Harar: Ethiopia’s medieval masterpiece

by Sean McLachlan on

If you’re lucky, every now and then when you’re on the road you’ll come to a place where a little voice will say, “Stop here. This is what you were looking for.” You’ll have other plans, a nice neat schedule you made up in your head of what you wanted to see in the time you have for your trip. If you stop, if you listen to the little voice, you’ll miss a lot of things you had planned to see.

Do it.

For me that place was Harar, a walled medieval city I visited halfway through my two-month trip around the Horn of Africa. My wife had flown home, having thoroughly enjoyed the lifetime of memories I gave her as a tenth anniversary present. Now I was free to go anywhere I liked without consulting anyone else. Or I was free to go nowhere.

Harar is reached on a ten-hour bus ride from Addis Ababa. That’s not as bad as it sounds. The road is paved and the two main bus companies, Salaam Bus and Sky Bus, offer modern, comfortable transport. The scenery gradually changes from the hilly green of the Amhara and Oromo provinces to the rockier, drier region around Harar. The city is at a lower elevation than Addis or most of the north and I could feel the change in temperature.

Nobody knows how old Harar is. Hararis say it was founded in the early part of the Muslim era, perhaps in the 7th century AD, but given its location on the border between the core of the Ethiopian empire in the western and northern highlands, and the Somali lowlands and the sea to the south and east, it was probably a trading center long before that. Harar has always been a place where different cultures meet.

The first thing I noticed about Harar is how small it is. It’s more of a town than a city, with a bit of sprawl in the surrounding hills. The area encompassed by the 16th century walls can be walked across in fifteen minutes, and walked around in little more than an hour. It’s slightly less than 120 acres. Yet within these walls there’s an entire history and a unique culture rich in symbolism. For example the Jegol, as the old city is called, has five gates, corresponding to the five pillars of Islam. There used to be 99 mosques in the Jegol to correspond to the 99 names of Allah. The list of symbols both in the geography of the city and in the shape and layout of the buildings could and does fill volumes.

%Gallery-91809%Walled cities have an atmosphere all their own. Damascus, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Segovia. . .they all feel like they’re worlds unto themselves. The wall is more than just a physical barrier. In the days when city gates were closed at night the walls provided a very real social and psychological barrier. The people who grew up inside the city will be subtly different than those who lived only a few miles away. In the case of Harar the difference isn’t so subtle. Hararis have their own language spoken only within the walls of the Jegol.

My education in the ways of Harar started on the first day. I hadn’t been inside the Jegol for more than an hour before I was invited to join a meeting of the Harar Revitalization group, which is rebuilding dilapidated old buildings and wants to restore three of the five city gates that the Emperor Haile Selassie knocked down in order to allow access to cars. We sat on a carpet on the floor in the back room of one of the museums as a local poet and songwriter coached a group of young people who were recording a CD of songs about their city.

I soon found that the shopkeepers and office workers sitting around me were some of Harar’s intelligentsia–writers and historians and lexicographers. I’d tapped into a rich vein of scholars who cared about their city so deeply that they spent their spare hours learning its secrets and preserving it for future generations. As a former archaeologist turned writer, I couldn’t ask for better company. Over the following days and weeks I found many doors open for me, and over endless rounds of rich Harari coffee I met people who shared vast amounts of knowledge, and were curious to learn what I knew.

I soon settled into a rhythm. Every morning I’d sit at my favorite cafe on the main square sipping an excellent macchiato and watching the world go by. A Somali friend would often join me, and sometimes some of the Harari researchers. After some leisurely conversation it was time for a stroll around town, followed a conversation in some shaded alley or courtyard. Afternoons were spent in one of three homes, drinking coffee and talking about everything from linguistics to travel to history. Then as the sun set it came time to walk the darkened streets of the Jegol under the light of the moon.

It wasn’t long before I became a familiar face. The touts in the main square stopped trying to get me to go on tours and people always knew where to find me. Once I was headed down one of the main streets to find Amir, the assistant curator of a local museum. As I passed down the street someone I didn’t know said, “Amir is in the cafe.” He didn’t tell me which cafe, but I figured it was the one people usually saw me at. Sure enough, there sat Amir. Now this fellow couldn’t have known I was looking for Amir, hell, Amir didn’t know I was looking for Amir, but Harar is that sort of place.

So when you get to Harar, slow down. Skip the sights for a while and sit in the shade with a good companion. Or don’t. Perhaps you need to stop somewhere else.

Don’t forget to read the rest of my series on travel in Ethiopia.

Next time: more on Harar (with suggestions on what you can actually see there)

Lon-done? Try Canterbury

by Sean McLachlan on

If you’re looking for a day trip away from the noise and pollution of London, head out to Canterbury just a 90 minute train ride to the southeast.

We’ve all heard of the Canterbury Tales, a series of stories by Geoffrey Chaucer told by pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral. It’s a cornerstone of English literature and well worth reading. Even if you weren’t assigned to read it in school, a visit to Canterbury will be an interesting diversion.

The most important site is, of course, Canterbury Cathedral and St. Augustine’s Abbey, which together constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There’s been a church at this spot since 597 A.D., when St. Augustine founded one here to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons. Like many early Christian churches, it was built atop an old Roman temple to assert the dominance of the new faith. The church has been extensively remodeled over the years, especially by the Normans in 1070. The soaring Gothic roof and the dazzling stained glass are the most impressive features, but pilgrims come here to see the spot where Archbishop Thomas Becket was martyred in 1170 for opposing the Crown. There’s a small chapel here where Becket is buried.

Also worth a look are the extensive crypts, with dark chapels, flickering candles, and the cathedral treasury. After seeing the interior, be sure to visit the grounds, a quiet series of gardens and squares that are soothingly beautiful in the fading light of evening.

The other half of the World Heritage Site is St. Augustine’s Abbey, founded in 598 A.D. and now in a state of elegant decay. It’s the oldest Anglo-Saxon Abbey in England. It was the only abbey to survive the Viking invasions of the 9th century and became central to the religious life of the region until Henry VIII shut it down in 1538.

Canterbury was an important Roman town and some of the these early remnants remain. The Roman Museum on Butchery Lane explains the development of Roman Durovernum through artifacts and recreated rooms. The star attraction is part of a Roman house uncovered by a Luftwaffe bomb during World War Two. One room had a heating system under the floor, a hollow area where warm air flowed from a nearby furnace. Also preserved is a hallway decorated with mosaics.

%Gallery-83609%Canterbury is a fine old town for a walk. The River Stour cuts right through the center and lining its banks are timber frame houses from the Tudor era. Rough medieval towers and ornate Victorian buildings compete for space with more modern buildings to give a quick lesson in the history of English architecture. Just around the corner from the Cathedral is the Canterbury Tales Exhibit, which sounds like a literary tourist trap. Since I haven’t been there personally, I’ll refer you to a blogger who has.

For dining you simply must go to Kashmir Tandoori at 20 Palace St. This local favorite has been serving South Asian cuisine since 1966 and has won a entire wall of awards. The balance of spices is masterful, emphasizing flavor over fire in a way that makes you appreciate Indian cooking as more than an endurance contest. They offer regional dishes from all over South Asia.

If you stay overnight, you can’t get a better view than from the Cathedral Gate Hotel at 36 Burgate. When I was there in 2007 the hotel was a bit tattered and in need of a remodel, but being located right next to the cathedral gate with splendid views of the Cathedral itself, you’ll barely notice. Make sure you get a room facing the Cathedral and not the street.

Up for another day trip? See another cathedral and more Roman ruins at St. Albans. You can even drink in “England’s oldest pub”!

The ten toughest castles in the world

by Sean McLachlan on

Castles make a pretty backdrop to any vacation. They conjure up images of brave knights and damsels in distress, but the reality was less romantic. Castles were fortifications built to defend important cities, ports, fords, or mountain passes. The best military minds in the world devised ways to destroy them, when they weren’t figuring out better ways to build them. Here are ten castles that proved almost too tough to take. Some took centuries before they fell, or cost the lives of hundreds of attackers. A few never fell at all.

Crac de Chevaliers
One of the best preserved Crusader castles in the Middle East, it protected the pass from the lowlands of Lebanon through the Anti-Lebanon Mountains and into the rich Orontes river valley of Syria. It’s on the Syrian side of the border but its turrets afford fine views of Lebanon. Originally an Arab castle that was taken by the French during the First Crusade in 1099, it became the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller, a knightly order that protected pilgrims in the Holy Land. They protected themselves too, by strengthening the castle and putting up walls that were up to 100 feet thick. It withstood more than one siege and even the great Saladin couldn’t take it. It eventually fell back into Muslim hands in 1271 but remained the model for castle builders in Europe.

Masada
Facing the world’s biggest empire with only a ragtag group of dedicated fighters? Go to the middle of the desert, find a sheer mesa, and hold up in it. That’s what the Sicarii, Jewish resistance fighters, did when they rebelled against the Roman Empire in the first century AD. The location was perfect. The mesa had already been fortified by King Herod as a refuge in case of rebellion, but the Sicarii rebels got it instead. Sheer cliffs rise 300 feet (90 meters) above the desert at their lowest point, and in spots tower up to 1,300 feet (400 meters). The only way up are three winding paths that are exposed to arrows and rocks coming from above. The Romans, in their typical efficiency, built a rampart up the entire way so they could roll up battering rams to breach the walls. The Sicarii committed mass suicide rather than surrender. The Roman camps and walls used to cut Masada off from the rest of the world are still plainly visible.

Numancia
The Celts in Spain faced the same problem the Sicarii did. How to defeat the Roman Empire? Numancia was one tribe’s answer. This hillfort at the headwaters of the Duero River held out for twenty years until the inevitable end came. The defenders had run out of food and had been reduced to cannibalism. Like the Sicarii, the Celts chose death before dishonor and most of them committed mass suicide in 133 BC. Spain became a Roman province. Today you can see reconstructions of the fort and Roman siege techniques at the site’s musuem.

Osaka
The samurai were brave warriors ready to face death, but even they must have thought twice about attacking this castle. Completed in 1598, it was the base of operations for Hideyoshi Toyotomi, who made peace between Japan’s many warring factions by beating them into submission. It took 200,000 soldiers more than a year to take this place in 1615, and when you look at this photo of the bare face of the ramparts you can see why. The castle combines form and function and is beautiful as well as impregnable.

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Walls of Constantinople
OK, this isn’t technically a castle, but the massive walls of Constantinople (modern Istanbul) protected the capital of Byzantium for more than a thousand years. Byzantium was the eastern half of the Roman Empire and survived long after Rome fell. The Bulgars, Slavs, and Turks all failed to take the massive double land walls and moat. It took the invention of cannon to finally destroy them. The Ottoman Turks under Mehmet the Conqueror in 1453 AD had a giant cannon that could shoot a 1,200 lb. stone ball a mile, backed up by an army that may have numbered as many as 200,000 men. The city still held out two months before falling and becoming the new Ottoman capital.

Sacsayhuaman
The Incas were master builders. Unlike most cultures, they didn’t build with regular blocks, but instead used irregularly shaped stones that fit together so precisely that not even a knife can be pushed through the cracks. Believe me, I tried. In the highlands around Cuzco, Peru, they built a series of temples and the giant fortress of Sacsayhuaman to protect them. The fortress has triple walls almost 20 feet (six meters) tall constructed in a jagged outline so the defenders could throw stones and spears at the attacking force from three sides instead of just one. It was finished sometime in the early 1500s, just in time for the Spanish to invade. The conquistadors were only able to take it after a fierce fight and the loss of Francisco Pizarro’s younger brother Juan.

Malta
Located smack dab in the middle of the Mediterranean at one of its narrowest points, whoever controlled Malta controlled trade. This, of course, led to lots of wars. Malta changed hands countless times, but one of its biggest battles came in 1565 when the Ottomans tried to take the island from the Knights Hospitaller. The Knights were ready with not just one castle but three. The Ottomans had an estimated 20,000-50,000 troops. Barely 500 knights and 5,600 helpers stood in their path, but they had the castles. The Ottomans landed and started a heavy bombardment with a large number of artillery on the first fort on their list, Fort St. Elmo. The castle was reduced to rubble but its 600 defenders went down fighting. The Turks lost more than 4,000. The attack then focused on Forts St. Angelo and St. Michael, and the Turks ground up their army against the walls. After losing at least a third of their force, they called it a day and retreated. Cannonballs from the bombardment can still be seen in the fields.

Burg Eltz
This castle has the distinction of still being the home of the same family that owned it in the 12th century. Built upon a 70 meter (220 ft.) high crag next to an important trade route, it was perfectly positioned to assert power. A river flows around three sides of the crag, making it almost impossible to take. The castle is an architectural jewel and much of the fifteenth-century interior is preserved. Burg Eltz has one of the best settings of all the castles in this list. The primeval Eltz forest encloses the castle on all sides, and several historic villages are nearby. Because of its commanding position and the political skill of its owners, it was only attacked once. In 1331, Archbishop Baldwin of Luxembourg tried to extend his territory by attacking the castle with catapults and an early cannon. After more than two years of bombardment, the archbishop admitted defeat and went back to Luxembourg.

Carcassonne
The high walls that ring this strategic town did what many French castles could not–resist the English throughout the Hundred Years War. The Romans had a fort on this hilltop in 100 BC and some of the original stones can still be seen in the walls. Later it was a stronghold of the Cathars, a Christian sect that was destroyed in a crusade led
by the bloodthirsty Simon de Montfort, who killed anyone who he found in Cathar-controlled territory, whether they were Cathars or not. He’s the origin of the saying, “Kill them all, God will sort them out.” In 1209 he took Carcassonne, but the city stood firm against later sieges, including a long and determined one by the English. Nowadays it’s a perfect view of Gothic spires and imposing medieval walls.

Bamburgh
This Northumbrian stronghold is like many of the castles on this list in that the present structure covers up centuries of history. Bamburgh was the capital of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria and there was a castle here from the 6th century AD. It survived a number of sieges and that’s hardly surprising when you see it standing proud on a little peninsula jutting out into the North Sea. A massive gatehouse and walls protect the landward side. In 1095, the owner Robert de Mowbray was captured by the attacking Normans but his wife took over the defense and continued to push back their assaults. She finally gave in when the Normans threatened to blind Robert. The castle fell again in 1464 during the Wars of the Roses when it became the first English castle to surrender because of an artillery bombardment. Modern technology succeeded where generations of swordsmen failed.

Hadrian’s Wall Day Five: across the lowlands

by Sean McLachlan on

Getting up early I take a last look at the crags that I crossed yesterday before heading west and towards Carlisle. I’m now in the lowlands and after scrabbling over steep rock for the past two days it’s very easy going. Add the fact that it’s sunny and I only have eleven miles to walk today, and I have an easy ramble ahead of me.

The countryside is more populated here, and I pass by hedges, fields, farms, even housing developments. Yet there are still wide swathes of untouched land. Rabbits hop into hedges as I approach and I spot the track of a fox in the mud. The Wall, sadly, has almost disappeared, quarried over the centuries for use in other buildings. I’m still along its course, though, as the ditch to the north and the Vallum to the south show me. They’ve survived better than the more durable stone.

The richness of this region made it a target for reivers, and I pass another pele tower, almost swallowed up by the more modern house built around it. There were probably more around here but they’re been quarried for stone just like the Wall was.

I stop by the side of the trail for a snack and meet some other hikers. I’ve met a few along this hike, but this group is different–it’s a whole family, including a ten-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl. They’re doing the entire Hadrian’s Wall Path and have already made it all the way from Newcastle to this spot, more than sixty miles. They’re taking it slow, the kids carrying little day packs and being encouraged with a steady supply of treats, but they’re doing it. Hmmmm, perhaps I should have picked a more challenging hike for my midlife crisis. It helps that these are two of the coolest kids ever. I ask them if any of the other kids in their school have ever walked across England and they blush and smile and shake their heads no. Impressive. Once my kid is a bit bigger I’ll have to take him across the country too. At age three he’s already walking a kilometer each way to and from school.

Next I come to the River Eden, which flows westward to Solway Firth, my final destination. Thick bushes colored with purple wildflowers grow along its banks. It’s a peaceful spot, but I see the tops of buildings ahead.

It’s not long until the River Eden winds its way into suburban Carlisle. I pass through a city park and nod at someone passing the other direction. He gives me a confused, wary look and I realize that I’m off the trail, where conversation is easy and everyone is helpful, and back into the world of city attitude.

%Gallery-72022%Carlisle is the most northerly city in England (it would be hard to go further north without ending up in Scotland) and has a population of a little more than 100,000, although it feels much smaller. An ugly ring of modern sprawl surrounds a few winding historic streets with a soaring cathedral, a few very old buildings such as the Guildhall built in 1407, and a massive castle. Carlisle Castle is built atop a Roman fort and the oldest bits still visible were built by Henry I in the 1120s. It was actually finished by David I of Scotland, who captured Carlisle in 1136. This city and Newcastle, where I started my hike, were top prizes in the constant English-Scottish border wars. David was one of the great early kings of the Scots and helped unify the rival clans into something approaching a national identity. It took a lot of fighting to bring the proud families under the feudal yoke, and he was only partially successful, but the Scots loved him because he was good at killing Englishmen

In a pedestrian underpass in front of the castle is a large boulder of sculpted granite that has got to be the strangest example of public art I’ve ever seen. It’s a reproduction of a famous “cursing stone” made in 1525 and inscribed with a curse against the reivers by the Archbishop of Glasgow. It’s pretty nasty, going on for more than a thousand words and inscribed in a spiral around the entire stone. For sheer spiteful detail, it cannot be matched.

“I curse their head and all the hairs of their head; I curse their face, their brain, their mouth, their nose, their tongue, their teeth, their forehead, their shoulders, their breast, their heart, their stomach, their back, their womb, their arms, their leggs, their hands, their feet, and every part of their body, from the top of their head to the soles of their feet, before and behind, within and without. . . May all the malevolent wishes and curses ever known, since the beginning of the world, to this hour, light on them. May the malediction of God, that fell upon Lucifer and all his fellows, that cast them from the high Heaven to the deep hell, light upon them. . .“

And on and on and on. It’s so creepy, in fact, that one local councilor has blamed it for everything from foot-and-mouth disease to floods and tried to have it removed.

Luckily reason won out over superstition and the cursing stone remains in place. But having read it and touched it, will my good luck on this hike hold out?

Read the entire series here.

Tomorrow: Finished!

Sleep on a bed made of hay at a German heuhotel

by Katie Hammel on

It seems hay is not just for horses – it’s also for sleeping on at hotels in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Heuhotels (heu means hay in German) are hotels housed in converted barns where guests bed down in sleeping bags in dorm rooms with layers of hay covering the floor.

The heuhotel Zum Alten Marstall, located near the Neckar Valley in Germany, sits at the foot of an 11th century castle and takes the medieval theme and runs with it. The hay beds are referred to as “knight’s lairs” and staff dress in medieval clothes. Hay beds start at €19,50, while private rooms are €31 per person.

While other hay hotels around the area may not have a theme, they do offer extras like privacy curtains or “rooms” in converted stalls, and most seem to offer a communal breakfast and outdoor activities. It seems like the hotels would appeal most to budget travelers, families with young kids, or eco-conscious travelers, but one heuhotel owner claims the hay beds are also popular with couples, saying “there’s nothing more exciting than a night on the hay”….except perhaps a roll in the hay?

Check out a list of heuhotels all around Germany here. Or click here to see some unusual hotels in the United States.

[via CNN]