After using the scheme the year before (i.e. to join the Easter and May 1 holidays in order to get 10 days or so and go away), as 2008 would see the same joyful combination for a supposedly Orthodox country like Romania, I started investigating destinations. Pondering over Libya and Algeria for a while, I was thinking about the latter for its 2918 m.a.s.l. Mount Tahat. Almost - if not entirely - by mistake, I started looking on a map of Ethiopia and then saw some pictures of the mountains there, the Simien. Getting from Bucharest to Addis Ababa seemed expensive for those with little time to spend and - therefore - with no possibility of using Air Arabia to Khartoum and going overland from there. Oh, what a great trip that would have been, to see both the ancient pyramids of Nubia and the stelaes in Aksum, respectively to laugh out loud at those crowds and their beloved Valley of the Kings... But this was not possible, well, let us say not viable (for next to anything is possible given the required quantity of will) for the time being. And then, finding a convenient combination of flights from OTP to ADD looked like a fine challenge and was well worth killing a couple of nights toying with Amadeus. Then, on a fine morning, I got it: either TK via IST, followed by ET for the domestics, or RO to BEY, followed by ET all the way. The latter was cheaper, but it was not only that: with all (too dead) sultans and (too alive) local merchants bugging foreigners at every street corner with their shiny crap to sell, Istanbul can never compare to Beirut, and neither can one compare even the landing on Rafiq Hariri Int'l after flying over the Corniche at night with the boring landing at Ataturk Int'l.

That being said, the logistics were a matter of when and not if. Visas could be got upon arrival at ADD, but it was nicer to see how the system works - especially with no embassy in Bucharest (Ceaușescu managed to plant an embassy in Addis, but his comrade in arms Mengistu seemingly did not). However, the process was smooth through the Ethiopian Embassy in Vienna, with a very helpful clerk which also told me that I am the first Romanian to be served there. Getting higher than ET's Cloud Nine at learning that piece of news, I got overconfident in people for a short while (not quite typical, I would dare say), but this was to soon abruptly come to a typical Romanian end. Just out of habit, I posted my travel plans on a mountaineering website I sometimes use to organize hiking trips in Romania, to receive the strange (for this country) piece of news: another hiker wanted to join. I washed my face with some bitterly cold water, slapped my face, but the e-mail was still, stubbornly there. So, we briefly discussed the logistics, and then capital R (like in Communist or Dum, you pick your choice) Romania appeared just to remind one that it is never to die: the guy called the Romanian Embassy in Addis to ask for advice. The sleepy clerk answering the phone (and definitely not willing to wake up from his dolce far' niente for things like Romanian citizens coming to Ethiopia and maybe requiring service) briefly told him that "there have been problems and coups in the country, so it is better to postpone your visit". No reference (like in "when and what happened"), no details were given, but nor were they asked for in a so typical Absurdistan way, as one once wrote on a book cover. After messing up his country for 17 years, Mengistu is still alive and taken care of in Zimbabwe. At his turn, after messing up his country for 22 years, Ceaușescu is seemingly dead, but he is still bitterly alive in his people, which makes it all much worse. By using the impersonal, by telling lies for a living or by using all tricks so as not to have to do anything, as well as by simply accepting the three above and taking life for granted, I was hit by all these and hell I deserved that.

But life goes on and so I did, having to face "only" colleagues' incoherence: "Ethiopia, there is a civil war there". Yes, indeed, and Romania, there are mineriadas in that country, aren't there? It is only a matter of when one last turned on the TV to watch something else but soap operas and porn.

So, disregarding of people's good and bad, time went by and - after initially changing some flight times - ET decided to cancel the ADD - BEY flight for May 3 and threw me on the May 2 one; I even enjoyed the opportunity of spending 24 hours in Beirut, at least before the ET's starting to cancel my (issued and paid for) confirmed booking every time the ticketing agent made it again. The reason for that was rather simple, but I was to find it only after calling Addis: foreigners (i.e. rich people) could not get Y class tickets (i.e. cheap tickets), even if such tickets were available for a certain flight. They could only get S class tickets (or higher, of course). But my agent did not know that, for it is not something one reads about when passing the IATA exam; however my (i.e. customer's, instead of her) calling Addis got her a thumb down; but hell, I have been living in Romania for over 30 years, so that was no wonder, it only convinced me to deal directly with the airline in a country where customer care is an oxymoron. Anyway, one rainy evening, I left Bucharest. It was funny that, probably for sharing the same "security issues", a few flights destination Amman, Cairo, Beirut, Tel Aviv departed at more or less the same time, and security measures were quite tight; the only one missing (as they did not run it that night) was the RB flight to Aleppo / Damascus, it'd have made the picture complete.

At least, people could smoke freely in the waiting lounge, as - passports stamped - we were no longer in the EU. A few large Lebanese and Jordanian families (most of which consisted of the typical combination of a foreign man marrying a Romanian woman) shared the flight (thank Nanak there were no Romanian holiday-makers on board, with their typical shopping and beach destinations!) and everything was quite enjoyable to Beirut, where I was pleased to see that the ET had no longer canceled my onward flight ticket. This time it was mostly about a large group of (rich and famous probably) Ethiopian ladies that had come to Beirut to do their shoppings. Carrying large, shiny designer's bags and boxes, they boasted great hair cuts and coiffures. To make it for the balance, the few men on board were probably poor people working in Lebanon in constructions, being rather tired and quiet. What the ET did not make through the foreigner-targeted policy, it did make through service, which was way above many EU airlines: food was plentiful and great (I only failed to see why they served French wine instead of the local Aksumite one), the service was attentive and the plane was even overstaffed. The head of the stewards was a lady wearing a fine traditional kemis and a natala boasting a simply superb tibeb. But these all would be only an introduction to the beauty of the day to day outfits of Ethiopian women, even in the most remote and poor areas. We landed on time, to find an airport which would compete with any of its EU capital counterparts (except for the E.U. capitals which had smaller airports). Large, functional, easy to find one's way around, it also lay close to the city.

The city itself was large, spread on a plateau and a few hills. At first, it gave one the impression of a compact place, with clean, well taken care of streets and fancy shops or office buildings. It was only then that one discovered its deep contrasts. Poverty shared the space with richness in Addis Ababa. A street could very well start as neat, paved and bordered by elegant residences (some of which surrounded by barbed wire-topped fences though), just to end with clay cottages sinking in mud. The rich did not want to either see or be seen, as they had surrounded their (otherwise large and column sustained portico houses) with tall walls or with dense vegetation. Traffic had no rules. If in certain countries of the Middle East and of Central Asia the rule is that there are no rules and everything flows, here there was absolutely no rule, as one might just turn to the right from the extreme left, one might reverse and enter the gas station back up front (for an impossibly to explain reason, as it would have been much easier for him to fill his tank if driving "normally"). The city, just like the rest of the country, experienced light curfews. People were eager to talk to the foreigner, to learn about him / her, to simply chat about anything or to sell something (in Addis Ababa rarely however, more often in tourist cities). Without being impressed too much by the glamorous wannabe (but familiarly imposing given the country and city I live in) Africa Hall or some administrative buildings, I liked a lot the area around the Merkat and the place itself. A huge network of streets and alleys bordered by anything from regular shops to kiosks, tents, cardboard-made houses, cars, donkey-pulled carts, trucks and vans, or simply by people standing on the sidewalk, all of them were selling something, from fruits, Chinese plastic toys, to natalas, soft drinks, motorbikes, agriculture tools, and the odd, usually 1970s-like gun. The variety of people and their looks was huge, from ladies dressed a l'europeene shopping without getting off their fancy car, to peasants that had come here to make a poor living. Contrasts abounded and one could sometimes see an old lady picking up firewood (rather wood scraps) she would carry in a bundle on her head, next to a black, shiny SUV (the "shiny" part depended on how dusty the respective part of the Merkat was).

Other than the Merkat, the city - just like the country - featured fine churches and mosques. Of Christian Orthodox religion, the churches were built in a different structure than that of their counterparts in Europe. Without the familiar Byzantine structure, they are round most times, and the main hall was surrounded by an open (or partly open, with only a tree branch see-through fence to the exterior) hall the faithful would walk along while saying their prayers. The church walls were covered in frescoes from the Bible, all of which were painted in very bright colours. People would burn incense, the strong fragrance of which took me back to Salalah in Oman a couple of years before. The entrances to main churches in Addis Ababa (such as St. George Cathedral) were surrounded by dozens of people begging. Many of them seemed to live there, on the sidewalks next to the entrance, in basic cardboard boxes, wrapped in a piece of cloth, newspapers or in a large plastic bag. It is hard to imagine poor people that no longer have the strength to beg, but there were such people. On the shiny side, Addis was loud, vibrant. People liked to sit down at various cafes, have a glass of chai or local coffee and chat. Overall, being rather new and lacking impressive old monuments, Addis Ababa was a great experience, with a very intense human beat and with contrasts that would have left nobody untouched.

Late at night, the hotel manager came knocking on the door: "You've got a phone call". Yes, indeed, I was probably one of the very few fools to provide Ethiopian Airways with contact data, and they used that opportunity to kick me out of the morning flight (which they had overbooked), respectively throw me on the early afternoon flight. Accidentally, I enjoyed that after a busy week at work and a night on planes, so, after another lazy morning walk in Addis, I got on the Gondar-bound flight, which went over Lake Tana I had read so marvelous descriptions of. From the plane however it looked more like a dirty brown pool in the middle of a reddish plateau, instead of the "amazing blue water lake" I had read of. There seemed to be a lot of green areas around Bahir Dar, but this hardly stirred any interest, especially given my general lack of interest in flora and fauna unless they are completed by scenery or anthropic heritage. Reaching Gondar, the usual tourist traps showed the fact that Ethiopia was quite popular: there were several drivers proposing rides to Simien Mountains, while an army of hotel clerks (joined / replaced sometimes by touts pretending to work for hotels) approached one with the typical stories; they were however little children compared to their Pakistani counterparts and they lacked the humour of their Indian brothers (with the memorable "no regular rickshaw, but helicopter rickshaw"), so life went on with a shared taxi to the city. According to the guidebook, various touts and to people in front of the bus, buses to Debark at the entrance to Simien Mountains National Park left early in the morning, or, as a boy put it "6 AM your time, which is 12 AM Ethiopia time".

However, according to the so disappointing sometimes reality, there was a bus departing in half an hour, which allowed time enough to put the backpack on the bus roof, have it tied up there, buy some water, get a seat and even start talking to other people on the bus, which were very curious about the foreigners and very happy to provide advice about their country. It was enchanting to see the extent to which they found every reason to enjoy their life, respectively to share that happiness with others, disregarding of poverty or hardships many of them faced on a regular basis. The asphalted road ended at the city limits, and it took us a mere 3 hour and a half ride for about 100 km. to Debark. The road was scenic however, with picturesque villages, cattle spread across endless plateaus overshaded only by scarce acacias, and those eternal children running around and providing the place with an overwhelming, almost incredible buzz of life. Reaching Debark at sunset, with the National Park Office closed, there was not much to do but enjoy some injera with tibs. However just showing up in front of the hotel resulted in being approached, among others, by a man asking whether I needed a car to take me to the Simien; he was just a middleman and had vague (at his best) knowledge about the mountains, but he managed to confirm talking to a driver, and, price agreed, to settle meeting (and subsequent departure to the mountains) the following day at the Park Office. Well, if in the Middle East or in Central Asia negotiating can take a long while, but once something is negotiated, it happens, in Ethiopia one might very well negotiate something, agree on a price and on delivery terms, just to see that the negotiation product might very well not exist. So it happened, as the following morning, after paying the National Park fees and waiting for half an hour, the guy appeared just to say that the driver had gone to another village in the morning, with some business. But he would be back in an hour or two, there were, of course, no reasons to worry. Once he showed up, the price settled the day before was gone with the morning breeze and a new negotiation began, with driver's pretending to leave when hearing my offer, my bidding a bit more, his returning and the rest of the oh so familiar act.

The driver was well aware of the fact that he was one of the few that could take tourists up the mountains, as the road was bad and he had a HiAce. At his turn, the National Park clerk knew tourists could not go to the mountains without the papers he would issue. So, like it or not you damn rich foreign bastards, you want to get to Ras Dashen even though it will take you 4 days to go up and come down, you will pay for 8 days' fees for the scout and the guide; that rhymed very well with Ethiopian Airways' not selling Y class tickets to foreigners. The guide kept on insisting that gaining 600 m. elevation at a smooth slope would take 3 to 4 hours and not one hour and a half or two, and sticking to his stereotypical routes not even Emperor Haile Selassie could have changed. Well familiar with this omnipotent and egocentric profile, I gave up and let him swim his way; life is too short and the mountains are too beautiful to beat around the bush; however, to his wrong, I was to get to camps every day at 1 or 2 PM instead of the guide's mentioned 5 PM.

With a bitter smile at this arrivisme and with a broad smile to the sun and mountains above, we started. The road began gaining in altitude, as it went across smaller and smaller villages consisting of clay houses covered in reed. Some of the luckier communities had received aids from the international community (mostly the US) and their houses shone in the sun with their brand new tin roofs. Children would ran along the road, following the car that stirred the dust like in childhood's memories, when I was one of them in a God forgotten (no, no God back then for political reasons) village in Southern Wallachia. Papers checked and the red rope lowered to allow our car go on, we entered the park. After going across barren hills for score kilometers, we reached "The Highest Lodge in Africa", a British - Ethiopian joint-venture consisting of the typical colonial rustic plush; the only buzz of life there was came from the dozens of baboons running around, screaming, playing or simply eating grass. On the even brighter side, there appeared the dramatic mountains at the horizon. Rugged, impressive, however nevertheless covered in vegetation, the Simien are more impressive than any picture I had seen. After passing by Sankaber Camp, ever gaining altitude, we eventually reached Chennek Camp, located in a superb place, at the foothills of the Inatye and Imet Gogo peaks. On one side covered with a pasture and with the other side dropping at 90 degrees for hundreds of meters, the two peaks were very scenic and impressive. The valley below hosted a few villages that seemed torn from a fairy tale, while the variety of fauna and flora - just to mention the countless baboons, the few walya ibexes or the lobelia forest - was simply incredible, even for a ghiaour like myself. There were about twenty tourists in the camp, but it seemed that - with rare exceptions - they came here by car or trekking, and returned from here without continuing to Ras Dashen or Bwahit Peak. In the evening, while preparing to sleep, I could not ignore the different treatment the scout and guide received from "life": while Mulat the guide (which spoke good English and came from Debark, i.e. the Town, therefore probably had studied in school and came from a "decent" family) had been given a tent, sleeping bag and so on by the Park Office, the scout (which came from one of the villages in the area, spoke no English and definitely had no studies) had been given nothing but an old Russian made gun, and was supposed to sleep under the blue sky holding it, protecting the two from hurting each other (the park from tourists and the tourists from the park). The guide often addressed the scout in a loud voice and he seemed to give him orders the scout could not but obey to.

The following day we started and one more staff joined the crowd (after the feringhi paid for him): a mule and a muleteer. The mule was meant to carry guide's stuff (as the guide could carry nothing but a bottle of water) and the little food the scout had. The muleteer was supposed to lead the mule. Had I not had brought a camping stove and plenty of food, there would have also been a cook, a mule to carry the cook's pots, another muleteer, a tree chopper, a fire maker, two more mules, a tent builder for all staff and, of course, a priest, as the following night there was Easter; well, and should one of the above have been Muslim, there would have been need for an imam too, his tent, mule, muleteer and personal cook specialized in halal food; and we would have multiplied them all by 8 days, for we were going to Ras Dashen, which means 8 disregarding of what sort of Messner or Borracho one is. Without all these beautiful people however we started towards the Bwahit, among the ever denser lobelias. The slope was rather constant and it was crisscrossed by the trail going in wide curves. After passing by a cave inhabited by baboons at about 4000 m.a.s.l., we reached the trail's end; cars could go no farther and all tin plates, school benches, water barrels and other supplies could only be carried by mule from here on. There was a tall pile of stuff near the road end, while mules slowly came and went away under their heavy loads. We continued upwards, just to reach Bwahit Peak, which provided a great view towards the future: we were supposed to go down from 4400 m.a.s.l. to 2850 m.a.s.l. in Mesheha Wenz Valley, then go up to the Ras Dashen at over 4500 m.a.s.l. But the view towards the Ras Dashen was worth all pains in the world. While going down, we crossed steep rock-filled slopes local people had ploughed; the harsh land they were trying so hard to turn into agriculture was simply moving. Unfortunately, the land was dry, as there had not been any rain for a long while, and people were next to desperate, as their water sources were ever weaker. After crossing the deep valley and going up the opposite slope for 300 m. elevation, we reached the village of Ambiko, where we camped for the night right next to the local church. Easter's night would mean people's singing, Mulat said. Well, I for one could hardly hear people's singing, but people's coming from nearby hamlets definitely stirred the local dogs that howled and barked all night long, or at least until 4 AM when we all woke up to prepare for leaving at 5 AM towards the summit. The moon was high in the sky and we quietly started climbing, while people dressed in impeccably white kamises came down, towards the church. At dawn we reached the ridge, with the dim breeze making the lobelias shiver. Before we even knew, we got under the Ras Dashen. The peak was a mere rocky stub raising from a barren plateau dotted with rocks and lobelias.

Light, wind carried clouds made the scenery be next to unbelievable. Should not it have been for the wind that made some noise, there would have been a total silence in the air. The views from the top were not impressive, but overwhelming, with vast plateaus, remote rugged ridges and massive peaks. "Lalibela is that way, 11 days' trekking away", said Mulat pointing to the South over the vast plateau. Life is indeed a long trek's away across barren plateaus or deserts, without much to see at the horizon but a feeble dot or rather a fata morgana, so I fully agree with him. We started going down. The places had come to their life, with sheep and cattle among the lobelias, often led by small children dressed in amazingly blue cloths. It was hot and there was hardly any breeze in the air, as we went down to Ambiko. After celebrating Easter and staying at church all night, people had gone home and the village was asleep now, with only the muleteer greeting us upon returning, congratulating us for the quick ascent: it was almost noon. We spent the rest of the day around an endless tea, unfortunately not the red Ethiopian tea we had had no time to buy, but the odd black tea which had traveled to many mountains in Romania and not only before being consumed here. The night was quiet, but it ended early as well, as we started at 5 AM again down the valley and up Bwahit Pass towards Chennek. The ascent was long, as the path followed a long valley, across a village the people of which stared at the foreigners which had covered to protect themselves from burns, while they smiled in the sun.

Eventually we reached the pass, just to cast a final glance at the Ras Dashen and Kidis Yared peaks. Eventually we reached Chennek and, after a short wait looking at the many vultures, the driver arrived and took us down to Debark. The town was full of life, with many people walking up and down the main street, children running after the foreigners, foreigners avoiding to go out of their hotel and shooting smart pictures from there to the "odds" and my looking for local bread and honey, just to find local bread and pineapple jam made in Thailand. The following morning at 5:30 I went to the bus station, just to find a big crowd of people in front of the gate. Showing up to buy a ticket, I was invited inside the yard, could quietly put the backpack on the bus roof, tie it up and get a seat before the others were allowed in; it was one of the few times during my travels when I felt really bad. Not for the others, not for myself. But for the Difference we make. For the Line we draw. For the Labels we stick on people, categorizing them, arranging them on shelves and placing them hierarchically, whatever that means. I would have liked to be back in Nepal, have my right foot smashed by two other people and my left food under a large sack of cereals, respectively my head under my 20 kilo backpack and on someone else's bags, traveling all night from Pokhara towards Lumbini. I would have liked to be one of Them. But I could not, so I had to enjoy my seat and look at the others, as they rushed to the bus in an incredible fury when the gate was opened. They smashed into each other, the young and mighty up front, the old and weak remaining to the back, moving slowly and hoping they too might get a place standing by the door.

But there was no place standing by the door, for - upon entering the City (a.k.a. Gondar) there were police officers, making sure there was nobody standing on the bus. So those without a seat could not get on the bus; they did not exist, or should not have existed for the authorities. The same authorities that granted foreigners a special place, paid in hard currency at an inflated price. We got to Gondar eventually, finding the almost exclusively foreigner-inhabited guesthouse and started to explore the city. The Royal Enclosure seemed totally cut from the outside world, like an emerald thrown in a pool full of turtles. It had no connection with the city which was so vivid, so beautiful, so alive, so vibrant.

People would approach the stranger, ask him questions, where he was from, what he had visited, what he would visit, whether he needed some help, a car, a taxi, a hotel, a ride to the mountains, a guide.

The following day I was supposed to fly to Bahir Dar and that supposedly blue water lake dotted with monasteries I did not believe in the colour of. So I paid the (S class, of course) fare and changed my ticket with one for Aksum the following day. This way I had the rest of the day to walk towards Empress Mentewab's Kuskuam Palace ruins, which provided a great view towards the nearby hills and to the city proper. The caretaker took half an hour to show me around without speaking a word of English. I enjoyed a glass of tej in a basic, poor bar with a few children clinging on the window to smile at the foreigner. But the time to go had come and so I got on an early morning flight to Aksum, to find a quiet town with a far more relaxed beat than that in the South. Also, it was in Aksum that I met a very alert and helpful hotel manager, at Kaleb Hotel. The stelae in the town were impressive, but the surroundings were more interesting, especially when I went to the Ancient Quarry and the Lioness of Gobedra, places to which I was shown by two small girls living in the area. Their running around and eagerness to show Their places to the outsider were simple amazing. It is in places like that that we realize the extent to which old stones are just a reason for us to go somewhere, but the actual reward is the people living there. I walked back to the city much richer than when leaving the city a few hours before. Then I spent the evening at the hotel, talking to a man from Adwa, near the Eritrean border:

"I used to work for the United Nations on the border, but it was over a couple of years ago. They used to pay me USD 500 a month, but now it is over, they pay USD 200, so I left"

The old town, with its stone houses that reminded one the Balkans, especially in Albania and Kosovo, was very interesting. There were many children in the streets, running around and surrounding the obvious stranger, laughing at or with him, singing, shouting, playing games we have unfortunately forgotten the trick of.

In the morning I had to leave. At the airport they asked me whether I wanted to be put on an earlier flight (on a B737), as it went straight to Addis instead of my Fokker that made three stops on the way; I did not want that, for I like donkey-pulled carts too much. So I started in Aksum and went to Addis Ababa via Lalibela, Gondar and Bahir Dar. After spending a few hours in Addis, I got on the flight to Beirut, on a plane full of people going to work in Lebanon and a few Lebanese citizens going home. The same great landing on BEY followed, after going over the Corniche. The same old acquaintance at Regis Hotel greeted me after 3 years, and then the same, long walk started across the city, to discover places I remembered or places I did not. They had restored much more of the old city centre. It looked like a jewel. A jewel defended by tanks, hundreds of otherwise friendly soldiers and loaded guns. A great Beirut Museum full of children taken there by their school teachers. Great mezze and a relaxing narghileh close to Place de l'Etoile. Some fine pastry and that overwhelming music beat along the Corniche, even though there was a curfew, announcing somehow the clashes that would occur a few days later between Hezbollah and pro-government groups. Taking off at 25C, just to listen to the pilot's announcement that there were 11C and it was raining in Bucharest. And then an acquaintance (one of Sorin Oprescu's retards) that wanted to show off his so being Romanian by driving 100 km./h. over the speed limit in the city, as it was Sunday morning and there was hardly a car in the streets. Yes, I was back home. Hooray. But there was no smile in the sun. For there wasn't any to smile at, as the grey concrete blocks we Romanians surrounded ourselves with are way too tall and dense. And we keep on building, as we trust in our very being Grey.