Coffee and dallahs and more

Believe it or not, but I did find a nice backyard open air cafe in Dubai, where you can even relax in the shadow of a real tree. It's close to Bastakia, the old, re-built area close to Dubai Museum near the mouth of the Creek (on the map at least). And of course I had to try Arabic coffee.

From what I heard, there are two main ways of preparing Arabic coffee. One way is to use cardamom or other spices such as saffron - which you can buy at a good price in Dubai's Spice Souk, by the way, and which gives the hot beverage a golden colour. The other version is called gahwa saada (plain coffee), it is without anything added and more bitter. It's that latter version I had so far - a bit unfamiliar for Western Europeans: the coffee powder remains in the pot after brewing, so you have to wait first till it settles at the bottom before you drink. Usually, you serve coffee in small cups, only just about covering the bottom of the cup.

By the way, invitations to have a coffee or tea seems to be quite common as a social event with Emiratee people - much more than invitations to their homes, with an invitation usually meaning that your contact person is at least entertaining the idea there might be a friendship in the making with you. Anyway, it would be quite rude to say 'no' without an important reason - of course only after politely declining the offer first, as only if the invitation is repeated, you can be sure it is sincere and not merely made out of politeness.

This, of course, is not necessarily the case with other people from other nationalities - which, as I mentioned earlier, make up about 80 percent of Dubai's population. So generally I'm finding it not an easy task to decide when to act upon which rule with people - are they Arabic, should I use what I read about good manners in Arabia? Or are they more internationally-minded, so I can simply adhere to our European codex of good manners? I definitely gave up on greeting people in shops in Arabic, as with very few exceptions so far, they all came from other nations so English was more appropriate. A good approach is to hold back a little, and see how the others behave and adapt your ways to that - at least in the beginning.

The pot in the picture above, by the way, is a small dallah, a special traditional coffee pot. Supposedly not the original UAE/Dubai design - which can be found on the back of the 1 Dirham coin (see right).

And such a dallah is what I bought last weekend at the Arabic Souk style shopping mall of Madinat Jumeirah (see - I get back to what I promised to write about earlier!). And without meaning to, I was quite successful at haggling - which is what you should try almost anywhere apart from in restaurants or supermarkets maybe.

The reason is: The price in many Arabic countries is, from the point of view of the seller, more the starting point for a discussion than what you actually pay in the end; the price will invariably be too high in the beginning. And don't worry, nothing will ever be sold without any profit. So haggling really is about making the markup as small as possible. There are translations of hillarious conversations around, also in some guide books, in which people not only ask about each other's well-being during a sales talk about dresses, but about family as well and supposedly even invent connections with people the other indicates to know just for the sake of establishing a link with each other. I have the distinct feeling that I should even have tried to haggle when I got a hair cut the other day - because the amount I paid seemed to be not in relation to other normal costs around here. However, I understand the tradition of haggling is much stronger in other Arabic countries. So it may be better not to exaggerate. There's certainly less drama in buying a carpet here than maybe in a traditional Egyptian market.

Back to my only half-intentional haggling. The thing is: I found the dallah in question quite expensive indeed; and was really reluctant to spend what I considered to be a lot of money on something I merely wanted to buy as a souvenir. So while I was standing there, with wrinkled forehead, trying to make up my mind if I really wanted to buy a souvenir like that at all, probably making incomprehensible noises of doubt in the process, the salesman just kept lowering the price more and more. After some time, he asked me what I'd consider a good price. Sure he'd object, I said a price still well below what he was asking for. To my utter surprise he said ok. So this is how it came that I got a souvenir - which probably is the cultural equivalent to a German cuckoo clock - at almost half the marked price.

Still I felt bad for spending the money. Which is why I decided to take a public bus instead of a taxi back. Which turned out to be a bad mistake.

Because, while buses are really new (and very cheap), run quite often on the main routes and even bus stops are air-conditioned, there is only a selection of the stops en route on display at the stop; and never a sign inside the bus where you could see where you actually are. Trying to follow the streets which the bus was slowly making his way through on a map, with street signs more than hard to read if there are at least two lanes of heavy traffic between you and them while darkness is falling, is as futile as resistance to Borgs in the Star Trek universe. So after a while, and as the person I asked for help apparently knew his way around (which is not necessarily the case if you approach people in the street, even though most will point in a certain direction; but they will do so even if they have little clue what you are talking about, simply for the sake of being polite and really wanting to help - I experienced that when I was looking for an ATM, and was sent in a new direction every time I asked only to find out there was one in the building I had started from), I got off.

And walked. Which took a long, long time. So coming by a shopping mall, I decided to make another buy - a Blue Bedouin CD (chillout music inspired by traditional themes and instruments, by a local Dubai band - go here and scroll down to "Hussain Al Bagali' to read about the man) to offset the frustration with some more retail therapy.

The next day, Saturday, I just went to the beach after I had visited the mosque (see my earlier entry) - to Jumeirah beach park to be exact, not far away from the Jumeirah Mosque, where you pay a few dirhams but get a nice beach next to a green park for. After having a healthy burger with fries, I had a healthy nap in the sand. And that was it for that day. Good I was protected from the sun by the sand in the air higher above the ground, which apparently came from a sand storm the day before. I really need du bai sunscreen.