From dust till dust

When we opened the doors of Doutzen at twelve o’clock in the morning at the Syrian border, we were surrounded by a madness of cars and screaming Jasser Arafats. That ain’t a problem for us, so Minne took a closer look at the old cabins filled with Kalashnikovs and uniforms. Something had to happen about the crazy entrance-fee, so with his best Arabic he found out that the CPD created a discount of $100,-. Nice, but not enough; with not enough cash in our pocket and the lack of a ATM-machine we were pretty much stuck between two borders. Unfortanetly, the old cabins where modern enough to have a computer, so we couldn’t sjanter our way in. Also the old-fashion way of trading with t-shirts wasn’t going the help, because somehow the bearded Arabics don’t like the Dutch fashion.

Luckily the government were kind enough to station a tourist officer at the border for the few stupid people getting by car into the country. Between all the sorries and welcome to Syria’s he helped us out by lending us some Syrian pounds. Also he talked to the customs-officers, so we didn’t had to empty our car like all others, and therefor could easily sneak all our stuff over the border without a glitch! 12 offices and 13 stamps later we finally drove into a country containing a lot of dust and even more rocks. A big difference after the wonderful green coast of Turkey.

The Aleppo bazar

After paying our helping tourist-guy his money back we started to scout the Aleppo city. We wanted to see the famous Aleppo bazaar, which seems to  the biggest and oldest in the world. This bazaar with a total length of fourteen kilometer is a must see. The narrow covered streets are filled with small stands, which are filled with screaming men trying to sell their stuff for ridiculous prices to tourists and normal prices to the locals. Every few meters you’ll find a new street, a inner-square or road to an old mosque. While we were walking between the buildings build centuries ago, we were amazed by the enormous amount of activity, colors of fabric, smell of spices and feeling us like the princes of Persia. Moving through one of the oldest cities in the world, you feel small and tiny while realizing the immense history purging from the street.

Not looking like genuine Syrian, we soon were easy meat for the local merchant. When a local salesman wanted to sell us something of his hand-made silver (yeah,right), he soon found out we were not the average tourist with to much money in the pocket. But we do like our thee, so after a while he couldn’t get us out of his toko. The nice merchant could understand the Dutch humor and introduced himself as Adil, called his friend Sam to meet us too and again effordless tried to sell us something. Meanwhile some Arabic scarfs cought our eye, which we could use to look more like a genuine local. With a big smile Alid accepted our old-fashion trading methods and happilly accepted the Dutch T-shirts, so we can conquer the dessert.

Proudly wearing our new scarfs around the head Adil and Sem introduced us into the city, where Doutzen barely could keep up with the crazy taxidrivers. Traffic consists of old Benzes, strange Aziatic brands, old hippie-vans in perfect condition and the cars from the United States seems to be more popular than their people. While smoking the waterpipe we met Victor, a great French Syrian, who made his fortune with parfumes and now living a big house. Because he had only one bed in his big house, the other 6 rooms were perfect for the ThreeLeftHands, also a good shower and a steady toilet where welcome.

The next day we were planning to catch some tourists for Adil, and so earn some cash, but not before we visited the famous Citadel. A good way of earning we thought, but first we wanted to take a look at the mighty citadel that is next to the bazar! we were aware that the entrance fee would be huge for this old piece of architexture, so while entering the citadel we agreed to get into this block of stone for not more than the studentprices! with our coffie and thee passes from our old college we chantered our way into the citadel! 20eurocents we had to pay and it was wurth it! WIKIPEDIA

After seeing the citadel we left and walked straight into the bazar! its time to earn some money! We made a plan and splitted the group. While Minne was busy trying to escort some foreign tourists to the silver, Henk and Mukkes lost the spirit and walked into some strange events! first they got thrown out of the mosque! Mukkes had his shorts on and that was probably to sexy for the well covered moslim woman… So they left and ran into a guy that started talking about being an honest salesmen and got them into the religious kind of chitchat. Then the men tried to search for tourists, that stopped pretty quick while being seduced by a male prostitute. it scared the hell out of them and luckily some other guy came in to calm us down with an unbelievable explanation.
It didn’t work out after all, so we met at Alid’s place where we drank a cup of thee to end the day.

Camels and Waterwheels

Well, the sales thing didn’t work out, so we decided to move on. You know, because of the extremely low prices for the gasoline, you are obligated to pay a dieseltax of $100,- a week, which forces us to move on with haste. We did leave late in the afternoon and decided to stop somewhere in a village to spend the night. Mostly, villages are nice and quiet so they provide an excellent place to sleep. This time however, it wasn’t. When driving into an orchard some lights doomed up in our rear view mirror and we stopped to wait for them. The lights belonged to some mopeds, that, on their turn, belonged to some males in dresses. The men didn’t only own some mopeds, they also had a shotgun. Well, thats an easy language to understand. The shotgun made us decide to drive right on to Hama, where we wanted to see the famous waterwheels anyway. Of course our semi-monkey Mukkes couldn’t help himself and climbed in the 10 meter high wooden wheels, and while Henk got lessons in Arabic-dancing-with-strange-man-that-dance-funny, a little boy threw Minne on a camel. It was to expect that the man was going to ask for money afterwards, but it was also to expect that we weren’t going to pay a dime. We didn’t care that the little bugger followed us for half an hour.n voor de watervoorziening in het anders kurkdroge Hama.

Sjantering in Persia

Damascus was way more fun than Hama. After parking Doutzen in front of a hotel where we would borrow some electricity later that night, we walked to the old center of the city. Through the bazaar, thats wider than the one in Aleppo, you walk right into the Great Mosque of Damascus. Naturally we wanted to check this beautiful structure out and we walked into it. Immediately some guards came asking for an entrance fee. An entrance fee? For a house of God? What the…? We began to sjanter, called the personel a bunch of Farisians and asked what Allah would say about that. The guards didn’t know and called for the imam, who was wonderfully friendly and while spending some time talking to the men we learned that the Islam in these countries is much more open then in Western Europe. The man even declared the Islam and Christianity to be the same. Well, you can’t get that kind of talk from a Dutch Imam! We got some Arabic coffee and were allowed to enter the mosque, which is a blend between religions. Not only are there still traces of Pagan gods, also the tomb of John the Baptist can be found here. Pretty strange to see a grave from a person that you only know from the bible.!

Last stop on our hasty trip through Syria was Bosra, near the Jordan border. Here the ‘coffeepasisastudentcard trick’ worked again for a ancient castle and theater. Along our journey we can handle the situations where locals think we’ve got a lot of money with improving skill. The restaurant that offered us the use of internet and a cup of thea asked a stunning five euro the hour for using electricity. That got even worse when they wanted to see money for the internet and tea that was supposed to be free earlier. Well, a streetlight provided us with the needed electricity and due some subtle sjantering we didn’t pay for the tea and internet. The pretended hospitality here made us lose our confidence in Arab people and we wanted to move on. A week in this country was long enough after all. Towards Jordan!

Tags: aleppo, asia, damascus, syria