Jordan

Jordan

At the begining of September Eva and I travelled to Jordan and Israel. And this from the beginning it has been an amazing trip. In advance we had to take care about the visa problems. So we needed to get an reentry visa for Egypt, because otherwise you are not allowed to reenter Egypt, when you are coming from Israel. Here in Cairo you get it at the Mogamma Building at Tahir Square. If anybody is going to visit Egypt in the near future I advise him to visit this building you will feel like Asterix and Obelix in their adventure “Asterix and Obelix against Caesar” at the task where they need to get a certain permission bill in that big administrative building in Rom, where everybody is basically mad. A Mogamma it is nearly the same but somehow it works.
So we went by bus to Taba at the israelian border (which was terrible because the busdriver decided to pleasure us with Koran singing over the loudspeaker for the whole trip). We crossed Israel by taxi (we only stayed in Israel for 25 min!!) and reached Aqaba at 8 am. From their we went directly to Petra. So we reached Petra 12 hours after leaving Cairo, which is quite good.
Petra is wow. It’s WOW. I think that I am not really able to describe to things their. But it is very very beautiful. Basically it’s a whole city in the stones, the area is huge. I cannot tell you anything about the distances, but you can easily spend 1-2 days there and you will never pass by things twice. There are tombs and graves, a so called Treasury and a Monastery. Just take a look at the pictures. The stones are beautiful in different shapes of red and white. Especially in the morning and evening it is amazing. Close to the entrance there is a canyon called the Siq, by which you enter the whole area. Everybody how is interested in ancient Arabic culture and heritage, please go to Petra!!
Eva and I spend a full day their, don’t ask me how we survived that but in the evening we were like dead. In the next morning we enter the site at 6.30 am when it is not crowed at all and climbed a mountain to see the sunrise. Really cool.
Afterwards we left Petra and travel by bus to Amman the capital of Jordan. Jordan is quite a small country so the trip only took 2 hours. To be honest I didn’t like Amman to much. There is not too much to see and I have seen similar things in Egypt and Italy. We visited the Citadel and the Roman Theatre. In the evening we tried to explore the city life of Amman but because of the Jordanian habits and Ramadan everything closed by 9 pm. Two more things one positive and one not too positive. First Jordan is one of the few countries actually ruled by a king and the people are really happy with it. The economy is going really well and you will find pictures of him all over the country, he is like a pop star. Secondly travelling with women in Jordan is difficult, in Amman you hardly see women on the street and when then veiled. So people really stared a lot at us, which makes you feel quite uncomfortable.
We left Amman the next morning and travel to Dead Sea. Just take a look at the pictures, it is really funny because you don’t need to swim, you will stay on top all the time…
From Amman Beach we travel to King Hussein Bridge. Which connects Jordan-Nomansland-Westbank/Israel. It was sort of an experience because everybody told us that the border crossing can take quite long. The first funny thing is that our driver drove tough wards the crossing point and like 500 meters before we actually reached it he suddenly stopped and told us “Get out, now, QUICK”… so we sort of jump out of the car and walked (a little bit scared) to the check point. Leaving Jordan was not problem, we saw some Diplomats which two Passports a national one and a diplomatic, which is quite useful for travelling in the Middle East. Then we took a bus through nomansland and arrived in Israel. They asked some questions about the purpose of our stay, took pictures and fingerprints. Nothing special. Quite funny they asked us if we are a couple so now the Israelian Government knows about my and Eva’s relation. Shit ;-)