I am leaving tonight for a 5 days training in St-Petersburg, Russia. I have never been to Russia nor Eastern Europe before so i am excited about this trip even if its short.

St Petersburg, ‘Venice of the North’ is one of the best places to visit in Russia from what i heard and read. Lots of attractions to visit and the night life is great. Unluckily though, it will be rainy all week long and it is relatively cold now.

Last but not least, everytime i mentioned to anyone here that i was leaving for Russia, he asked me to bring him back a girl from there (one girl requested a guy). So i thought i open myself a super night club if am bringing back that many girls lol!

I mean seriously, so what if we have a lot of Russian girls working in super night clubs here, does that mean they are all prostitutes?

I will have my laptop and the hotel i am staying in has internet, so i should be able to post from there.

До скорой встречи. ! (See you soon)

A friend of mine recently stayed at the Le Gray hotel in downtown Beirut and he posted up a review with pictures which you can check [Here]

I took a trip to Lebanon this past weekend and people… it was AMAZING! Lebanon is seriously booming… there was a zillion and one events and it felt depressing that I couldn’t go to all! It’s like taking a kid to a candy store and asking them to choose just ONE kind of candy. Anyways, that’s not the purpose of this post. I want to post about the airport (which I still refuse to call Rafic Harriri International Airport).

I arrived to Beirut on Wednesday night. Along with my plane, there were 2 other planes that arrived around the same time so it wasn’t busy. Passing through passport control was quite quick, so I was pleased. I got to baggage claim and to my surprise there weren’t any trolleys! I searched the entire baggage claim area and could not find trolleys. I asked one of the employees and he told me to check on the sides but that most probably they weren’t any left since there’s lots of incoming planes. I looked around and only saw that only passengers from one of the arrived planes were collecting their baggage.

What traffic?!

How can an airport that’s expecting over 2 million tourists in the next 2 months not have enough trolleys for more than 1 incoming plane?

I ended up paying someone to drag my bags for me which made me feel terrible! I don’t enjoy the fact of having someone dragging my 25+ kg bags around… especially since he was an old man.

While leaving last night, I stopped at Cafematik for a snack and to watch the Spain vs. Paraguay game. Unfortunately, they did not have the channel that airs the game. I then went to buy a wifi card so I can get online. The guy told me wifi connection has not been working at the airport for the past week.

Seriously?

I don’t mean to sound like a spoilt brat but I do not consider trolleys or wifi access at an airport, as busy as the Beirut Airport, to be optional items to add.

The New York Times has an article today called 36 Hours in Beirut where they recommend going to Beirut for a quick weekend getaway. The article mentions a lot of cool places like Al Mayass, Souk El Tayeb, Beirut Art Center, Kayan and Behind the Green Door. A very cool article for Lebanon. [Link]

Thanks NS

I have a business trip to Amsterdam in May and since I have only one nationality which is “Lebanese”, I have to go through the whole visa application process. I’ve lived in Dubai for 2 years where I applied for many schengen visas from different embassies (german, Swiss, etc…) and I started having my visa extended to,I think, 1 year utmost but since I came back again to Lebanon and canceled my Dubai residence visa, the consulates in Leb disregarded my previous visas if they were issued from a different country, so that was my first shock when I came back. In JAN 2010, I had to go to Amsterdam (on a business trip) and my Lebanese friends kept telling me:

“ l safara l elmaniye a7san men l hollandiye w ahyan, rou7e addme 3endon w ba3den fike trou7e wein ma baddik w ma32oul ya3touke yeha for 3 months” so I went for it…and guess what , they gave it to me for 2 weeks only!”

Today again, I had to apply for a schengen visa since I am going to Amsterdam in May and I said to myself, let’s not play it the Lebanese way and I will apply legally at the same embassy even though I’ve heard that they are very strict and tough. After preparing a deck of documents (which took me almost 2 weeks to request), and of course after taking an appointment, I drove today all the way from Seheile to Sofil and passed through all kinds of Monday morning traffic. It was a hell of an experience!!

1- No place to park (and then the policeman came and told me: soffe honik w sakkre 3al parking la2anno ba3ed ma fata7 )

6- In the afternoon she called me back saying that on one of the documents, the person who signed (which was my boss) is not the same person as the one of the register circular so I have to again pass by and drop her the letter signed by the eligible person!

Even writing all this now, frustrates me again as this is really unfair for a Lebanese to go through all these procedures and especially that I had many schengen visas before (from Dubai, which was so much easier to apply for). After all, we always say: proud to be Lebanese but if you really think about these frustrating things, I sometime think, what are we proud about?

I was at the airport picking up a magazine when I spotted Maya’s book for sale at the cashier so I picked up a copy for $12 which is a pretty fair price. I managed to finish the book while waiting to board the plane and I found some of the illustrations really funny. The only thing I thought wasn’t necessary was the small copy at the bottom of the page after every story explaining or talking about the subject in the illustration above it. I thought that took away a bit from the experience and I personally didn’t think the illustrations needed it. Overall its definitely worth picking up at the very least to support a talented blogger like her.

If you don’t know who Maya is click [Here]