I was sitting in New York noticing that of all those in my New York directory, I hadn’t seen one person in the past year. I figured it’d be more sociable to get away for a month and see about 50 of my amigos. Now I guess I’ll just send my New York friends an e-mail telling them I’ve moved to Florida and then after 6 months I’ll send them another e-mail telling them that I’m visiting New York for a day and we ought to have lunch. I’ll let you know how that goes…
This will be a long journal. Take it on a long train ride. It’s worth reading though. The details are important and I didn’t try to edit them out. This is more a report of what I heard and saw, and less of what I think. That will go into a separate edition of Global Thoughts which will be posted simultaneously. Except for Hamburg and Seville, I have already been to all these places so the focus here is on people and updates as to the places, not the sightseeing. The sightseeing has been covered in previous journals and there are other sets of photos on this site that give you the grand tour of those places. I was careful to make notes soon after the talks so as to keep these details around. It took me 30 days and cost $15,000 to visit 15 countries and hear about 50 people out; you can take 30 minutes to read the notes.
Hamburg, Germany — Friday 11am through Sunday 11am October 11-13
Delta Business to Frankfurt (not bad but nothing special either; I realize how lousy it is compared to the others later on this trip) and then Lufthansa :25 to Hamburg. Seatmate to Frankfurt is a retired American working in Baku, Azerbaijan with a legal reform committee sponsored by the American Bar Association. He says it is OK there and that there is more hijab (veils worn by Muslims) in sight in Munich than in Baku. Says US policy in Iraq is making us lots of noise and enemies; lots of US oil work in the Caucuses, even bypassing Russia now. The flights are surprisingly full to Hamburg. On this trip I will mostly be surprised to see people traveling where I expect things to be empty. Frankfurt airport expanding and a second terminal has been built but the Air Train helps you move quickly between buildings. Allow almost 30 minutes to get from international arrival flight in Terminal 2 to Terminal 1. It would have been better to fly Lufthansa which goes into Terminal 1 to do this connection. Same thing with regard to return from Luxembourg at the end of the trip. $40 taxi ride to Hotel Luis Jacob which is on a mansion-filled street atop the Elbe River but a good 20 minute drive from center city. I am staying here because it is a 2 minute walk away from my friend’s apartment who I have come to visit. The hotel is also giving me a ridiculously low rate of $240 for the two nights together. Good food and beverage and the staff is eager to serve; Saturday night a good show watching dinner prepared via a see-through kitchen from a bistro-type table. Art at work watching 4 good chefs choreographing their moves in the hotel kitchen. Drive into town walking the main streets; already very chilly. Didn’t feel like moving around that much. Donuts are popular here and sold on the street and I am glad to be back in the land of fresh sandwiches and pastries. Pretty churches, lake and city hall is a focal site. Museum of Hamburg history very worthwhile; there is a café inside for lunch. Xylophonist playing Dancing Queen by the river across from City Hall was a Kodak moment at the end of the sunlit day. Friday night dinner at Marc’s apartment; rent for a 1 bedroom corporate style apartment is $1,500 per month. Marc is an engineer with the Airbus plant in Hamburg which is a large employer in the city. Hamburg is a port city and the port is a big part of city life. Marc got his green card in the US and, feeling secure, moved back to France and now works in Germany. When French and German work together, the operating language is English. Saturday attended synagogue in a neighborhood called “Shlump.” There is one in this city of 4,000 Jews among 2 million; the attendees are anything but German-born — Persian, Israeli, Russian. About 10% of the Hamburg historical museum is dedicated to Jewish history in Hamburg; Jews never were more than 20,000 population of the city; had Hitler ignored them, they would have probably been no more than a footnote of the city’s history, now they are a ghost you can’t escape anywhere. Saturday night drinks with Avi and Johann. Avi has lived in Germany, Israel and the US; Johann snuck over in 1989 from East Germany. Hamburg is a nice, clean, architecturally diverse city with lots of kinds of people — not as utterly Germanic as I expected. Come here when warmer. Avi parrots the latest Foreign Ministry line and starts lecturing me about history, as if I don’t know. Complains about Islamic violence in Europe against Jews; not so much from Europeans as Arabs. Says people are victim to propaganda, the Arabs wouldn’t compromise at Camp David, their educational and media systems incite hatred and therefore we will always be at war. He hopes he is wrong but believes he is right. Says Germany will side with the US in Iraq war and that the Schroeder anti-US campaign was a phony ploy to get votes. Hamburg buses have GPS so the displays on the buses read out what station is coming and the bus stops have signs telling you when the buses are coming. Radio Melodie provides good ole oom-pa-pa music 24 hours a day on your radio dial. This stuff really sells in Germany and Austria and the artists are very wealthy; it is the equivalent of American country music. Departing Hamburg in Business Class via Tyrolean / Austria Airlines you pass through security via a special entrance to the lounge and then you can go straight to the gate. This is a great idea.
Vienna (1pm to 6pm Sunday) — 1:20 flight from Hamburg. My 11am flight arrives at 12:30; I check my bag at the luggage hold in the arrival area near the car rental counters, take a 20 minute taxi to center city, and have a half hour to walk around before my 2pm lunch with Falko at Demel Café. Retracing the center city walkthru — Hofburg, Grabenstrasse, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Kartnerstrasse, Opera House (now there’s a Starbucks on the corner, ouch!), Galleria shopping center (the Movenpik Marche is still there), then back to Kohlmarkt. (Vienna sightseeing is covered in detail in an earlier article.) At least there are no strip-shopping malls to be seen. Lots of pedestrians walking around but the shops are closed Sundays here and just about everywhere in Europe. Most people think this is stupid. Austrian Airlines fed me so well during my flight that I can hardly find room for cake and juice; I was going to take a Napolean for the road but they all sold out while I was there! Gotta come back for one of those. Falko: Real Estate is good nowadays. Now a partner in a development firm. Looks quite dashing in his outfit. Married with daughter and building a house at Los Angeles prices; can get a house 15-20 minutes outside of Vienna center. 3,500 SF house and land will cost about $800,000. Hopes US war in Iraq can be clean and surgical. I will hear this a lot in Europe. We agree that Europe is useful as a rational outsider; nobody hates Europe. However, US is paying the bills and we all depend on the Dollar. Europe is hampered by too many vested interests and a history of inaction so it is unlikely to do anything but talk. From last night’s dinner and today’s lunch I am forming the opinion that today what counts is not the openness of your system but the openness of your mind, because everyone has the same access to information but chooses what they want to believe. At 4:15 I am on the way to the airport for a 5:45pm flight to Madrid which takes 2:45. The Spanair cockpit is open the whole flight (on Delta they keep the door closed but open it often and sometimes leave the front of the plane unstaffed– only El Al is really a secured cockpit and Swissair keeps someone in front to keep people away from the front of the plane). These flights are a good opportunity to eat, read the newspaper and the Economist, write my journal and think about what is happening during this fast-paced trip. Spanair also quite elegant; air tickets here cost a fortune but the experience is wonderful. It’s been a full day so far but it’s not over yet.
Madrid — (9pm Sunday to noon Monday) — Madrid airport makes a nice impression. So did Hamburg and Vienna. Taxi into town is now $27 for 20 minutes; the Euro has caused inflation in this department. No signs from the highway telling you where center city Madrid is; you’re just supposed to know. Taxi drives 160 kph and blasts the radio. This is a faster paced city than where I came from. At the Westin Palace, I switch to an inside room for quiet. $200 for the night. Late night dinner with Francisco at a tapas bar following an reorientation walk around town which is fairly simple to remember. Madrid is great walking around at night; the climate is pleasant, everything is all lit up and grand. Francisco is quintessential Spanish — romantic and dramatic in his voice and gestures.
Seville (Monday 3pm to Thursday 1pm) — Now off to a place I haven’t been for some sightseeing and relaxation. Take the AVE train to Seville. I went first class on this speed train. It is about $100 for the 2.5 hour ride. You can also use the lounges in Madrid and Seville and the train stations themselves are very nice. Lovely ride through beautiful country and the train is elegant with hot towels, newspapers and lunch. If booking in advance, ask for vege food because everything on the plate was meat. The taxi driver taking me to the hotel talks to me a few minutes in Spanish (I speak Spanish) and then asks me where I’m from; I ask him where he thinks I am from and he says “Arabie.” Just in case you were sure that everyone knows where I am from.
Seville makes a nice first impression and my hotel is the Westin Alfonso XIII (“Alfonso Trece” in Spanish). There is a local style of building here, somewhat Arabesque with tiles instead of wood. I complained about my small room and got upgraded to something very nice which makes sense since it is about $250 per night. Always worth complaining if you’re not happy with what you get. The problem in these 5-star hotels is that they also take a lot for laundry and extras such as minibar but at this hotel they gave me 50% off the laundry (a good thing since they charging 4.2 Euro to launder a pair of underwear) and I have become a bit more mellow at the various charges figuring the convenience is worth it and overall I am getting very good discounts as a travel agent. Upon arrival I head out for a 4:30pm orientation bus tour; this company is franchising all over the world and for $10 you get on the bus, drive around for an hour or so and listen to the commentary, and you can get on and off at various points and walk around by yourself. It is a good way to get the feel of things and overall I didn’t feel the need to hire drivers and guides this trip so I actually saved quite a bundle in this regard. Also, there are internet cafes everywhere with high-speed connections so there is no need to pay the hotels for business centers which have become de-emphasized as people travel with their own laptops (although I believe the latest research is that people are getting tired of traveling with laptops). There is a 24 hour business center right across the street and you can spend an hour on the computer for a dollar. At the hotel, there is a cocktail party in the courtyard and I am having dinner looking at this sea of people at a cocktail party talking into their cellphones. Am I the one who is supposed to be lonely and single here or what?
Evening walk to Plaza Espana (really beautiful), Plaza America (lots of doves in the piazza) and down a street with pavillions that were built for the 1929 world’s fair and now house various government buildings and embassies. Ate two good meals today at the hotel. Here and in Madrid (as was in Dublin earlier this year) there are chirping intersections; when the light is green and you should walk you hear chirping sounds. Late night walk to cathedrals, gardens and a world’s fair in the park near the Plaza Espana. This is a great city for walking and sunset here is not till 8pm, about 2 hours later than it was in Germany. A bit disorienting though to have traffic come right up to the intersections; no room for error. Red light is optional for too many. Tap water is good. Regional accents abound in Spain. Lots of terrorism news on TV; trying not to stress on it; all this news could ruin one’s vacation. My friend Basil told me the previous week how quiet it was in Bali. In Seville, the various taxi drivers tack on phony surcharges to their meters. You sort of need to know what’s fake and what’s real here but the overall cost for taxis is reasonable.
Tuesday I took a late start and then a 7 hour walkathon in Seville. Started at the Cathedral; can walk up the ramp to #34 on the wall which is the top. Nice view of the nearby area. Next door is the Real Alcazar with very nice gardens. Two palaces, a bit confusing without a guide, and make sure you reach the gardens. Hospital de los Venerables, some Spanish art; you could skip this. Lunch in the Santa Cruz district and walk to city hall and the Cortes Ingles department store which is a nice store. Walk along river to bridges and the world’s fair area which is now closed during the week. I arrived ten years too late. One should be skeptical about these wasteful projects which took up a ton of land now sitting full of empty grandiose pavilions. The world’s fair area is a long wasteful walk and the distance between the bridges is longer than they appear. Use a taxi to drive by this stuff. This is a great city to be an athlete in training, at least in the fall and spring when the weather is perfect; many do train here. Summers are very hot though. Museum of Fine Arts worth a visit; then to the Bull Ring, Golden Tower and back to the hotel. An evening Flamenco show was about 75 minutes, about 45 minutes too long but it is an art and the male dancer was fun to watch. Lots of tap and sex appeal; this could be a fad in the US with a big-screen movie but not everyone can do it.
Wednesday sidetrip to Cordoba. The AVE to Madrid passes through Cordoba. It’s a 45 minute trip for $27. This train always seems to arrive early. They have a money-back guarantee if the train is more than 5 minutes late. Amtrak please take notes. In Cordoba it’s a 5 minute ride or 25 minute walk to city center; go to the tourist office on street running the perimeter of the cathedral to get a map. It is a small city with lots of alleys and it is not gridded, so the map is marginally useful but everything is close together anyway. 4 hours is plenty of time here. There is a synagogue but it is tiny and empty and there would be no reason to mention it except that all maps say it must be seen and there are only 4 must-see sites in this town. A few doors down the alley is a little tourist trap worth seeing if you are already in the area. Lunch. Museum of Bullfighting. Museum of Archeology. Cathedral/Mosque — called the Mezquita. It is a mosque which was turned into a cathedral. Walk across the bridge to get a nice view of the cathedral, Alcazar and the city. Sat in the Mezquita courtyard and returned to the train. A nice sidetrip, nothing grand here. Easy to get in and out of. Could use more signage for pedestrians. Don’t go on Mondays as the Alcazar is closed. Grenada is supposed to be interesting but it is 250 km away and there is no speedtrain going there.
Dinner back in Sevilla in a garden restaurant behind the cathedral, plenty of nice little restaurants here. The hotel is well located for walking around in center city and it is the only 5 star in the area. Food is not as good as other places such as Italy/Switz/Germany. Night walk again to the Plaza Espana and the World’s Fair area. Returned to hotel for a desert; $9 for a piece of cake and they don’t bring you any water unless you order it. Thursday morning another walk through the gardens near the cathedral and then a quick ride to the airport and it’s off to Geneva. Bring back the winter coat and umbrella, although my friend in Geneva says it is also a great city for sport.
Geneva — 3pm Thursday till 3pm Friday. Temporary construction at Geneva airport means lots of walking right now. The Swissair flight to Geneva was lovely at roughly 2 hours. Fed us a 4 course lunch, rolls and cheese platter, chocolates, salads and cakes. Just when you forgot how nice flying used to be before the Americans ripped the guts out of passenger aviation. Geneva airport is just a 15 minute ride into town. Met Thomas in the Movenpik and then Isaac where we went to a local pizzeria with a friendly Italian owner who insisted on sitting with us for drinks. This is a city where all kinds of people come into close contact with each other; Jews feel safe and rich in Geneva. One of my friends’ parents have their primary residence in Monaco to avoid Swiss taxes. On the hotel TV (President Wilson Hotel at about $200 per night; nice rooms with modern architecture and I had a nice view of the lake) there are channels from Morocco, Libya, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Qatar, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon. My friend says that a Jew manages the hotel, which obviously caters to Arabs. Tomas says that in the past a Jew couldn’t walk inside that hotel lest he be thrown out. I don’t know if this was true. When I was there, I saw a rabbi who looked like he was planning a wedding in the hotel, so obviously times have changed. In any event, this is an international city with many Arabs (especially in the summer); in a café, the odds are 30% that the person sitting next to you is reading a green-colored newspaper from Saudi Arabia. My whole time there it is nonstop raining. Friday I walk into town and the various department stores; the socks here are of very high quality. Lunch at a café; I order what I think is the vege plate and everything is in French. I get a plate full of green beans. I start cracking up and 20 people around me also start laughing. Finally, I get someone over to handle my lunch order and wind up with a very nice lunch. The French love to eat lunch and they have these lunch palaces everywhere with bread, entrees, salad, deserts, tea, etc. As usual, Geneva is a place to visit friends, enjoy the lake view, shop, eat, walk around and go to the next place. The big issue here is whether or not Swiss banking secrecy law will survive attack from the EEC countries which are tired of tax evasion via Switzerland and threaten sanctions next year unless the laws are changed. The Swiss fear their industry will be ruined but they are offering concessions to try and head off the Europeans; the Europeans got Luxembourg to agree and cannot let off the Swiss without screwing the Luxies, so they have to insist. In mid-afternoon, I fly the 40 minute flight to Lugano featuring a choice of sandwiches, bag of chocolates and more candies. Swissair pilots always tell you in exactly how many minutes they will land; in the US, whatever they say is never what actually happens. Sit on the left for a beautiful lake region view upon landing. I’m sorry my camera was in the overhead bin because I expected only clouds. Today I have seen rainbows over both Lake Geneva and Lake Lugano; it is a hopeful sign of peace amid all the bad news.
Lugano (Friday 5pm till Sunday 11am) — Hotel Principe Leopoldo. Room “B” is a beautiful suite with a view down to the lake and the mountain passes. It is a perfect view and I don’t think any other hotel room in the area has that view. Dinner at the hotel which is part of the Relais and Chateaux chain; we were not that impressed with the food. It is a 20 minute brisk downhill walk into town; better to use a taxi to return to the hotel unless you can stand a tough walk uphill and you will sweat. I wonder how these people bicycle up these mountains. I scouted the area Friday afternoon and then returned on Saturday. At the edge of town by the park there is a wooden model of a cathedral which looks real until you get close to it. It is an interesting optical illusion. In the park I saw people who looked like Al Qaeda. If the CIA is looking for these guys, they should have someone walking around Lugano. Here is a place where people make plans. On Saturday we stumbled across a demonstration in the town square; we had no idea what it was. Turned out to be a Palestinian demonstration. In Lugano, everything is low key. Como is just 20 miles south, but the Italians are not like the Swiss. This is also an older crowd. Saturday night dinner at Locanda del Boschetto, a fabulous fish restaurant where they make the fish in a brick oven. Sunday morning drive to Malpensa in Italy with Demonico, my mom’s driver, for $130. Instead of entering Italy via Chiasso on the Autostrada, he used a small road via a small town crossing which was quicker. A Swiss taxi would have been $200. Taxis can be nuts here, especially after 10pm. It was $15 for a 5 minute ride home from the restaurant. For Sunday shopping, there is an outlet mall about 15 minutes from Lugano that my mom said was excellent. One other thing about crossing from anywhere into Switzerland is that Switzerland is outside the EEC so you can get your VAT refund stamp at the Swiss border instead of having to deal with problems at an airport.
Milan-Doha-Bahrain — 5:15 flight to Doha and then another :25 to Bahrain. Qatar Airways is truly excellent. I am in business class here and across the aisle is Tom Friedman of the NY Times. We talk a bit but he is jetlagged and more curious about sleep than anything else. In Doha, a car meets him at the plane and speeds away. I told him that there are a few people in the world who does what he does, but that I am probably the only person in the world who does what I do. And besides, I can write more of what I know than he can. He was in the region for the week to see what kind of US military operations are going on in Qatar and to check out the parliamentary elections scheduled that week in Bahrain. On board, the staff offers Service and excellence and everything is just lovely; food and beverage and entertainment. I enjoy the company of an interesting Italian journalist (who complained that his newspaper is conservative and that it is verboten to write anything right now criticizing the possible war with Iraq) and two officials of IATA, one of whom I figure is a pilot because he is describing everything the plane is flying over and I am just totally impressed. Turns out he is Greek and for the hour that the plane is over Greece and Cyprus, he is just like that guy in Big Fat Greek Wedding, telling anyone who will listen every detail about the topography of Greece. At Doha, before the plane even hits the runway you see the Golden Arches of McDonalds just beyond the airport. At the airport, there is this ninja lady talking to herself in the duty free. It is now that I realize that the cordless cellphone with headsets has hit women in chadors in the Gulf (and they are wearing the headphones under the veil). I am in the airport lounge for an hour and there is a staff of 6 people serving the two people in the lounge with a huge buffet that could have been in the Sheraton. And this is just the business class lounge; imagine what’s in the First Class lounge, although on my flight there was nobody in First Class. I asked if the emir and his family flies First Class; the steward told me nope, they have their own planes. After a short visit to the Doha airport, it is time for the 20 minute flight to Bahrain. It is only 80 miles away, and in 2 years there will be a causeway making the flight somewhat ridiculous. As it is, the plane goes around in a big circle I guess to get altitude. This region is somewhat ridiculous, with all these airlines and airports competing against each other in such a small space (Doha, Bahrain, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait). But they are all beautiful airports (though more and more standardized with the same companies outsourcing all the duty free shops and services) and the airlines are the best in the world today.
Bahrain (9pm Sunday till 11am Tuesday) — Mar— (a Jordanian working here who is not Palestinian) (NOTE new policy: based on some requests, respect for privacy and the primary interest in getting candid reports across to you, in the Arab countries I’m going to not print the full name of Arabs I talked to because they are just simply too scared to attach their names to their comments these days, which tells you a lot about where things are in this region): America is an empire imposing its will because it can. Reshuffling the deck in this region via a war with Iraq could be good in that the past 50 years has proved a total failure in every respect, but fears (1) the Americans won’t stick it out in Iraq and will make things a mess; and (2) they would overturn elections they didn’t like; (3) irreparable damage to a pandora’s box of 50 years of unnatural borders and states. Tell Sharon to kill Arafat and I will build him a statue. Moderate Palestinians just want to live life now, he believes. If a truly free election would be held in Saudi Arabia and the Americans would announce in advance that they would respect its results, 50% of Saudis would vote for a moderate; 30% fundamentalists, 20% to other parties. 80% would get rid of the religious police, except in Riyadh and certain pockets in the country which are more conservative. Because the Americans insist on rigging elections that are not to its liking, 80% of Saudis today would vote fundamentalists just to spit in America’s face. Just look at Pakistan which just had elections rigged by America; the Islamists never got 5% of the vote; this time they got 30%. A more clever and honest policy would yield better results. Notes that veils only started in Jeddah in the 1980’s after the fundamentalists took over the mosque, so people shouldn’t believe that Saudi has always been this backward.
Ken– (marketing; focus on Saudi): Saudis think democracy is an interesting idea but what they miss, more than democracy, is the lack of representation in the Saudi government. They don’t really know what democracy is, so they don’t miss it. They do know that they have no say in Saudi Arabia’s government and that bothers them. It is a show run by the royals for the royals. Corruption is high and it is estimated that 30% of the nation’s GDP is diverted.
Met Ay— for lunch at a Lebanese restaurant; then to the National Museum, then to buy my friend’s little child a dishdasha (a white robe people here wear), then back to hotel by 6pm where it was already dark. In this region, there is no summer time. The National Museum has nice exhibits about the history and customs of Bahrain. Today it was open 8-8; I had read and asked several people who gave different answers; call there by phone to be sure before you go. Taxi driver who drove me around that afternoon: Every Bahraini wants Saddam out. We know who he is. Remember that he attacked Bahrain with missiles. Don’t listen to the boss: No Emir wants to lose his chair. But a war is bad for business during a war. Right now, I am reading that uncertainty over Iraq has driven the country’s offshore banking industry into a tailspin.
This week there will be elections and today’s front page features the following stories: Raise of minimum wage for civil servants, faster citizenship for foreign spouses; king visits people’s homes; hotel nightclubs closed for 3 months (except in the 5-star hotels). As you can see, a bone for each segment of the society the week of the election. It’s good to be the king. On TV, his speech is broadcast several times a day. TV News Item: “Bahraini minister X chaired a meeting today at which he said there are many items on the agenda to discuss.” End of story. The newspapers tell people to vote; my sense of it after talking to a few taxi drivers is that people are going to vote and that they think their vote counts for something. By the way, more of them speak English now than did a year and a half ago. They must be teaching them English or I just got lucky this trip.
On Syrian TV channel there is now daily news in Hebrew which must be funny to watch except that I don’t understand it because my Hebrew is not fluent. On the Japanese NHK channel, all 3 newscasters bow to each other at the beginning and end of the newscast. What’s good here is the Arabic pop music channels; there is a new mix of Arabic and Western pop music that appeals to young people and the videos are entertaining to watch. Not raunchy like Western music videos because people here wouldn’t stand for it on their TV’s, and you can sing along with the melodies. I went out and bought some CD’s that I liked; “Mashkalny” by Rashed el-Majed is an example. Funny item: In the Amman duty free shop, they were playing his music but I couldn’t buy the CD because they don’t sell anything but western music in that airport. So I bought it with Muhammed in Nazareth after checking around with a few stores; it is just now hitting the stores.
Dinner with Ay— at the Sheraton buffet after driving around a bit. I have been here a year and a half ago so I have already seen the sights and asked most of the stupid questions. You can check this out in last year’s journal. He has a 50% off dine around card which is accepted at the Sheraton. The hotel is full because the government fills it up with conferences; last week was the gold trade show; this week the information ministry has something going on. The country is now trying to market itself to beach tourists. The hotel is not cheap at $150 per night and it appears that even though it is a Sheraton it has a local owner, staff and Arab guests so it is not likely to be a “Western” target. There are American bases here but they don’t exactly fly the flag so you could pass right by them and not notice them. Of course, the locals know where they are so nobody is kidding anyone. There are Shiite neighborhoods that are less equal than the other neighborhoods, but you are not likely to encounter anything terribly scary or disgusting in Bahrain, although once off the main drag it is not particularly clean or well infrastructured. I stayed at the Sheraton in order for it to be convenient to the airport and the center of town (which it is), but the Meridien Hotel another 10 minutes away is a beautiful property which I enjoyed much more last time. It is more of a resort than a business hotel.
On the flight out, my seatmate compares expatriate life in Saudi to Bahrain. Likes Saudi better because it is bigger so there are more places to go, better friendships in Saudi because foreigners really need to rely on each other, and there are fewer places to spend your money there. But Bahrainis have better manners. Ayman also noted that one tends to have truer expat friends in Saudi. The Bahraini airport has a beautiful duty free shop and rather tight security; the Gulf News is a meaty newspaper. You can’t dial Israel on your cellphone here. I need to arrange something regarding my upcoming visit; it will have to wait till I get to Jordan which does have direct dial to that country.
On the Gulf Air flight to Amman which is about 2 hours, the food was again excellent and the cabin steward obviously a trained chef who dressed the plates. Fresh juices and all sorts of treats on board. The flight is full in coach but the front cabin is quiet. At the gate you see all sorts of people with various types of gowns, head-dresses and turbans, feet up and exposed. No Westerners except me and my seatmate, a Brit who has been living here 15 years. The pilot said nothing in English on this flight, meaning that we obviously didn’t exist. Kids go to private school which features weekend skiing excursions to Switzerland. Arabic is optional; most expats don’t stay more than 2 years. If you do, you get great promotions. Expats are worried about violence in Palestine for fear it will spill over into these countries. The governments may not support the Palestinians, but the masses do. Al-Jazeerah, I am told, lost some of its elite audience this year due to sensationalism and the sense that they were getting full of their own success and trying to tell people what to think. Ay— hopes US can clean up Iraq and Arafat cleanly. Thinks business goes on in the region apart from the politics; Jordan’s king doing a good job. Gamal Mubarak won’t succeed at trying to take over his father’s presidency; doesn’t see Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan having a future role in Iraq since he is not popular. Some people want the US to just get on with its war and finish it and stop talking about it so much.
Unfortunately, there were only a limited days available to travel to the Gulf and I couldn’t go to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman or Dubai on this trip. Two people who were supposed to come in from Saudi Arabia for this talkfest didn’t show up and I am not sure that I have a good fix on what people in Saudi or Kuwait are thinking about these days. When one day some of these people ask why the US did such and such and didn’t consult them, they will have to answer for this.
AMMAN — Now, for some intensive discussions in Amman, Tuesday 23 October 2pm till Thursday noon. First thing I notice is all the Iraqi Airlines jets sitting on the tarmac; they have been here for a decade. My first thought is that I am quite sure that by the next time I visit here a year or so from now they will be gone. Usually on the road to and from the airport, there are banners with whatever slogan is on the King’s mind these days. A year ago it was “Think Big.” It was ridiculed. Right now it is “Jordan First” which means Jordan must do what’s good for Jordan. I don’t know if it is intentional but this year the signs are only in Arabic and none of them are in English.
Met at airport by Riy– and went to office to talk for a few hours. He moved to Jordan a few months ago from the US; has set up an office, car (buy one used) and home for his wife and kids; they are all happy. He hasn’t quite figured out what to do here yet. Must be careful to choose the right friends and partners in this rather clickish metropolis. King is focusing on a few priorities and has lowered Jordan’s profile; it is weak enough that no one cares to threaten it. Accuses Israel of masking cause and effect so that Wednesday Israeli action appearing to relate to Tuesday’s Arab action really relates to Monday’s Israeli action. (“It started when he hit me back.”) People here believe Zionists or someone other than Bin Laden did 9/11 or at least that the Zionists knew about it and didn’t stop it because they wanted to get the US on board against terrorism and don’t you know that no Jews showed up to work that day and no one was killed. At least 4 different educated people ran this by me during a 24 hour period in Jordan. When you explain them that it is ridiculous (ie: who has a list of 4,000 Jews in the World Trade Center; who could have made 4,000 calls in one night and why hasn’t anyone confirmed even one of them, and how do you explain that roughly 100 Israelis died in the twin towers), everyone agrees that it is ridiculous but that they never considered the details. People agree that it is very scary that no one has claimed credit or responsibility for 9/11 and that this is freaking out Americans to this day. At least the Palestinians who make terrorist attacks let you know who they are and there is a certain security to that. People ask “Why, Why, Why” (this seems to be a popular way of expressing a point here) the US is now interested in Iraq after 10 years of doing nothing, why it is a problem that Iraq has nuclear weapons and why it is not a problem that Israel does. They say that they feel more threatened by Israel holding nuclear weapons especially with what they see as a non-democratic type like Sharon and people around him such as Lieberman in this dangerous government. They are afraid of chaos, of being caught in the middle (biological-tipped scuds falling over Jordan do not inspire enthusiasm). They do not think Crown Prince Hassan will be used to rule over Iraq. If there has to be a war, get it over with as quickly and cleanly as possible and don’t keep the region in suspense for another year. Investment here is on hold pending a more certain future. Lots of big hotels, shopping and office centers have been built (ie: LeRoyale at 190 million USD and the Zara office tower) and are quite empty. Many hotels are filled up with conferences, Israeli Arabs and Gulf Arabs, but there are few Westerners and no Jews or Israelis. There is greater hostility to Israel these days here than was apparent to me. More blacklists and fear of being associated with a Jew or Israel. All commercial contacts that were known to me to exist between Israel and Jordan no longer exist. An Israeli visited with Hann— a few times, was questioned by a Jordanian security officer at the airport about what he was doing in the country, probably freaked out and never returned. Although the King has opened up the country a bit, there is still no real freedom of speech and there is absolute fear at doing certain things we would consider ordinary, such as pointing with your finger or filming near an embassy or a palace. [To be fair, in the US, filming sensitive architecture of bridges, tunnels and other infrastructure is prohibited but there are signs saying so instead of it being left to your imagination.] Hotels and restaurants continue to be very nice and reasonable. Howard Johnson’s is about $30 a night; I paid $40 at the Sheraton. Han—‘s partner from the Majali family says “You take care of Sharon, we will replace Arafat and in one year Saddam will sign a peace treaty with Israel.”
Jordan has a growth rate of close to 5% which is the largest in the region, but with 3% population growth, it is really just breaking even. The King’s moves are paying off, but the average Ahmed doesn’t see it yet. Roads are being built, some areas renovated, and the first suspension bridge is being planned but some pedestrian areas still look somewhat shabby and there are too many empty lots in prime areas with grazing shepherds that are not being sold and developed because of doubt and holding out for rezoning or a higher purchase price. Abdoum has been filled out and now a new district just beyond has been developed; this is where Hanna wanted me to buy 8 years ago; the values have doubled. We met Ima— at his very nice house in this new neighborhood and went to a nice restaurant for dinner. My amigos know to order for me so that I can eat. Satellite TV here brings so many choices you can just watch everything here from all over the region including the US networks. On Wednesday, met Mohamed for breakfast at the hotel, then to Hanna’s office, and then with Ray to lunch atop Hojo’s which offers a great city view and good food and decor. Then for a pastry at Chez Hilda in the Swefia neighborhood, probably the city’s finest pastry shop. The palace is among their client base. Evening with Mus– at a local falafel place. I. is a 22 year old pastry chef working 12-hour days to produce an impressive line of pastries and somehow having lots of energy to go out at night. Spent 5 years living abroad in many European countries and Thailand; just won 3rd place in a local bakeoff against chefs from the top hotels. In 48 hours I will be sitting with the owner of the #1 French pastry shop in Tel Aviv who is a good friend, so for me it is a small world bound by lovely chocolate pastries and fruit smoothies. Too bad the people around me don’t think it is so simple a matter.
Moh—, born in Saudi, demanded at age 11 to go to a UK boarding school, lived in DC and now, at 30 wants to build businesses. Family is in the contracting industry, especially in Saudi. Met him for coffee both mornings. Sat with manager of the Gaza branch of the Arab bank on the Royal Jordanian flight to Tel Aviv which was full of people including all these Israelis all decked out from their trips to India and Thailand. They are as much a sight to look at as the people in the departure lounges in Bahrain two days before. The Arab Bank guy looked pretty comfortable for a guy living in Gaza’s disaster zone but it is clear he is a VIP; the Israelis had a car meet him at the airplane. He said to me that he is personally OK but that he is not happy his 3 kids have to be there. He travels out of the country weekly. After passport control I found him in the luggage area and we exchanged business cards. Israeli security asked me why I was talking to him, so he may have gotten the VIP treatment but they are clearly concerned about people like him and it may be that instead of being nice to him they were singling him out and giving him a hard time. The flight to Israel is all of 20 minutes and 20 light years. As Israel has already switched to winter time, I arrived 15 minutes before I left.
All seem to agree that there is some logic to a Big Bang coming from the outside (ie: the USA) and reshuffling the deck as long as it works out, but people here prefer an Arab solution. They realize however that after 50 years only some sort of external Big Bang can wake the area out of its stupor. Everyone wants Sharon and Arafat to be replaced, but nobody sees who the next guy will be. People feel the US is now hating all Moslems and Arabs (the Christian fundamentalists saying how Islam is evil are not helping America’s image in this part of the world) and not practicing what it preaches — people were not happy to see people put in Guantanamo or in prison without trials or appeals, and the guys in Guantanamo are obviously the foot soldiers not smart enough to escape. At least they eat well…
The Washington sniper is a big attraction here; people hope he ain’t Moslem. (He wasn’t caught yet.) He is really terrorizing people. People think Israelis are depressed and want change but they are so angry about the occupation which they say has gotten really outrageous lately; they consider Sharon the worst possible guy and say Israel cannot be democratic with people such as Sharon, Effi Eitam and even a Peres as he appears now, at the top. They continue to be well-informed about Israel and are relying less on the sensational Al-Jazeerah and more on the BBC. Radio Sawa (Washington’s replacement for the Voice of America Arabic service) is working as long as it sticks to music and straight news and lays off the propaganda. Washington finally got the message: Don’t insult the intelligence of 18-35 year olds here; they just want objective news. BBC gets the highest marks here. Jordan is trying to be tourist friendly; lots of brochures in hotels and signs in English, (but not in post offices). The US has replaced Iraq as Jordan’s #1 trading partner and there is a good amount of trade involving the Qualifed Industrial Zones. Within 5 years, trade has risen to $400 million per year with the US; it was less than $10 million 5 years ago. These statistics were told to me but confirmed with the International Herald Tribune.
Oil war: Everyone believes US wants to sit in Iraq, take over the country and milk its oil. Everyone agrees that Gamal Mubarak is an insult to the intelligence of a country of 60 million people and that Egypt is being run like a mom and pop shop. People agree that if Saddam was nuclear in 1990 and went into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, nobody would have stopped him. But they believe that if he were nuclear, he wouldn’t do anything or at least they don’t want to think about it since right now they believe he is not nuclear. It is a bit of a joke because you can see how much fear exists of Iraq even though it is next door and not ruling Jordan; you sit in a restaurant here and talk about Iraq and the people at your table look over their shoulder to see if some Iraqi spy is sitting around taking notes. They’d clearly rather be talking about something else.
People think the US accusations about North Korea (ie: that they are nuclear) was timed to convince Congress to support the resolutions against Iraq. A major point: People here are so cynical and agitated that they don’t trust ANYTHING coming out of the US or from Bush who is viewed as dumb, a cowboy and a captive of Jews. You could say the sky is blue and they would still insist it is green because if the US is saying it’s blue, then it must be green. Rumsfeld is very unpopular here. I explained that Bush is not captive to Jews but rather to Christian evangelicals and Reagan-era ideologues, and this explanation seemed interesting and new to people here. Personally, I think that Rumsfeld’s strategy is better for Arabs than Powell; Rumsfeld wants a quicker more clever war, and Powell can’t tear away from post-Vietnam strategies which call for overwhelming superior force with guaranteed victories.
Several Jordanian friends who have moved to Bahrain think less of their ties to Jordan and more of becoming Bahrainis. Under Arab League rules, you can’t have dual citizenship within the Arab League countries. For instance, Ay— as a lawyer and citizen of a GCC country, could form companies and practice law anywhere in the GCC countries, and there is no tax in Bahrain. Almost all the Jordanians I know here who are young have left the country during the past 8 years. The salaries are higher in other countries. The Jordanian government would have been wise to have supplemented young people’s salaries with grants or incentives to keep them in the country. There is more nightlife now, some areas have been fixed up a bit. Downtown Amman at night you see lots of people walking around and many are Iraqi refugees. It is still fun to come here and to be received in a friendly and most hospitable manner; it is still one of my favorite places to visit. In addition, I have had lousy Italian food in Italy but never a bad meal here of any type. It strangely turned out that I didn’t spend one dime in 48 hours except to pay the taxi to the airport and the departure tax. It is becoming a bit harder for some of my amigos here to receive me openly and I appreciate their situation and do not take their hospitality or friendship for granted. Remember, I was here before things became good, so I am used to the ups and downs.
Amman still feels safe; of course I wasn’t thrilled to hear of the assassination of a diplomat here a week or two later but overall Amman is a safe place and I am sure the Jordanians were aghast at the deed which did take place and will take the appropriate measures. I saw two wedding parties in hotel lobbies, one of whom had royals in attendance. Bagpipes are used here even though they are really British imports. Jordanians are trying to keep going about as normal but they are well aware there is danger lurking. Afraid of opening up a pandora’s box of borders in Iraq after having lived with artificial borders for 50 years but at least they know how to deal within their systems and are afraid of change, even if that change might better suit their overall aspirations. They fear the results of war in Iraq will be US domination or US-inspired chaos. But at least people figure it can’t get much worse. Just leave us alone to live in peace and make money. Jordan knows it could be a big winner after a war. It hopes so much pent-up demand and supply will exist. But if the Israel problem is not solved, the US will not be popular, oil supply could become an issue in this region (particularly if the US war goes sour), and the economy in this area won’t grow. Mus— says the Qualified Industrial Zones are succeeding and that people who work there don’t feel the jobs they hold or the money they get is “dirty” just because Israelis hold shares in the companies that employ them. Ray thought the opposite. M says the salary is the important thing here and this helps westernize their poor and rural lives. Salaries in Jordan overall are still low. So how is the King living? I am told the palaces are tasteful but simple and understated and not as opulent as you might have thought.
In this region, I keep thinking nobody is here and nothing goes on, but in fact there is life and business going on. Will have to see how Israel is doing (at the Tel Aviv airport, the driver said he waited 4 hours for a passenger). In Jordan, my driver to the airport is Walid, a Russian from Chechnya. Russians guard the King; no Hashemites or Palestinians get to do this, he said. He trusts the Chechnyans with his life and they have been in the country for 100 years. They see themselves as Moslems but not Arabs and a bit more civilized than the natives.
A big challenge here will be to start from below zero to regain trust and benefit of the doubt, both with regard to Israel and Iraq. Perhaps better PR, but also a better policy is necessary. To convince people that US empire is not just the world’s policeman and acting for its oil and to jumpstart its economy, but that it learned lessons from 9/11 — that everyone in the region must be happy and there must be Win/Win or else nobody in New York, Tel Aviv or Amman will be safe or happy. I want to think that all these crazy events leading to a shakeup from the outside hopefully reflect God’s will that things should turn around here, because it is just tragic that no one here can figure out how to create opportunities out of this mess. Moh– : People here don’t want to bring kids into this world because it is not a hopeful place. I am optimistic (and hopefully not naively so) that such a Big Bang could produce opportunities — an Iraq that becomes the envy of its neighbors who will want to change in order to compete, a Saudi change that will be more manageable (instead of the fundamentalism that will be inevitable if Saudi is left to rot on its own), less fuel on the Palestinian fire coming from Iraq, better economy with fewer scary horizons and a future that involves America doing the right thing and changes in the region that meet the aspirations of people. Insh’allah, we all agree these would be good outcomes.
I explained how Jews and Arabs both boycott the same media (ie: CNN) saying it is biased; the Jews say it is anti-semitic, the Arabs say it is anti-Moslem. Israelis go to India to meditate and escape reality; Arabs don’t have the leeway of all these escapes and it is less fun to go to Europe and the States these days due to security concerns; they go to school and work and, according to a recent Zogby survey, say that work comes before families, which is ironic since the same survey said of Arabs in America that family comes before work. I expected the opposite.
Israel (Thursday 25 October noon through Sunday 3 November 8pm) — Tel Aviv: I am at the Hilton and there are no Arabic channels on my TV, which is strange after 2 weeks in Europe and the Middle East. It is actually a bit nuts because it is an artificial situation that the Arab World suddenly doesn’t exist in the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv, just 20 minutes flying time from Amman. However, this is a tourist hotel where entertainment trumps politics and the Israeli stations have become ever more commercial, and you will not here see endless pictures of Arab kings and princes in their gowns and head-dresses receiving streams of visitors and signing proclamations with only martial music in the background. Just sit around watching Saudi television and even Bahraini television and you will see the difference; that kind of stuff is so out of step with the rest of the world that it can’t last much longer. Nope, here television exists for your entertainment and it is quite entertaining but commercials seem to go on forever and I ran out of patience quickly and didn’t watch any programs. (I don’t watch commercial TV in the US either.) The Hilton is very nice; it is a Jewish crowd and everyone wants to be a VIP so here there are two lounge floors, one for regular business floor people and another Executive floor for the real mucky-mucks. I’ve never seen this before but you gotta know your clients. The grill rooms in the hotels are gone; they’ve been replaced by family-style restaurants because the hotels are down to one dairy and one meat restaurant apiece for dinner; the fancy dishes are out but the prices are lower. I ordered two entrees for what one used to cost; the waiter thought I was nuts but I figured heck I’ve just spent so much to come here and I’m only in the Hilton for one night so that for an extra $20 I may as well try both the beef and the lamb entrees.
As I arrive the Bahrainis are voting and the DC sniper has been caught; a spy ring recruited by Hizbullah has been broken and the US envoy Burns is here for talks. It is a good start. My taxi driver is an Uzbekhi who has been here for 30 years and sees no future. No way out. Exactly what I expected to hear. We’ll see if it gets better as we go along. First thing I do is go to the pool, order a hamburger with fries (my first meat in 2 weeks), write my Jordan notes and get ready to meet Israelis in a few hours.
Here I can resume naming names because while there is fear of terrorists, at least Israelis don’t fear their governments or outside powers that might take over their country. Adi (age late 20’s; Iraqi descendant, works in accounting): Not sure of there being a future here. Might move away. Thinks Sharon doing a good job. Wouldn’t answer if Sharon wants Arafat around or not. For now, everything is in a freeze until after the war. More talk about personal issues (ie: girls, families, life, work) than politics. In 12 hours, I have gone from Mohammed and Azzam to Ayal and Adi. Every Israeli is amazed that I am not afraid to sit in Amman; the Arabs are more afraid to talk to me than vice versa because they are taking a risk inside their countries to talk to me. I figure I am only in danger if I personally become a target and the 48 hour tourist is not generally around long enough to take anyone’s notice; in Israel, everyone for just living is a target. But it is amazing to see the contrasts and likenesses when in the same day four Jordanians say that Zionists had a hand in 9/11 and Israelis say that Sharon is a good prime minister who can bring peace. Both say they see no future. They all talk of moving away and starting anew (ie: Hanna who is in his 60’s and Adi in his 20’s) and of girls, marriage and life. We are all going through life making choices, worrying and wanting pretty much the same things, but seeing political matters through vastly different lenses. Otherwise, on personal matters, nothing is really different. It is unique to be in a position to move from one side to the other, cover the same ground in all these conversations in a short period of time, and to see how much people have in common in spite of their differences. It is sad that people are so stuck in the muck of politics that they can’t see each other’s commonalities. But at least I can and it gives me something to feel optimistic about for the long term. It is a long day that ends today at 3am with a talk to my girlfriend in New York to let her know that I have surfaced after a rather hectic week beyond and that she has been out of sight but not out of mind.
Ayal (optical goods sales and marketing in mid-30’s): Might not vote but could conceivably vote for Bibi. Has in the past voted liberal. Wants the best negotiator to cut the deal. Israel lost 500 civilians; should get something more than the Clinton plan for this. Sharon is wisely biding his time to get a better deal; nobody on the Left is credible; Mitzna talks like Barak and people don’t want to hear Barak’s ideas since the Arabs refused them at Camp David. Bibi speaks to people’s emotions and terror was lowest while he was prime minister, so he must’ve been not so bad. The Hilton is at 50% occupancy and the restaurants are busy. My amigo Shmuel expects war in as little as a few weeks.
Friday I move to Jerusalem’s King David Hotel for the weekend. Now for a paragraph about game-playing with your friendly neighborhood hotel; we tried to get a rate from our contacts in hotel management and it turned out that my cousin sitting at the internet in New York got rooms for us at half the price and gave me the contact information for the wholesaler in Tel Aviv. So when I got there I complained to the management who continued to quote me the wrong price for rooms I was booking for family arriving later in the week. Finally, I told him where I was getting the rooms upstairs via the telephone and he admitted that he would not undersell or match the wholesaler. So we went through the motions of booking rooms with him on the phone in front of me with the wholesaler on the phone. This is a lovely way to treat your good customers, isn’t it? Anyway, they have a promotion where if you go on the internet to the Dan Hotels site and register, you get 12.5% off all your food and beverage, laundry, etc. charges in the hotel. Of course, I couldn’t get it by asking for it because the management says they can’t screw around with the computer. So I just put all my charges on a newly booked room. Anyway, they upgraded me to very nice rooms for the several times that I stayed in the hotel while I was in the country and it really is the best hotel to stay in. If nothing else, it is the only one in Jerusalem these days with lights on in the lobby during the day.
Now for a swipe at hotel guests: On Saturday the lunch buffet was downstairs in the grill room because the upstairs dining room was being used by a Jewish Federation group. The Saturday buffet is quite lavish but they left off a few items because we were in a smaller room and there weren’t 25 tourists in the hotel beyond the Federation group. This guy was carrying on because there was no chopped liver and was chewing out the maitre d’ who was just standing there not knowing what to say (and thus getting even more abuse heaped on him). On Saturday the entire dining room staff is Arab because all the Jews are on sabbath. There is enough food on that buffet to feed his entire village and this guy is carrying on about his chopped liver. If you’re reading this and you’ve ever acted this way at a hotel, you should be aware that it is very embarrassing and offensive and helps explain why some people have good reason to hate us. I know that non-Jews in an American hotel would never act this way.
Saturday afternoon walk in Jerusalem. The city does have a special feel to it on the sabbath; 50 girls in their sabbath dresses are playing on the street and the dogs lie on the porches without a care in the world.
Moshe (business consultant in mid-20’s): Sees no investment opportunities. So much corruption here you might as well blow up the Knessest with everyone inside, draft all the ultra-orthodox into the army and put a ton of work into religious-secular relations. Sick of the news. Put up a wall and kill any Arab who makes trouble — he says this is what all his Leftist friends at the Tel Aviv branch of a multi-national consulting firm are saying privately. Let the Israeli Arabs choose which state they want to join. Agrees that the present course leads to no future but that Jews only thrive among non-Jews and that is why Israel stands still or at the abyss. This is a good time for companies to shop for technology in Israel because of deflated prices, but not to speculate.
David (business consultant in mid-40’s) and wife (clinical psychologist): Psychological profile of combat soldier has become more religious and nationalist, Russian and aggressive. The kibbutzniks are now going for the teckie jobs in the army. Sharon doing a good job of being powerful. Reshuffling the deck is a good idea if the US will carry a big stick again. Nobody now on the Left is credible and, at the end, Sharon is best placed to make a deal with Israel behind him; no matter if Arafat or anyone else is on the other side. He likes Barghouti or Dahlan. Sees no big economic changes for 2 years. Army actions are more aggressive but this is due to increased threat and still humane. Even if we have to kill 10 people, it is worth it to stop a suicide bomber who will kill 200 people. The actions in Rafiah are necessary and useful, he says, though there are more accidents lately than there should be. Believes Barak did nation a service by exposing Arab unwillingness to trade at Camp David. We can’t control this destiny; let’s see what America does now. All the Hamas dudes will be killed, sooner or later.
Tzvi & Varda (university professors in their 70’s): Sees nobody on the Left; their ideas are discredited right now. New finance minister has put up the best possible budget for these times; Sharon wants Arafat out. David agreed with this last sentence. David, Varda & Tzvi focus more on Israel’s acceptable status quo than its descent from previous highs or the demand for a better future.
Saturday evening tour of what’s new in Jerusalem’s old city with $100,000 and-up donors of the Miami, Florida Jewish Federation. They had extra seats on the bus and we just sort of glommed onto the tour since we were staying in the same hotel. Here I have to stop and impress you with the magnitude of this evening. First we went to the Tunnels beneath the Western Wall. I had no idea what was going on there and there is no way from the outside to have any idea of what is inside. No expense has been spared by many Jews and Christians with deep religious and ideological convictions to make this excavation one of the most mammoth and impressive in the world. This is not a small place and it takes half an hour to walk through it. They are just building out everything you can imagine underneath this area and there are canyons you walk through that are over 50 feet high. There are lifesize hydraulic-lift models, everything is totally handicapped accessible, and there are 60 inch plasma TV screens wherever you might want one to be. It’s not Disney World; everything here is real. We are on a totally VIP tour and are walking around with some security personnel in tow at night time and these tours are booked 6 months in advance. They charge heavy admission (which people on this tour didn’t have to pay) so whatever anyone spent to build this has been repaid many times over. These tunnels are a powerful statement of what Israel is doing on its side of old city and it would blow people’s minds in the Moslem Quarter if they had any idea of what’s going on here. Ideology carries no price tags.
We then continued to the police station in the Armenian Quarter just beyond Jaffa Gate. Everybody walks by it and has no idea what goes on inside. Well, we saw a high-tech center with 250 video monitors reporting back on 250 closed circuit cameras that record just about anything going on in the old city. These cameras are not digital and the system is not really meant to prevent terrorism, but it is good for helping to find people who are guilty of terrorism and crime. It is also useful to rebut accusations of Israeli excesses in sensitive areas, such as the Temple Mount. The videos helped to quickly dispel the Mitchell Commission which had been summoned based on Arab accusations of Israeli violations. At the center we were given briefings and demonstrations of the system with regard to the above-mentioned points. These two projects I saw this evening make it clear that the Israeli government these days is not screwing around at all in places where it counts, regardless of whatever is going on in the public eye.
Sunday: Ronen (bank branch manager; late 30’s): Build a state in the Negev with tunnels to the West Bank and give this subsidized to all of the Arabs. West Bank sovereignty to continue by Israel. Sees no economic future under the present condition. Hopes US strike on Iraq succeeeds to change things; nothing can happen right now.
Hisham drives me to Frances who lives in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Rais el Amoud (spelling might be off), about a mile beyond the Old City beyond the Mount of Olives. Hisham is an Arab who drives me around whenever I am in Jerusalem. He is part of an elite group of drivers that is licensed to take passengers from the King David; that means he has been screened as an OK security risk because the government does not want visitors at the King David to be picked up by just anybody. He is happy to be taking me to Frances, a Christian Arab who used to work at the YMCA and helped arrange my first visit to Jordan (so you can all blame him). The other drivers at the King David are more desperate because of the poor tourism situation and are trying to freeze him out somewhat unpleasantly so he asks me to meet him on the street corner away from the entrance. This weekend the hotel is full because there are a half dozen Federation missions in town, but there are no real tourists in town and these Federation guided bus tours don’t really patronize the gamut of local businesses.
Hisham is afraid US action with Iraq will not work out and that it may make things worse. Frances and Raina, his daughter, agree. Very nice family; Sayeed is 8 years old, goes to the French school and learns French but not Arabic in school. Of course, the first language at home is Arabic. There are kids throwing firecrackers outside getting excited about the upcoming Ramadan; at first I thought they were gunshots and I was figuring why the hell did I come here, just a mile but a light year away from such nice areas in West Jerusalem which might as well be on another planet for all these people know of each other’s existence. The walls contain Hamas-inspired graffiti and it is a pretty slummy looking area on the edge of Jerusalem, but moving would be costly to them. All their neighbors are Moslem; their kid is isolated and doesn’t play on the block. They were harrassed some time ago until their neighbors accepted they weren’t moving. It is clear that Israelis, and even the Gaza manager of the Arab Bank, don’t know the full details of current military actions by the Israelis. Raina, doing a masters degree at Bir Zeit University, works with CARE, a human rights organization. Says kids coming from Rafiah (a border town between Gaza and Egypt) can’t stop crying and that the situation in the camps there is very tough. They have no shoes or food and are at the desperation point. Raina and Frances try to shield Sayeed from reality and keep him hate free without TV and exposure to other kids, but you have to wonder how he could live in his environment and be immune to it. I asked Frances as we drove the 3 minute ride back at night into town how he avoids being shot at by Arabs since his license plate looks like a normal Israeli license plate. An excellent question, he answers. There is no answer. He just hopes his attacker sees his face, and indeed there have been cases of mistaken identity in this regard. Just good luck, he says, because in his opinion he says that he doesn’t look like an Arab. Frankly, there are many people here whom I can’t tell what they are supposed to be by what they look like.
Had lunch Sunday in the hotel’s grill room. It was completely empty when I entered; 4 French people came in and that’s it. Get these steals while you can; the King David Hotel has been humbled to the point where you can have a lunch of lamb chops and kabob for under $25. Nobody from outside the hotel eats in these dining rooms even though I really think the food is the best in town here. If you stay in the hotel and charge food to your room, you get out of the 18% VAT which you pay in the restaurant or the hotel if you are not a guest, so there is an incentive to eat in the hotel. Actually, restaurants in this country have been improving over the past 20 years and whatever I ate anywhere was very good. The “Yotveta” chain of restaurants would be a winner anywhere in the world; I’ve never seen anything like it in the U.S. What I am paying in the hotels: Tel Aviv Hilton $210; Tel Aviv Dan $200; King David Jerusalem old city view single room $168; King David Club Room (1 BR suite) is $350.
Peres has a few fans here. Somewhere in these notes you will find someone who likes him. He is hiding with Waldo so look carefully.
Monday morning I took a tour of new real estate listings in Jerusalem; they have just begun to use multiple-listing services and on Monday morning the real estate agents go out to preview whatever new has hit the market so that they can educate themselves. Orthodox are a major factor in Jerusalem real estate and they want low floors and sukka patio areas with an open roof for the fall holiday. They will pay an extra 10% or roughly 30 to 40k for a sukkah; consider that you could take your family to a hotel for the week for less than 2k, so it is really an inflated premium. Apartments are generally in lousy condition and prices are about 25% less than Manhattan. For instance, they are asking $320,000 for 1,000 square feet (about 100 meters) on the 8th floor with pretty views of the Knesset but needs work. My similarly situated apartment would ask 450k. Or 325k for a totally rehabilitated 2 bedroom about 950SF 1 flight up above ground level. It is a buyer’s market today; people get more value in the suburbs; 200k would get you a semi-detached villa with a garden but it is like living in Connecticut and spending 1.5 hours each way a day going into Manhattan. People tend to do it for a few years thinking their kids will like it, and then move back into the cities when they realize they are not seeing their kids this way. One apartment I visited was some Kahane-fanatic’s pad with all kinds of locks; looked like what an Idaho hideaway of the Unabomber should look like. Here’s an interesting note: The Church is the largest landowner in Jerusalem. Nobody knows what’s going to happen when all these 49 and 99 year leases on these lands underneath all these buildings run out. So far in court cases, the church wins every time. Unless the Church negotiates, Israel has good reason to keep expanding Jerusalem so that people can live on land where their rights are not going to be in doubt. If you’re buying an apartment to give to your kids, under the present conditions all you may be buying them is a future lawsuit. This issue has already begun to depress prices and half the properties we saw were on land that is church-owned, so this is a real issue.
It’s Monday lunchtime and my brother and father have arrived from Miami. I am now in the country because they are coming and wanted me to be here with them. They are on a mission to try and contribute to the country during this difficult time. My brother is going to shoot a video documentary about victims of terrorism and my father has an idea. He printed up certificates that look like $20 bills and took them into all kinds of stores in the downtown Jerusalem pedestrian zone which has been the big loser from all the attacks (nicknamed Piazza ‘Pitzatza’ (explosion))— toy stores, underwear and socks, film and electronics, coffee houses, falafel, yoghurt places, etc. — and said to each merchant I want to give you $300-500 and in return you will sign and validate these gift certificates. I will distribute them to worthy people, such as victims of terrorism, volunteers, soldiers, students, and orphan children, and they will spend these certificates in your stores. That way they get things they need, and your store does business. Sounds good, huh? He was inspired by his late father who 50 years ago wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Daily News in which he suggested a national lottery which would give away lots of consumer goods as prizes, so that the lottery would stimulate production in the economy, which was the big problem during the Great Depression. Anyway, we walk into the store and the merchants’ first reaction was “Uh, go away, don’t bother me.” Then they started looking for Candid Camera. Then they turned hostile and accused us of trying to scam them. When they finally figured out that Santa Claus had just entered their store and was about to fill their monthly sales quota, they came around. One particularly hostile lady, when she came around, got the chills and goosebumps and was overcome with emotion — “Kol Hakavod Licha” (all Honor Due You) was what they all said. Anyway, we did this with about 15 stores and distributed about $10,000 worth of certificates. My father and brother visited all kinds of people in hospitals and rehabilitation centers around the country giving out the certificates and showing them moral support. He went to a hotel on the edge of Jerusalem which was on the verge of bankruptcy and made a deal to purchase dinner for 90 people and to bring two busloads of couples into town for the evening who lived in a besieged settlement and reportedly hadn’t been out of town for a year. The municipality in question contributed two bullet-proof buses for the evening. He also arranged to bring in a busload of kids for an evening of pizza and games in Jerusalem. This attracted the attention of the media and we were chaperoned by a person who used to be Bill Clinton’s White House liaison to the Jewish Community. He now does political consulting and, the week before I was in town, had been in Jordan arranging meetings with Queen Raina and various people. My father was assisted by Hatzala, an emergency response ambulatory and paramedic organization. My father and brother have hosted parlor meetings to raise money to purchase bullet-proof casings for ambulances used in the Territories. I’m not taking any credit for any of this; it was all his idea. I do take credit for helping to ditch all the crazy ideas we thought of and rejected the month before we showed up.
The political consultant (Jay), an American splitting his time between Israel and New Jersey, said that the Jordanian officials said that the U.S. ought to stop meeting with Arafat if they want to push the idea forward that he is irrelevant. They stress that not one person has demonstrated against the Qualified Industrial Zones. According to Jay, The King wants Internet and a computer in every first grade classroom, even though he understands that Internet equals Freedom. The King understands economics, freedom, Israel and peace. Jay feels that Israel must solve the Palestinian problem due to demographics or else the Arabs can just do nothing and ask for the right to vote, in which case they will eventually create facts via the vote. He said Bibi would be a winner because people just want change from Whomever and that Bibi has the party faithful in the Likud in his pocket. (As of this writing, I think he is about to be proven wrong as to Bibi — the guy is losing ground to Sharon.)
Oded (economic analyst in his 50’s: chronic gloom and doomsayer but most often right) — Americans run everything; they will run Iraq too and tell Israel and all the Arabs what to do. Who runs any of these countries doesn’t matter. Mubarak son cannot succeed taking over Egypt. In Sudan and Yemen, the Americans impose solutions. The Europeans have no power and are meaningless. The Euro will go bust bringing in 10 more countries. Israel is run by fools and the next generation is just as stupid, but there is no reason to be creative since Israel is run from the outside. Saudis in the elite don’t care about the future of their country; they will just move to France when the party is over. All the Arabs who know better will move away from here; the Palestinians will never get anything. Rumsfeld says there is no Israeli “occupation” now; the Americans won’t pressure Israel; just agreed to give them another $10 billion loan guarantee (the Israelis are now officially “asking” for it).
Itzik (30’s; PR officer for liberal social justice organization) — Talked up Mitzna as a possibility who works well with Arabs, did well in Haifa and in the Intifadah. Itzik served in Lebanon in early 80’s; said the mission as given to him was to shoot Arafat, but by the time they found him it was too late as the ceasefire agreement had been signed. Says Israel won’t kill him or Yassin or go into Gaza because they are afraid of the consequences. Even the Right-wings with skullcaps didn’t want to go into Gaza once they were there last May and got a sense of the place. He was there. Agrees the past 2 years brought both sides to more realistic positions viz. Jerusalem and the Right of Return.
Itzik continues: Better to send liberals to do the missions today in the territories than the right-wing nutsies who are not as humane. Talking to nationalistic religious people today is like talking to the deaf. They quote you a verse from scripture and for them that’s a conversation stopper because what more is there to talk about? In order to talk to them, you have to talk their language, the language of Halacha (the Jewish equivalent of Sharia). He saw a female would-be suicide bomber who was caught before she succeeded. She was brought into the IDF camp for interrogation. While she was waiting, he brought her some water and talked to her. He felt that he saw in her eyes that she was a beautiful woman who had somehow been shut off from the vibrancy of life; she was prepared with all her strength to sacrifice herself; such an innocent person filled with such hatred and despair. She looked university-educated and was shy. He felt that him talking to her and offering her water made a big difference to her, and that’s why he feels that the profile of the soldiers in the territories should be more people like him.
In Rafiah, he says there is definitely a lot of stuff going on there. He feels that the new defense minister Mofaz is a fanatic and not a smart one either and that he will be a disaster. He feels that it is a miscalculation to believe that people will vote for Mitznah over Sharon if they feel that Mitznah will offer them hope. People want hope but right now see no choice based on the Palestinian leadership situation and continued terror and at this point see Sharon as the only realistic choice.
Gilead (30’s; economist) — Many liberals have moved to the Right. Doesn’t see any Laborite taking power for a decade. Sharon wants to make a deal; nobody will ever accept Arafat but the Palestinians must be the ones to choose their leader. Says Jerusalem cannot be divided, and that Israeli Arabs should go into the Palestinian state as they can’t be trusted. Nothing will happen till Iraq activity reshuffles the deck.
Tuesday in Jerusalem I had some free time in the afternoon and went to see some museums. There is the Museum of Islamic Art which happens to be excellent. In the Arab countries, I haven’t seen much in the way of art but there happens to be a lot of it. The trustee of this museum had a tremendous collection of European watches and timepieces and donated it to the museum which is exhibited in the basement; I understand the curator stole half of it so what is left is even more impressive in that it is only half the collection. The Bible Lands Museum is another large museum; I’m not sure I got the gist of the main galleries but its special exhibits including black and white photographs of Jerusalem from the 19th century were impressive. Then to the Israel Museum which has so many special exhibitions that you have to keep coming back. Ten years ago I didn’t understand why this museum had so many things going on that had nothing to do with Israel; now I get it. They had special exhibitions on Chagall, glassware, Italian consumer design, 9/11 fire rescue, and ball playing in Latin America 1,000 years ago.
The taxi driver said he just finished 40 days in Gaza; said it’s real dirty work down there but it’s war, good work the army is doing and an endless blood feud of revenge. Gilead mentioned the revenge thing too. Dinner at Norman’s steak house in the German Colony (Emek Refaim) which consistently has really good filet mignon and anything else you care to order. My brother found a print he liked in a gallery so I got him something for his house.
Guri (cousin in 60’s; biology professor): Barak’s biggest mistake was to exclude Arabs from his government. They have, since 1967, played Palestinian politics but played within the system. After Barak left them in the cold, particularly after they voted for him almost unanimously and he gave them high hopes, they became radicalized by their leaders and turned against the state. Arafat would never have started the 2000 Intifadah without feeling the support of the Israeli Arabs. Remember it was Arab MK’s who walked with Sharon on the Temple Mount as part of a preplanned visit and then started going nuts when the cameras rolled making lots of people feel that they planned an ambush for him. Guri has seen his university students turn more radical over the past few years, stop watching Israeli TV (he thinks they are afraid of peer pressure in their villages since they can now watch Hizbullah TV or Al-Jazeerah if they want), change their opinions about the army (now he says they refer to them as child-killers). Says the Israeli Arabs will want to get rid of Israel if there is a Palestinian state because the Palestinian state won’t better their lives and so it is hopeless — Israel can’t give the Palestinians anything because it will only lead the Arabs from within to revolt. The only solution is to bring the Israeli Arabs into the political system and to absorb them. Guri will never vote Likud but right now Labor/Likud (what’s the difference) provides no alternative and there is no one besides Bibi and Sharon who are electable. The Israelis have become more radical; they support Likud policy more than Sharon, because half the Likud supports Bibi. Oslo failed because Barak was a jerk and because arms given to the PA to fight terror were used against Israel. Arafat only wanted a truce as he said to the Indonesian prime minister; can never deal with Arafat. Media incitement to kids raised kids in kindergartens in 1993 to radical teens by 2002. But he wants peace and feels the Clinton plan is probably the way to go. Hisham (the Arab driver) agrees with Guri that Barak should have been loyal to the Arabs who supported him and says that Mitzah would be good. He agrees that if Arafat is in the #1 spot, either Sharon or Bibi will be on the other side of him. Maybe a different Israeli leader if Arafat is not in the #1 slot. Hisham says he hears that King Abdullah of Jordan is drinking and womanizing.
Wednesday afternoon I leave Jerusalem to visit the Galilee. Maybe I will get some different perspectives. The Brittany Spears look is in; all these girls with their chests showing. I don’t like it. My cousin Yochi works at Amdocs, a big hi-tech company listed on NASDAQ. They have 2 big office buildings near Kfar Sabah, about 30 minutes from Tel Aviv. I have never visited the campus of one of these companies before and I suppose Microsoft looks like this. The lunch buffet at the employees’ cafeteria looks like a wedding spread at the Hilton (better than the food they served us guests last weekend). They had carving stations, duck, veal, turkey, lamb, salad bar…you get the idea. This is obviously a Jewish company — they can go bankrupt (and the company’s share price is down 90% this past year or so) but don’t you dare shut down the dining room. (Imagine a labor uprising with people like that guy who missed his chopped liver.) The view from the building’s roof of the nearby areas is pretty and it is not far at all to be gazing beyond the Green Line. Yochi offers no ideas about politics but says he can’t fathom living anywhere else, so for good or bad he’s stuck there. I then fly to the Galilee; due to military exercises the plane flies low and over Haifa as a detour and it is a beautiful flight. Haifa is a lovely city and one day when they rebuild Beirut (not just the city center) it will also look the same way from the air. Unfortunately, it was too dark to get a good picture.
The infrastructure in the Galilee has really been built up; the roads and service areas are excellent. It is not a hicktown area just because it is far to the north and the coffee houses and pubs are really nice. I am told what it looks like a mile across Lebanon and I know what Jordan looks like just beyond the border; these people probably have no idea how advanced the Israeli situation is and you can quickly understand why the Arabs living in the Galilee have no interest in leaving their comfortable situations in Israel to join any Palestinian entity.
Bernard (Galilee lawyer and entrepreneur) has one foot out the door and wants to leave if he can’t figure out how to make a decent living in Israel. He has already lived in several countries but keeps coming back. The Galilee has too many lawyers as it is. Bernard feels Israel was wrong in abandoning its allies in South Lebanon; he and his friend Guy (business partner and army intelligence operative) had personal relationships with these people. Bernard’s parents own a guesthouse near the Lebanon border in Kiryat Shmona; very pretty property with lots of greenery and nature. Military exercises kept most locals up all night with shells hitting targets; I was far away enough that I didn’t hear anything. Bernard and Guy had some clever ideas and I wouldn’t mind if either if these guys had more to do with the country’s leadership which is not particularly clever. Unfortunately, I can’t for the life of me recall what they recommended and neither could they afterward even I called a few times on the phone to tweak their memories so those highly useful tidbits of conversation didn’t make this journal.
At noon Bernard handed me off to Mohammed (Israeli Arab attorney). Now you get the reward for having managed through the past 20 pages because Mohammed is always the most insightful guy on these trips, so here is the world according to Mohammed. Israel makes a profound mistake by trying to cast the conflict as one between itself and Palestinians or Sharon and Arafat. It is also making a mistake in terms of trying to enforce a solution based on natural law justice and overlooking the emotional sense of justice which is what Arabs want. What is necessary is a Sulha (reconciliation) between Israel and the Arabs in order that a peace will not just be between governments but among peoples, or else it won’t last or be taken seriously. A Sulha involves asking forgiveness for past misdeeds and then promising to do right by that person or clan. Even if the person is angry for being the victim, if an elder recommends a Sulha, everyone has to go along with it. So if you murder somebody and it was an accident, you could offer money in the Western sense of things as restitution, but the Arab won’t want to take your “blood money” — if you want to avoid the cycle of revenge, you are better off sending emissaries to the victim’s family, requesting a Sulha and arranging that your family and the victim’s family will kiss and make up and Be Excellent to one another. Israel must seek a Sulha with the Islamic world via either a Wahid of Indonesia or an Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. When the simple 78 year old Abdullah offered Israel a Sulha this past year, it was a mistake to roll out the lawyers and academics to parse his every word and look for legal loopholes; they should have taken his outstretched hand and ran with it. Abdullah himself said that he was a simple person who did not appreciate having academics run around trying to interpret his simple remarks. He said that Sharon understands what he has to do but that his advisors are holding him back. Barak didn’t have a good attitude and did nothing for the Arabs who backed him.
Lunch in a nice but deserted restaurant in Nazareth (no tourists anywhere). Walked in the casbah, the Church of Annunciation (where Mohammed explained me that here the Virgin Mary found out she was going to give birth to Jesus)[consider the irony of Mohammad standing in a church in Nazareth explaining a Jew the story of Jesus], the nearby Christian high school in which he was educated, and the nearby site of the mosque which was a big controversy for the past few years. They have since compromised and it seemed obvious enough to us after looking at the site for a few minutes. The problem was solved by creating a piazza that opens out to both the church and the mosque. We found the Arab pop music CD that I was looking for the previous week and which I couldn’t get at the Amman airport (but at least I got the shopkeeper to write down the name of the song and artist). This wasn’t easy to find; the CD was just making its way into shops. Imagine me walking around Israel with a piece of paper with Arabic writing on it looking for a store to buy Arabic pop music. I figured it would either be with Mohammed or when I got to France that I would find it.
Then we walked into the local Mashbir department store. Just before we walked in, about 50 kids walked right into the store in one big group. It was so ordinary that there was no reason to notice it. Mohammed didn’t mention it but it hit me like a ton of bricks. But this was actually totally profound because this is an Israeli chain store in the middle of Arabville. And there are no identifiable Israeli troops anywhere around here either. In a Jewish area, there would be security guards and metal detectors and all these kids would have been given the lookover and more. That’s what I got Saturday night going to the shopping mall in Jerusalem (and sooner or later I suppose people there might get bombed too). This is the most important point of the trip — who is more safe today? You’re not safe in New York, Tel Aviv, Paris or even walking underneath the Western Wall, but you are safe walking the casbah or Mashbir in Nazareth, at least if you are with a friend as an honored guest. I was walking around the casbah with Mohammed and any sane Jew should have felt his blood pressure running wild because this was the site of many gun battles between soldiers and enemy combatants just 2 years earlier. But frankly, I’m walking around with Mohammed and I feel I got nothing to worry about. It again confirms to me my gut feeling which I have being sharing for years — the Israelis who constantly keep tightening the screws in the search for more security will only find themselves with less security. Better the security of an honored guest than a fearful occupier. The only security is in compromising and coming up with a modus vivendi with the Arabs that speaks to the aspirations of people. Mohammed’s Sulha remarks confirm the concept I have long said regarding Barak — it is not just What he offered but also the Way in which he offered it that would determine whether or not the Arabs would ever accept it.
Bin Laden is brilliant; keeps leaking stuff to Al-Jazeerah on cue and picked people from 15 leading tribes in Saudi Arabia to embarrass the government from all the tribal sectors making it impossible for the authorities to investigate or to pin it on any one party, just like all 12 tribes went against Mohammed, so that revenge was impossible. Saudis can’t touch these people, he says. Bin Laden wants the US out of the Middle East, the regimes replaced by an Islamic superpower that will impose its will and can threaten the rest of the world. America and much of Israel doesn’t understand the Arab mentality well and keeps paying the price; justice here is not measured in dollars but in emotions. Better to apologize (and mean it) to the Arab who was dispossessed in 1948 than to spend the next 5 years determining how much compensation to give him. My friend Khaled has said as much to me as well. (Problem is the Israelis feel they have nothing to apologize for, so I can’t possibly imagine them apologizing and meaning it.)
Israeli Arabs want to stay in Israel and not risk going into a Palestinian state, especially if it is hostile to Israel. They have more in common with Israelis than with West Bank or Jordanian Arabs and the other Arabs view them as outsiders as well. They are more civilized, and have more moral limits and different manners. Israeli Arabs view Israeli Jews not as Europeans or Middle Easterners but as Israelis. He agrees that the best future is to bring the Israeli Arabs into the Israeli political system and that a Mitznah is a good possible candidate. Mohammed feels that if you leave people to freely elect, they will act moderately.
Mohammed: Jews at least check themselves against their worst excesses because they know the will be judged by history and their descendants. 9/11 showed us the Americans are not like Jews, because they chucked their principles and declared open season on those they deemed enemies (ie: prison without trial), says Mohammed. I mentioned to him and others that some Israelis were also rounded up and put into solitary confinement without attorneys or visitors for several months and were beaten in prison too, because they too were suspected to be possible terrorists. Not that this is an excuse, but the Americans have been on a learning curve this past year.
Says the only reason there is less terrorism right now is that security measures are effective; deporting parents and siblings won’t deter terrorists; Arabs are warrior people and those that want to fight the Israelis will try their best to do so.
Returned to Tel Aviv Thursday evening via Arkia, the domestic airline. Of course they saw me walk into the airport with Mohammed and started asking a million questions even though the guy is cleaner than a band-aid. It is like an airbus. People’s cellphones ring in mid-air; the plane makes a stop for a few minutes at the end of the runway; half the people get off, a bunch more get on, the plane turns around and takes off again. The pilot has a big black skullcap on; the cabin steward wears jeans and a T-shirt. It’s not Qatar Airways a la elegance, but the price at $39 each way is right and I can take a 6:30 flight and be at the Azrieli Tower in Tel Aviv early for an 8pm meeting with Shmuel who says he knows the pilot who flew the plane (such a small country this is).
Shmuel (50’s; hospital administrator) — No good leaders at the top. The last 3 prime ministers were all failures. Fuad Eliezer is a joke; Eitam a dangerous embarrassment, Ramon and Mitzna not serious leaders or carrying acceptable ideas. Earlier Gury said that it was the government’s fault that the Arab villages have no investment; Shmuel says the Arab villages are unkempt because they don’t pay any municipal taxes and the various cities are funded from their own municipal taxes; in any event, Israeli Arabs should be given a better deal than they currently have. Later that evening Aryeh will say that the Arab city leaders are so corrupt but that the national government should step in and clean up the situation so that the Arab cities can absorb taxes and use services. Thinks Saddam will use biochemical weapons on Tel Aviv and Haifa even if he hits Arabs in Jaffa or Haifa. Saddam’s missile was only 200 meters from a major target in 1991 so he should not be underestimated. Thinks US should hit Iraq. The Israelis need to be prepared for worst case scenario in that Saddam won’t try and launch 20 different attacks but will throw the best of what he has into one or two attacks at the beginning of the war and whether or not the anti-missile defense system will stop all of this or be overwhelmed by a high number of missiles thrown at it remains to be seen. As far back as the 1960’s, Soviet military doctrine was to overwhelm such systems and Saddam’s military will go by the Soviet playbook.
Aryeh (30’s; lawyer) — Another gloom and doomsayer who is usually right. Dance of Death needs another 3 rounds because the parties are not yet truly exhausted. Each side still thinks it can win this game. Fears making another illusory peace that will last 5 minutes. Says business goes on beneath the surface and that in his life he is happy. Says the Arabs won’t agree to peace; the best way out of this is to cut deals with village leaders who each agree to a truce involving freedom and dignity in exchange for no terrorism so that none of them have to be liable for having dealt with major issues on behalf of all the Arabs. Agrees with Bernard, Shmuel and Guy that the way Israel treated the Lebanese upon withdrawal was a disgrace. Says corruption is a bigger problem than people realize and there is too much red tape and hostility toward start-up businesses. Says Barak and Bibi brought in ministers who brought in their friends who tolerated corruption; this corruption has perverted the economy and has caused the greatest damage to Israel’s economy in its history. Says academics are privately more hawkish than they appear in public. This paragraph sums up a 3 hour conversation that ended at 2am Friday.
That night I am at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv; some Russian singer came in with an entourage and filled up the hotel. The desk clerk says to me that they no longer know the meaning of the word “tourist.” I visit briefly Friday morning with Barak who is working hard, making less money and rather despondent about anything political. (He keeps me waiting while sitting on a cellphone. One other person sits with his phone on the table and keeps losing himself in conversation; his girlfriend called 3 times during the course of an hour and he didn’t shut her up until I told him I was leaving in 5 minutes and to call her back. I told you that on the domestic flight they don’t even stop talking on the edge of a runway and the phones ring in the air.) There is a serious lack of phone etiquette in this country.) Then on to Jerusalem for another sabbath, this time with my father and brother. The driver says Build a Wall; be nice to Arabs inside Israel, but thinks it will never be normal here. His regret for the past 20 years is that he didn’t move to the U.S. Saturday night we go to the shopping mall and it is a mob scene; the Jerusalem footballers won a game and the teenagers are waving flags and singing. Earlier this week there was some kind of miracle finish against Manchester United and so football fans are on a high. It is years since I have seen lots of Israelis looking happy in a public place. But the lineup of cars waiting to be searched at the parking lot and the metal detectors at the entrance to the shopping mall is the price to pay here for a Saturday night at the mall where people think for the moment they are safe.
Afterward we pay a visit to Moshe Yeffet, a practical entrepreneurial man of Sefardic descent who runs a prominent café in Jerusalem. He knows the neighborhood and is a practical businessman but for several years I would ask him what is to be done and he had no answers. He used to be paying 50,000 shekels a month in taxes; now he pays 5 because there is no business. Used to be ten buses a day; now maybe one in a week. Tonight I am there with my father and brother and he lets it fly. He throws his lot with Peres. Peres, he says, knows we have to sit with these people and talk. Even East Jerusalem we will give up under Sharon or Bibi if the US says so. Another year without tourists and we will all choke. Moshe and all his amigos are sitting in the café on a Saturday night playing cards, watching football and waiting for the big moment — the Lottery. They all go nuts while the numbers are being called off (of course nobody there won) and then it’s back to the cards. This should be a big business night but that’s what they are reduced to; a few years ago he was going to build a second story for this restaurant; the two Arab workers who used to virtually run this place for at least 20 years that I know of have been laid off. My brother is looking at this and thinks it is all rather pathetic. My brother and father are listening to Yeffet and they think he is speaking blasphemy, particularly when he talks about East Jerusalem, and he tells them You guys are sitting in the U.S. taking in all this bullshit about Israel and you don’t understand any of the reality here. Who needs East Jerusalem? Who goes there? Meanwhile, nobody goes to downtown West Jerusalem. So what’s the point of trying to hold onto a place that nobody needs and risk everything that you have in the process, he says.
Now it’s Sunday, my last day here. I get my brother the print at the gallery, say my prayers at the Western Wall and head back to Tel Aviv with Hisham. He says that my observations make sense and affect his opinions. Lunch with Jonathan (investment banker and economist; 30’s; another dark opinion maker but usually right): Deficits are good as long as government invests in projects that will pay off. Israel has just fought the inevitable war so that it, with the U.S., can beat the Arab spirit and convince them of Israel’s reality. Tough stuff going on in Rafiah but the Palestinians are using kids as shields (ie: a bunch of kids surround a guy throwing molotov cocktails). Likes the Likud backbench of talent in their mayors; will vote Likud but would give up East Jerusalem and deal with refugees as long as he is sure the Arabs are ready to make peace. Thinks the Arabs are breaking and will soon come around. Tel Aviv is renovating; in the South we walk around to a newly built modern dance complex with studios and theater. In center city I see paint jobs, gut rehabs and newly built buildings.
Avi Tversky (40’s; lawyer): All of Likud and Labor fighting is BS; no difference between them; they all know the price to be paid and will pay it. Jonathan agrees. Israel wasted many years; economy is bad. Looking to open an office in Bucharest; feels this is the last place left in Eastern Europe where one can speculate and feel somewhat safe in doing so.
David Livingstone (30’s; anesthesiologist): Israel can vaccinate all of its population within 4 days and has better vaccinations than the US or the UK; maybe it will be safer to be in Israel than these other two countries if the worst happens. Is very concerned that smallpox is a very contagious and painful disease and that it will be awful if anyone plays around with it. I have since seen research that says people overestimate how contagious it is. I also met with the chief of Israel’s biomedical anti-terror response team whose job it is to coordinate everything in the country that counts (smallpox being just one of the items); I asked him how he sleeps at night. He said he is doing the best he can, hasn’t had any fun for months, but does sleep at night, presumably because he is exhausted. My uncle gave a presentation to the Knesset committee on homeland security because that is his area of expertise; they made it available live on internet to interested parties around the country.
Jay (American political consultant living in Israel): Bibi is the sleaziest of the bunch but electable as people are desperate. Thinks Israel should cut its losses and make a deal now and do it because it’s good for them to do it. US must win war in Iraq or else it will have no credibility in the region. Also it can’t afford to lose and have Iraq blackmail the entire Middle East (ie: Israel, you better withdraw tomorrow or be nuked). Agrees that Rumsfeld is better than Powell for Iraq war and that Powell has little or no influence (that was before the UN resolution passed raising Powell’s stature). Bush is a lightweight but Rice and Cheny “get it.”
Off to the airport. Lubavitch (a Hassidic sect) has a store in the departure area of the airport with people putting on Tefillin (phylacteries worn daily by men at prayer) and handing out propaganda. If this were in an Arab country, everybody would be writing about it and saying how nutty the place was. In the airport lounge, Bibi has just been appointed foreign minister, is on TV again and the Labor party has pulled out of the government. As of tomorrow morning, I assume Israel will resume its role as the bad boy of the world and the media will be attacking this government relentlessly. (So far it hasn’t happened.) It’s a 30 minute flight to Larnaca; El Al won’t win any awards for the food they serve on board. In front of me sits a Russian mobster-type with his girlfriend who paid $100 for a private van to take them from the gate to the plane. I am sitting next to the flight marshal and I know it is so because, besides the fact that he looked like one, (1) the cabin steward threw a bag onto the seat next to him and no cabin steward would ever do this to a guy seated in business class, not even on El Al; (2) he couldn’t tell me what he paid for his ticket; and (3) the guy never got off the plane. Interestingly enough, he was sitting in short sleeves and I figured he’d be wearing a jacket. Clearly, the situation of air marshals is that they are not expected to go for the gun as a measure of first resort. As it was a year ago when I sat with Ezra in Zurich, I don’t really think that people are into hijacking planes these days and am more concerned with checked luggage and missiles. Ezra and I argued about this 48 hours before 9/11; here I am and now that I am home writing this you of course know there was reportedly an attempted hijacking of an El Al flight just 2 weeks after this flight. (So don’t count on me to predict hijackings. I err in thinking they are so last century.)
One thought as the plane flies over Tel Aviv on the way out: This city keeps growing. The Azrieli Towers have become skyline landmarks visible from the air, even at night. Tel Aviv is like a Singapore; it continues to make progress despite anything going on. I have been in the Galilee and seen much the past 2 weeks; the Arab countries are making progress but go around Swefieh in Amman and you can see that what was new in 1995 is decaying in 2002; the Gulf countries are rich but there is no spit and polish beyond the main streets in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. A few years ago I was critical of Tel Aviv saying that the place was stagnating; it is making progress and as much as the Arabs are also making progress, Israel is making progress faster. This year for example you see parking lots with electronic readouts of the number of parking spaces just like in Europe. Regardless of the Palestinian situation, Israel is a modern country that houses a consumer culture and freedom-loving society that is developing at a tremendous rate. People can buy things, travel, express themselves, and be entertained. Humans are incredibly adaptable creatures; Beirutis put up with far more during the 1980’s and kept their sense of humor. They are not thrilled with the economy or with the overall situation but nobody is packing up and leaving and it is a tremendous mistake to think that they are going to all become leftists and withdraw under pressure; they are going to back Sharon as long as they feel the Arabs haven’t come around to dealing with them reasonably, just the same way the Americans just voted Republican and the Congress gave Bush a free hand to deal with Iraq. It is not for nothing that the Bible calls them a “stiff-necked people.”
Larnaca 9pm Sunday to 10am Monday November 4 — I am here briefly to visit my friend who wound up tonight in Bucharest at the last minute. All of a sudden the world is going to Bucharest. Maybe I am missing something. Anyway, I am here so briefly it doesn’t matter. Evening at the Golden Bay Beach Hotel just outside Larnaca, about 25 minutes from the hotel. They gave me a beautiful room on the first floor with a private terrace with jacuzzi over the beach; it is filled with Russians and the lobby is garish to their taste. Take your breakfast indoors; when I came outside with my juice, the birds had eaten my bread and cake. Cyprus is not in that great shape but it’s OK; it’s a $15 ride to the hotel and $100 a night for the room. At 10am, I’m on my way to Frankfurt. Cyprus Airways wins no awards either but it’s the only morning flight out. This is going to be a rather quick week: Frankfurt, Paris, Brussels, Luxembourg, Spangdahlem Germany and then Frankfurt again.
Frankfurt 2pm Monday to 11am Tuesday — Time to put my coat back on. It’s 2 weeks later and Europe is cooler and of course wetter. It’s good to arrive in Germany carrying water; everywhere you go bottled water has the fizzies. Germans don’t like still-water. Tonight I’m at the Arabella Sheraton hotel just off the Ziel shopping street. Ask for an inside room because the street is noisy. Here I meet up with Ilan, Vered and Kai. Ilan takes me to an Italian restaurant for a pasta and then Kai takes me to an authentic German beer cellar and we have potato pancakes and salad for dinner. Kai: German pension system is shifting to US-style (trust funds instead of pay as you go) because of the graying of the German population. Agrees there is too much penalty to hire and fire workers; if the system does not become more pro-employer and deal with pension demographics, Germany will be a graying market and run a deficit. Thinks government will instead just spend more money on subsidies and raise taxes due to the Schroeder/Green coalition (which has since its election lost a lot of popularity based on these moves).
Frankfurt has built up a nice skyline over the past decade; the hotel wasn’t so good and getting a piece of chocolate cake late that evening turned out to be a federal affair with a stale ending. Ten years ago I had to look for still-water and pay lots for my laundry; same thing in 2002 but at least I am used to the drill and am no longer shaken by the laundry bills or the fact that nobody sells still-water or that once you do find it, the counter clerk just ignores you while you stand there waiting to pay for it. This is not a very pro-service economy. I keep expecting Frankfurt to be so boring and ugly but it’s not so bad and it’s a very good place to keep stopping over on the way to somewhere else. I will pass through Frankfurt 4 times this month but I am still in search of a center city hotel that I like. Kempinski doesn’t have a hotel in Frankfurt; I will try the Steigenberger, a German chain. The taxi ride is 20 minutes and $20 to the airport. Terminal 2 is one of the most sterile and quiet airport terminals I have ever been to but it works well.
Paris Noon Tuesday to 3pm Wednesday — It’s almost an hour flight to Paris on Air France and again it is a pleasure to be flying. Full lunch with all kinds of pretty vegetarian goodies. The taxi into town is 40 minutes and $40; Café de Paix is under renovation so I meet Nicholas across the street for lunch as I step out of the taxi with my bag. When you are in central Paris just 2 hours after being in central Frankfurt, you notice La Difference. It is always nice to be here, even if I have no sightseeing on my agenda and it is a bit chilly. Paris is a lovely city and I am staying at the Prince de Galles hotel right next to the King George V Hotel just near the Arch de Triumph and the Champs d’Ellyses. The Saudi airlines office is right across the street and at night all these rich Arabs are at play driving their fast cars down the lane and hanging out in front of the nightclubs. The elite on this street is one of the reasons so many people in the Middle East are not happy campers. One thing that Frankfurt has that Paris doesn’t is a central pedestrian zone where everyone knows it is the center. Paris is too big for this. Despite the shortness of my visit, I spent quite a bit of time walking around the various zones and my feet will attest to the hurt.
Here’s a good tip: When you buy a day-pass on the metro, you get a bunch of coupons, among them a 10% discount card at the Galleries Lafayette department store which is where the good shopping is. That card was worth at least $50 to me since I spent over $500 in the store. That plus the VAT refund was over 20% off the sticker price. I went looking in the evening and then went buying the next day. If you go to the basement floor, you can get a book of coupons which you hand to each cashier when you buy things in the various departments. Then at the end, you go back to this counter, wait 30 minutes (ie: have lunch), and they bring you all your shopping in one or more bags. This is great convenience and gets you a more favorable VAT refund too.
Next morning breakfast with Laurent (40’s; CEO of multinational). Europe is building a wall to the East promoting development in those countries hoping people will stay there and with more stringent immigration rules to keep them away from the West. Bullish about Mexico, Eastern Europe and even Russia a bit. He is closing down a factory in Germany; 200 km east in Poland he can run the same show for one-fifth the price. He is closing down Argentina. China is a big worry; they are gaining ground by stealing from everyone else (ie: Intellectual Property). You kill 2 of them; 10 more rise up. Here I suffer my first outrageous ripoff of the trip; Laurent ordered the breakfast and I get stuck with the bill and it shows $50 for rolls, coffee and juice for two. I gave the maitre d’ hell about it and they reduced it by half. The hotel itself was a bargain at $138 a night; it is one of the finer hotels in the city. I visited the new Park Hyatt hotel and it is very interesting architecturally if you like super modern stuff, but I don’t think it is worth the prices they are charging. The concierges at the Prince de Galles were excellent and this is a plus. There is an internet café about 5 blocks away just off the Champs d’Ellyses
The speed train to Brussels runs hourly, takes an hour and a half and costs about $100 first class. You know you are in another country when you look at your cellphone and it tells you which carrier is carrying your calls. There are no passport checks any more in these EEC countries, you know. I see graffiti here for the first time in a while; that’s one thing you don’t see in Jewish areas in Israel. Brussels has a heckuva lot of traffic during rush hour. If you arrive at this time, use the metro. In my case, I am at the Sheraton Towers in Brussels and it is a 5 minute walk to one of the train stations and right by a metro station which is a direct shoot from the other train station. There are renovated rooms and non-renovated rooms; they are all rather stodgy but at the least the renovated rooms are better. I wouldn’t stay here again, especially for what I paid which was $162 a night.
Brussels 6pm Wednesday to 9am Friday — Wednesday dinner with Enrique and Carolina and visit to their apartment in a big rectangular building with pretty views of a park. Thursday walk through City Center 2, a shopping mall with a branch of INNO, the department store (here they just send you the entire VAT refund from the store instead of having to deal with Global Refund which deducts a third of it for commission and takes 3 months to do it). The post office sells a zip-lock bag you can put photocopies into and it is very useful. Near the Palace of Justice they have built an elevator at a cost of $2 million to get people up and down a hill with pretty buildings all around; it is a nice ride if you are in the area and I did it just to see what’s new around here. At the Grand Place (city center), there is a museum of municipal history and I lunched at Moka Café in the Schubert Gallery. Right next door was a store that sold mousepads with images of French impressionist art on them; might be something you could buy at a museum store or it might be unique. I couldn’t tell at the time. Then headed over to the EEC Parliament to meet Janet of the newly established Brussels office of the Washington-based Institute for Religion and Public Policy who gave me a tour and discussed issues. There is so much paper here; right now there are about a dozen working languages; if they take in another dozen countries they will either have two dozen working languages or cut most of them out. The bartenders at the parliament wear tuxedos and it is a rather UN-type place that takes itself seriously. Walked through city parks all the way back to the hotel. In this country, the satellite provider gets BBC1 and BBC2 but no BBC World.
This evening we had a rushed but pleasant home-cooked dinner at Monica’s apartment (a friend of Enrique). People here have nice spacious apartments and the rent is not that high for a big European city. We then attended the Brussels Jazz Orchestra at a theater with excellent acoustics; it was originally set up as a recording studio for the Belgian radio network. I hadn’t heard of the BJO before but I won’t forget them now. The theme for the evening was Tango and the fusion of tango and jazz music was very innovative and enjoyable. The price was right — 20 Euro for a third row seat.
Luxembourg 11am Friday to 4pm Friday — Friday morning train ride to Luxembourg. It is 2.5 hours; they are working on a speed train. $36 in first class in the meanwhile. I had a whole compartment to myself and it wasn’t busy this morning. In Luxembourg the walk from the train station to center city is 15 minutes and you can put your stuff in a locker in the train station. Lunch at the Namur Café; I love these lunch places and I bought a bunch of deserts to take home that evening. The shopping is very good here; the best of Paris compacted into a few square blocks. In the 5 hours I had here I did lunch and shopping, saw the National Museum (all in French alas), visited the Old Town (best viewed from above and I had the bad luck that the elevator was broken), took the walking tour of the city center and finally figured my way around. The prices are reasonable but it is raining and chilly. The only 5 star hotel here that is in town is the Le Royale. The Hilton and Sofitel are far away. The last time I was here was just after 9/11 and I was here only for the evening; I had a sense I would enjoy this place for shopping and walking around and it was worth the return visit. (Some good men’s shopping: Krau-Hartman, Grand Rue 24 near “Schroeder’s; Zwick, corner of Rue du Fossee and Rue du Core around the corner from the Royal Palace by the Grand Bank of Luxembourg — I think that was the name of the bank.)
Germany 5pm Friday to Noon Monday — Met up with Mike for the 30 minute ride into Germany to his house. Wouldn’t want to be driving around here at night; there are no lights here on the roads and lots of DWI, I am told. We visit the various military bases here at Spangdahlem and Bittburg. The cartoon channel is on in the hospital waiting room and I watch it for a few minutes; if I were a kid, I’d think this would all be over my head. Bases get cheap gas ($1.50 versus $4 outside); subsidized goods at the Walmart-type canteen; US-style post office with domestic rates and all the machines take US coins and the ATMS give out dollars. Can be here for years and never leave the base. Satellite TV offers a choice of 7 American armed force network channels offering feeds from US networks, no commercials (only military-related public service announcements) — this means you never watch any local TV or any of the international networks such as BBC World. To the military they think of the base as “just like the US”; to me it looks like Germany with English signs. The construction crews are local and I expected the base to look like suburbia a la Warner Brothers studio backlot complete with American-style Stop-signs, green lawns and white picket fences. Visited Trier, a nearby city with a nice city center and historical ruins. The surrounding areas are lovely to drive through with wine fields and villages along a winding river and falling leaves. It must be even lovelier in the summer. Paston sees it from 1,000 feet up in an F-16 and figures it would be nice to drive around. Visited a castle at Manheim but it was raining at the time.
Now for some pot-shots at Germany. He lives in a house off the base. This area of Germany is hicksville with no tourists and a place where the locals have hardly been to Paris, let alone anywhere. Houses here have no closets, kitchens come with nothing except the sink (meaning no cabinets, dishwashers or refrigerators), bathrooms have no shelves, to buy a sofa means few choices, 12-16 weeks delivery with cash up front; the shopping malls here and everywhere are completely closed on Sundays. Germans live in a completely modular manner; they move with everything in the house when they move. The tax assessor comes to your house and taxes you on your closets and your furniture. People throw their furniture on the lawn once a year and let people just take it because they don’t have the cash or the desire to pay the tax. People live in houses that are unfinished from the outside; they have crazy recycling laws; garbage gets picked up twice a month and certain types of refuse are collected only once every few months. This is a system that is a total disincentive to work, produce, spend or inherit and begs you to cheat. Service is often surly and on-hold wait times are high. Israel is actually better than this even though people make fun of Israel; you don’t sit on hold when you call customer service lines and they are exceedingly polite and well-trained. Most important, the toilet paper here is hard, even in the good hotels. I haven’t seen hard toilet paper since Russia a decade ago. Now we know why the Germans are still so tight-assed in 2002. Very hard to use credit cards here and places charge you a few percent if you use them; that can be expensive if you are in a travel agency paying in advance for your vacation. As I said earlier, the pension system and employment system are totally dysfunctional. Until this country makes drastic changes, its economy will not be competitive against the rest of the world.
Sunday evening I fly out of Luxembourg to Frankfurt; the airport is all fogged in but this is normal here. Last week the fog resulted in a crash to a plane which was landing, the first such loss in LuxAir’s 41 year history, but I figure that taking off is less of a risk. LuxAir flight is 25 minutes and offers 3 choices of sandwiches and a box of chocolates. I was supposed to fly Monday morning but I have to switch from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 to Delta Airlines and there is only 75 minutes to do it; I am not feeling well and don’t want to put myself in a panic. If you fly to the US and are connecting from a domestic European flight, you are better off sticking with Lufthansa and its codeshares via Terminal 1 for an easy connection or allowing at least 2 hours for the connection to Terminal 2 so you can check in, get your VAT refund, etc. I spent the evening at the Steigenberger Airport Hotel which was a few blocks from Terminal 2. 100 Euro per night with a very nice breakfast. Good dinner in the hotel restaurant with one of the biggest sole fish I have ever seen. In the morning after breakfast, I take a leisurely walk in the forest (where the sidewalk ends, the forest begins everywhere in Frankfurt) and then go to the airport to check in. Delta Business has lost my vege meal but has a vege option. The flight is the emptiest across the pond I’ve seen in several years. The good news with Delta is you can use your frequent flyer miles to get to Frankfurt a lot easier than Paris or London and fares are lower into this country. Better yet, just fly Lufthansa because it’s a lot better enroute and for connections.
A few travel tips and changes to the packing list: No need for phone cards in this cellphone age; neckties hardly get used, especially if you are wearing sweaters in the cold; I’ve stopped bringing a shortwave radio and sharp nail scissors, but an alarm clock is useful; Micoferon is useful to accelerate and dispel oncoming flu symptoms and it is available over the counter (i travel with this in winter to cold climate areas); use leftover local currency to pay for the hotel bill or let the hotel give you local currency to get to the airport and pay the departure tax — the idea is to have no money by the time you get to passport control. Pack a good pen; hotel pens are often lousy. Business class: the clubs feed you and give you newspapers and magazines. To avoid jet lag, eat a good meal upon arrival and get some sleep if you arrive in the East in the morning, and then go through your day and get some sunlight as quickly as possible. When arriving West, stay up until your normal bedtime, and don’t get out of bed the next morning until it’s the normal wakeup time. I see people arrive in the East in the morning, go through the day, collapse at 6pm, wake up at 2am, get sick as a dog after 3 days and wonder why it happens to them.
Roundup: This trip might sound like a blur of places and conversations but it was very interesting and even relaxing. When you reach a point where you have seen the cities you are visiting, know your way around and no longer care about where you are as much as who you are with, you can just enjoy the moment of seeing what you see and hearing what you hear without thinking about what you should be doing or where you need to go. It doesn’t matter that you are in Paris for only 24 hours; it was plenty of time to shop, talk and look around. Think of it as a cruise to various ports of call using an airplane. On the plane you can eat, read the newspaper, update your journal and have an interesting conversation with the person next to you. With business class lounges, taxis and good hotels along the way, it costs a bit extra than fiddling with all the metros, longer check-ins and laundromats but you can spend your time being productive instead of spending your time saving your money (which is what a lot of people spend too much of their travel time doing). In any event, it pays to get the discounted travel agent rate in the better hotels than to spend virtually the same amount going to inferior hotels which don’t discount as heavily. The Starwood chain in particular discounts nicely to travel agents, especially if the Educational Rate is available. The Frankfurt Sheraton hotel was giving rooms away for $79 a night; the Sheraton in Amman was $39 a night; you can’t do much better than that at a 3-star hotel. This was a good chance to compare the situation in various countries and regions, talk to lots of people and I think you will agree that I heard some interesting ideas along the way that help to answer questions we are all walking around with. The world is not all the same (even though the first thing you see at the Doha airport is the Golden Arches of McDonalds) and I certainly felt I visited plenty of places. The sightseeing in Seville was totally worthwhile and Lugano was a lovely place to weekend. The objective here was to get out and talk to people, hear what they have to say and report back to you in this time of uncertainty and expectation; I say mission accomplished. Now we will have to see what happens and then I will be following up in a region which almost certainly will not be the same as I left it.
Take the photo tour. Start in Lugano, continue to Seville and briefly see other places.
