Disorientation

It took me a lot longer than normal to get my bearings in Riyadh.  Usually, after only a few days or maximum a couple weeks I can pretty well find my way around in a new place, and it's a given that if I've been somewhere before, I can get back.  It was a different story here.  Unlike in a city with any public transportation to speak of -- there is none in Riyadh-- where you just need to become familiar with individual stops and parts of town and then the specific lines that connect them, here everyone drives everywhere and everything basically looks the same.  The whole city is a series of highways and intersecting divided roads laid out in a grid and looped by a ring road which is simple enough in theory but in practice takes some getting used to.  There are few discernible land marks, and since there is zero topographical diversity, the only ones you can use are buildings.   This was drastically compounded by my being cramped into the company provided minibus to and from work without the chance to check much out, including the street signs and exit numbers which are, in fact, for the most part bilingual. But now, after almost two months, I'm finally able to direct cabdrivers to take efficient routes, I'm becoming familiar with street, neighborhood and exit names, and things are going much more smoothly.

It also took me a lot longer to figure out my cardinal directions.  I couldn't understand why the grid of roads laid out at right angles didn't seem to line up north, south, east and west when I tried to use the sun to orient myself.  I never knew which direction I was going because I never seemed to be heading strait in any direction.  Everything was slightly skewed.  I came to realize after finally sitting down with a map that the entire street grid is rotated about 20 degrees counterclockwise.  It took me another little while to figure out why.  You see, the loop highway that circles the city is actually more of a square and the horizontal road at the bottom of the square instead of running strait from east to west and vice versa, heads from the northeast to the southwest.  It heads out of town to the southwest to Mecca, the holiest city in Islam.  The rest of the roads on the grid then have been oriented with that one and run either parallel or perpendicular to it.  All the buildings are understandably oriented the same way.  I'm not sure which came first, the orientation of the buildings or the roads, but regardless everything lines up on these axes.  There's never any question as to the direction of Mecca.  It's also convenient for Muslims who must face Mecca five times a day for prayer as they get to face the wall instead of a corner.  It seems in fact, that the direction of Mecca is much more important than north, south, east or west, but for the most part people will still say something is "north" of something else even though it's actually northwest of it.