Domestication

As the warm afternoon sun flooded my host's living room yesterday, I real‎ised that I have been indoors or in a car almost continuously since Thursday evening. I am not complaining about the hospitality - far from it - but after six months on the road, it is a radical lifestyle change. After explaining my desire to go for a short walk, I excused myself and set out.

One thing about the towns in the hills around Beirut is precisely that they are built in the hills. The roads follow the‎ contour lines, and if you make one wrong turn, you'll find yourself on the opposite side of a very steep valley, with no way to get to your destination other than winding down the hill and trying again. (That's one of the reasons my Thursday evening taxi ride was so painfully long.) Another peculiarity of these areas overlooking Beirut and the sea is that they consist almost entirely of low rise apartment buildings. Any errands require the use of a car. The only people I saw walking were attached by a leash to one or more dogs. I suppose I was rather conspicuous, especially with the bright yellow duct tape patches on my shoes. (Inexplicably, my photo of the repair job that I uploaded to Flickr has received over 3000 views in a little over 24 hours.)

From the above, it's probably quite obvious that I did not head north Sunday afternoon. I am very comfortable here, and being well fed at regular intervals. I should make an effort to do something other than sit and eat while I'm in Lebanon, or the resumption of my pilgrimage will be a real shock to the system.

When I arrive in Larnaca from Beirut on Saturday evening, I have several options. I could walk to Limassol and take the ferry to Haifa from there, or I can save a few days and fly out Sunday after attending Liturgy. The Orthodox cathedral in Larnaca was built over the tomb of Lazarus, and some of his relics have been preserved there to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Saint_Lazarus,_Larnaca (This year, the commemoration of Lazarus' resuscitation at our Lord's command will take place on April 4, a week after I arrive at the site of his second and final grave.)

Now that I've processed this information, there's no question about what I want to do. I plan to be at Liturgy Sunday morning in Larnaca. I suppose I could start walking to Limassol afterwards, but once I reach Haifa it will be about eight days of walking along the Israel National Trail before I reach Jerusalem. If I catch a Sunday flight and start walking Monday, I should arrive on Tuesday, allowing me to spend the greater part of Holy Week in Jerusalem. (Hopefully the hordes of Catholic and Protestant faithful will have withdrawn by this time.) I should have booked a hostel months ago since it is a very busy time of year, but I'm not overly concerned.

I will need to book my flight home before I reach Israel. (Apparently they may demand to see proof of departure at customs and immigration control.) My months of wandering are drawing to a close. Of course I'm eager to see friends and loved ones again, but the pilgrim way of life on the road has a beautiful simplicity to it which is difficult if not impossible to replicate when at home in the world.

In October I wrote of my mixed feelings of excitement and dread regarding my pilgrimage, and compared it to jumping off a cliff. There is no longer any dread in my heart, but my joyful anticipation at reaching my goal is mingled with some sadness. In online discussions, people who have completed the Camino often report experiencing the post-pilgrimage blues.

I don't know what I'll be doing when I return to Canada, other than seeking gainful employ. One thing I plan to do is maintain the habit of daily exercise I've acquired over the past months. (I've lost 20 kgs, so a new wardrobe is also in order.) A forty hour work week would provide both the time and money for a gym membership, but if I'm unable to re-enter the workforce immediately I will at least have the luxury of taking long walks each day. This might be beneficial for another reason. I've had several people suggest that an account of my pilgrimage could make a good book. I would need time and a good editor to work these updates into something worth publishing, and walking for several hours each day would provide me with the distraction-free time I'd need to get such an undertaking organised.

In any case, I will soon be sleeping in my own bed again, surrounded by my books and computers. There are some advantages to a domestic life that are impossible to replace while on the road.
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Hmm... what's the frequency, Kenneth?

‎The last half of my previous update was dropped, but the first half was repeated several times with some odd formatting.  My roaming plan has no data provision for Lebanon, so I didn't discover the fail until I arrived at church this morning and connected to the WiFi here.

Anyway, from Tripoli, my German friends dropped me off in Antelias, just north of Beirut. That's when I realised that while I still remembered‎ how to get to the old church, all I knew of the new location is that it's in the hills across a valley from the heavily fortified American embassy. It's not just the North which has seen massive growth. I barely recognised the area, although once I spotted the army checkpoint I knew exactly where I was.  After walking around for a bit and getting a sandweesh batates ma'a toom, I decided my best bet was to flag a taxi and let the cabbie figure it out. I guess he was only in the area to drop off a fare, since his knowledge of the neighbourhood was even worse than my own. I had been stopping every five minutes or so to ask for directions, and he was doing likewise. The difference, of course, is that travelling at 4 km/h meant I remained in the right area, but stopping for directions every five minutes in the cab meant we wound up taking a very VERY scenic route. When we finally arrived at the church 45 minutes later, I discovered it was 500 m from where I had first hopped in the cab.

I've spent the last few days as a guest with my friend's family, and it has been wonderful. I've been to services every day (except for Thursday, due to that frustrating ride), I've been feasting on fresh and tasty Lebanese food, and have made a good start at catching up on the past nine years -- including meeting the seven year old child. I am quite happy to be here, although I do plan to head north again to pay a visit to the Balamand and see some folks there.

I'm also playing with the idea of going back to Tripoli and then walking down to Beirut. While I've been trying to walk as much as I reasonably can, the trains, buses, and car rides have trimmed about a thousand kilometres from my journey. Any notion of "authenticity" or "purity of pilgrimage" was shot long ago. (Thankfully, my sense of humour is still intact.)‎ What I may do is head up to Tripoli this evening, spend the night there, and then walk south along the sea road for a few dozen kilometres before heading back to the highway and catching a bus south in time for Great Compline Monday evening.

This is not (simply) a case of pig-headedness.‎ With the land route from Turkey to Jerusalem closed for the present, most pilgrims are going through Cyprus. This presents a different set of challenges. The physical minefields are all well marked, but the Turkish military occupation of the northern section of the island has created numerous political ones. Crossing the Green Line in Λευκωσία (as Nicosia is known in Greek) has been possible for several years now. The problem is that the shipping companies operating ferries between Cyprus and Israel have been instructed by the Cypriot gov't not to sell tickets to non-EU pilgrims who have entered Cyprus "illegally," i.e. through the port of Girne/Κερυνεια. In 2006, an American pilgrim was allowed to take a ferry after being scolded, but this past autumn a different pilgrim wound up having to travel from the port of Limassol to the city of Larnaca and leave Cyprus by plane. By travelling to the Republic of Cyprus from Turkey via Lebanon, future pilgrims can avoid one set of potential problems. (Lebanon is beautiful, and worth visiting in its own right, even if it's just for a few days along the coast.) If I do a bit of walking while I'm here, I can provide information for future pilgrims who choose this route. I won't be walking the 90 kms or so continuously, but by using Beirut as a base I should be able to spend time with my friends, get to church, and do some significant amounts of walking. (Yeah, I want it all.)

Whatever I wind up doing over the next few days, my flight from Beirut to Larnaca is bought and paid for. I'll be leaving Lebanon on March 28 and arriving in Cyprus after the 45 minute flight. I'm not sure whether I'll take a plane or a ferry to Haifa, but I should be on my way to Jerusalem again shortly.

Feets, Don't Fail Me Now

On Thursday I arrived in Tripoli much later than I'd expected. Our departure from Turkey was delayed  several hours beyond the advertised time, and don't even mention my mistaken 5:00 AM jaunt to the port. When we eventually moored in Lebanon, there was another lengthy wait was the vessel was boarded and the passengers and crew were accounted for. Once we had permission to go ashore, the interview at Customs went relatively quickly. As a Canadian, I received a one month visa, with the possibility to renew it for another month. Unexpectedly, I wasn't charged for this -- on my last trip to Lebanon I had to purchase a tourist visa at the airport. The Lebanese gov't website I consulted before visiting this time indicated that policy is still in effect, although it didn't mention anything about arrivals by sea.

The journey was pleasant enough. There were about a dozen passengers in total, including a few truckers who were bypassing Syria, and two cars with German-Lebanese tourists who had driven 3200 kms in five days in order to spend two weeks on vacation in the home they had left in the 1970s. One of the men had worked as an automotive engineer in Germany, and he was a bit put out at the condition of the ship. It's not that it was obviously unsafe, but it just wasn't up to German standards. When he mentioned possibly writing an email to the shipping company to complain about the delays and the shape of the ship, I laughed and told him he'd been away from Lebanon too long.

Since it was midafternoon when I got out of customs and found WiFi, I decided against walking to the Balamand and instead accepted the offer of a ride from my new German friends. (Two of the three adults were travelling on German passports.) That's when I learned that one of the cars had been purchased and registered in Germany two months ago. Not normally a problem, except that Lebanese import regulations require proof of ownership for at least three months before entering the country with a vehicle. Perhaps my friends could have sprung their vehicle had they been willing to grease a few palms, but as a matter of principle, they wanted to do everything correctly and above-board. (They've been in Germany a looong time!) After waiting several hours, they were informed that only the head of customs for the port had the authority to release the vehicle, and he had gone home for the day. Undaunted, the Germans decided to rent a car for the night, drive down to Beirut, and return in the morning. (This is a much cheaper option than a taxi each way.)

I had been considering taking a few days to walk down to Beirut from Tripoli, but instead I squeezed into the rental car‎ with the others and headed south along the main highway. I'd been amazed at how much Tripoli had grown in the nine years since I'd last seen the city, and the highway has seen corresponding growth. The long stretches of highway with nothing but cliff face to one side and the sea on the other have been replaced with new construction, gas stations, and shops. I was pleasantly surprised that nobody was driving against traffic on the divided highway -- clearly Lebanon has become more orderly in my absence. That's not to imply that the cheerful chaos is absent, just that driving is no longer as life-threatening as it used to be.

Random Thoughts From The Road

Since leaving the long stretch of resorts near Alanya, the past several days have been spent walking for hours on end without seeing so much as a village or petrol station. That has meant packing along a little extra food and water for the day, but it has also meant lots of solitude. Since I have over five hours to kill in Taşucu while waiting for the ferry, here are some of the thoughts with which I have amused myself along the way. Perhaps they'll amuse some of my readers as well -- either that, or confirm that I'm a bit, shall we say, odd.

As a language, Turkish is unlike anything I've attempted to learn before, but like several other languages, its written form is very straightforward. By this I mean, once the alphabet has been mastered, there is no ambiguity in reading what's written. This is very different from English, which is highly irregular. A few examples are in order.

"Does" can rhyme with either foes (The hunter shot three deer: one buck and two does.) or fuzz. (Does that make sense?)

The letter S usually indicates a sibilant (mast), but consider the words Asia, his, and insurance. Try coming up with a simple way of explaining what S sounds like to a person trying to learn the language!

New topic. When I walked the Camino de Santiago in 2010, I set out on my own. It's a very popular pilgrimage route, so even in January and February, I met many pilgrims along the way. Since everyone is following the same path and walking at about the same speed, it's very easy to meet companions either on the road or in the hostels at night. The shared experiences forge a sense of camaraderie, so even if the day is spent walking alone, there are familiar faces at the end of the day, and possibly also at cafés and restaurants along the road. Some of the pilgrims I met were walking with a friend, and they were rarely more than five metres from each other at all times. Other pilgrims walked at their own speed, sometimes with their pilgrimage partners‎ but sometimes on their own, meeting only for meals and at the end of the day. The last five days of my Camino, I wound up walking with a woman from the Czech Republic. She was good company, but there were times when I really just wanted to be alone. My updates from the road were much shorter while I was walking with her, mainly because I did not have the hours of silence to order my thoughts. (Why yes, I am an introvert! How could you tell?)

My decision to walk the Camino crystallised after reading an article in The Walrus magazine. The author and his friend spent many hours in conversation as they walked, but they also had many solitary hours. (And if you're at all interested in pilgrimage, here's the link to the article: http://thewalrus.ca/walking-the-way/ ) When I started planning my current folly, I assumed I would be walking by myself. Not many folks I know are able to take five or six months to go traipsing through two continents, but two people indicated a willingness to do so. I think both of these men would have made excellent travelling companions, but it didn't work out for either of them. Carsten, Peter -- maybe a less demanding trip in the future?

New topic. Although it's been a while since anyone has asked, a common question posed to me has been, "Why walk?" It's certainly easier to ‎use a plane, train, or automobile to get to my destination, and when the cost of daily food and lodging are factored in, motorised transport would also be cheaper. I answered this question in an earlier post (http://phool4XC.blogspot.com/2015/01/why-walk.html), but since then I've realised there's another reason to prefer a walking pilgrimage.

Every great feast in the Orthodox Church is preceded by a period of preparation, marked by fasting and additional church services.  (One regret I have about my current pilgrimage is that I've missed so many of these beautiful services. It was to get to church again that I decided to go directly to Lebanon from Turkey, instead of spending several days walking across Cyprus.)  While the notion of fasting and going to church during the week may be seen as "penance" by some, these are tools for opening our hearts to God. Perhaps penance properly understood has the same function, but to many it smacks more of punishment than preparation.

After Pascha, my favourite feast is that of the Transfiguration of our Lord. Not only does this feast reveal Christ's glory which is His by nature, it shows us what we are all called to become by participation in His grace.  The troparion for this feast begins with "Thou wast transfigured upon the mountain, O Christ our God, showing Thy glory to Thy disciples as far as they were able to sustain."  

This is not to denigrate those who don't have the luxury of spending weeks or months on pilgrimage, but travelling at the human pace of 4 km/h allows the heart to slow down from the frenetic pace of modern life with all its distractions. Arriving by bus, train, or airplane removes the opportunity to prepare for the τέλος of the journey, the "end" both in the sense of completion and goal. Walking a pilgrimage is a means to an end. The traditional Christian understanding of the pilgrimage is always teleological. (Don't know that word? Look it up!) Spending the time walking is a means of preparation for me to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ at the empty tomb. I have not kept the Lenten fast as strictly as I normally do (walking up to 40 kms per day is demanding)‎, but it's my prayer that I will be ready for the Feast of Feasts by the time I arrive in Jerusalem.

And now for something completely different. In anticipation of my upcoming transit to Lebanon, here is a wonderfully cheesy video by one of my favourite ska bands. Wrong continent, but this is "Night Boat to Cairo."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLLL1KxpYMA

All Packed Up With No Place To Go

When I bought my ticket for the ferry to Lebanon, I was told that I needed to be at passport control by five o'clock. When I tried to clarify whether that was AM or PM, the English-speaking clerk told me, "Five. Tomorrow." I should have asked my question in writing - "05:00 or 17:00?"

So now I'm going back to sleep for a few hours!