Sep 7, 2010

How do foreigners go around Amman?!


I pity every non Arabic speaker who live here! how the hell do they get around the city is a mystery yet to be solved - to me at least- ! I would really love to meet the man who decided we should use the most confusing names that we locals can't even memorize most of the time! And why is it that each street should have a different more confusing name? I mean what's the point? keeping the names of people who lived on this planet some 1400 years ago alive? well they're not! getting us to know the names of small villages in Jordan? we're not! It's not working for me and I'm someone who has some vivid storage unit up there!


Back in Thailand I used to get around with a map in a city big enough to have 11 million people living in it, and it wasn't hard at all because the system was easy to grasp, this area is called Whatever, and the streets in Area Whatever are given consecutive numbers; Whatever1, Whatever 2 and so on! Would it be a betrayal of our culture if we had Jabal Alhussien 1,2,3,... for instance? So Arabs, Tourists and non Arabs living here can go around and give addresses without having to use "landmarks"? (After the traffic light, get in the 2nd right, then straight, then there's a supermarket, I'm in the building next to the supermarket, opposite of the dumpster!) ! we all know the feeling of being lost, its not funny, and I imagine how hellish my life abroad would have been if the street names sounded like "Kun Chuu Pun Te" or something!! I don't think شارع الحفص بن يعقوب is easy to pronounce even for Arabs!

Forget tourism, I just need my phone bills delivered to my house, it's been 4 months already! LUCKY me lives in a building located on the corner of two streets intersecting, and whether its delivery, taxi cab or recently the telephone company I use landmarks! It is about time this brilliant system changes, we now have a new lovely Amman font and I'm guessing someone will have all signs replaced, lets replace them for numbers! you'll be cutting cost walla!

final note: really? Um el Kundum? and btw its not an urban legend... I knew someone who lives there!
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