The emperor and I

The rest of the Ethiopia trip turned out fine. Spent the weekend in
Mekele, about 100 km from the disputed border with Eritrea. I had some
free time on Saturday and thought about visiting some of the historic,
century-old churches in the region -- carved completely out of rock,
accessible only by scaling some decently steep terrain -- but I was
pretty tired from the long week. Also, my tour guide and the taxi he
had selected for the trip were pushing 60 years old, and I doubted any
of us could make it up a sheer rock face. Instead I stayed in my hotel
room, napped and made it through nearly the entire second season of
Family Guy on DVD.

Culturally insensitive? Perhaps. But the episode where Peter takes
over the community theater production of The King and I is classic.

Don't worry -- I was feeling guilty about not seeing any of the
sights, so on Sunday afternoon, with a few hours to kill back in
Addis, I went to two museums. The ethnological museum is set in
Emperor Haile Selassie's former palace, and the highlight is seeing
the emperor's bedroom -- still in its original condition, down to a
bullet hole in his dressing-room window, a remnant of the coup that
forced him from power in the early 1960s. They also have the emperor's
bed and a few outfits on display -- turns out he was about 5 feet
tall, immediately vaulting him into the ranks of my favorite emperors.

Pictures coming later this week.