office: I could see Imad Marji, financial and administrative manager, waving at me from afar. I ran down to the office dodging deep pools of water in treacherous holes in the road, and got there right on time. Nine o’clock sharp.

I met everybody gradually during the day, while I was settled in the office of Faisal Hakki, my supervisor. At 4 I attended a short meeting where I saw everybody together and I got a proper introduction. Fun exciting day! I headed home, and went to bed early. Monday consisted of more meetings and talks with people in the office. Everybody has been very friendly and helpful, so I couldn’t have wished for anything better.

Oh, and on Tuesday, the girls from the embassy prepared a superb hutspot dinner, followed by wine, Old Amsterdam cheese and dropveters. Mmmm. Almost as good as sheep brains. I met Ala’a (because everybody called him Allah, he decided his nickname would be Alexander or Alex), a Jordan-Canadian and his cousin Osama. I also met Francisco, an Italian who had studied in Enschede at my university, and believe it or not, had actually lived next to me for half a year in 2001. Small world, huh?

Finally, yesterday night was football night. Holland played Russia so we went down to the Champion bar near the Kemplinsky hotel, but sadly we were too late. Some English fans had already requested the England - Spain match on the big screen. So we headed down to the Bristol Hotel, which turned out to be absolutely shady and smelling of toilet refreshener. Nevertheless, a 4-1 victory for the boys in orange did me good. Oranje boven!

By the lack of an Internet connection at home and by the abundant times of having tagged along with a few fresh acquaintances, I haven’t been able to update a lot. So now, drumroll please, I’ll give you summary of these last couple of days, over the next few days! Is this the start of a vicious circle? Naaah. I’ll work overtime at the office just to please my readers.

So, after almost having lost by luggage, I took a taxi (“Where you from?” “Helanda.” “Aaah, good good, welcome to Jordan!”) at the airport and headed to the Marriot Hotel where I’d meet Maike, my contact at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Amman. I had to pass through the tight security at the entrance and then plunged into the most comfortable seat next to some huge American guys in suit. They were talking about American football and all wore those big championship rings; the first people I meet in Jordan are all-American football stars. Isn’t that ironic? I had trouble staying awake, not only because they were talking about American football, but because it had been a door-to-door journey of 20 hours.

Twen-ty-ow-arrrrs. Aye. I left home in Holland around 10 am on Friday, hopped on the plane at 2:45 to London and spent my afternoon there cruising Heathrow and lounging at Starbucks. I met up with Kate later and had a great time, laughed a lot. Reallyreally nice to see her! After that, I boarded my next plane to Amman via Beirut an hour later than planned. The trip to Amman was long and grueling. My seat was just close enough to the one in front of me that I could take on any sleeping position. Eventually, I sort of dozed off with my head against that pesky seat in front. I sat next to an old Lebanese woman clad in black, didn’t wear any shoes and who didn’t speak a word of English, but was otherwise very nice and quite eloquent with her hands. We landed at Rafiq Hariri International Airport in Beirut at around 4 am. Just a dozen people remained in the plane that took off to Amman at 5 am, and I found myself next to a very interesting American traveling to Baghdad.

Dressed in sand-coloured clothing, wearing a hat with ‘O.I.S. Operation Iraqi Freedom’ and complaining about the lack of coffee, he drew my attention. I moved over to the seat next to him. He was a 50ish-year-old from Florida and was one of those foreign contractors in Iraq. He specialized in sewer construction, and had seen combat in Vietnam. Although we discussed politics, art, literature and my extremely flowery and superior jacket, he kept on swinging the conversation back to one central theme: that he really didn’t want to go back to that hell hole, but that he had to serve out his contract. I wished him all the best when we parted ways at the Queen Alia Airport luggage belt in Amman, and he complimented me on my jacket again.

So, swooooosh, back to the Marriot hotel and those American football players. I met Maike and headed down to my apartment near 7th Circle. In Amman, every major roundabout has been numbered from 1 through 8. My little studio is located near a Safeway and a Cozmo, two nice supermarkets. I’m about 10 minutes by taxi (1 dinar, i.e. 1 euro!) away from my office. After having been shown to my apartment, we decided to head down to Abdoun Circle (Abdoun – a well-off trendy neighbourhood) for breakfast. Oh yes, Lebnani Snack, gotta love it! Mmmm. I met Maaike (yes, a different person with an extra a), another embassy intern, and then decided it would be best to head to bed.

In the evening, me, Ma(a)ike, and a new acquaintance Mohamed, who organizes tours for the Dutch embassy, went to one of the best restaurants in town, Fakhr el Din. Another embassy employee, Sami, joined later on. We had a brilliant Arabic meal (even typing this makes me drool) with everything in it, ranging from hummus, to tahbouli (a side dish with a lot of parsil and tomato) to sheep brains.

Yes, sheep brains. They tasted marvelous.

So, here I am. Finally with a decent Internet connection at the office. I landed safely on Saturday morning, and was immediately introduced to that Jordan way I had heard so much about. I was waiting at the luggage belt for my 2 sets of luggage, and only 1 arrived. So, bummed out of course, I headed over the the luggage service desk, where I filled in some forms. I was instructed to call and see tomorrow. Then as I turned, a maintenance guy asked me what the colour was, and then dove into the LUGGAGE BELT HOLE to see if he could find it. Eh voila. Crazily enough, out popped the green bag. Strange first impression!

I’ll update tomorrow with stories I’ll write tonight and some pictures. Still don’t have a connection at my appartment, but I hope that will change in the next two weeks.