Yesterday morning around 9am local time the Taitu hotel in Addis Ababa caught fire. The hotel is located in the Piassa neighborhood of Addis Ababa and is one of the oldest building in the city. The building was established under the order of Empress Taitu around 1907. The fire is said to have started in the kitchen and engulfed most of the front of the building as well as completely destroying the Jazzamba lounge located just next door to the hotel. There are some pictures of the damage below.
Some nighttime construction photos
Here's some pictures of the construction of the light rail project in Addis. I just used the small Fuji camera, thinking about a bigger project with bigger camera. More coming soon.
New years in Langano
For European New Years, (not to be confused with Ethiopian new years) about 8 of us went down to Langano Lake, roughly 190km outside of Addis Ababa. A friend of ours, Helen works for the International Community School so we had access to a sick campground owned by the American Embassy.
View on the way
This is near Lake Ziway
Stopped also in Ziway for lunch at the lovely Tourist Hotel. We had about a kilo of tibs and Paola got some shiro. We did have really nice though expensive jebena afterwards.
That's Paola looking sassy.
Had some coffee after lunch.
I love gentle toilets.
Ziway is only about 25k from Langano so it was a quick drive after we picked up a few supplies. At the entrance there were some kids dancing on the road. Probably to try and get some money or just applause maybe. They were pretty good though.
Here's some Acacia trees. Common in the arid clime of the south.
Finally here's a view of the lake. Its kinda brown but actually relatively clean. It's one of the only lakes you can swim in throughout Ethiopia as most of the others have parasites.
That's Chu Chu, Helen and Meskie.
That's Kevin with some tej (mead, basically)
Ciaran took a kayak out for a paddle.
Later we got out on the canoe.
Here's the campground.
That's a bungalow over there.
Dinner was cool, we had some potatoes, pasta and sausage.
Some of the sausages were cooked with tej. We also had a couple of Italians around so the pasta was bomb.
The Italians I spoke of previously.
The brothers post 2013.
We took the canoe out at night and crashed the African Lodge's party. This was the bartender.
Creepy volleyball net at night.
Drive back was really sick - want to make this trip again for sure.
24 hours of transit, another story altogether
So after I caught the train from Angoulême I had what I like to call a ‘pre-layover’ in Charles de Gaulle. This was pretty chill. Not extremely comfortable but I was left alone. I had a nice setup as well.
Zach's portable buggy life:
Shit was pretty dope actually. Watched some movies and ate mad food that Anaïs mom made me.
Next morning I caught Saudia to Jeddah, where I had what I like to call my ‘post-layover’, about 12 hours spent in the terminal, of which we could not move out of. Think of confining over 1000 people at times more, to a room the size of half a football field.
Good sunset at least.
At least donuts.
In this situation I would have said ‘yea sure’, lets just leave the airport, right? Wrong buddy its almost impossible to get a travel visa in Saudi Arabia. You have to layover for over 18 hours. Thinking of visiting? Also really impossible they don’t really give tourist visas.
I would have gone to have a swim in the Red Sea, but apparently there’s a giant wall blocking it, from my inside information from a guy who’s been living there for 2 years. He says it isn’t too hard to get in you just have to have your passport and if you're American they wave you in. Thinking of going as a Saudi Arabian citizen? No that’s prohibited.
Saudi’s also apparently hate to work. Most of the labor force is Pakistani, Nepalese, and you guessed it Ethiopian. Though the Ethiopian maids are being made to leave after too much controversy and their poor treatment by the Saudis. Which is also happening in other places, like Lebanon.
Anyways my boarding time finally came and I got on the plane. It was mostly empty, and I think in fact that there were probably some maids there on the plane with me. Took a bit of a nap and woke up in time to see the entry to Addis.
Addis from above, you can see the crazy amount of condos up.
Welcome home.