A safety belt
Visitors to Israel are usually surprised by the numbers of security personnel almost everywhere you go – at the cafes, the malls, supermarkets and almost any other public place. Israelis are already, unfortunatelly, used to that.
To me it came as a surprise when I first arrived in the hotel in Amman. “Feels like home,” was my first reaction towards one of the German hosts who was with me while my bags were checked through, I walked through a magnometer and was body-checked by a local security guard.
“No, it’s not like at home,” she insisted, although she hasn’t been to Israel. If I would have looked like an Arab, they would have made it even a more extensive search, she explained to me. “It’s because of al-Qaeda“, she added.
Only minutes earlier I was asking about the presence of police and military in the streets, because according to what I knew, this was the key for the stability in Jordan. But I’ve been answered that security personnel are seen only rarely.
When we arrived at the Goethe Institut in Amman I was overwhelmed to find a policeman sitting in a small police booth outside. “That’s because of the Danish Mohammed cartoons,” said the German host. No panic – the soldiers by the plastic barricades 50 meters up the street? That’s just because a member of the Royal family lives nearby.
