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Published: December 27th 2009
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On Sunday I felt like doing nothing much so I stayed in Sally's flat. I did want to explore the city a bit on my own and so in the late afternoon I went for a walk and followed Sally's directions towards the national museum and the arts and crafts market that is located behind the museum.
A very cosy market with loads of different stuff all hand made. I bought some typical wooden damascus art boxes and strolled around to get some ideas what to take with me for presents.
Round 6pm I returned home, we invited some friends and had the left overs from that delicious meal Sally made on Saturday.
Since I didn't see much of the old Damascus yet, I met one of Hanan's friends on Monday morning. He was willing to guide me through the old city. Fedi took me to one of the very old hotels with a court yard. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera that day in the flat and took some pictures with my mobile. The quality is a bit less but it will give you an idea. There was an exhibition going on of Syrian artists. Really nice, different styles and there
I was confronted with our western ideas that in the Middle East people can't just paint what they want. It is nice to be confronted with prejudices like that.
After the exhibition we went to another kind of museum, this one used to be the house of a very rich family and in fact, the hotel where the exhibition took place used to be from that same family. This house had several rooms like the hammam (bathroom in Arabic), the mother in law's room (this was the room for the mother of the groom), the room where men had their 'shisha' and so on...
I met two of Fedi's friends and we visited the most important mosque in Damascus. Unbelievable, so beautiful on the inside. I had to wear a long cloak because I wasn't wearing any long dresses and so was Mariam, the friend who joined us. To me a bit strange but the normal way to enter a mosque so no big deal.
Fedi had some time free and he was going to travel to Aleppo with me the next day so after a very nice day in Damascus I said goodbye to Fedi's friends and went back
home. At night we went to a little snack restaurant with some of Sally's French colleagues.
Thanks to Sally I found a couchsurfer in Aleppo so I didn't have to worry about where to sleep :-)
The next morning, Fedi and I met under the President's bridge where all the busses stop and found our way to the bus station.
It's a huge bus station where different bus companies are located and where you just pick your destination like a travel agency, you walk through security check and off you go.
We found a cheap ticket to Aleppo and we took off. It wasn't a direct ride, we had to stop in Homs and Hama but we got there in the end.
I was really lucky to have an Arabic guide with me, to Fedi, Aleppo was new too but at least he understood what people were saying :-)
When we arrived in Aleppo, we took 2 buses to the old town and the citadel but we had forgotten it was a Tuesday and on Tuesday museums are closed.
So there we were, loaded with our stuff for 3 days and a closes citadel. We decided to check out
the souck in the old town. I read in my tour guide that Aleppo is thé soap city and that we learned from them how to use soap and make soap. So with our backpacks, we went to look for soap or as it is called in Arabic 'savon', so this is where the French got their word for soap ;-)
After some negotiations we found some nice soap and we walked on, through the small streets of Aleppo.
Fedi's family lives in Aleppo so we went to see them and they offered us a cup of hot 'chai' (thee) with cinnamon, delicious. The lady of the house baked her own cookies, filled with dades, really nice. I asked for the recipe but I still have to ask someone to translate it for me (my Arabic is very poor ;-) )
After thee I met Jamal who was going to host me in his flat.
Aleppo is a very traditional city, you see a lot more veiled women than you see in Damascus but on the other hand, you walk from the Islamic quarter into the Christian quarter. You find churches and mosques next to each other. People live next
to each other without any problem. And than when you think of home where veils are seen as a problem, where building 4 minarets are seen as Islam taking over Europe. It's just so ridiculous.
The next morning we started our day by visiting the national museum in Aleppo. If there is one thing I really didn't like in Syria, it was the fact that you can smoke everywhere, even where it says, 'no smoking'. Imagine, you enter a museum and people at the desk are smoking, even in the museum. They are working on this problem but it takes a lot of information and education before something like smoking will go away ...
After the museum we found some nice little museums all around in the old city. The old ciity is very well preserved and that makes it very authentic.
Eventually we managed to find the citadel again. I was expecting a lot more, I was hoping to find torture methods like you find them when you visit castles like in Gent or in Carcassonne but instead we just found ruins. Very nice of course but after 1 hour in the citadel, you have seen it all.
Our
plan was to stay in Aleppo until Thursday morning and to go to Palmyra before going back to Damascus but it turned out that we had to travel from Aleppo to Homs before we could go to Palmyra and that would have been a 5 hours journey. We decided to leave Aleppo Wednesday night and to go back to Damascus.
We said goodbye to Jamal and Murdoch and their nice flat and to Fedi's family and took off to Damascus.
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