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Published: December 18th 2007
Sunset
Columns of the temple of JupiterApproximately 90 kilometers northeast of the city of Beirut in eastern Lebanon stands the magnificent temple complex of Baalbek, the ruins are one of the holiest places of ancient times. Before the Romans conquered the site and built their enormous temple of Jupiter, long even before the Phoenicians constructed a temple to the god Baal, there stood at Baalbek the largest stone block construction found in the entire world. The Phoenician word Baalbek means "God of the Bekaa valley". Ancient legends assert that Baalbek was the birthplace of Baal, later the town became known as Heliopolis, the "City of the Sun"...
- Beirut - The day after our roadtrip up north to Byblos and Tripoli, Omar left in the morning by plane to Cairo. We drove him to the airport and had a minor car accident at the airport-gates, which was a kind of strange and we had the feeling that the guy in the other car tried to cheat us because the damage on his car - the trunk didn't close anymore - couldn't be caused by us, we had the feeling that he wanted us to bump into his back! So he was arguing and wanted us
Me & the Temple of Bacchus
Hmm.. what was I am pointing on with my finger? to pay him 100USD for his damage, but we refused, especially as the security guards who witnessed the accident confirmed our view. After a good 15min of arguing we just drove on as Omar had to catch his flight, so the guy chased us with his car the aprox. 500m from the gates to the terminal, a bit like in a "Fast & furious" movie. We said farewell to Omar and ended up paying the guy something like 20USD for the accident and drove back to our hostel?!
Aarti and Yousef decided to leave Lebanon in the afternoon as their free 3-days visa was going to expire and as they had to move on back towards Egypt anyway. Grace had a 3-days visa as well but decided to stay a few more days and to pay the fine for overstaying in the country when leaving Lebanon as there was no way to extend the visa in Beirut without leaving her passport at the immigration office for a week or so, which was unacceptable.
So we spend three more days in Beirut. Lebanon is a fairly small country, what makes it very convenient to do day trips from Beirut
City of the Sun
Me, Temple of Bacchus, Baalbek instead of packing up all your stuff and to go to another place for 1-2 days just to spend a couple of hours the next day in some ruins and then to head back to Beirut. In addition the bus system in Lebaon is good, so you can easily just take the public buses across the country for little money.
- Baalbek - The City of the Sun - Besides of Beirut there was just one more site I had on my must-see list: The magnificent temple complex of Baalbek, or in Greek "Heliopolis" - the "City of the Sun."
For getting to Baalbek you need to take a service taxi from downtown Beirut to the Cola bus station, a minibus to the half way point and then a transfer to another minibus (4 USD). The whole journey gonna take you approximately 2-3hours. Baalbek lies up in the high hills, in the Bekaa valley, which runs through the eastern half of Lebanon, so the drive is scenic.
The Bekka valley is Hizbollah's heartland and there is no way you can fail to notice that: the Hizbollah logo (the word Hizbollah in Arabic script with the middle
Temple of Bacchus
The smaller temple of the two letter ending in a fist holding a machinegun) is omni-present. Throughout the whole region, every lantern pole has a Hizbollah flag. During the civil war Hizbollah kidnapped many westerners in this region, but in the 90s they put an official end to that so Baalbek is now open for tourism. But as Lebanon is still political unstable and due to that not a major tourist destination, we saw only a few other visitors on the site and had it almost just for ourselves, even though the temple ruins lie right in the center of the city and are nowadays Lebanon's main tourist attraction.
Baalbek was once a place of worship for the Phoenician god Baal, hence the name. Caesar founded a Roman colony here in 47 BC and magnificent temples for Roman gods were constructed. Nowadays Baalbek is a little mountain town of 12000.
There is a lot of history and some myths to the temple complex if you are into the old Roman gods and such things. It is kind of odd to be visiting all these places where Gods have been born or stories have been written about. But I will skip all the historical facts
Lion
Baalbek before I bore you to death and just tell you something briefly about the two temples.
The temple of Jupiter was built in 60 AD. Some of the structures that surrounded its courtyard are still standing, but of the temple itself only the huge platform and only six columns remain (see 1st photo). With a height of 22m, these give a good impression of how huge the temple must once have been, especially when you see how big the smaller temple of Bacchus is.
The temple of Bacchus (Dionysos in Greek) was built around 150 AD. In its time it was known as "the little temple" because the temple of Jupiter next to it was a way bigger, but it sure doesn't seem little now. I thought it's huge and the only temple of similar size which I would come up with and which has not been destroyed, is the Acropolis in Athens. And indeed it's one of the most well preserved Roman temples in the world, and in Roman times must have been one of the most impressive, the detail of the ornamentation is still after a dozen of centuries just fabulous. I have been to Italy
Grace
and the Temple of Bacchus several times, but you will not find something like this there!
We liked the site very much and were quite impressed. I personally like to visit ancient archaeological sites as they are achievements of past generations and cultures. In a way they show and remind us what mankind is capable of. But then, mankind is capable of many things, unfortunately in good and in bad sense, if you think about all the conflicts going on - on this greenblue planet of ours.
We were in the mood for some photos and ended up having a kind of "Photoshooting" and dozens of pictures with the columns of the Jupiter temple or the Bacchus temple as scenic background, sitting on a momument, jumping around, posing and it was a quite some fun.
It's interesting, I have very few pictures of myself on former journeys or of fellow travellers, so my mom kept complaining like "Where are the pics of you?" I think I was a kind of camera shy and as a single traveller you sometimes just don't have anyone who can take a decent pic of you and it wasn't of any importance of me anyway, if I
Triple G
Grace & the remains of the Jupiter Temple have a pic of me in front of the Taj Mahal or not! But then, people change, the view on things change, I change... and it's actually nice to have pics of myself and the people I met along the road, so now I have plenty of pics of me - and my mom was like: "What? Why are there so many pics of you?! Son, are you sick?!" - "No, mom... I've just changed!" and changes are good from time to time.
Though the temple site is small we spent late afternoon there. The site closes at 5:00PM but one of the security staff told me that we can stay inside for longer and showed me a small side-gate where we could exit later, in return I had to promise him to close the gate properly when we leave. So we had the entire temple complex just for ourselves and strolled around like little kids on a big adventure playground! We decided to went around a second time when the sun was setting at dusk and I could take some more pictures with the sunset as background. I like taking pictures at sunset. As the light changes with
the setting sun, it will paint everything in a totally different colour and I like this kind of natural magic, but who doesn't like a bit of magic now and then.
After sunset we made our way back into the town and had dinner in one of the Falafel shops before catching a mini-bus back to Beirut. The driver was nice and after our arrival in Beirut he invited us to have dinner with him at one of the street restaurants. We were actually full and didn't feel like having more food, but nevertheless ended up stuffing some more food into us as it was nice to meet someone who wasn't trying to rip you off, but just offered some genuine generosity and hospitality.
- Beirut - Leisure Days - The other days were spent in Beirut, Grace had to do some editing work online while I was just strolling around the city for a bit and then to return to pick Grace up for dinner. We met some other travellers in our hostel like David, an Australian Chinese, and Heather, a Korean girl.
Grace and I love to eat, probably Grace's love for food is
City of the sun
Grace taking a pic even bigger than mine, but we both enjoy to have good and enough food. On one evening we met David and as we had no time to withdraw money from the ATM machine, we asked him to borrow us money for dinner and to join us for just a drink as he had already eaten, we would pay him back afterwards. He agreed but when he saw how much Grace ordered he pulled me aside and whispered "Heey, I don't know if I have so much money left! That girl is ordering loads for just the two of you!" and in fact we both ordered food enough for 4-5 people - but to David's surprise we finished it all! The bill was something like 35USD which is quite a lot, considering that you can just have some Falafel for dinner and pay something like 1-2USD each or so, we kind of pigged out and splurged on food. But we had a good time and enjoyed the meal and the music and the dancers, that's all that counts - having a good time now and then. And don't worry, fortunately David had enough cash to pay the bill, so we didn't
Sunset
Photoshooting Grace end up washing the dishes! :-)
We liked Beirut, this city which didn't really feel like being in the Middle East. I went to several really nice cafés with David and Heather, some nice bars with Grace and we even went clubbing to have a glimpse on Beirut's nightlife. Though Beirut was expensive and probably the most expensive place in the region (except Israel) it was fun and we had some leisure, relaxing days there.
As I always woke up pretty early, I liked to have a morning walk along the waterfront before having breakfast, breathing in the fresh air of the sea and to watch the people walking around or fishing. The world looked so peaceful, bearing in mind that Beirut is one of the hotspots when conflicts arise with Israel and the first target Israelian rockets will hit.
I don't know enough about the conflict in this region to talk about and much less to judge the one or the other side. I do think that it always takes two to Tango and that noone is more or less right or wrong than the other one, there is something that roots deeply under the surface,
Sunset
Photoshooting Grace deep under the skin that keeps the tension going on. But I truely believe that everyone, deep inside of them, just wish for one thing that one day they can live a peaceful life without fear and without bombs and terrorist attacks, without war and dead sons who'll never return to their homes.
Like Rafik Schami, a Damascus born author and immigrant in Germany, once wrote as a preface to one of his wonderful books, something like:
"I have a vision... it's something very simple! Two kids playing in a small alley of Jerusalem, laughing and joking, running and jumping around. And when it gets dark, I hear a voice coming out from one of the windows calling one of them in Hebrew to come and have dinner, and then another voice from another window calling for the same but in Arabic! Then the kids will look at each other and say, "We have to go, our moms are calling... let's play tomorrow, my friend!" To be continued… next: Syria - Damascus: The Pearl of the East...
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Mingxin
non-member comment
Good boy!
I’m just back from a post office to send u this comment! A perfect adventure! Not too dangerous, not too safe. U got both ancient ruin and modern city night, neither more nor less.So I like that place too. U got all kinds of sunrise & sunset pic, beautiful indeed. And u love feet & slipper fotos as well,that's amazing! U’v even mentioned world peace things. Good boy!