On Falafel and taxi cabs

Tonight I went to eat at the Automatic Restaurant, a Lebanese place that sells falafel sandwiches for the entirely too reasonable price of 5 dirhams. For those of you without a currency calculator handy, that's a little more than $1, and such value adds to the deliciousness of all things food-related.

I even took a picture of the spread for Friend of the Blog and sandwich aficionado Pete. Sadly, it is not yet available for public consumption.

But anyway. After hiking all over town today, I thought I would hop in one of the city's multitudinous and fantastically well-air conditioned taxis to go to dinner. And in it, I had my first political taxi conversation.

It was a bit difficult to follow for both of us, I think, as the gentleman driver's English was as weak as his opinions were strong. So it's possible that something got lost in "translation" when he told me he loved George Bush and, in the same breath, added that the Taliban, although bad people, had some decent ideas. Also, he hated dancing... a fact he stated right after he asked if I enjoyed it (I don't). A really friendly guy who felt we were kindred spirits because the U.S. has too much water (?) and Abu Dhabi has too much money (??).

But the falafel was easy-to-understand awesome.