After a long night flight, Do you go to sleep or….

After a long overnight flight, I landed in Addis around 8 AM. Surprisingly, passport control went quickly, and I found myself spending a long time at the baggage claim carousel – my suitcase hadn’t arrived, and the flight I arrived on had already been removed from the departures board, which was filled with other flights. Just as I thought about going to the lost and found department, my suitcase suddenly appeared.

The next stop was the queue to buy a local SIM card (because in Ethiopia there’s only one phone company, and everyone has to buy their SIM card). I got a card with a large package for about 10 shekels.

I arranged with the driver of the company to exchange money with her, because if you exchange money through official channels like the bank or post office – you get the official rate of 56 Birr. But if you exchange on the black market, you can get up to twice (!) as much Birr for the same amount of money. This is a huge difference. The taxi driver told me in advance that she could exchange for me at a rate of 80 Birr per dollar, but at the airport, I went to the first booth I saw – a transportation company – and asked them if they could exchange money. They actually exchange at the black market rate. The guy at the booth initially wanted to give me a really low rate. After a short argument with him, he agreed to give me a rate of 82 Birr per dollar. He carefully handed me a large stack of bills under his jacket, and I handed him back dollars.

After that, I met the taxi driver outside who would take me to the hotel. We crossed the city from southeast to northwest. Surprisingly, compared to India – the first place that came to mind for comparison – the city seemed quite clean, organized, with good roads, fairly new buildings, drivers hardly honk, and not much dirt. They also answer directly and not every question is met with ‘yes, yes’ like in India.

The driver exchanged $50 for me at a good rate and took half the amount for the ride 😊.

I took a good 5-star hotel for $29 a night, which is almost 8 times cheaper than the budget the company allows.

After a short settling-in period in the room, I went for a quick walk outside the hotel – there’s a smoothie and fruit stand right opposite. They offer many fruit smoothies – and you can ask for a smoothie with 2 or 3 fruits, and they create them in beautiful, colorful layers. Here, you eat the smoothies with a spoon, you don’t drink them. There are many fruits to choose from – banana, pineapple, mango, papaya, apple, avocado, orange, and more, and they look really good. You can also buy the fruits at all these stands. If you want to drink – there’s an inner room behind the stand, usually quite dim, where people sit, alone or in pairs. In these places, there’s also food, sweet bread, and you can also eat the fruits. A smoothie costs around 4 shekels.

After the short stroll, I went to the hotel for a short two-hour nap because I was very tired. After I woke up, I ordered a taxi to Entoto Park National Park – where there’s a mountain overlooking the city. The park is quite close to the hotel – only a fifteen-minute drive. I used Ethiopia’s local ride-hailing app – RIDE – which is really convenient – and a fifteen-minute ride to the mountain cost 22 shekels.

The road passed through villages with mud and block houses, in wooded areas with pine, eucalyptus, and other trees. At the top of the mountain there is a very important church for Ethiopians (most Ethiopians have a strong religious affiliation – they are Orthodox, and their biggest dream is to visit Jerusalem and Israel). Between the church and the park entrance, there are many coffee stands, honey wine, food, and souvenir stalls. I visited the church and then entered the park. The park is organized, with some roads, walking trails, and bicycle paths. I walked among eucalyptus trees, and the weather was really pleasant – warm and sunny. Below, you can see Addis sprawling in the valley. I wanted to do a short trail and then I saw a small path climbing into the forest from the main road. I knew the path roughly led back to the access road with the villages above and I started to climb. It was very difficult – probably because Addis is at an altitude of 2400 meters and I felt like I had no air at all, unlike similar climbs I do without any thought. It takes a few days to get used to and regulate breathing at this altitude. After 20 minutes, I reached the road and started walking on the road between houses and villages. All the people I met were very nice and everyone said hello and smiled. I thought about walking back to the city entrance but then a rickshaw – a kind of taxi – arrived and took me and a few other people along the way to the main entrance junction on the main road between Addis Ababa and northern Ethiopia. Six of us squeezed into a small rickshaw and the ride cost almost nothing. At the big junction, where all traffic from Addis north passes, there were some small, makeshift coffee shops, stores, and food stalls. I went in and sat down in one coffee shop and ordered the national drink – coffee. Ethiopians love coffee very much, grow a lot of it, and there is a whole ceremony for drinking coffee. Inside the place, a few people were sitting, and one of them motioned for me to sit next to him. We talked a bit and watched life pass by in front of our eyes at the junction. Then the girl making the coffee went to get him a samosa (a stuffed and fried pastry like in India, which in this case was vegetarian. Excellent), so I asked if she could get one for me too. She went to get it from another stall. After that, she poured me coffee – which has a deep taste like a drink between coffee and mocha. They drink coffee with salt, sugar, or butter. After I finished, the guy sitting next to me insisted on paying for my coffee and samosa. I tried to object and pay for him but nothing helped. So I gave him some Israeli money as a souvenir, and he thanked me.

I walked to the military checkpoint at the junction to catch a minibus back to the city. There is currently very high tension in Ethiopia in most regions due to civil war, and there is a risk of traveling outside Addis Ababa. There are many army checkpoints, and they stop almost every minibus, have the passengers get off, and check them. The soldier at the checkpoint signaled for me to get into a minibus that had just stopped, and after I sat down, I counted 20 people crammed into one minivan. A 10-minute ride cost something like 80 agorot (Israeli cents). I got off near the hotel and started walking towards it. I saw a fruit stand and went into the back room to drink an excellent mango and banana smoothie. A few moments after I arrived, a guy came in and we started chatting. He manages an Orthodox school with 2200 (!) students, and he was really happy to meet someone from Israel, expressed a lot of interest in the project I came for, and asked me to come and lecture to his senior students at the school on one of the upcoming days. We agreed to stay in touch this week and see if we could make it happen on one of the days.

I went up to the room and fell asleep, after just one short day so full of experiences, warm people, smoothies, and new phone numbers. What a joy.happen.