Exploring the old city of Harar

By Teis Feldborg Gregersen

The sun was nowhere to be seen in the sky as the bus carefully drove into its parking spot in Meskel Square. It was 5 o’clock in the morning as my first journey out of Addis Ababa began, a journey that would completely change my view on the country I currently live in.

Luckily I was in the company of two friends who were going to explore what is outside of Addis Ababa for the first time as well.

The bus seats on which we were going to travel on were tattered, the footrests missing in front of at least half of the seats and the food tables were either pointing downwards or simply too fragile to stay in the right position when a bottle of water was placed on them. But, the view was amazing. I was lucky enough to get one of the front seats, and from there, the sight of the Ethiopian countryside kept amazing me as the bus took us further and further away from Addis Ababa. It was beautiful; all the passengers on the bus experienced the busy mornings of the Ethiopian peasants, small villages waking up as well as the sun rising above the mountains alongside the road. As the day progressed, the heat of the sun got stronger and Harar got closer, the air-condition system of the bus was set on a difficult task; to keep everyone in the bus at a pleasant temperature. Fortunately it succeeded its task and we arrived in Harar with a lot of spare energy after we had been sitting down for almost ten hours with only a few breaks.

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