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Published: September 2nd 2006
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St Peter's Church
One of the first sites of Christian worship in the world My first blog from the Syrian Arab Republic! The good news is that I am here and established in Damascus. The bad news is that I don't seem to be able to access my hotmail account. I am unclear if it's just a local problem with this cafe, or if access to the hotmail website is blocked across Syria. We shall see. In the meantime, I can't get to my e-mails, so anyone who is trying to contact me may have troubles for the next week until I get to Jordan.
So, to pick up from the last blog, I was in Antalya, and after a 15 hour bus ride I made it to Antakya, the closest Turkish city to the Syrian border. After investigating the bus connections there, I realized the connections were much smoother than I an anticipated, so I was a day ahead of schedule. So I decided to delay my entry into Syria for a day, and spent the afternoon wandering around Antakya, which is not too bad as far as border cities go. Went and saw the Church of Saint Peter, which is apparently one of the oldest places of Christian worship in the world, then went to the local Archeological museum and wandered around there (they had air conditioning and a cheap admission fee; I was so fascinated by this one tomb right next to the air conditioner that I spent half an hour sitting there looking at it ). And that was my last day in Turkey
The next day was my travel day for crossing over into Syria. There is only one bus going direct from Antakya to Damascus, and it leaves at 11 AM. It is a nine hour trip, meaning that arrival is in the evening after sunset. More on that in a sec. First up was the Turkish border to get an exit stamp. This was one step above total chaos, huge numbers of people crowding around two tiny windows in a concrete building shoving their passports forward to get them stamped. The process was painfully slow. When it came my turn, the guy takes my passport, flips through all the pages slowly, even though most of the pages are blank, looks at my Turkish entry stamp from every conceivable angle, as though looking at it upside down will be the key to understanding it that eluded him by looking at it right side up, waits for several minutes while typing something slowly into his keyboard while taking a long slow sip of his tea, and then he finally decides to stamp it and give it back to me without asking any questions of me. All the time I'm getting crushed up against the window by the people behind me wanting to be next. I was actually one of the quicker ones. Those people who had genuine issues to be resolved took far longer. Once everyone on the bus went through this process, we then traveled over to the Syrian entry border post, which was actually far more civilized. The whole thing took place inside a large air conditioned building, with signs clearly marked in Arabic and english for where people should go, all with the smiling faces of Bashar and Hafez Assad grinning down at me from about a dozen portraits. This is common throughout Syria. By the time I leave this country I'll probably see those two guys faces in my dreams. But anyway got throught the Syrian border with no problems and again no questions asked.
From there it was an uneventful bus ride to Damascus. When we got there, this is where the fun began, since I had (kind of naively) assumed that I could easily change my Turkish money when I got there, and so I had no Syrian money of any sort upon arriving. We arrived at the Damascus bus 'station' which is really just a series of parking lanes for the buses to pull up in and drop people off. There are no buildings, no exchange booths, no bank machines, no shops, no telephones, and no helpful tourist information people. Just a bunch of people milling around with taxis waiting. So here was me at 8PM, arriving in Damascus with no money to a bus 'station' on the outskirts of the city, way to far to walk to the hotel I'd made a reservation at. Luckily, as I was walking about, trying to figure out what to do, the guy I'd sat with on the bus came up and asked if I needed any help. I explained that I didn't have any Syrian money and asked if he could exchange some with me? He didn't have very much to spare, but taking into account my situation he agreed to give me five dollars worth of Syrian money in exchange for the equivalent in Turkish money. He then offered to ride in a service bus with me (essentially a minivan size vehicle that serves as public transit for locals), and direct me to where I should get off, to which I accepted. So here I was riding around with a bunch of locals in a minibus, including a few members of the Syrian military, with no idea of where I was going. This is one of those strange backpacker moments that one does not forget for quite a while afterwards. So I got off where I directed to, which was in the vicinity of but not at the hotel I was trying to get to. At this point I had to whip out my compass and Lonely Planet map and navigate my way to the hotel, which is not as easy as it sounds when its dark out and all the street signs are in Arabic which I can't read. But it's all good, I made it there eventually, and checked in. It's now a day later and I still haven't found a place which will accept Turkish lira, which is strange, however Damascus does at least have bank machines, so I do have some of the local currency now.
So to summarize Syria so far: Main Damascus bus station = crap! Not impressive at all. Photos, paintings, scultpures, posters and other likenesses of Syrian President Bashar Assad and now deceased former President Hafez Assad are EVERYWHERE. Talk about overkill, but whatever. A more recent poster to crop up is that of Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah smiling down in solidarity with President Assad with the Lebanese flag flying in the background. This is all great stuff. Highly amusing. I also saw a kid riding a bicycle with a Hizballah flag attached to it. As for non political stuff, Damascus is quite a modern city, on par with Cairo and some of the cities I saw in Turkey (maybe not Istanbul). So for everyone who thinks this is some sort of pariah backwater state on par with North Korea, think again. Bank machines are fairly common, many people speak at least some english, they have Coke and Pepsi (insert sigh of relief here), and late model vehicles, including Ford. No McDonalds that I could see, but nobodys perfect. My strong feeling at the moment is that if the Syrian government got the right offer from the Israelis and the Americans involving the return of the Golan Heights, they would jump ship on the Iranians in a heartbeat. They certainly already have the market economy and foriegn investment thing figured out already. So that's all for now. I will blog again in a few days after I've had a chance to explore the old city. By for now
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