Saudi Arabia strikes me like the Middle Ages with freeways.

Dr. Olga Popel, 34, is a rheumatologist in North Hollywood. She works 70 to 80 hours a week and gets relaxation from reading, tennis, biking, the theater and travel. Popel recently returned from an eclectic vacation that left her with vivid images that won’t go away.

My last vacation was a little exhausting. I started off with a midnight flight Friday into Paris, flew off Sunday night to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for a four-day sojourn, part business, part tourist. Then Thursday flew to Jidda, on the Red Sea, for a few hours. Then we zipped right out for a weekend in Geneva. Monday, jumped a train to Bern to visit friends, and that night traveled all the way across Switzerland into the French Alps to ski five days before taking the virus flu with me on a day and a half journey back to the States.

So it wasn’t what I would say was a relaxing trip. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had done a little less zigzagging and if Saudi Arabia hadn’t been quite as different.

As I’ve been thinking about it, Saudi Arabia just strikes me over and over again like the Middle Ages with freeways. The whole aura of the place seemed so familiar in the sense of what I’ve gained from history books, and yet jarring in the sense that I live in 1988 in America.

My friend met me at the airport with orchids in one hand and an abaya in the other. The abaya is a black formless garb, down to the ankles, that I was encouraged to put on right away, because I was wearing jeans that were unseemly. So I immediately complied. The rest of the trip was this constraint on where you could go, how you could get there.

I walked into a restaurant once, and my friend pulled me back and said, “Where are you going?” I said, “What do you mean? I’m going in to order lunch.” As a woman you can’t go into the restaurant. We had to order from the door frame and be handed our sandwiches so that we could eat them outside. It was so stressful.

One time we spent 15 minutes negotiating with the chauffeur of the hospital limousine because we were three single women and one single man and we wanted to go into town for dinner. He felt he would be held responsible for defiling the teachings of the Koran if he were to drive us into town for dinner. We told him that this was not immoral.

The supervisor of the limousine service of course immediately understood and reprimanded the chauffeur. For the 15-minute drive into town the chauffeur conversed with the interpreter about how unseemly this really was after all and that if it wasn’t against the policy, it should be against the policy.

My friend gave a party and I met a lot of ex-patriots as well as several Saudi individuals. Every single one of them was interested in speaking with an American and was so personable. A couple, she American, he Saudi, took me to their home for lunch. We just had the most wonderful time for three or four hours. They had such a warm, family, human spirit about them. The people have a great sense of hospitality.

But the system itself just made it very difficult for me to feel comfortable. There were so many images and so many things that baffled me. I felt I spent a lot more time there than four or five days. I found it extremely fatiguing to keep the curbs up, to keep the restraints up.

Later it hit me, in Geneva--it was such a liberation. I felt I could take a deep breath again, and not have to worry about whether I was dressed appropriately and whether I had remembered to bring my abaya with me. I just felt like I had all my options back.

I feel so badly coming back with this ambivalence about my time in Saudi Arabia because it contrasts so starkly with the generosity of the individual people and how warmly I felt in response to them. It’s difficult to come into a culture where you see things through a Western bias. I hope I didn’t misunderstand.