The reason why....

...I never went to see Lattakia but returned to Palmyra for another two days after Aleppo.
I found it very easy to adapt to their simple life style, it is like returning to an older, more natural state of being.

Wed, September 15, 2010

Aleppo and around

New photos from Aleppo and the surrounding area. More coming up tomorrow when the souk opens again after Eit, so stay tuned...
On the photo above you see St. Simeon/Qala'at Samman, the ruined basilica noth of Aleppo.

Sat, September 11, 2010 - 1:16 PM -

https://picasaweb.google.com/113264861998536374583/AleppoAndAround#

In Palmyra meeting the bedouins

Ended up staying three days in Palmyra, the desert town, instead of one, and half promised to some friends there to cancel half of my stay in Aleppo and come back there instead. Tonight they are having a big party for Eit al Fitr there. The muezzeen went on for an hour this morning after sunrise, with a whole chorus of people shouting "Allah akbar", "God is great", again and again. The end of Ramadan.
Later went with another bedouin friend into the desert on his motorbike, we climbed up to the top niche of a tomb with a great desert view, and danced in there together to bedouin music from his mobile phone. I almost shouted with delight, so much fun. Then he took me to his father's garden and picked me a few pomegranates and dates and gave me an olive twig for farewell presents. Then Baasil called me on my mobile because he knew I was leaving an hour later, and came to my hotel to say goodbye. When I arrived in the hotel lobby, he stood there, no longer in desert coloured jeans and tight shirt and green kefiyeh, but dressed up in an immaculate gleaming white dishdasha, with a cleanly wrapped shiny white kefiyeh, smiling his silent smile." Wow!" I said:"I tried to take your picture, but my camera broke, you are too beautiful for my camera!" It took me ten minutes to get it to work again, with new batteries from the store across the street, lots of fiddling with a pair of tweezers, plying the jammed lid for the battery case, but finally....
https://picasaweb.google.com/113264861998536374583/Palmyra?authkey=Gv1sRgCNbe_LyG8f2_9QE#

In Aleppo now, feeling like someone who ended up alone at Christmas, as everyone is celebrating Eit al Fitr with their families, even all the hotel staff is gone back to their villages, except one at the reception.

Fri, September 10, 2010 - 1:11 PM

Crossing the border back into Syria... on to Homs and Hama

Crossing the border back into Syria...

Sitting on the bus to Homs. This is a complete disaster and I regret that I did not take a service taxi. Felt like we spent almost an hour sitting around in the grubbiest part of the city, with more and more grubby, poor people getting on the bus and I had no idea when we were finally gonna depart and was unable to ask too as nobody spoke English. Now we are on the road and I sure am glad that I did not put Tripoli on my itinerary, oof!
I left Byblos this morning, after leaving a considerable sum of money there and am now looking forward to inexpensive Syria.
Bcharre was nice though a bit lonely as I felt like I was almost the only tourist in town. Met one other traveler who was staying in the room next to me in the Bauhaus pension. 30$ for a triple room with extra beds I did not need, and no service whatsoever, not even breakfast. Tony calls this "chalet style". I always thought, chalets were cottages...Well, it did have a communal kitchen that nobody seemed to use...
Here are my photos of Les Cedars and Bcharre in the beautiful Qadija valley which is the birth place of Khalil Gibran, the greatest of all poets... https://picasaweb.google.com/113264861998536374583/BcharreByblosBeiteddine# The image shows the hugging cedars in Les Cedars, Northern Lebanon

-------------------- In Hama now--------------------------------------------------------

One guy who looked like in a daze, with a bandage around his head and half covering one black swollen eye and an envelope with x-ray pics under his arm, got on the bus. When he kicked his suitcase down the aisle I felt scared because I thought, he acquired this injury in a recent fist fight. But maybe he was just too dizzy to bend over and pick up his luggage. Then a couple of young wives in headscarves, traveling with little kids. At the Syrian border they made me go in and finish my entry formalities and when I came back out, I could not find the bus and wondered if they had conspired to drive off with my suitcase and my rucksack with the netbook in it...After asking around, being pointed to a wrong bus full of strangers, I finally found it 100-200meters away around the corner, waiting. Then they dropped me by the side of the highway after whispering with the driver, and told me to get into a big yellow car there (a taxi without a sign??). The taxi driver again did not speak a word of English, and did not even know his way around in Homs, could not find my hotel that I asked him for. When he finally found it, he started carrying my suitcase up the staircase in a dilapidated old building with broken windows, in a dusty area of town, and I shouted, with the bits of Arabic I am capable of , thank God, from downstairs:"La, la!! La uhibbu!!" ('No,no, I don't like it!'), and told him to take me to a bank, so I could get some Syrian money, and then to the bus stop out of town with the buses going to the next city. He did, but he ripped me off- charged me 1000 Syrian pounds (about 16 $?) when for short taxi rides inside the city they charge only 50 pounds...
So when I got to Hama, and here they spoke English, were exceedingly helpful and moreover cheap (900 pounds for a room with shower and air con), I was so relieved...
Tomorrow I am off to the desert, to see Palmyra and meet the bedouins. = )

Mon, September 6, 2010 - 1:23 PM

On to Baalbek through Hezbollah country...and the art of riding Lebanese buses

Today I asked my way through to the bus to Baalbek from Zahle. First rejecting the taxi drivers, then asking several people, finally I talked to two women in Arabic and they stopped a taxi for me and told him to take me to the right bus stop down the road where the crossing is. Then I rode up the Bekaa valley, past a few soldiers, even saw a black tank parked by the road, until I arrived in Baalbek. There I had some coffee and hummus in a cafe, then asked the waiter for help and he took me to the entrance to the ruins and helped me hire a guide. And this is the result of an hour in the blazing sunshine, visiting the ancient temple of Bacchus where orgies have been celebrated, and seeing the temple of Jupiter and the sculpture of Cleopatra with the snake at her breast after she killed herself...The temples are gigantic, columns like 8 meters tall, towering over the valley..Baalbek is the highest point, the
Orontes and the Litani river both spring from here, flowing in opposite directions. On the way back I sat next to a young soldier in battle fatigues on the mini bus, and the two young men in front of me flashed me a photo of the Hezbollah chief with a grin on their faces. As the bus was driving down the bumpy road, Arabic music was playing loudly in the radio, in the familiar bellydance rhythm. Then we passed through a town where all the women were wearing hijab and I managed to form a question in Arabic and asked the girl next to me:"Ma ismu hadha madeena?"-what is the name of this town? "Ali Nakhle", she told me. I guess, anything starting with Ali means the people living there are Shia. We drove on, music playing, and tell you what: I got a kick out of this! The thrill of driving through a place that is very close to a territory where the embassies tell you not to enter, not knowing exactly where we were, feeling free and enjoying the smell of adventure. Yes, I noticed that the key to safe travel is speaking some Arabic and befriending the local people, accepting their friendly assistance whenever needed.

see my great photo album with 77 photos of Baalbek temples: https://picasaweb.google.com/113264861998536374583/BaalbekLebanonInTheBekaaValley#

Marhaban min Lubnan!- In Zahle, Lebanon, in the Bekaa valley

Marhaban min Lubnan!

   Tue, August 31, 2010 - 10:22 AM

Guys, I am in Lebanon!
I feel like, if you combined a town in the Black Forest or Tirol with a place in the Mediterranean, like Italy, you'd get this look here....
I also got a little adventurous and took out the golden Arabic metal applicator I bought on the Damascus souk yesterday and put on Arabic khol eyeliner with it. It worked and did not hurt. Yay! I can wear my strappy tops and dresses again, no longer walking around in billowing clothes and an occasional head scarf. ; )
Now I will stroll down to the river in Zahle and look for a nice open air restaurant to have dinner.

Tue, August 31, 2010 - 10:22 AM

In Damascus at last- Fallen in love with Al Sham!

Fallen in love with Al Sham!

My second night in Damascus. I returned after less than a week in Germany and again, even more so, it was somehow like coming home... My hotel is 400 years old and my room is up two narrow stone stairs which probably carry the foot prints of many, many generations of Damascene Arabs followed by many backpacker travellers, I sleep in a large heavy wooden bed in a small room with thick old walls, filled with pieces of antique Arabic furniture.
Tonight I ventured out into the souk again, this time I was almost ablle to find my way among the winding alleys, around the famous mosque, past countless shops selling bellydance costumes, fashionable hijab scarves, spices, perfumes, dried fruit, pastries, appliances...I already started to doubt whether the information I got from a fellow female traveler who works here as an intern, that "there are many places that say 'restaurant/cafe'" might actually be something like 'mataam wa kafwa" written in Arabic that I missed when I finally managed to discover where the alley with the restaurants was. Had dinner at "Bait al Shami", another old Arabic house with a large courtyard where dinner was served under a lemon tree and trellises of dangling grapes. I had my first glass of mulberry juice ever, and watercress salad which turned out to be chopped ruccola, perfectly fine with me, and "Shami kabop"/ Damascene kebab which was great.
Again I spent most of the evening communicating with my bits of recently acquired Arabic, and still don't know whether people actually speak English here as I have been told they would. I am so happpy, every time I manage to form another sentence from my Arabic vocabulary. And they do understand, yay! Nobody tries to switch to English when I do that. ; )
Then I picked my way back between the carts of nuts, little shops full of perfume flasks, raising my arms in mock despair at the car stuck and trying to move between the stone walls, pedestrians and carts of merchandise, exchanging smiles with a couple Arabic women in hijab. Walking home, feeling happy, and deeply inhaling the mixture of fragrances emanating from the shops, a heady blend of spices, perfumes, soap and waterpipe tobacco, and relaxing into my ancient surroundings, feeling part of it and very much at home. I am in love with this city, Al Shams/Damascus is called the oldest city in the world!
see 62 photos of Damascus and a bit of Zahle https://picasaweb.google.com/113264861998536374583/SYRIAANDLEBANON#

Sun, August 29, 2010 - 3:09 PM