An abundance of experiences and travels and too little time to write them all up. The tragic result: it has been a month since my last update. In this month I worked, met yet more people, traveled around ancient Jordan and hosted one of my best friends. Now that I’m in bed with a cup of Starbucks coffee at my side, let me tell you about it all. View the photographs of all the places mentioned below at this Picasa web album.
Early in April, I decided to visit one of Amman’s most ancient sites: the Citadel, or Al Qala. This fortification in the middle of the downtown area lies high upon one of Amman’s mountains and stems from before Christ. However, most of the ruins date from Roman times, when Amman was called Philadelphia and was a major city in the Decapolis. It was one of the first sunny days since I arrived in Jordan, and the wind was howling across the mountains. Walking around alone, it was kind of eery; very few tourists around and a single armed guard. I walked around flipping pages of my Lonely Planet, trying to figure out all sorts of information about the site. The view down to the streets below and to the Roman Theater was spectacular. Supposedly, the Roman elite had a tunnel constructed to carry them from the temple complex on the Citadel down to the Theater, as to avoid mingling with the dirty riff raff in the streets. Nobody knows where this tunnel is, or if it even really exists!
Continuing to feed my hunger for history and archeology, I visited Jerash and Umm Qais in the north of Jordan, in Roman times respectively known as Gerasa and Gadara. These cities were also in the Decapolis. I rented a car with one of my best friends Frederik, who came over for a week while traveling from Dubai to Amsterdam, and drove up there. Jerash was amazing; incredible well preserved and an enormous site. The most amazing part was the theater. Beautifully restored and certainly worth a visit during the Jerash Festival this summer, for a concert or two! Umm Qais was a small Roman city but nonetheless an interesting visit. The first striking thing is the use of black stone instead of white marble. Really weird to see that! It is not nearly as impressive as Jerash or any other ancient site in Jordan, although it boasts a magnificent view of the Golan heights (Israeli occupied but actually Syrian) and Lake Tiberias. However, I value my visit to Umm Qais as more entertaining than Jerash, because of the complete rawness of the site. It hasn’t been excavated well and that means that you can just stray from the path and start your exploration. Roman pottery is spread all over the place.
I was also stalked by an Iraqi woman in Umm Qais. She was with her friends and started to giggle uncontrollably when I looked over my shoulder towards her. Wherever I walked with Frederik, I bumped into her and her friends. It turned out that she was Christian (‘My name is Mary!’), around 35 years old and wasn’t married yet - or anymore! Hence the stalking. Her 5 veiled friends discussed me in Arabic, and when I told them that ana (I) be7bti (speak) arabi (arabic) shway (a bit), they all just sort of applauded me and started to ask me all sorts of questions. I enjoyed my 5 minutes of admiration and then casually walked away.
