Hi dear readers. Colleen and I decided to stay in Damascus (and all of Syria) for much longer than anticipated. In fact, we arrived in Beirut a week later than originally planned. Whoops. But this is what I love about long-term travel – the flexibility to change your plans whenever a whim hits you. Which brings me to last Saturday…
Last Friday on Colleen’s birthday, I took her out for a lovely meal in Damascus (Syrian food is fantastic, by the way, someone needs to tap into this!!!) and we went out dancing at a club in the old city that was basically a 1000+ year old cave. With a DJ from London perched in the upper corner. Crazy!! We danced til the wee morning with hip young Syrians and woke up too late the next day to check out of the hostel so we postponed Beirut plans again. Saturday night was supposed to be a quiet one, but we ended up going to dinner with three other travelers Colleen had met at an internet cafe – a Brit, an American (the only American we’ve met!) and an Italian, all guys (we rarely meet other female travelers, which is sad). We went to a gorgeous restaurant with a balcony and a huge courtyard in the middle that was alive with singing and dancing from a huge wedding/engagement party (we think).
We ate on the balcony and Colleen milked her birthday card even though it wasn’t her birthday anymore and the waiter brought a complimentary chocolate cake with four kinds of ice cream out for her! He insisted on it, saying he wanted her to have a great memory of Syria. The hospitality in the Middle East continually amazes me. Then the three boys decided to pay for the meal because it was her birthday, another lovely gesture considering we had just met hours earlier.
Giacomo, the Italian who had recently arrived in Syria to travel after working in Iran as a chef, had plans to rent a car and go to Lattakia the next day. Lattakia is a city on the Mediterranean coast of Syria, known for being a laidback beach town. He invited us to go with him, and we decided in a split second to go and postpone Beirut since he said he would do all the driving. Driving in the Middle East is like playing some kind of insane version of Grand Theft Auto, but with more cars, no lanes and incessant hooking.
So the next day we took off – three foreigners in a rental car in Syria, armed with a map and about ten words of spoken Arabic between us. The highways in Syria are well-paved and signs to major cities are marked clearly in Arabic and English. We drove about 350km to Lattakia, arriving at the main hotel on Blue Beach after following road signs to “Touristic North,” where we were told to ask about rental apartments in the area. The reception guy told us to “talk to the guy standing on the corner,” so we went outside and found the rental guy who called his English-speaking friend so that he could translate during this entire interaction. We decided on a furnished three-bedroom apartment on the water with a terrace and a great view and paid less than $40 a night for it, extravagant for backpacker standards but such an amazing deal!
Lattakia is definitely the most laidback place I have seen in Syria. Women generally have their heads uncovered and wear tight, tight clothing! We even saw trannies walking down the street, something you NEVER see in the Middle East (except Istanbul). I think it’s the Mediterranean beach influence, because there’s also lots of Italian food there. People look Italian too! We had pizza for dinner and had a few beers on the terrace afterwards. We ended up chatting all night on the terrace, having switched to tea since the beer had long since run out. After watching the sun rise over the Mediterranean, instead of going to bed we decided to go visit Qalat al-Saladdin, a castle/fortress built roughly around the time…oh, I don’t know, when Jesus was walking around. Nuts.
The castle was only 24km away, so we figured we would check it out in the gorgeous early morning sun and head back to the apartment in relatively no time at all. Ha! Things never work that way, as we always realize later on. We got horribly lost and asked about fifteen different people how to get to the castle. Asking strangers for directions is almost comically ineffectual when you don’t speak Arabic. Here’s what would generally happen:
1. We pull up, roll down the window.
2. The Syrian is shocked by these three foreigners driving a car and doesn’t register what we are saying because he/she is too busy staring at the freakish combination of an Italian guy, a blonde girl and a Korean girl.
3. We repeat the name of the castle several times.
4. The Syrian recovers from the shock, develops a huge smile and gestures enthusiastically in Arabic about which direction to go into.
5. We smile, say “Shukran jazeelan!” (thank you very much) and drive away, still not having any clue which way to go.
After contemplating driving on the highway in the wrong direction (Syrians do it frequently because you can’t get off the highways and back on in a different direction), we suddenly found our way and drove up to an area that looked EXACTLY like Tuscany – Cyprus trees, rolling hills, brilliant violet wildflowers – absolutely gorgeous and totally unexpected. We arrived at the castle three hours after we left the apartment at exactly nine on the dot, opening time.
Upon arrival we were offered tea by the castle guards, so we sat and chatted with them for awhile before exploring an almost empty giant castle/fortress/citadel thingy. We walked along the extremely precarious castle wall (with a several hundred foot drop on one side), explored the ruins, watched Colleen fall off a donkey into a puddle of mud, and met the sweetest 15-member Iraqi family on vacation. Fabulous morning! We were delirious with lack of sleep at this point, but spent three delightful hours there. Around noon we finally left to grab some lunch and head back to the apartment. On the way home some police tried to wave us over, but Giacomo gunned the engine and sped away instead. Giacomo had been told that the police only pull over foreigners to extract bribes, and that if you just drive away quickly they are too lazy to follow you (I mean, they have important tea-drinking and backgammon-playing to attend to!). I can now confirm that this is true.
Our next few days in Lattakia were not nearly as eventful, but, as we like to call it, the perfect “vacation from our vacation.” We did a whole lot of nothing besides laying around, walking to the beach, sitting on the terrace, drinking beer, letting Giacomo cook for us and making fun of unintentionally hysterical Arabic television shows. Giacomo also regaled us with fascinating stories of life in Iran. My favorite anecdotes include the popularity of the “burqini,” a scuba-suit-like bathing suit, and an Iranian television channel that solely features a still camera angle of a river running through a grove of trees with tinkling music in the background. And sometimes rain on the trees, because there are no trees, pretty rivers or rain in Iran. So people watch it on television – just as good!
Three nights later we finally tore ourselves away from Lattakia and drove to Aleppo, the most conservative city in Syria. Talk about culture shock! Colleen and I immediately covered our arms and heads because almost all the women were in full chador. The traffic in Aleppo was even more manic than the traffic in Damascus, so cars would come to a screeching stop an inch or two away from each other, in every direction, honking honking honking. SOOO stressful for driving – Colleen and I were so glad that we didn’t have to deal with it. When we finally parked I vomited in my mouth, which basically describes how I felt about that place. People rave about the ”authentic” souks (covered markets) in Aleppo, but there were full of elderly German tourists and male harrassment on par with Istanbul. Ugh. Compounded by the fact that Giacomo had to leave us to meet a friend back in Damascus, we felt harrassed, intimidated and generally sort of unsafe during our brief stay there. We were followed and yelled at constantly, which can be kind of a downer! After a day we got the hell out of there and back to Damascus for a night before leaving for Beirut the next day.
Getting from Damascus to Beirut was another circus as as well, but I’ll save that for my next entry about Lebanon. Beirut is currently on the brink of war - political parties at a standstill with Hezbollah everywhere, but what an exciting place to be (and not as dangerous as you would think).
