Manu, Corinna, and I decided to go to Damascus for the weekend. So, Friday afternoon, after buying water and food at Fahed and preparing it for the expected wait at the Syrian border due to my American passport, we departed. We took a service taxi to the bus station, where after getting out, we were surrounded by at least 10 taxi drivers who all wanted to take us for varying amounts of money from $7/person to $100 for all three of us… until we told them one of us was an American… Then, they all dispersed as if we had leprosy and saying, “no, the wait at the border will be too long” and that they don’t want to take us. Except one of them, who worked for a bus company that provided regular service to Damascus. So we went with him, and bought our tickets for the bus leaving in about an hour, at 4PM. After taking a few pictures, eating, and waiting for the driver and his aide to gather other passengers, we left earlier than predicted towards the border. First came the climb up the Lebanon mountains, from the sea level to more than a 1500 meters, through the clouds, into the sunshine, and then the sight of the flat Bekaa valley - more a plateau, than a valley-, with farms and fields. After a drive down the mountains, we stopped in Chtoura.
On the subject of Chtoura – pronounced Shtewra- I have to mention a company called Choura Garden, which makes fruit juices. It is the only Lebanese product I have ever seen sold outside of Lebanon, oddly the- Israeli owned- Hummus bars in Budapest. Which is quite strange, since there are no contacts of any kind between the semi-Arab country and their Jewish neighbor to the south. Even stranger is that the bottle’s label shows a lush, green field with many fruits, yet the place is nothing more than a quite uneventful town of money changers, small shops and rest areas.

Our rest stop was a bakery with a flatbread conveyor in the window, showing the freshly baked flatbreads, which was the most interesting thing I was there. After a 15 minute stop, and a 5 minute drive, we were at the Lebanese border. This is where the problems started, and we got a first hand experience of the Lebanese system of laws…
First, we had to fill out exit forms, which we all did, and then stand in line at the line for foreigners, which was handled by one bald, typically French-looking officer smoking a cigarette in front of a “no smoking” sign. After a 10 minute wait, Corinna handed him our passports, he stamped and threw back mine, and soon the other two as well, without stamps, saying that the sheets had to be filled out again due to too many corrections. After this was done, and the passports were handed back, he said he cannot stamp them, since the visas were expired. After not receiving any more info, fortunately the bus driver’s helper directed us to the officer’s office, where there was a French speaking officer who nicely explained the situation: The visas that we were all given at the airport and had 1 month written on them were valid for 3 months, but the law had recently been changed (a month ago), and were now only valid for two months (one month multiple entry, and 1 month exit only), and therefore only Corinna and I could exit the country. Additionally, nothing could be done at the border crossing; it all had to be done at the Surete Generale (Security Headquarters) in Beirut. So after I got my exit stamp cancelled – I had already officially left Lebanon-, which wasn’t easy either, and decided to head back home.
First, we decided to take a service taxi who wanted to find two more passengers - who we waited half an hour for, but never came, and all the while he also tried to make us pay their part of the trip as well-, we decided to start back on foot, and sure enough a minivan picked us up, took us to Chtoura where we boarded another bus, which took us back to Beirut.
When we entered the apartment, everyone was quite surprised, since they thought our trip to Syria was quite short. We soon explained the story, and I convinced Manu to go out with Justine and Jean Paul to a bar called Club 55 in Jemmayze.

That is, WALK to Jemmayze. Manu didn’t believe it could be done, and on our half hour walk, we did not see any other people walking on the streets. Not because it was dangerous, because the service taxis were too cheap to be walking on the street, usually 1500 or 2000 Libanese Lira, or $1-1.50. I had the chance to talk to Jean-Paul during our walk, and learned many interesting things on the Jesuit University in Beirut, the road dividing East- Christian- and West- Muslim- Beirut - which we were walking on -, uneventful social life in Kuwait, and how he was continuously mistaken for a Frenchman in Belgium.

On our way, we stopped to see a new sushi restaurant. At first I didn’t see the building, just a round, see-through cylinder the size of a truck. Then, I noticed that it was a large elevator, with two large couches and a coffee table, on its way up with a girl at the controls. We rode the elevator down, and it was then that I noticed that the whole restaurant was underground, structured in a circle around the elevator. Of course, like all chique restaurants in Beirut, it was full, but since we looked like tourists – at least I did- we could walk around and see it. After another quick ride, and a walk, we arrived at Club 55, where a full table of Manu’s co-workers and friends were already sitting at a table. We ordered our ten dollar cocktails –beers were 7, so there was no use in ordering them- , and talked, photographed and watched Jean-Paul perform his Scrat (the squirrel in the Ice Age movie) routine, and then left for home soon later, to get an early start for our trip to Tyre .