The coast was awesome, but all good things must come to an end, and I'm back in the heartland of Syria, seperated from the mediterranean by a range of mountains. I used to think it a bit lame when in geography class they'd talk about how the mountains would prevent the cool weather from the sea from reaching the hinterland... turns out it's true: I was running around the ruins of Crak des Chevaliers yesterday in a T-shirt, and although today the weather was fairly warm, it got pretty cold after sundown (true to desert style). I head a bit south [View Full Entry]

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I finally have pictures. I decided to splurge on the hotel last night, paying $6 rather than $4 for a room with private shower and cable tv. There was a really loud noise emanating from a water pump which threatened to cause hearing problems, but the manager assured me it would be over before 7pm, so I head out to explore. I got back around 1am and the noise was still going on. I asked the guys at the reception to turn it off and they were like "oh, sure, yeah we'll do it right away", so I go back to [View Full Entry]

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Most women in the old city of Aleppo wore some form of veil: the most common being a head scarf covering the hair. Some of the younger girls would cover their hair but wear tight jeans, which was interesting. A more common sight would be long flowy black clothing that sits on top of regular clothing, and commonly referred to as the "chadoor". It is here in Syria where I've first seen women with the entire face covered, essentially with a thin black cloth that gives one the eerie sensation that the person has their head screwed on backwards or are [View Full Entry]

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Aleppo, Syria. This is my 6th day in Syria. Spent the first couple days in the desert town of Deir Ez-Zur, in the eastern side of the country, with the Euphrates river running through the middle of town. I was pleasantly surprised at how friendly people are and how cheap everything is (comparing prices with Turkey, that is). People seeing me walking down the street would make me stop and drink tea with them, communicating with sign language and the few words of english they may know. Actually, the people on the street here seem to speak more english than their [View Full Entry]

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I'm in Mardin, the final stop before Syria. Perched on the side of a hill, crowned with a castle containing an immense radar dome spying on the middle east on behalf of NATO, packed with historical honey-colored houses lining crooked streets, Mardin is a real beauty. At least the old city is. There's the obligatory concrete sprawl, but it's kept in the back so as to not ruin the view. And the view is beautiful: an unspoilt plain, stretching out as far as the eye can see and beyond, into Syria. The weather has been clear for the last couple of [View Full Entry]

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Greetings to my loyal following. The past few weeks have found me extremely lazy and/or too busy to sit down and blog. Now that I finally find time to do so I don't have any pictures with me (left them all in Istanbul), so this will be a boring blog without pictures (which means Baybora won't be reading it). Since I last blogged I have: Been to Cappadocia Cappadocia was awesome: Goreme, with deserted valleys full of phallic towers with houses and churches carved into them, trudging through knee-deep snow all day long, occassionally taking refuge in a cave (which, I [View Full Entry]

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Bedreddin's adventures are now featured on the "Highlights" section of the main travelblog.org page. Yeah, baby! The roughly 2 weeks since my last blog were spent in the stupor that comes over me when I go to Istanbul. During that time I met old friends, sat around a lot and picked up a new time-killer pastime: learning the Ottoman script. The Ottoman empire used (a slightly modified version of) the arabic script, but Ataturk did away with that with a wave of the omnipotent hand. The result in practice is that people nowadays are unable to read family albums dating from [View Full Entry]

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Hitched across rolling fields and afternoon fog through Eastern Thrace to Edirne, less than 20 miles from Bulgaria and Greece. My hitchhiking fortunes have vastly improved since my comparative inexperienced days a month ago. Being offered a ride while not hitching is no longer an uncommon experience, and I don't think I hitched for more than 15 minutes before getting picked up. It may have more to do with the drivers in Thrace than anything to do with me. Edirne was the Ottoman capital prior to the liberation of Istanbul, and home to many mosques and other historical entities. T [View Full Entry]

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So finally, after 5+ weeks of traveling, I made it to Canakkale, no more than 500km away from Istanbul where I started off. A record-setting pace. Yeay. After Bozcaada I head over to the ruins of Troy. I daresay it was a bit much for my untrained eye. There are the ruins of 9 levels of city (Troy I-IX), from different periods, all on display simultaneously and more or less undistinguishable (and unremarkable). The informational signs (as usual) obviously didn't have the casual traveler in mind and didn't help me visualize what things must have been like. Definitely needs more work. [View Full Entry]

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So the holy month of Ramadan is here: muslims are commanded to fast while the sun is up throughout the month. Today was the first day and I'm a little anxious about what this will mean for me; finding open restaurants may be problematic in the more devout portions of the country. I was drunk last night -- I'm going to hell in a handbasket. But more about that later. I've been busy since my last blog at Ayvalik, but I didn't want to post without having pictures, so I've been holding out. Now I'm on an island, and the only [View Full Entry]

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