New Libyan Government

Better late than never...

The new Libyan government, however changes are under way

Presentation and discussion at "Kremser Nahost Forum"

For the Libyans in Austria among you, my dear readers, meaning those who have a Libyan way of live and decide on a rather short notice how the daily schedule looks like, there might be something in for you today:
Tomorrow at 5 PM there will be a "Kremser Nahost Forum" lecture and discussion on Libya "Libya, the richest economy in Africa in transformation"
Details to be found on:
http://www.nahost-forum.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=9&Itemid=12

Libyan Railways and Intergeo´s bankruptcy

What a nice train ! It started in the nowhere of Tripoli and lead into nowhere. Fabricated by the Italian Finemccanica group´s company "Ansaldo". It was actually a present from Ansaldo to Libya. Well kind of - actually it was handed over to Muammar Gadaffi around the 40th anniversary of the revolution. Well, and as there were no rail tracks at that moment, Ansaldo also build about 1.000 meters of them. Italy´president, Silvio Berlusconi handed over the train to his friend Muammar Gadaffi and together they inaugurated the masterpiece of italian civil engineering.
At the same time a tender was opened fo the delivery of rolling stock (trains & wagons) for Libya´s new railway that should start at the Tunisian border and run all the way to Egypt. A special line was also leading to Sebha.
Too bad that Ansaldo did not comply with the specifications set forth in the tender. The technicians at Libyan Railroads did not know what to do: The whole railway industry had its focus on Libya, as it had at that moment the biggest railroad project in the world. And they were all very curious how Libya would solve the project, because the leader wanted by any means the Italian train. Even though it did not meet the tender criteria. And even though it had a different track size than the one built by the Chinese and Russian general contractors.
However, whenever I met an Italian diplomat, they were smashing it into my face: "The train is ours!"
Luckily for the employees of Libyan Railroads the revolution came...

The railway project did not end that luckily for some other companies. The Austrian company "Intergeo", for instance,  had to file for bankruptcy earlier this week: The company entered Libya in 2010, providing engineering works for the Russian part of the railway project, with its headquarters at Ras Lanuf. Unfortunately they did not receive a single cent for their works in Libya so far. The company said the outstanding debt amounted to approximately 1 Mio Euros.
12 employees and about 80 creditors are affected by the liquidation of the company. If you know german, you can read up the whole article here:
http://salzburg.orf.at/news/stories/2559701/

Deutsche Schule Tripolis

 Das waren eben noch Zeiten: Schuljahr 2009/2010 in Tripolis. Mit ca. 55 Schülern in der Deutschen Schule, und das auf alle Alterstufen verteilt. Manche Klassen waren dann nur 3-4 Kinder groß, aber das haben einige Kinder dann auch als sehr angenehm empfunden.
2009/10 soll dann auch das letzte Schuljahr gewesen sein, denn im Februar 2011 reisten ja bekanntlich nahezu alle Ausländer aus. Die Schule hat die Revolution gut und unbeschadet überstanden und wäre wieder bereit für neue Schüler.

Deswegen gab es dann auch einen Informationsabend für deutschssprachige Botschaften, Firmen und sonstige Einrichtungen. Es stellte sich wieder die Henne/Ei Frage. Denn war es jetzt, dass keine Kinder in der deutschen Schule sind, weil die Lage nicht so rosig ist und keine Firmen vor Ort sind, oder kommen keine Familien weil die Deutsche Schule nicht geöffnet hat ?

Mein Empfinden ist eindeutig ersteres.

Ein kurzer Gegensatz bei der Beurteilung der Sicherheitslage konnte zwischen zwei Diplomaten von deutschsprachigen Ländern festgestellt werden: Vertrat der eine die Ansicht, dass man noch weit von einer normalen Lage entfernt sei, so propagierte der andere eine "Mafish Mushkila" (no proplem) Stimung.

Als Österreicher verhält man sich in so einer Situation am besten ruhig,und schliesst sich nach erfolgtem Meinungsbildungsprozess der Mehrheit an. Zu blöd, dass es in diesem Fall keine Mehrheit gab, aber mein Erlebnis der letzten Woche lässt mich eher zum "es ist nicht alles in Ordnung" Lager tendieren.

Aber zurueck zur Deutschen Schule: Man hat alles parat, Gewehr bei Fuss und ist bereit bei entsprechender Nachfrage sofort den Schulbetrieb wieder aufzunehmen.

Die Direktorin der Schule, Christel Ostermann-Latif präsentierte entsprechende Pläne und hoffte (wie wir alle) auf eine baldige Rückkehr der Firmen.

Die Deutsche Schule ist übrigens im Internet unter 

http://www.deutsche-schule-tripolis.com/ zu finden.  

Yefren in the Nafusa Mountains

Yefren, probably one of the nicer towns of the Jebel Nafusa. And definitely worth a visit (and a blog entry). Sitting majestically on the edge of the western mountains, overlooking the plains that lead to the coast. The town is very hard to spot form the plains, but once you are up a pleasant countryside feeling sweeps through the streets. There is also a small hotel with a restaurant. We were just a bit unlucky, because when we visited the town, they had all the local big shots for a lunch over. This led also to the situation that when we wanted to leave, half a dozen of cars blocked our way out.
There is also a small old revitalised house with a typical berber mansion to be visited. Guilhem (see photo) helped out with tea cooking. The owner of the house, who tricked us into his home by promisingto show us the way to the Roman ruins took about an hour to cook tea. Luckily we managed to continue to the Roman mausoleum, about 20kms to the east of town (in Yefren they told us: 3-4 kilometers), because otherwise we would have missed another wartime memorial with loads of old ammunition and ammunition boxes. We could have taken away all of the ancient Roman stones, but were denied an empty RPG box.

Beach retreat of Gadaffis sons

If you have visitors these days, you must show them all the treasures of Tripoli. This includes also fallen treasures, or sights from the revolution. One of them are the beachhouses of the sons of Gadaffi in the former foreigner compound "Regatta".
The poshest of them is one directly on the sea, with an own little bay, an infinity swimming pool and lots of amenities, such as Gym, etc.

I do not remember anymore if it was Saadi's, Hanibal's or Muatassim's villa, which anyhow does not matter anymore. It is a spooky atmosphere, as the house was burnt down and hardly any other people are around, as the whole compound is closed for the public.
One can see the remainders from more glorious days, I am sure some of the revolutionaries still had fun driving around with the jet ski.

New time schedule Austrian Airlines / Lufthansa

With the change of Libya´s time zone to Central European Time (and the adaption of summer time as of coming spring), airlines also had to change their time schedule for flights to/from Libya.
Hence find in the following the new time schedule for Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa.
 

Benzinkrise

Da war aber noch etwas... Ach ja, die Benzinkrise, die eigentlich gar keine war.
Eines Tages (eigentlich kann man das ziemlich genau sagen, es war vergangenen Samstag) beschlossen ein paar Dutzend Bürger aus Zawiah, eine der Geburtsstädte der Revolution, die Raffinerie in ihrer Stadt zu besetzen. Der Grund? 150 Verwundete und Versehrte aus der Revolution sind durch den Rost gefallen und haben nicht von der grosszügigen Aktion der Regierung, diese Personen nach Europa zur Behandlung zu schicken, profitiert. Gefordert wurde, dass diese unverzüglich zur Behandlung nach Europa geschickt würden. Man hat sich einen neuralgischen Punkt ausgesucht,  denn die Aktion machte sofort die Runde in Westlibyen und binnen kürzester Zeit bildeten sich lange Schlangen an den Tankstellen. Die Bevölkerung fürchtete, dass das flüssige Gold versiegen würde, solange die Zu- und Abfahrten der Raffinerie blockiert sind. Die Regierung verlautbarte, dass die Reserven für mehrere Wochen halten würde, bis dahin sollte man eine Lösung parat haben.

Ein kleines Gefecht zum Wochenbeginn

Das hat es ja schon länger nicht gegeben: So ein richtiges kleines Gefecht mitten in der Stadt. Dabei ist das ja so eine willkommene Abwechslung im trüben Büroalltag: Da knallt es wenigstens wieder einmal ein wenig und man braucht dann auch schon ein paar Stunden um herauszufinden was wirklich los ist. Wo man besser nicht hinfaehrt das hört man ohnehin, und wenn man zu nahe ist, sperrt ohnehin die Polizei die Zufahrten ab. So ein wenig wie in Hollywood, wenn eben gerade wieder ein Film gedreht wird. Auch diesmal brodelte die Gerüchteküche: Von einem Gefangenen, der freigeschossen werden sollte, über zwei Milizen die durch einen Zufall begonnen aufeinander zu schießen bis zu den üblichen Hochzeitsfeierwerken war diesmal wieder einiges "drin". Das ganze spielte sich ca. 500m von unserem Büro ab, weshalb die Lärmentwicklung und der Hall relativ laut waren.  Aufregen hilft da auch nichts, denn einen halben Tag später war alles wieder vorbei. Selbst während des kleinen Gefechts (es kamen auch RPGs - Raktene zum Einsatz) sassen nur zwei Strassen weiter Tripolitanier ungestört bei ihrem Capuccino und beschwerten sich wahrscheinlich über den Hintergrundlärm.

Visit to Zintan

Bored during the weekend ? Why not go to Zintan ? About two hours easy drive away from Tripoli, Zintan makes a great excursion destination. Passing Ghariyan, the first settlement in the Jebel Nafusa (Western Mountains) one imagines why the troops of Gadaffi found it so hard to take the territorry. I was surprised how few checkpoints there were, the only majour one we encountered at the entrance to Zintan itself.

There a young men saluted us and wanted to chit-chat with us. (Us: a group of European colleagues)

Of course we were shown the Zintah museum, with some impressive paintings, and a lot of old ammuntion, weapons, tanks, etc.
A colleague asked if we could see Seif - but the response was just a laugh.

At the end we managed to see one of Gadaffis buses. But it seemed to be an old model, a bus that he might have used in the 70ies or 80ies.

Land Rover and Jeeps on the beach near Khoms

"You should not take your Landrover to the beach!" I will write this 500 times this week. Or maybe I should keep trying, until one day it works ? Anyhow, it is a bit frustrating getting stuck every time I go on the beach. And yes, I did let the air out of my tires. But the electronic in this ultra modern car, combined with a weight of nearly two tons, does not make it the ideal vehicle for Libyas beaches.

Luckily, within one hour, many friends came and tried to rescue us. It was a trial, at first, because you cannot pull out a Landrover with a Jeep Liberty. No way.

At the end, a Cheep Grand Cherokee with a 4,7l Turbo engine saved us from having to sleep on the beach.

Thanks Nasr ! 

Austrian National Day

 Finally we could celebrate our national day. Actually it is on 26 October, but on that day Eid Kebir was celebrated in Libya, so it had to be done on another date.
Last thursday Ambassador Hörlberger and his wife invited approx. 200 persons to the Mahari Hotel Radisson in Tripoli.
And many followed the invitation, making it a memorable evening.




However, first we needed to get over the obstacle of getting the flag right. It needed some explanation how to put it.
Maybe after "Felix" jumped from outer space, hotel staff thought that our national "bird", the eagle, also had to be upside down. "Same same like Felix".
Luckily I could convince them that not all of us come upside down.

 Asma Khalifa, from the Libya Youth Center acted as our translator - not the first time. And as usual, she did a very nice job.
Oh, yes, the strapline for our national day was being "surprisingly ingenious" - the new slogan for our foreign trade organisation "Advantageaustria" (www.advantageaustria.org)

We sould not miss out on Austrian sweets. Generous support of Austrian companies that export their products to Libya, such as: Manner, Rauch, Spitz, Pago, Pfanner, Red Bull made it possible that guests could taste a wide variety of products.

We felt especially honored that many high level politicians such as outgoing Ministers Hamroush (Health) and Tarbel (Youth and Sports), on picture, or new Ministers (such as Abdulaziz) and Members of Parliament attended our national day.
Also remarkable is the fact that so many Libyans attended. During the last few years this group was a minority. And most of the people who came were already known, because they attended all national days and were either very close to the regime, or reporting in one way or the other.