Syria

Middle East » Syria
March 29th 2008

Published: March 29th 2008

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Ludwig

Damascus tea time

A happy moving-around tea seller in the streets of Damascus

I am currently in transit at the airport in Amman on my way to Muscat, Oman. I ended my last note commenting about the kindness of people in Jordan… this has been topped by the people in Syria when measured in terms of liters of tea offered and rapidity of people offering any kind of help (it has to be noted that I exclude all taxi drivers in Syria for the sake of this little exercise!)

Arrival in Syria
I took a three hour taxi ride from Amman to Damascus after an almost longer price negotiation and managed to awake a smile on the face of one Syrian official at the border which, I believe, is a fact so exceptional that it is worth mentioning on my blog! Having lost my Lonely Planet in Jordan, no Syrian pounds on me and all banks closed at the time of arrival, I got screwed in a dodgy currency exchange shop and by a local taxi driver within my first half hour in Damascus - but I guess that’s part of the many privileges of tourists.

Damascus
I spent two days in Damascus walking through the souq, tasting local sweets whose name

El presidente

Every street corner, monument, hotel, restaurant and shop must have (at least) one picture of the president

I can’t remember, devouring an uncountable number of pistachio nuts before my daily portion of shawarma and fresh tabouleh and sipping tea and cappuccinos amid a blended aroma of spices and shishas…it is pretty difficult to get more relaxed than that, trust me!

I left Damascus and the summit of the League of Arab Nations to which I was not invited to travel to Palmyra with Katja, a German student on holiday in Syria who I met at the hostel.

Palmyra
Dominant trading platform between the East and West along the Silk Road and capital of queen Zenobia’s empire that once defied Rome, Palmyra is today a vast site of ruins in the middle of the Syrian desert. Walking through the site gives a pretty good impression of the immense wealth and grandeur of this dead city. I even climbed a small mountain in order to observe the sunset - my efforts resulting only in burning some of the many calories I picked up in Damascus due to “bad weather” conditions (25-something degrees with some clouds).

A couple of hours by bus up north lies Aleppo, second biggest city in Syria.

Aleppo
If one wants to

Damascus: Omayyad mosque

One of the most important mosques in Islam. I walked through it during prayer time, very impressive

learn the skills of a good salesman, the Armenian part of the souq of Aleppo is the place to do it! I have never met so many people mastering this skill so well while at the same time switching between almost perfect German, English, French and even Dutch (not to mention Arabic and Armenian of course)! I wonder how I managed not to buy any 6 meter long carpets or silver jewelry with “really rare handcrafted stones” despite the heavy friendship discounts offered, only food stores and, for the third time during my trip, a sunglasses shop had the pleasure to see me cash out.

Many people in Aleppo will stop walking or get off their bike to shake your hand and exercise their foreign language skills for a couple of minutes or so, however, one subject nobody dares speaking about is interior politics (not even in Bavarian German - luckily for me as I don’t understand it either).

Aleppo was a great experience and will be a nice souvenir of my Middle East trip. Off to Oman now before visiting friends in Dubai and Qatar!

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