Gonder, Ethiopia Day 2
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Day 2 in Gonder and thankfully I was feeling just fine. Lots of water and sleep seemed to fix whatever I had come down with. I headed back up to the Belegez Pension to check in on Lee (he was feeling bad as well and had gone to the hospital to get tested for Malaria, which proved false). As I left the Belegez, the young kid who had shadowed me from the bus station the day earlier was sitting outside. Somehow, the local kids just know where you are at all times, it's amazing. If you ever need to find another traveler, just ask the local kids and they will tell you where they are staying. This time, I was feeling a bit more soft then the previous day, especially since I knew that he had seen me walking with the two teenagers, so I felt kind of bad.
Gonder is described as "Ethiopia's Camelot" and while I have no idea what Camelot is really like, I can say that there is a castle right in the middle of Gonder, so that was the first tourist attraction to visit. With my young sidekick by my side, I headed off to the Royal Enclosure, as it's called, only to find out that the ticket office was closed for lunch.
Since the office would reopen in less then an hour, I decided to be a nice "big brother" to the young kid and took him to a local juice bar for a drink. While he did speak reasonably good English, he never really asked me for anything and I think he just genuinely wanted to walk around with me. I suspect that if he wasn't walking with me, he'd just be sitting on the street or somewhere like so many of the other kids (more on that in a different post).
After the juice bar, it was back to the Royal Enclosure which by now had opened up. I told the young kid not to wait for me since I had no idea how long I would be and I couldn't promise him that I would be free afterwards to hang out with. I spent the next few hours just wondering the grounds. To be honest, the castle isn't anything special when compared to the great castles in Europe. When you describe something as "One of Ethiopia's top tourist attractions." it's a bit like saying "Sacramento is a great place to visit" when you haven't been anywhere else in the state. Regardless, I was able to get a few decent photographs of the buildings and bumped into a British traveler named Tess and her mother. As is common on the travelers circuit, I would bump into Tess more then once over the coming days.
From the Royal Enclosure, I made the short walk to the Debre Berhan Selassie Church, which is described as "... probably the country's most famous church and one of the highlights of Gonder - and Ethiopia." Well, my friends, either the author has a real church fetish or they simply haven't seen any church in Europe because this very basic looking church didn't really impress me. Maybe the mural paintings inside have some deep historical significance and indeed, the local priests are all to eager to point out rare drawings of so-and-so beside so-and-so but when you have absolutely no idea who anyone is other then Jesus (and just barely at that) it's hard to get excited over the paintings.
That said, it was still worth a visit since the short 2km walk from Gonder is a world unto itself. Ethiopia is nothing like Sudan and Gonder seems like it hasn't changed in several hundred years. Sure the main street is paved and their are cafes, bars, banks, telecommunications centers and all that, but just a few blocks of main street and villagers are walking around in clothing that would be right at home on a movie stage. The village itself is built up of huts and tiny buildings put together with nothing more then straw and branches. Donkeys roam the streets and everyone seems to be carrying something, somewhere. It's very surreal and would only get more so as I ventured further into Northern Ethiopia.
Back in "town", I again stopped by the Belegez Pension and this time met up with Mark, the American traveler I had been with back in Sudan. Together with a UK traveler named Glen, the three of us went out for dinner and drinks that night. Around 11:30pm, I returned to my hotel only to find the main entrance all locked up.
You see, the ground floor of the Fasil Hotel is a coffee cafe and by 11:30pm the cafe was closed, all locked up with a huge gate drawn across the store front. From what I could tell, there didn't appear to be anyway that I was getting into my hotel from the front. The left side of the hotel was flush with a local bar, so that didn't seem like the way in. The backside ran into a sort of residential area with no obvious entrance and the right side, which bordered a side street, didn't seem to have any obvious entrance either. I was a little confused and frankly, since I saw no lights on in the hotel part of the building on the second floor, I wondered if maybe they didn't realize someone was staying there for the night.
Eventually a local kid saw we aimlessly wondering around the front and side street and offered to help. Turns out, the big metal gate on the side street is actually the entrance and after several hard bangs on the metal wall, someone eventually came and opened it up so that I could get in.
Part of me wondered if maybe the Sudanese were right to be careful in Ethiopia because this was now the second hotel that completely locked itself up at night. I couldn't tell if this was just standard operating procedure or maybe there really was a problem with crime at night and the hotels had to take extra precautions. In any event, I finally got up to my room, which happened to face the main street and had a nice balcony attached to it. It was nice to just people watch from the balcony for a bit.
Gonder, much like Metame on the border, is a sort of happening town with lots of clubs and bars along the main street. None seemed packed, nor did any seem much larger then a single room, but you could definitely hear the music, which in many cases was familiar "Western" music of rap and hip-hop. The local going-out crowd would wander up and down the streets just like you would in any big city and frankly, the fashion was pretty similar as well (with the girls getting maybe even more dressed up then back home). It was quite the contrast from the farmers and village people who were just a few blocks away. I didn't make it into any of the bars but I sure heard the bar beside the hotel for most of the night as the music played on well into the evening.
Kenny
Day 2 in Gonder and thankfully I was feeling just fine. Lots of water and sleep seemed to fix whatever I had come down with. I headed back up to the Belegez Pension to check in on Lee (he was feeling bad as well and had gone to the hospital to get tested for Malaria, which proved false). As I left the Belegez, the young kid who had shadowed me from the bus station the day earlier was sitting outside. Somehow, the local kids just know where you are at all times, it's amazing. If you ever need to find another traveler, just ask the local kids and they will tell you where they are staying. This time, I was feeling a bit more soft then the previous day, especially since I knew that he had seen me walking with the two teenagers, so I felt kind of bad.
Gonder is described as "Ethiopia's Camelot" and while I have no idea what Camelot is really like, I can say that there is a castle right in the middle of Gonder, so that was the first tourist attraction to visit. With my young sidekick by my side, I headed off to the Royal Enclosure, as it's called, only to find out that the ticket office was closed for lunch.
Since the office would reopen in less then an hour, I decided to be a nice "big brother" to the young kid and took him to a local juice bar for a drink. While he did speak reasonably good English, he never really asked me for anything and I think he just genuinely wanted to walk around with me. I suspect that if he wasn't walking with me, he'd just be sitting on the street or somewhere like so many of the other kids (more on that in a different post).
After the juice bar, it was back to the Royal Enclosure which by now had opened up. I told the young kid not to wait for me since I had no idea how long I would be and I couldn't promise him that I would be free afterwards to hang out with. I spent the next few hours just wondering the grounds. To be honest, the castle isn't anything special when compared to the great castles in Europe. When you describe something as "One of Ethiopia's top tourist attractions." it's a bit like saying "Sacramento is a great place to visit" when you haven't been anywhere else in the state. Regardless, I was able to get a few decent photographs of the buildings and bumped into a British traveler named Tess and her mother. As is common on the travelers circuit, I would bump into Tess more then once over the coming days.
From the Royal Enclosure, I made the short walk to the Debre Berhan Selassie Church, which is described as "... probably the country's most famous church and one of the highlights of Gonder - and Ethiopia." Well, my friends, either the author has a real church fetish or they simply haven't seen any church in Europe because this very basic looking church didn't really impress me. Maybe the mural paintings inside have some deep historical significance and indeed, the local priests are all to eager to point out rare drawings of so-and-so beside so-and-so but when you have absolutely no idea who anyone is other then Jesus (and just barely at that) it's hard to get excited over the paintings.
That said, it was still worth a visit since the short 2km walk from Gonder is a world unto itself. Ethiopia is nothing like Sudan and Gonder seems like it hasn't changed in several hundred years. Sure the main street is paved and their are cafes, bars, banks, telecommunications centers and all that, but just a few blocks of main street and villagers are walking around in clothing that would be right at home on a movie stage. The village itself is built up of huts and tiny buildings put together with nothing more then straw and branches. Donkeys roam the streets and everyone seems to be carrying something, somewhere. It's very surreal and would only get more so as I ventured further into Northern Ethiopia.
Back in "town", I again stopped by the Belegez Pension and this time met up with Mark, the American traveler I had been with back in Sudan. Together with a UK traveler named Glen, the three of us went out for dinner and drinks that night. Around 11:30pm, I returned to my hotel only to find the main entrance all locked up.
You see, the ground floor of the Fasil Hotel is a coffee cafe and by 11:30pm the cafe was closed, all locked up with a huge gate drawn across the store front. From what I could tell, there didn't appear to be anyway that I was getting into my hotel from the front. The left side of the hotel was flush with a local bar, so that didn't seem like the way in. The backside ran into a sort of residential area with no obvious entrance and the right side, which bordered a side street, didn't seem to have any obvious entrance either. I was a little confused and frankly, since I saw no lights on in the hotel part of the building on the second floor, I wondered if maybe they didn't realize someone was staying there for the night.
Eventually a local kid saw we aimlessly wondering around the front and side street and offered to help. Turns out, the big metal gate on the side street is actually the entrance and after several hard bangs on the metal wall, someone eventually came and opened it up so that I could get in.
Part of me wondered if maybe the Sudanese were right to be careful in Ethiopia because this was now the second hotel that completely locked itself up at night. I couldn't tell if this was just standard operating procedure or maybe there really was a problem with crime at night and the hotels had to take extra precautions. In any event, I finally got up to my room, which happened to face the main street and had a nice balcony attached to it. It was nice to just people watch from the balcony for a bit.
Gonder, much like Metame on the border, is a sort of happening town with lots of clubs and bars along the main street. None seemed packed, nor did any seem much larger then a single room, but you could definitely hear the music, which in many cases was familiar "Western" music of rap and hip-hop. The local going-out crowd would wander up and down the streets just like you would in any big city and frankly, the fashion was pretty similar as well (with the girls getting maybe even more dressed up then back home). It was quite the contrast from the farmers and village people who were just a few blocks away. I didn't make it into any of the bars but I sure heard the bar beside the hotel for most of the night as the music played on well into the evening.
Kenny
posted by Kenny Carruthers at 2/14/2006 09:43:00 AM
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