Libya, Hamburg, and so on...

My last blogg entry was when I returned to Hamburg from Egypt, around one month ago.

I only spend one weekend in Hamburg before I flew down to Tripoli in Libya to work there for two weeks. Again I travelled with the three Germans from RWE Dea. Marcus, the project manager, was the only one who had been there before. We basically had no idea where we were going to stay in Tripoli. Our worst fear was that we didn't have any hotel reservation at all, but we also had a faint hope that perhaps we would be staying at the Corinthia hotel, maybe the best hotel in North Africa. We got something in between, a decent hotel called Thobacts. Quite small, very disorganized staff, but brand new and very clean.

Work in Libya was less stressful than in Egypt, but we still had to work almost every day. Over the two weeks we stayed there we managed to take two days off, both of them Fridays. One of the days we spent exploring the old part of Tripoli. It was certainly an experience walking through the narrow streets and looking at all the stuff people were selling in the markets. Some streets were filled with small shops selling various spices. The smell was wonderfully exotic! There were also plenty of shops selling fake stuff. Fake iPhones, fake D&G clothes, fake CAT choes, and so on...

The next Friday we went to Leptis Magna, an incredible place! It's one hour's drive outside Tripoli, and is an old Roman city that was destroyed by earthquakes and villains hundreds of years ago. As the years went by the whole city was covered in a thick layer of sand. But recently the old ruins have been excavated, and the old Roman city has been partly restored. So I was walking through the old streets of a once great city, admiring the great triumph arches, tall columns, and of course - the impressive theater! Sitting in the theater looking down upon the stage I let my thoughts drift and imagined being at an old Roman play, surrounded by soldiers, workers, traveling merchants... It was all very impressive!

We were working in Tripoli most of the time, but of course we had a trip out to a drilling rig to set up the system there. This time the rig was out in the desert. It was not the kind of desert with sand dunes, but a very rocky kind of desert. Me and a local Libyan IT guy flew down there, while the Germans drove by car. An 8 hour drive... The plane departed from Tripoli airport and landed in the middle of the desert, at "Mabrouk oilfield", run by the French company Total. We then drove from the airstrip to the oilrig. We stayed out there for 4 days, working quite hard. There wasn't really much else to do out there than work. I found it quite enjoyable though! The temperature was not too hot during the day, and not too cold during the night. And just being out in the desert for the first time was all quite exciting!

All in all I enjoyed Tripoli quite a lot! I felt very safe when walking around in the streets, and the people I met were very friendly. "Welcome to my country!", "Yes basketball!", "Hello long man!" were examples of what people were saying when they saw me. I did get the impression though, that it takes a long time to do stuff in Tripoli. For example, a year ago the government decided to demolish lots of buildings to build a new highway there. But still they haven't started the construction of the highway, so all the remains of the demolished houses are just laying there in piles... Not very nice to look at. On the other hand, the Libyan government seems to open up a bit more to foreign investors and so on, and I saw many new skyscapers being planned in the next few years.

After Libya I returned to Hamburg again, but I also got to get back to Norway in the weekend, for the first time in two months. My brother was also home from the US that same weekend so it was good timing. Now I'm going to stay in Hamburg until the 19th of December, hopefully not longer, cause I would like to celebrate Christmas at home as usual. I've never spent a Christmas away from my family actually! It will probably happen sooner rather than later, but this year it would be good to be at home, considering I've spent so much time away lately.