Salam
So that is ethiopia! to be honest the language is really too difficult to keep it in our minds (it seems close to arabian), exept "salam!" the greeting and "ciao" the goodbye, a rest of the italians who tried to make a colonisation in the beginning of the 20th century but hardly failed...so ethiopia is one of the nearly uncolonised states in africa, they say the ethiopian people are more proud of their country...well we can say for the first days it is easier for us to walk through the streets, not so many people are coming to us, exept the children but when you say "no" they quite go away, and the people are really friendly in helping you without wanting anything...
we arrived good with ethiopian air at the much more modern looking airport of Addis Abeba. thanks to Laure the cousin of Helene who picked us up at the airport and thanks airportworker who stole my mobile out of my rucksack (sorry juliane it was so beautiful! i will try to get it back!) we spent the next day in town and realised that the was plenty of influence of the ca 15 years comunist government which ended in 1991. We felt more like in an east east-european city than in africa: big streets and monuments and typical comunist architechture...
next day Helene arrived in the morning and together with Laure and William, another french friend we went to spent the weekend at southern lake langano, a beautiful brown disease-free lake (my guide says it's because of the soda) with lodges at the beach where we spent three interesting days with some english, italian and german expats...
we went by boat to a an island with sparkling hot springs and took a short sauna in the hot sulfaty vaporating water. when we went back the motor of the motorboat broke down and some of us had to paddle but because we were too heavy some others had to get into the water and push the boat. happily after half an hour it started again and we could go back to our place...
on sunday night we celebrated the ethiopian new year of 1999 (they are going on the old julian calender which is 7 years and a few months behind) and the second weird thing is the clock-time: the time starts when the sun goes up around 6 which means at 7 a.m. it is here 1 a.m. and when the sun goes down at 6 p.m. it is here 12 o'clock...
Tuesday we went to Bahir Dar, twice, because our sweet litte propeller plane had to go back to Addis because of technical problems...well after one hour repairing, while we could enjoy free fried toast at the airport restaurant, we could start again and landed after a very good flight in Bahir Dar, which is situated at the historical lake tana. We are staying of couse in the beautiful budget place TANA PENSION after we went unknown to the upper upper class TANA HOTEL where we happily enjoyed the high standart for only 20Birr (2euro) per person after a guy told us it was 20DOLLAR per person...happily early we packed our things to move to TANA PENSION...
well more later we have to eat now.
greetings from us margot, helene and me!