Finnish for beginners

Finnish sounds completely different to - apparently it has completely different roots. When you see it written it looks like a language invented by a bunch of drunk linguists sitting around the table - each daring the next to through in a few more constants or double letters in to each word. Many words are long compounds, most being made up of lots of short vowel-consonant-vowel strings with almost all words ending in a vowel, and the Finns have a penchant for throwing in repeated double letters where ever they can. So sometimes listening in on Finns it sounds like a muffled machine gun of sounds being spat out with an underlying rhythm. Many words sound very similar, so that if you remove just one of the letters out of a double letter the meaning completely changes - a lesson I soon learnt.

Being the culturally sensitive traveller I am I thought I should give it a go, and I started learning a few basic words and trying to get both the pronunciation and rhythm right - needless to say I didn't do very well, particularly as most Finns are such competent speakers of English. However I did find that some Finns are a little shy about speaking English, perhaps as they don't get much practice, so I learnt the phrase for "Don't be shy". One day, Oscar a six or seven year old boy who lived next door came for one of his regular visits and seemed a little frightened of the strange speaking, bearded foreigner. Trying my best to put him at ease I said what I thought was "Don't be shy" which caused everyone in the room to dissolve in to fits of laughter and saw Oscar bolting out the door. When the laughter finally subsided I asked what I had said, and it turned out by not pronouncing one syllable correctly (of course it was a double letter) I had actually said "Don't take a shit !!!"
One can imagine Oscar running home to his parents saying the strange foreigner told me not to go to the toilet. After that I pretty much lost my desire to learn any more Finnish.

So you think you know sauna ?

The Finns invented the proper sauna and they take it very seriously, from the pronunciation ( it is SOW NA not SOR NA) to the temperature (at least 60 degrees but 80 if you are really serious, not like those wussy Swedes who have 40 degree saunas and sit inside reading the newspaper for a couple of hours) to the array of flavours - standard, wood, smoke. Almost all Finnish houses have their own sauna, a summer cabin isn't a cabin unless it has a sauna and even apartment blocks have communal saunas. Sauna is a way of life, and there is none of that new age mumbo-jumbo spiritual jumping about the place that some saunas have become associated with.

My first sauna experience was in a new house in the city belonging to a couple of friends of Sari. The sauna was located upstairs to the side of the bathroom and the women got to go first. When it was our turn we got fresh cold beers and headed upstairs and began to get ready. Whilst I was familiar with the concept that the sauna required you to be naked, I was a little unsure of the practicalities and a little nervous about being naked in front of a man I had just met. He went out to the bedroom the change I after using the toilet I started to take of my clothes, but when he returned in a dressing gown I was still in my underwear wondering whether it would be a faux pas to be completely naked, but a little wary of him thinking I had the usual Anglo hang-ups about being starkers. Whilst Finnish people may be a little shy about talking to you they are definitely not shy about getting naked in front of strangers, so Juko dropped the dressing gown to shower, advising me that it was best to get wet before getting in to the sauna. The ice was broken, so I dropped my strides, got wet and headed in to the sauna, which was only about wide enough to sit two people and not much deeper. The inside was entirely covered with pine decking, and in the corner there sat what looked like a wood heater, the top covered in a layer of rocks that were glowing red hot. Behind the heater, running the length of the sauna was a second level, upon which there was a bench for sitting on,
As soon as I closed the door I could feel the heat, and I was glad to sit straight down on the little towel that made sure my ass didn't get burnt from the hot timber decking that was the seat. I checked the thermometer and it was a cool 80 degrees, and pretty quickly my entire body was covered in sweat. I began to recline against the back wall but immediately jumped forward as the wood was too hot to touch. Gradually I began to get used to the heat - the cold beer helped immensely, but my body was completely covered in sweat, and the hot water left in my hair from the shower was dripping on to my shoulders, each drop stinging me as it fell. Then Juko threw some water from a pail between us on to the hot rocks and after a moment I found I could no longer breathe. The water immediately turned to steam and rushed to the top of the room, and seemingly straight down my throat, burning all the way down. I clamped my mouth shut and when I started to run out of air I sucked it threw my closed lips so that it only burned a little. Slowly the air cooled and I could open my mouth, and next time Juko threw water on I was prepared.

After what seemed like quite a while but wasn't much more than 15 minutes we got out and showered, wrapped ourselves in a towel and then headed outside (for Juko to have a smoke) and stood on the back porch in the rain - and I felt fantastic. The heat coming from inside my body kept running in to the cold from outside, and as I sucked in deep breaths of cool air the drops of rain were stinging my skin in a painful but enjoyable way. My senses were heightened, and I could feel every square millimetre of my skin, millions and millions of nerve fibres twitching, sending a flood of neurons bouncing along to my brain. Juno told me that it is even better in winter when you can jump in the snow !!! Before we got cold we headed back inside, and then back in to the sauna, and despite the initial shock of the heat again I felt comfortable much more quickly. After another 10 or 15 minutes Juno announced that he could feel his heart beating in his ears which was a sign to get out, which was just fine by me as my temperature was going through the roof and I was feeling a little uncomfortable, but I didn't want to seem like a wuss and get out first. After showering and cooling down somewhat we headed back downstairs for another beer, and despite feeling a little flustered and still quite warm, my skin felt very soft and I felt clean and tired. The ride back to Sari's house by bicycle in the rain was almost as refreshing as I could feel the rain and the wind on my skin all the way home.

My second sauna experience was in Sari's grandparents home. This was a much bigger sauna of the wood variety, attached again to the bathroom, but big enough to fit in maybe four or five people. Gramps lit the fire, and then Sari restocked it with wood about half an hour later, and about another half an hour later it was ready to go. The heater looked almost identical to the previous one I had seen, a metal box with rocks on top, but it had an empty chamber below in which you lit the fire. Gramps and Gran went in first, during summer they sauna twice a week and during winter it goes up to three times a week. Sauna really is a way of life and I could imagine how pleasant it would be to escape the monotonous cold of winter (it gets down to -40 !!!) by stepping inside a sauna a couple of times a week. When it was our turn the heat in the sauna had peaked but was still around 70 degrees. It was, however, far more comfortable because the burning wood gives off moisture (or something like that). It was much easier to relax and I lasted much more time, even throwing a bit of water on to the hot rocks myself. When we came out for a break I cranked the water up to full cold and it was absolutely freezing, and despite it initially feeling quite painful, it was actually enjoyable, feeling the contrast between cold skin that was turning in to goose bumps and a core temperature that was still high. (Sari later told me that when you go ice swimming, which is common in winter during sauna the water is about the same temperature.)

My third sauna experience was what the Finns consider to be the Rolls Royce of sauna, a smoke sauna, at the cabin in the woods. The sauna was a separate building itself, constructed out of logs, about the size of a small room. Inside there was a much stouter looking heater covered in hot rocks.
I admit that I only half paid attention to how the smoke sauna works but it involves enclosing the sauna and then burning wood which smokes up the room and heats up the rocks. Then you let the poisonous gases out, wait a little while, and voila, you have a sauna with the air that tastes like a mix of smoked salmon and a dark, rich bottle of red wine. Inside it was quite dim, but the temperature was only around fifty or sixty degrees, so you could sit around for longer, or indulge in another favourite Finnish pastime, whipping yourself with a bunch of branches of birch strung together just for the purpose. (Still no so convinced on that one) After a while when we grew too hot, we could simply amble out of the sauna, down the path for twenty metres or so and jump in the river, and have a swim until we started to feel the cold. We would then head back to the sauna and do it all over again. It was so enjoyable we ended spending almost all evening in either the sauna or the river, only stopping when after we watched the sun go down around 11pm. The other cool thing about the smoke sauna is that it stays warm for a longer time, so that we could even have another go the next morning !!

I got so used to having saunas whilst I was in Finland it was one of the first things I missed when I left the country. Starting to think maybe I could build one at home !!!

Let there be light

When someone says to you that during summer in Finland it is light nearly 24 hours a day (if you go above the Arctic Circle then t is actually light 24 hours a day for a while) it sounds impressive, but we have long days in summer and what are a few more hours of light anyway. Well, quite a lot actually, when it is almost light all the time strange things start to happen.

When I got to Finland I had the good fortune of arriving in the early hours of the morning when it almost becomes dark, and having had a few bottles of red wine so I quickly fell asleep. However, on the first day as it got late in the afternoon and I hadn't yet left the place I was staying I started to get jumpy and felt like getting outside and going for walk. I procrastinated for a while and then began to notice that as it got later - six o'clock, then seven, then eight - it wasn't actually getting any darker. When I finally did get out for a walk, it was still light when I returned at eleven, and I found myself eating dinner well after midnight. The strange thing is that whilst the sun slowly marches across the sky, and finally sets at around 9.30 or 10, the sun's arc is almost parallel to the horizon rather then perpendicular, so whilst out of sight it is tottering along just below the horizon it is still light enough to read a book outside pretty much all night.




This is around 12.30 am one night in Lapland.



Over the next five weeks, especially when I went further north and got even more daylight I started to realise the effects of constant daylight. The most obvious is that it is quite difficult to sleep when the sun is still shining. (It reminded me of when was a little tacker and Dad sent us to bed at 9 o'clock during summer and it was still light. The Morgans from over the road came and tapped on the window and made fun of us because we were in bed before dark !!!) Even when you do get to sleep it never seems to be that deep so a lot of the time you wander around during the day a little like a zombie. As a consequence the Finns are some of the biggest consumers of coffee in the world, needing a jolt of caffeine a few times a day to keep them awake.

The other thing about constant light is that it really throw your sense of timing across the day out of wack. I would wake up in the morning feeling as though it was 6am and it would be well past 11, or I would go out for a walk in the afternoon and when I got back it would be almost midnight. With the sun moving across the sky so slowly, and not much variation in the light levels almost every hour of the day felt the same, and I soon started to lose that reflex of having to do things before the sun goes down - because it never really does. For a while this meant that the days started to get a way from me, but it is hard not to do lots of things when the day is 20 hours long. Finns also know that the dreaded winter, with its almost light free days is on the ominous and unrelenting march towards them so they take full advantage of the light and spend a lot of time out doors. And I must say whilst I enjoyed the constant light I don't think I would be so keen on its constant absence.

Introducing..... Finland

If you know more about Finland than it is the home of Nokia, then you probably have been here.

If you think Vikings - that is Denmark, if you think ABBA, Ikea and all blonde and suntanned - that is Sweden, If you think North Sea oil, whale hunters and too snobby to be in the EU, that's Norway. For almost 600 years the Finns were ruled by the Swedes, and then the Russians took over. During WW2 there was an epic mid Winter battle between the Finns and the Ruskies and despite the bravery of the Finns, the Russians won, after which they stole a big chunk of territory and exerted their influence all threw out the Cold War. As a small country, there are 5 million Finns, wedged between the devil and the deep blue sea, the Finns might just be happy that no one notices them and they are left alone to be their happy little Finnish selves.

In Zambia I met a bunch of Finns there on a University exchange program. I had the good fortune of running in to one of them again, Sari, in Malawi and she kindly invited me tod she kindly invited me to come and visit Finland to see what it was really like. (Perhaps Finns are secretly a little upset that they don't get many tourists)

When I arrived in Finland begin to see why else Finland flies under the radar of most people. In Helsinki all of the buildings are new, with modest architecture, they are drab and grey and nothing stands out. (Almost everything was destroyed during WW2) The streets are clean, as is the air, and you can even swim in the sea and lakes in Helsinki, and there are trees and parks everywhere. There is no flashy advertising to assault the eye, and when you do see advertising it contains very ordinary people, in ordinary clothes, doing ordinary things - no using sex to sell everything here.

All this is very characteristic of Finland, all very plain, the people beavering away doing the write thing socially, environmentally etc etc, and to be honest, it is a little boring and predictable (The most surprising thing I can tell you about Finland is that I got a suntan there - for the five weeks I was there it rained twice, and every other day it was over 25 degrees !!) Everyone is polite - if perhaps a little too polite - in general most Finns are quiet and reserved. They even make sure all the public signs and government documents are printed in Finnish and Swedish so as not to upset the Swedish speaking minority who are left over from Swedish rule. They all ride a bike or use public transport. Everybody recycles - there is a container deposit system (Oh you don't have that in Australia - we have had it for ever !!!) People conserve energy (even though most of it comes from hydro power) and all houses are buildings use double glazing and are well constructed, so when you sit inside it is almost silent. However even when I am outside I notice that it is fairly quiet as well - the background noise of snarling traffic and screeching tyres, the metallic clang of construction and the yells of vendors that were omnipresent in the third world have disappeared.

Supposedly the Finnish population is one of the most genetically homogeneous groups in the world, but they don't look it - in fact probably less than half the people I see are blonde - rapidly destroying my idea of every native Scandinavian being blue eyed and blonde haired. As Finns remind me, they aren't Scandinavian anyway - Nordic is the right word.

When we hitched up to the north I saw the evidence that Finland is the land of 100,000 lakes, and there is water everywhere - I should say everywhere there isn't trees. For most of the six hundred kilometre journey all I see are endless tracts of lush, green pine forest. I indulge myself and have the pleasure of taking several guilt-free thirty minute showers with the water on full - no water restrictions or spying neighbours here. (It is the little things !!!)
Having so much forest and water, and with the exodus from the land to the cities being relatively recent, Finns still have a strong attachment to the land. Every Finns' dream is to have a little cabin in the woods, a place to escape to the quiet and sit in the sauna, drink vodka and not say much at all !!! Lots of families have little cottages and especially in summer they head out there to relax, swim in the river, wander through the forest and remember the good old days. I had the good fortune of being able to spend a few days in the self built log cabin of Sari's grandfather, in an idyllic bit of forest, next to a small river. I got to experience my first smoke sauna, and had the masochistic pleasure of running from a scaldingly hot sauna in to a freezing could river - well actually that is a slight exaggeration, the river was probably about 20 degrees, but it felt cold !!! I got to see my first real life reindeers (no sign of Rudolf) and watched the sun go down at midnight. It was all very relaxing and reinvigorating.

The Finnish forest also seems to be very fecund, filled with food for the picking - in fact any person is allowed to come to Finland and harvest the fruits of the forest tax free. (So of course enterprising capitalists ship in teams of Thai workers to work for a tuppence) As traditionally most food had to be collected during the summer months and preserved for winter Finns often go in to the forest to collect kilos upon kilos of berries to be frozen and eaten during winter. A couple of days we headed out with empty buckets and specially designed tools to separate blue berries from the bushes. By the third or fourth day I was getting the hang off it and managed to collect an entire bucket in not much over an hour, but as the blue stains evidence I think I nearly ate just as many blueberries !!! Never having seen, let alone eaten, fresh blueberries I discovered the reality of the artificial taste that I had eaten in some many industrially produced ice creams and deserts. As we crushed a few berries that we picked and piled in to the buckets the scent permeated the forest, wafting between the trees and continuously making my mouth water despite seemingly constantly eating berries and slacking my work rate in the eyes of my Finnish friends/overlords. On the way back to the car we stumbled across some bear footprints which my Finnish friends casually showed me, like I would show people crocodile tracks in Australia.














Not satisfied with me only meeting one of her grandparents, Sari also took me to see her maternal grandparents, and before I knew it I had become a Finnish potato farmer.
Her parents have a larger field behind there house and as they are well over seventy their eyes lit up when they saw a fit lookin' city boy like me ripe for the workin' !!! It was actually enjoyable to spend a day or two working for a change, and there is nothing like a bit of gardening and weeding to reacquaint you with your connection to the soil. However when I woke up the morning after the first full day I was saw all over, and couldn't touch my toes because my muscles were so tights. Fortunately we finished all the weeding on the second day, so we could move on to the lighter work of stacking firewood, but even a couple of days afterwards I was still a little stiff from all that gardening. The reward however was particularly sweet though, we got to eat freshly picked from the ground new potatoes that were absolutely scrumptious.

Chasing the sun

I spend two or three hours in the airport in Istanbul waiting for my flight during which I meet a Sudanese family. They sit down next to me outside the duty free and the young son breaks in to fits of laughter every time I make the noises to go with the actions he is producing with his little toy aeroplane. I had been listening to the young daughter speaking to her father in English with what I think is an Irish accent. I ask the father where he is from, guessing correctly he is Sudanese. He explains that the family has lived in Ireland for 14 years, and all the kids were born there. They were on the way to Sudan for a holiday. I ask the daughter whether she likes Ireland more than Sudan. She tells me she does because it is too hot in Sudan !!!

I walk out on the tarmac and as I ascend to stairs to get on the plane I look out to the west and see the sun's last gasp of light as t falls below the horizon for another day. I get on the plane and somehow find myself in a drinking competition with the middle aged father sitting next to his son opposite me; he got two bottles of wine when dinner came around, so I do my best to catch up.

Halfway through the second bottle I suddenly notice that the Finair flight attendants are middle aged women, without copious amounts of make-up on, dressed in rather drab uniforms that are a pale blue colour best described as 60's pale blue.

By bottle number three the man and his son are making paper planes, and one of them lands on my tray table so I throw it back to the son when the father isn't looking - the alcohol seems to be effecting my aim though.

By the time I start the fourth bottle I look out the window and the flickering glow of sulphur orange street lights below which pierce the darkness of the night down below give way to a layer of dark grey thunder clouds which in turn on the horizon give way to the faintest light blue sky as the sun hovers just below the horizon refusing valiantly to give in to the night. The light is so weak that above he horizon their grow darkening layers of black - the absence of light. By the time the fourth bottle is finished we are getting close to Helsinki and the sun has managed to push its way high enough up to make it look like the end of the long twilight on a summers' day.

Fortunately the father seems content with only four bottles of wine and we call it a draw, so that I am able to walk off the plane. The Finnish immigration officer asks me how long I plan to stay in Finland, "Just a week or two" I say, "You know you can stay for ninety days" ,he replies, stamps my passport and waves me through. If only he knew.

When I step out of the airport building it is about 12.30 in the morning, the sun isn't visible but it is bright enough to stand outside and read a book - much more light than when I stepped on to the plane in Istanbul at 8 pm. I think to myself I have managed to outrun the sun.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to Istanbul, or a bus ride in Turkey

Unfortunately I only had a day to cross Turkey to get to Istanbul to
catch my flight. I caught a bus at 5am from Aleppo in the north of Syria
to Antakia and from there I took a Turkish overnight bus to Istanbul.
Naturally I took the cheaper bus but when I stepped on board I was
pleasantly surprised - there were pillows and neatly folded blankets on
each seat. When I sat down again I was surprised, I could stretch my
legs fully out and my knees didn't touch the seat in front of me.
As we headed off the surprises continued, every now and then the steward
would come around offering complimentary drinks, chocolate bars and
lollies. The bus even had free wi-fi access to the internet so I didn't
have to watch Turkish TV. The sweetest touch of all was the couple of
times the steward came around with the Turks favourite pungent lemon
scented cologne which he generously splashed on to my hands and then
gave me a hot towel - very refreshing.
All this, and a fourteen hour bus ride for $30, and we managed to arrive
on time.

Crazy Christians

OK, so I admit I have been going a little hard on the Muslim faith a little of late, so time for poking a little fun at the other main faith in the Middle East, Christianity.

In the north of Syria, near Aleppo - in what was in biblical times known as Antioch, is a place called Qalat al Samaan , or the Basilica of St Simeon. Simeon, born around 400AD was your run of the mill shepherd, who went on to become a monk, and then left the monastery to go and live in a cave - the monastery not being an ascetic enough lifestyle for him. Just like these days, people who live in caves and claim to be closer to God seem to attract a lot of attention, and before you know it solitary seeking Simeon was so besieged by admirers that he had a pillar built so that he could escape the great unwashed (and probably so he could be a little closer to God) Now stopping there for a moment I think that is probably enough irony for an entire blog entry but the story goes on. It seems the pillar dwelling only made him more famous, so as more pilgrims arrived Simeon felt the need to get even higher, so that after forty or so years of pillar dwelling, he was now leaving at around 18 metres off the ground. Apparently he gave sermons and answered questions, but no women were allowed - except that we all learnt from the stoning scene in the Life of Brian that even in those days gender was pretty fluid. Seems Simeon's desire for more solitude only made him more famous, and he set off a fashion for pillar dwelling which swept the known world. The authoritative Lonely Planet says that when Simeon kicked the bucket, or fell off his pillar to use a more appropriate expression, he was the most famous person in the world - a bit like a fifth century Paris Hilton. Anyway, being so famous, they built the world's then biggest church over his tomb, to ensure that in death as in life, he would never have a moments' peace.

Oh, and that little rump of rock in the middle is what is left of his pillar, pilgrims over the years have each nicked a bit leaving the pillar not quite so impressive

Apathy, or how I know it is time to move on

I don't want to see any more old buildings - a mosque is a church is a colonial office.
I don't want to be invited for tea with the awkwardness of working out whether I am supposed to pay and then the long silences caused by the inability to communicate in a common language.
I don't want to have to negotiate finding the right bus terminal, chose a bus company, bargain the fare, argue with the luggage boy, arrive in a new town and try to find a place to stay.
I don't want to have a complicated conversation, using mainly hand gestures, to try and stop everything I buy being wrapped in three plastic bags.
I don't want to watch people throw rubbish absolutely wherever they feel like it - on the street, out the window of a moving vehicle, over the edge of the wall of a ruin, without even a second glance.
Time to move on.

On the road from Damascus

The conversation on the road to Damascus was all in Arabic so no possible conversion there, unfortunately on my trip out of Damascus, on the way to the rather uninspiring largest of the Crusader castles, I was subjected to an attempted conversion in English. I had managed to squeeze in to the back seat of a minivan, rather uncomfortable with my backpack on my lap to avoid paying for two seats.

Not long in to the journey I found that I had the pleasure of sitting next to an English teacher in the local high school, who attempted over the entire length of the journey, almost 90 minutes, to bring me in to the fold. He was an educated man so it started out as a rather open discussion but the Converters always seem to get stuck on the question of where did you come from ? My attempt to short circuit this line of questioning by answering, "My parents made me" is never satisfactory and only leads to
a series of questions about who begtted each generations' forebearers. Then we got tied up in a discussion about the origin of life and everything being about chance. Under relentless questioning and preaching, unable to articulate what I thought and being stared at by someone who clearly thinks my responses are ridiculous I started to doubt my own beliefs. Somehow though I struggled on, clutching at whatever rational straws I could grasp and finally I think he conceded defeat and he told me, "When judgement day comes I will see you and I will say I told you about God and still you denied him"

So I am left still waiting for the light to knock me off my horse.

Arriving in heaven more than once

Legend has it that back in the day when the prophet Mohammed was wandering about he sighted Damascus from a hill top nearby the town but declined to enter the city saying that a man can only enter in to heaven once. It may well be sacrilicious, as Homer once said, to say this but the hummus in Damascus is bordering on the divine. In the small street where I am saying there are about five hummus places in the space of a couple of hundred metres. And when I say hummus place that is all they sell - and why would you mess with anything else when you can reach such perfection - served up on a square piece of cardboard covered in silver lining. You get a big dollop of rich, creamy hummus which is then weighed for the price. The master craftsman then shapes the hummus so that he can create a pool of olive oil in the middle, and place small slices of tomatoes in each of the four corners. A light dusty of paprika, some coriander leaves and a bit of lemon juice and voila !

Next door you can pick up your still piping hot fresh pita bread and you are ready to be taken to culinary heaven.

Syria - first impressions

So maybe I give my heart away too easily but after half a day in Damascus I am already falling in love with Syria.

I arrived yesterday in the early evening and the city is an assault on the senses - in contrast to the rather homogeneous looking Egyptians, Syrians are a diverse mix - many look more European than Arabic. Also thrown in to the melange are plenty of other Arabs from the Gulf who come here for the shopping and cooler climate, and a few bus loads of Iranian burka clad tourists I saw wandering around. Dress varies wildly - from the completely covered in black women (burka, veil and even eye coverings) to short, tight jeans, fluorescent lycra clad modern women with hair flowing in the breeze and everything in between. (Something that still strikes me is the way even within a group of women who are clearly good friends the range of covering will vary - it is not uncommon to see a women completely covered with veil and all walking hand in hand with her friends wearing jeans and a t-shirt. It makes me wonder whether they discuss the matter between themselves, or look down or up at each other about it)

As is to be expected in a place that claims to be the oldest continually inhabited city in the world history drips out of the walls, runs along the roads and in to the gutters. Everywhere you look there are buildings from a different historical period - the odd Roman column and arch, a 2nd century synagogue, the first grand Arab mosque, grand old Ottoman houses, 20th century French modernist buildings and space age Iranian funded Persian style mosques/tombs. Throw in more souks (street markets) than you can throw a stick at, and the wafting aroma of a million perfumeries and it is not that difficult to transport yourself back in time.

This morning being Friday means that almost everything is shut, however I still managed to spot what I am going to have for breakfast for the next week: chocolate croissants (but real croissants), mini herb and lemon pizzas like in the Turkish bread shop in Sydney Rd, baklava and some other delicious looking sweet that is caramel on top and cream underneath, and what I finally opted for - fresh hummus served on a paper plate then decorated with tahini, olive oil, chickpeas, tomato and parsley so it looked like a work of art - and it tasted even better. Washed down with fresh coffee, needless to say I was one very happy camper.

Reflections on the Holy Land

This land is my land

During the day the sun is searing and temperatures can get up to around 50 degrees, and then as evening falls, and you would expect the temperature to drop, it actually starts rising as the hot winds from the desert blow in. From almost any point you are surrounded by steep, stark hills, filled with so many ridge lines caused by erosions the hills look they have been scribbled all over with the erratic strokes of a thick black pen in the hand of a hyperactive child. In the narrow gaps between the hills, a few small plains and the coastal strip, there is shimmering white sand that the sun heats up all day that it is too hot to walk on, and the wind whips up at night that in the morning it looks like an impenetrable mist, and everything is covered with it. The few roads that cut across the land are like snakes, swinging back and forth as they find the gaps between the hills and rising abruptly from small planes to narrow passes then dropping down almost as quickly. The wind grows stronger and stronger, whipping up sand and the odd plastic bag here and there, you can imagine it only took a couple of years for it to wear down the hills as it blasts across all you can see, wearing everything in its path down like sandpaper.

As we ride along in a taxi the German guy sitting next to me surveys the landscape and comments, "Huh, its hard to believe they fought a war for this place". I take it he is referring to the Israel-Egypt war, but really people have been fighting for this land for pretty close to eternity Jews (Moses), Christians (Crusaders) and Muslims (the 4000 horseman). It is pretty clear they weren't fighting for the view.

Ships in the desert

I finally managed to leave Cairo and head east, and on the way to the Sinai I saw a most spectacular sight. After I went through the tunnel under the Suez Canal I watched out the bus window as we drove along the road the surreal site of three or four huge container ships, apparently stuck in the middle of the desert. All around there was only sun bleached sand, and a few hills in the background - no water or trees to be seen. The view from the bus meant I couldn't actually see the water in the Canal, so the ships appeared to be just sitting there slowly melting in the sun, and I couldn't help think of them as camels, the ships of the desert !!!

On the way to the Dead Sea

I headed out of Amman down to the Dead Sea (which Jordan shares with Israel) through the hilly, tree-less sun bleached, desolate, dry and rugged hills that are the Holy Land and was struck by the similarity between here and when I was getting about in the Kimberley. Perhaps because I had been wearing my Noonkanbah t-shirt the night before and explained what it meant to a curious Englishmen I suddenly had one of those flashes of insight about the similarities between two very different Holy Lands. As we descended down the road what looked like desolate country is filled with holy places - Mt Nebo on the left (where Moses is supposed to be buried) Bethany over Jordan - where Jesus is supposed to have been baptised, on so on. In between these places live people who go about their daily lives without paying much attention to these special places, which to the outsider don't appear to be much.

In the Kimberley much more time has passed since most places gained their significance from a religious system that most people don't really understand, and their aren't too many signs pointing them out, and people go about their everyday lives without apparently paying much attention to the special places, but they are important none the less. Just like in the Holy Land, they are places of pilgrimage that would upset the Gods to tamper with or destroy.

I think the analogy is a good one, especially for good Christian kids like me who paid attention in religious education classes and absorbed some of the reasons behind the significance of biblical stories because it gives you a little understanding of the importance that people, both Australian aboriginals and others, place on certain places, the way that people can live around and manage sacred places, and an idea of the universality of the relationship that people have with the land upon which they live.

Swimming in the Dead Sea

As the sea came in to view , covered in a thick haze the steep, red hills in the background in Israel were barely visible. The water is a dark grey colour - almost black, and is very still, the whole place is eerily quiet.

Some fast facts - the Dead Sea sits 400 metres below sea level (as you come down the road from Amman you pass the most unusual sign which reads YOU ARE NOW PASSING SEA LEVEL) the Dead Sea is around 40 percent salt (most seas are around 4 per cent - which interestingly is about the same as your tears and amniotic fluid) - it has no outlet so the water evaporates and the salt remains. The Dead Sea really is dead and is dying - it is true !!! The water is so salty there isn't any fish or much aquatic life getting around. Also, Jordan doesn't have much water so it tries to stop as much as it can running off in to the Dead Sea, so it is shrinking. The Dead Sea is bloody hot and quiet - I arrived at around 8.30 and it was already forty degrees.

However the most amazing thing about the Dead Sea is swimming in it - because of the combination of low altitude and high salt levels when you get in the water you float like you are in space - standing in the water over my head the water only came up to my armpits - I was so buoyant that I couldn't but help poke out of the water - even when I tried bobbing up and down the water only reached my shoulders !! No need for treading water here. Lying on my back almost my entire body was out of the water, and there is no effort required - you really can lie there and read a book.

Swimming is almost impossible, you just can't get in to the water enough to pull yourself along - not that you would want to try - a bit of water in your eyes would ruin your whole day. All the little cuts and scratches I had on my feet started to sting from the salt, although it is nowhere near as bad as guide books warn. The benefit of the salt is that once you wash it off with water your skin feels soft as a baby's.

Language soup

wake up in the morning and speak Indonesian with the guest worker at the hotel in Wadi Musa, Jordan.

I hitch hike back from the Dead Sea to Amman with a Jordanian who lived in Italy for twenty years and speaks better Italian then Arabic. He speak to me in Italian, which I can understand, and I can speak to him in Spanish, with a few Arabic words thrown in, and he can understand.

I take a share taxi from Amman to Damascus and try to communicate using English with a few Arabic words thrown in here and there, and I find myself using some very Arabic hand gestures, particularly the tips of fingers together wriggle the wrist up and down one which ostensibly means wait but can be used for a myriad of other expressions. The other three passengers, two older women - an Iraqi and a Syrian, and a middle aged guy who sits in the front seat and thinks the back seat must be thirty metres away given the volume with which he speaks, and the driver spend the entire five hours of the journey in a heated debate about Iraq, Saddam, America, democracy, Palestine, Israel, the King and the best falafel joint west of the Mediterranean. OK, the made the last one up, but I did hear all the others mentioned.

I arrive at a hotel in Damascus and the receptionist, an older Syrian who lived in Germany for years insists on speaking to me in German, even after we clear up the Austria/Australia confusion.

I chill out on my bed in the dorm and meet an Algerian, and we have a long conversation in French about what Algeria is like and why he is living in Damascus.

I go to sleep a very tired and confused Loiterer.