Arabian nights

It was a Thursday... the same day Yasmina and I snuck into the abandoned church, the same day we went souvenir shopping and suntanning at the military beach.

We picked up Raof, an outrageous lanky improv actor, and retreated back into the Druze mountains and Beit ed Dine. We passed a wedding parade, every car dressed up in flowers and ribbons, honking joyously as they slowly crept up to their mountain village.



Maybe their wedding reception was to be held here? A palace where even the pool has a carpet.



The sun set, and we ate slowly. The food was not nearly as good as the view.





We danced in the courtyard at the last rays of light. Roaf plucked yasmin flowers and crooned at Yasmina about her beautiful scent.





We left at dusk; the palace lit perfectly for the arriving wedding guests.



It was heartbreaking to turn away.

Into the deep

One Wednesday afternoon, Yasmina and I left Beirut in late afternoon. We traveled the world that day, breakfasting at a Parisian cafe, shopping in London boutiques, then climbing up this mountain and back in time.



Like inching along a time line, the high we climbed, the further archaic our landmarks became. We came upon villages, castles, a monastery, and the Ark.



At the top, we entered a cave, heading back down into the mountain. No pictures are allowed.



But the Jeita Grotto is a truly stunning piece of the earth and deserves to be a Natural Wonder of the World.







Sweeping along a delicate, winding concrete walkway, you are at times within a foot of a stone curtain that took millions of years to drape or staring face down into what could only be the pits of hell.
It feels infinite and sacred; its vastness a siren song luring you to the very end of the walkway, craning to peer around the last stalagmite, wanting to know how deep, how far, how high, how forever it goes.

[+ grotto fotos were found via google image search]

walking with giants, visiting the dead

In 1967, Oscar Neimeyer, Brazillian Modernist Architect Extraordinaire, began designing an International Fair site in Tripoli. Channeling both his strongly Corbusian background and subtle Arab influences, his fairground was an exploration in material, space, and form. It is High Modernism. In 1975 construction stopped mid-way through completion; the civil war had started, and no one came back to finish the job.

But the pavilions remain, cracking and crumbling in a well-tended garden. It is a an architectural graveyard; the rotting corpses of great characters set among flowers and serene, expansive, unbelievably eerie parkland.


More photos here (really worth it, I promise): Tripoli

The look of Perseverence

One afternoon, Yasmina took me on a tour of the Green Line, the section of Beirut dividing the Christian East and Muslim West. It was the no-man's zone of the civil war, which for a number of political and social reasons has remained in a stage of half-renewal, half-decay.



She took me to one of her favorite spots: a deserted church once used as an artillery strong-hold. Trees have begun to create a canopy where a ceiling once was. Battlements with bullet holes still stand in the nave.



Despite it's decrepitude, or perhaps because of, the church (like all magnificent churches are) a focus of architectural student musings (several studios have held projects here) and provided shelter for the poor (the bell tower became a sort of homeless-apartment complex).



I found a shard of mirror that let me look at the space anew. It got me thinking about the power and beauty in making the best of what you have. With the shard, I could only frame a tiny portion of the world around me, a skewed version, distorted and limited in odd places. But it resulted in such an extreme, high level of satisfaction when something whole or good could be caught through that one glance; each detail magnified in importance and richness... Eventually, this became the best lesson I learned from my time in Lebanon.



Just build it back, build it up, keep rebuilding.

---
Photos from the Beirut Album

The [broken] Paris of the Middle East

The majority of my time was spent in Beirut. For two weeks, Yasmina's home was my home. I shared her room, sprawled on a mattress on the floor. I by no means "roughed it."


Yasmina lives in Hamra

We spent each morning in Beirut; either enjoying a slow breakfast, or taking a tour of an adjacent neighborhood. We shopped. We tanned. We slept in. We lived like two 20-something girls with no responsibility.
During the day we would usually leave the city and go on an adventure (like the proceeding entries will detail) and return again in the evening to sample the night life.
Oh, the Beirut nightlife. I imagine that having money in any major city would give you a similar experience, but never having had a deep pocket nor having the sort of friends who would frequent such places as those we frequented, it was an absolutely frivolous, luxurious, and unquestionably unique experience for me.


AUB Aquatic Center by VJAA

I spent more time living than photographing the 'fun' parts, so the majority of my city shots are architectural- because the built environment was so strange, so foreign, and so fantastic I couldn't help but find 3000+ amazing things to record with my camera.


The Cheap Beach option

I know my next lines sound prejudice, but Lebanese society is still in fact very divided, and it has a strong correlation to religion.
I found Beirut particularly interesting because of its segregation. It is no secret that the Christians, who are rich, live on the west side of the city. Across the "green line" are the poorer Muslims in the east. While little in the West seemed unfathomably foreign (we shopped at Zara and laid out in bikinis), the East was something new. Here remains tangible evidence of warfare. Here the people dressed differently. Here the language spoken most often was straight Arabic, not the French-English-Arabic mash-up of the highly educated Westerns. The streets felt different. The city felt older, richer in substance. It remained a city with a difficult and complicated past.




I invite you to view more photos of Beirut at the Picassa album. It's worth it.

Thirty minues in Riga

On my flight from London to Beirut, I took the cheapest I could find on a small airlines called Baltic Air. Every flight detours through Riga, its headquarters, regardless of how out of the way this stop might be.


Riga, the yellow flag, is not exactly "on the way."


However, I befriended a very nice British pilot sitting next to me who had recently moved to Riga. He invited me to come see the city on my 2 hour layover... and I eventually caved after much back-and-forth. Was this guy safe? Did I really have time?
I decided I didn't want to regret not going, especially after we flew over Riga and I saw just how beautiful the Latvian countryside is: thick, tall evergreen forests cut by small streams and tiny village out croppings. It was stunning from the plane; I could only imagine what it was like from the ground.

After only a slight hesitation at customs, the Latvians let me in and we raced towards the city center in a beat-up 1950s Soviet clunker. The little car made a lot of noise and didn't have many features, but it was built like a tank and got us into town without any trouble. We parked and literally RAN through the square. I shot my photos while trying not to trip over my own feet on the uneven pavement.



It was definitely interesting.
Riga is where Christmas trees were invented, and they are very proud of this. They celebrate by always having a luxuriously decorated, gigantic tree in one of the squares.
They also have very good bread. And quaint cobbled streets. And strange Eastern ornamentation. And a very Sovient mentality when it comes to planning and building (ie. no planning, what so ever).





I would say it's definitely worth a visit longer than 30 minutes.

View more photos here: Riga, Lativa

flights and fancies

In the last two and a half months,
I have felt at home in four countries, seven cities: Chicago, London, Oxford, Beirut, Istanbul, New Orleans, and Aurora.
I have met over 50 people who have drastically influenced my life, and whom I'm fortunate to call friends.
I have organized every book I own by color and height.
I have lost a computer and gained four dogs.
I have learned the beauty and the pain of 32 ounces when measuring daiquiris.
I have been a monument, a sloth, a tourist, and a townie.
I have taken almost 4,000 photographs.
I have painted a mural.


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Once I (eventually) feel settled enough to take on a project, I will review and edit my travel photos.
As for now, I am in a sort of freshman-hazing with RTA; the past two weeks have been office orientation, and I'm scheduled to make appearances somewhere every weekend this month. Today I "served" 12 hours.
But it's amazing. I believe in the power of this organization, and I feel useful, competent, and productive. The koolaid tastes great.