Salt. Why not.

Friday, December 29th

10:00 am. After my morning workout and breakfast, I'm looking for some sunshine (our apartment doesn't get much sunlight during the day), and I discover that the small garden table in our staircase is in a really wonderful spot: full sun in the morning. I sit there with my laptop for a while, until Lea and Rebecca join me, and we decide to have breakfast outdoors.

While Lea and I discuss our plans for later, we decide that Jerash would be a good choice for a short trip. The ancient city is known for its well-preserved ruins and is only 40 km from Amman, making it perfect for a day trip. However, we end up leaving home around 2:30 pm, so it will be more of a half-day trip. But better late than never, as we always say.

We take a taxi to the North Bus Station, where the buses to Jerash supposedly depart. When we arrive, our taxi driver talks to the other drivers and we find out that there are no buses to Jerash today because it's Friday.

Maybe it was naive of us to assume that everything would operate as usual on a sacred day. Lea and I are a bit puzzled about what to do next. The taxis to Jerash are too expensive, and the only other bus today goes to Irbid, a city further north. By the time we reach Irbid, it will already be dark.

So what do we do? Lea quickly checks Google Maps and finds Salt, a city not too far from here, described on Wikipedia as a charming city with numerous Ottoman-era houses. Our taxi driver doesn't hesitate and takes us to another spot in Amman, from where public buses to Salt depart. We arrive at the bus stop just in time to catch the bus - perfect! We jump out of the taxi and into the bus, which looks exactly like the old rusty bus I took from Madaba back to Amman a few weeks ago. There are only two seats available in front of the last row. Our seat neighbors in the aisle: birds. The men in the last row have four bird cages with tiny inhabitants stacked around them, providing cheerful chirping throughout the journey. Maybe we should have secured the bird cages - during an abrupt stop, one of them starts moving towards the front, but luckily our neighbor reacts quickly and avoids any major damage.

We reach Salt at sunset and decide to follow a small walking tour described in Lea's guidebook. We soon realize that it's Friday here too: if we were in Germany, we'd say it feels like a Sunday. There are hardly any people on the streets, and many of the shops we pass by are closed. It's a shame because the wooden shutters that seal the small shops in the Ottoman buildings look really cute. Maybe we should come back another day when the sun is shining - the half dinar for a bus ride would definitely not be an obstacle.

We're now looking for the stairs that should lead us to a nice viewpoint, but we get a bit lost and instead pass by many old buildings. One can still imagine the charm they must have had in their heyday, but now they are mostly just ruins - partially burnt down, partially dilapidated. And some are still inhabited. After a few extra meters, we finally find the desired viewpoint and have a beautiful view of Salt at dusk.

"Etschnabi?" we hear a voice behind us. A young boy is busy washing a car and looks curiously in our direction. As we walk through the streets, we realize that we attract even more attention here than in Amman. Apparently, tourists don't often wander here. And the attention is not always pleasant. A group of children suddenly start jumping around us. "Money. Give me money!" When we try to talk to them, we realize that this is the only English sentence they can say. We can only speculate about the reasons for this. It's a bit sad, either way.

After stopping at a local eatery to have shawarma (here, too, all attention is on us, and of course we receive immediate assistance when ordering), we take the bus back to Amman. We want to go to the City Centre, which the bus driver confirms. During the journey, the driver has to repeatedly fix the driver's door, which doesn't close on its own anymore. After a relatively long ride through the evening traffic, the bus suddenly stops.

"Downtown?" a man in the front row asks us. All heads in the bus turn towards us. Lea and I want to go to downtown, but we're sure that we haven't arrived yet. After a long discussion with the bus driver, under the watchful eyes of all the other passengers, the driver finally wins and refuses to continue the journey until Lea and I get off. And he's right - we're just in a side street off the usual busy downtown street with Hashem & Co., so we decide to walk home. This excursion definitely turned out to be completely different from what we had imagined. But it was beautiful.