Even though Lebanon is facing elections on 7 June, I only saw one poster on my three hours walk that is related to the coming elections.
I passed the American University of Beirut, which was founded in 1866.
I went down some very steep and long stairs which were decorated with graffiti left and right on the walls. I immediately felt removed to Zurich, the place of my childhood, where there is a similar staircase leading up to the University of Zurich. The stairs in Zurich might be a bit broader, but have the same kind of graffiti and the students are sitting in the same way on the stairs in groups.
Here are the stairs in Beirut. Please note Mickey Mouse in the forefront on the right.
In the area around the university there is a lot of graffiti on almost all walls. I have always been fascinated by these expressions of the “city guerilla”, the student underground. Graffiti is an art form by itself. But more about this another time.
I went down some very steep and long stairs which were decorated with graffiti left and right on the walls. I immediately felt removed to Zurich, the place of my childhood, where there is a similar staircase leading up to the University of Zurich. The stairs in Zurich might be a bit broader, but have the same kind of graffiti and the students are sitting in the same way on the stairs in groups.
Here are the stairs in Beirut. Please note Mickey Mouse in the forefront on the right.
In the area around the university there is a lot of graffiti on almost all walls. I have always been fascinated by these expressions of the “city guerilla”, the student underground. Graffiti is an art form by itself. But more about this another time.
The sun was already low in the sky above the sea when I finally reached the Corniche, the promenade on the shore of the Mediterranean in Beirut. I sat down on a bench, with my back to the road and the row of hotels behind that. The friendly smile of an old lady had invited me to share the place with her.
There were quite a number of cyclists with bicycles from the bicycle rental shop “Beirut on Bicycle” which I had noted on my way down. Some men and women were jogging along; some were doing other physical exercises such as stretching, bending, jumping; there were two men who were fishing with fishing rods surrounded by an admiring crowd; many young families with small children, many children with their Tamil or Philippino maids to attend to them; an old bag lady with a shopping wagon containing all her belongings; also the young and beautiful were strolling along talking on their state-of-the-art mobile phones.
The aroma of freshly brewed coffee enveloped me. A small van had stopped behind me at the kerb: it was a mobile coffee shop. For 750 cents I got a small cup with a few sips of fragrant, bitter, refreshing, piping hot coffee.
The atmosphere at the corniche again reminded me of Zurich, where half of the population will congregate at the lakeside as soon as the sun is warm enough for people to sit outside. From cyclists to old women enjoying the warmth of the sun, and the playing children, the scene was similar. The only difference: nobody in Zurich is selling Arabic coffee from a van.
When the sun had sunk into the sea, I slowly walked back to the hotel.
How similar people are. All you have to do is go to one of these places where people go in their free time to unwind and enjoy themselves and you find that they enjoy the same kind of activities, be it in Kuching at the riverside, in Beirut at the corniche, or in Zurich at the lakeside. So, if we are so similar as human beings why can’t we live together as human beings in peace? Are not our similarities bigger than our differences?
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