Here's the link!
So, we arrived at the Syrian embassy some time around 10 or 11 AM, I believe. It was unbelievably hot, and there was no AC inside, just lots of big open windows. The place was pretty dingy: a long, large hallway with lots of counters along the side for various nationalities to get their passports stamped. There were no other Americans, so we were kind of on our own, but already we got to see how friendly Syrians were. We'd stand around and look confused and someone would come up to try to help us. Eventually, some officials came out from behind a door and determined that we were Americans and needed visas, so he led us back to an office where we sat around for a bit and then got grilled about all of our travel plans. The officials spoke a little English, but we had to conduct a good portion of the transaction in Arabic, so it was really helpful to have Matt with us. It actually wasn't quite so intense as we might have expected. The one dodgy bit was when we got to discussing getting from Jordan back to Cairo. Of course, Syria hates Israel, and they don't grant entry to any person having an Israeli stamp on his passport, or even an exit stamp from a port adjacent to Israel, as that obviously implies an Israeli entry. This was the primary reason that we did the trip in this direction, rather than going up through the Middle East and flying home from Athens. If we'd done that, we'd have had to worry about keeping Israel from stamping our passports.
Anyway, they wanted to know if we'd be passing through Israel on our way back from Jordan to Egypt. I'd of course made sure that Matt knew not to tell them that we had plans to visit the Holy Land, but I failed to brief him adequately on the details. When they asked us how we'd get from Jordan to Egypt without passing to Israel, he told them we'd take a train. The thing about that is, Egypt and Jordan share no land border, so you either have to take a ferry or enter Israel. When we got back out to the lobby, I asked Matt about that interaction, and when we realized what had happened, we started to get a little worried that they'd think this meant we in fact were going to Israel. I began to rehearse my Arabic for, "I planned the trip so he didn't know that we were taking a ferry from Aqaba to Nuweiba. We will not be taking a train and we will not be going through Israel." After worrying about that for a little while, the boredom began to set in. We tried to read or study, but it was so sweltering that we could hardly concentrate. On top of that, our only sleep from the previous night had been on the bus, so we were all exhausted. I was the only one brave (or stupid) enough to act on it though. I laid right down on the floor and put my head on my backpack and fell asleep for somewhere between two and three hours. I was very impressed with myself, though apparently I was quite a source of interest for all the folks passing through: the dirty sleeping American kid.
When I woke up, we still had heard nothing back, so we each took turns walking down to the duty-free shop, though we didn't really want to spend any money there until we knew how much the visas were going to cost. This was a source of some concern. Visas at the border were supposed to be around $20, but Americans who get their visas from the embassy in Washington have to pay $100. We didn't know if that extra $80 was a result of the additional bureaucratic levels it would have to be passed through coming from the US, or if it was just a tax for being a rich American. We were of course hoping for the former. After another hour or two of waiting, one of the officials who had interviewed us motioned to me to come over. He proceeded to confuse me greatly about what he wanted me to do, but I went off to try and do it anyway. There was something about how I had to pay in American dollars for something that was equivalent to some amount in Syrian pounds. After wandering around trying to gather a little more information about what exactly I should be doing, I recruited Matt to come back with me and help me figure out what my task truly was. They seemed a little annoyed that we were having so much trouble, and so they told Matt the same thing they told me, but we were still confused. On the third return, they realized we were hopeless so one of the men escorted us around the place. We had to take the American money which we had obtained across the street at a restaurant because the actual money changer wouldn't change Turkish money and we had to bring that money over to the bank to get it changed into Syrian pounds which we then had to buy receipts with which were then used to obtain stamps from this little office way in the back of the place which we then had to take back to the office and then we were given everything to go to the main counter for non-Arab foreigners entering Syria where they then applied the stamps. Ugh... how they expected three far-from-fluent Americans to figure that out is beyond me.
But we made it, and it cost us less than $20 each! So with our new Syrian visas in our passports, we left that damned sweltering hall where we'd been for the last five or six hours (better than we had hoped for, especially considering one group of our friends was stuck there for more than twelve), and we walked through the border. We were hoping to see a bunch of taxis waiting on the other side. There weren't any. Looking at my map, I guessed we were maybe sixty kilometers or so from Aleppo. Way too far to walk. But we started walking anyway, and for the second time in our trip, we pointed our fingers down at the road and tried to hitch-hike it. We only had to wait two or three cars before a little fat man in a little fat sedan stopped for us. We told him we wanted to go to Aleppo, and he motioned for us to get in. It was awesome! He was from Turkey and spoke no English or even Arabic, so we had to communicate in hand gestures and the tiny bit of Turkish we'd picked up over the past week or so, but it was really nice. He was very friendly and the ride was pleasant enough. When we got to Aleppo, he let us out somewhere not far from downtown. There were plenty of taxis so it was good enough for us. I tried to pay him but he absolutely refused. He seemed just happy to have been of help. It was a really heartening experience.
At that point we hailed a cab to go further downtown, and the driver was once again just overwhelmingly friendly to us. He didn't try to rip us off and he was very excited to meet Americans, in spite of governmental tensions. He gave us a quick tour of the city as we drove through it, and he let us out right at the Clock Tower, one of Aleppo's central landmarks. It's a really neat old building, one of several things in Aleppo that feels more like it belongs in Europe, but somehow still works well there. We headed from there to one of a couple hotels recommended by the Lonely Planet. Since we had been unsure of our ability to get in to Syria, we hadn't booked any of our hotels from here on out previously. The first hotel we asked in at was booked, so we kept going just down the alley to the next closest hotel, and they had a triple for us. It was a really cute little place with comfy beds, our own bathroom, AC, and even a little, inscrutable TV. Matt was exhausted and even dirtier than Peter and I, so he decided to stay back and take a shower while Peter and I went food-hunting. Syria, and Aleppo in particular, is said to have some of the greatest food in the world, and our first experience certainly affirmed that. We wandered around the nearby alleyways until we found a little shawerma stand. We'd of course been eating lots of shawermas back in Cairo, but Syria is the source of this type of food, and so we were pumped to try the real mccoy. We bought three of them, along with a big order of french fries and three Fantas as well, and this is when we first saw how absurdly cheap this country was, even compared with Egypt. All of that together cost us a little over one hundred Syrian pounds, or two dollars. Amazing!
After eating and chilling for a little while, we decided to hit up what we could of the city before it got too late. Syria definitely felt like the most cramped period of the trip, in terms of how much there was to do and how little time we had to do it. I absolutely need to go back there at some point in my life and do the country more justice. Anyway, we headed up to the Christian district. Most of the attractions up there being churches, we figured they might be open late. It was a really enchanting area. The district is all interwoven by these tiny, picturesque alleyways, and you emerge from them into the courtyard of some great church. This really felt like Europe to me, like some town in Northern Germany or something. After wandering around checking that stuff out for an hour or so, we headed to a little restaurant in one of the alleyways that the Lonely Planet recommended as some of the best light fare and drinking in Aleppo. It was incredibly classy, but of course still very cheap. We got some hummus and some wine and beer and started to get a little tipsy. It didn't take too much drinking before we were convinced of what we were going to do with our night. Ever since our hammam in Istanbul, we'd been craving another scrubdown. Unfortunately, they were pretty pricey throughout Turkey, but as early as Bandirma, I'd noticed in the Lonely Planet that Aleppo and Damascus both had some very reputable hammams, and like everything else in Syria, they were absurdly cheap. Whereas we'd spent around $30 or $40 each at the hammam in Istanbul, the ones in Syria were quoted at four or five bucks tops. We finished up our drinks, went back to the hotel to get a change of clothes, and then set out to take advantage of the cheapest professional massages we would ever get without dating a massage therapist.
The hammam the book most strongly recommended was women only on that night, and the second one it mentioned was closed. So we headed for the third one. It was a very serene, antique place, just like the one in Istanbul. There were a few men laying around the big open tea room, and they were very excited to see some tourists looking for a bath. It was just as cheap as the book had predicted, and so we undressed, threw on our towels, and headed in. There were probably a dozen men hanging out in the sauna, all of whom were immediately very friendly and spoke the best English we'd encountered so far in Syria. One guy started talking to Matt and Peter, while another guy came over and introduced himself to me. He was wicked nice, asking me all about what had brought me to Syria, where I was from, what I was studying. It was all good and nice... until he says to me, "So, are you gay or are you straight?" I blinked at him for a second and then asked him to repeat himself. "Are you gay or are you straight?" "Oh, I'm... I'm straight." He nodded and looked a little bit miffed, but still friendly, he asked me, "What about those two?" He said, motioning toward Peter and Matt. "Are they gay?" "No, I'm pretty sure they're straight too." I almost apologized, but fortunately I caught myself. "Is this a gay hammam?" I asked awkwardly. In a very matter-of-fact tone, he replied "Yes," and nodded firmly. As he began to walk away, I struggled to get Matt and Peter's attention without being too obvious. Once I managed to pull them aside, I told them of my discovery. They were skeptical, however. We were, after all, in one of the most conservative countries in the world, a country where homosexuality is illegal, not to mention severely punishable. I put it aside and tried to relax. Soon enough, though, another man had come up to me and we had a nearly identical conversation. Once again, after he'd questioned my sexual orientation, I asked him if this was the gay hammam, and he told me that it was. I didn't need any more convincing after that, and I told the other guys once again about what I'd discovered. At this point they started to believe me. No other men approached us to ask about for which team we batted. I assume they all spread the news pretty swiftly and so we were politely ignored... for the most part. We went into the room with fewer men and managed to relax a little, that is until one surly-looking Syrian man entered it and sat down not far from Peter. Slowly I began to notice that this man was only looking at Peter, nowhere else. He was, in fact, staring at Peter. I began trying to make Peter laugh, as he had clearly noticed, and he was trying with all his might to ignore it casually. It was pretty hysterical. Matt was, of course, totally oblivious, just basking in the warmth of the steam. Just then, a wiry old gentleman entered and motioned to me. It was time for my massage.
I went back into the other room where he laid me out on the stone and began to soap me down. As he began massaging my legs, it seemed to me that his hands were getting a little close for comfort. I began to fear this was a little more than just a gay hammam, that perhaps these Syrians were also engaged in the world's oldest profession, but then I told myself that even if a gay hammam could slide by under such a regime, certainly a combination gay hammam and male brothel would be a bit much. But I couldn't really know. I decided that if he touched any of my no-no bits, I'd just ask him to stop, and being a friendly Syrian man, he would understand and comply. To help relax, I just began imagining how awkward Peter was about to feel during his massage. Of course, he didn't touch any of my no-no bits, and all-in-all it was a very relaxing, if a little disconcerting, massage. As I got up and went to go sit down again, I saw him bring Peter in and I smiled at him, told him to have a good time. Sure enough, as soon as Peter was finished, he came in looking a little shocked and told me about how close the man's hands had gotten and how he'd kept tugging down on his towel. The man had waved his hands and indicated that there was no problem, that he was just doing his job, but still Peter was very uncomfortable. Of course, after he'd had some time to recoop, he admitted that it had in fact been a very good massage. After sweating for a little while more, we rinsed ourselves off and headed out to the tea room to dry out and drink some tasty tea. Once we'd settled up and redressed, we headed out and laughed our asses off in the street. We'd found maybe the only gay hammam in Syria, just our luck. Why couldn't we find the only hammam in Syria totally owned and operated by beautiful Syrian women? In the end, I found it to be a pretty positive experience, though, actually. It was interesting to see what homosexuals do and how they surivive in that part of the world, and even if it was a little awkward, we were alive, our no-no bits in tact, and we'd gotten to witness something very rare as well.
Needless to say, after all that excitement, we decided to call it a night.
The next morning, we got up early and headed back to the Christian Quarter to check out some Armenian churches and other spots that had been closed the night prior. Apparently Syria has a large and old community of Armenian Christians. It was here that we ran into our first AUCians of Syria, and we ran into a good many, in spite of the visa issue. It became clear that our worrying had been somewhat unfounded, and that the Syrians were just talking trash when they said Americans can't get in without already having a visa. So we explored the Armenian stuff and then headed back downtown to check out the National Museum, which was full of a lot of the same archeological junk from the same empires that had ruled the rest of the places we'd already seen, but it was still neat. We headed back toward the Christian Quarter once more to grab some lunch at a very classy and delicious establishment. After that, we went down to the old city, the Islamic part of town. The suqs, or markets, in Aleppo are supposed to be some of the most amazing in the Middle East, and they were pretty overwhelming. There's just miles and miles of tunnels filled with shops and people and all sorts of things I can't even remember. After perusing them for a little while, we emerged at the Citadel, which was totally awesome! It's a huge elevated fortress surrounded by a vast, albeit dry, moat. There's a huge stone bridge shooting up to the Citadel. It's all very breathtaking. We went up inside and found a vast palace to explore: quite elaborate. There were theaters and dungeons and throne rooms and mosques and all sorts of neat shit. There was a sweet tower on the far side which afforded amazing views of all of Aleppo. After we'd had our fill, we headed back down to the street and went to a quaint, if a little touristy, cafe where we smoke some sheesha, drank some tea and fruit drinks, and generally relaxed. Aleppo is a pretty focused city, and we'd covered most of it already, so it was nice to relax a bit. On our way back out, we stopped by the Great Mosque, the sister mosque to the elaborate and historical Umayyad Mosque which we would soon see in Damascus. It was a beautiful structure, and it was filled with prayer and children playing. I've probably said this already, but I so prefer the mosque atmosphere to that of a church. So much more laid back. By this point, it was dinnertime and most sites in the city were closed, so we headed up to get some food. Our sleeper train for Damascus was to leave at midnight, so we had a few hours to kill. Luckily the restaurant we chose for dinner was a very good place to kill them. It was a really nice setting right on the roof of a building downtown. We spent most of the time surrounding the huge and fantastic meal teaching Peter how to read Arabic and having quite an intense discussion on philosophy. Afterwards, we headed to the internet cafe to kill some more time. We'd toyed with the idea of doing another hammam, but I think Peter was still a little wounded from our last experience. At the internet cafe, we ran into more friends from school, and I got to chat for a long time on Skype with my mom and sister. It was very weird to think that I would see my mom again so soon, before I saw Egypt again even, and yet there she was on the webcam hanging out with my sister in New York. Technology is wiggidy wiggidy wiggidy whack.
Finally, around 10:30 PM, we headed up toward the train station, which was somewhat confusing, but we got everything worked out and got on our train in time. Peter and I shared a cabin, while Matt slept in a room with an Iraqi refugee, which was pretty crazy. Once again, the sleeper was delightful, although I think we all wished it had been a little further between Aleppo and Damascus. We only got about five or six hours of sleep, but it was worth it.
When the train pulled in, we stumbled across the platform and tried to figure out where we were. We were a little too exhausted though, so we gave up and just got in a cab and told him to take us to the center of the city. From there, we managed to sort of make our way around and find a hostel, though the map the Lonely Planet has of Damascus is terrible. I feel like our experience there was somewhat marred by the fact that the map was so bad and we kept getting lost. Everywhere else was easy-peasy; we had zero problems. But in Damascus we were hopeless. So we found a hostel and got some breakfast there. It was a little while before stuff started to open up, so we took our time hanging out and talking. Finally, we got moving and decided to begin by securing our bus tickets to Amman, which we'd failed to be able to do in Aleppo, much to our chagrin and nervousness. I'd read that those buses filled up fast, and the last thing we needed was to be unable to get out of Syria for a week and miss picking my mom up as well as some classes most likely. Of course, that's overreacting a little, but we were a little nervous. I really wish I could do this trip again, now that I understand how simple most of that stuff is and how little there's really anything to get worked up about.
So we walked toward the bus station from which the Lonely Planet claimed buses to Amman left. We got there, and it appeared to be just a big empty parking lot with a few stands and buses scattered around. Looking very confused, we began walking around it and soon enough a cab driver came up to us to try and give us some help. When he found that we needed to go to Amman, he told us we were in the wrong place, that the correct bus station was out of town a little. I was reluctant to believe him, but after a week and a half of this sort of stuff, I was growing pretty tired of this game, so we just got in his cab and he took us to this other bus station. He was of course quite friendly and sure enough he was right about the bus thing. Perhaps it is possible to take a bus from the station we went to, but this was just as easy. As he drove us back in to Damascus, between dancing to the Arab music on the radio and asking us about America, he told us he'd pick us up the next morning in time for our bus. We shook on it and went out to explore the city.
Working as best we could with our terrible map, we managed to work our way to the old city, where most of Damascus's sites can be found. We started with the suq, which, though less laberinthine than it's counterpart in Aleppo, seemed much vaster and more impressive. We walked down a long main artery of the suq to emerge in front of the aforementioned Umayyad Mosque, and if I thought I had been impressed by the Great Mosque, the Umayyad Mosque freakin' blew my mind! It was huge and open and beautiful and filled with astoundingly intricate gold mosaics. To top it off, we ran into even more friends from AUC! The other cool thing about this mosque is that it was built on the site of an early Byzantine church, which in turn had been built on the site of a Roman temple to Zeus. Among the awe-inspiring mosque were ruins of these other two centers of worship. Sweet!
From there we wandered over Salah El-Din's (or Saladin, as many Westerners call him) mausoleum. That was quite a guy. He freakin' kicked those Christian devils right out of Arabia. Quite a legacy, so it was pretty neat to see where he is now: a gaudy, overdone tomb with a big gift shop attached. I think there was a gift shop.
After that little gem, we wandered over to get some lunch and then realized we needed more money. The Lonely Planet was informative enough to tell me there were no ATMs in the old city, so we had to head back toward our hotel. We had a pretty neat walk out of the old city, in spite of the fact that we got lost again. We saw this neat modern Muslim academy and then we started talking with this really nice guy who showed us how to get where we were going. He and Matt seemed to have a really good conversation. By the time we made it back to the hotel, we were exhausted, and though we only meant to lay down for a minute or two, we passed out for about two hours. When we woke up, everything was starting to close, and we'd missed some of the stuff we'd wanted to see, but once again, after ten or eleven days of non-stop touring and getting up early, we didn't beat ourselves up too much about taking a nap.
But still we headed back to the old city to try to make the most of the time we had left in Damascus. We went for the Christian Quarter again, which is pretty historic since some of the first Christians settled in Damascus back in the day. Some stuff was closed, but we did get to check out the House of St. Ananias, which was basically a little church in an old basement, but it was neat. From there we walked back to the Umayyad Mosque to what the Lonely Planet calls one of the best sheesha places in the Middle East, and it was pretty great, though mostly for the atmosphere. We were right in an alley coming off the mosque. It was phenomenal for people watching and the mosque itself was pretty awe-inspiring that close to us. We smoked sheesha and drank tea for an hour or two, and it was probably one of the most serene experiences of the whole trip.
Afterwards, we decided to head up and get some dinner across town in one of the newer districts. We got marginally lost, but we found it and it was pretty nice. We toyed with the idea of another hammam, but we decided it would be best to get to bed early so we wouldn't be too tired the next day. Of course, by the time we got back and fell asleep, it was past midnight anyway, but whatever. The next morning we got up around 6:30 or so to go downstairs and wait for our cabbie from the day prior who was slated to pick us up to bring us back to the bus station. We gave him about fifteen minutes, but he didn't show up, so we just grabbed a cab. We were talking with a Mexican guy while hailing the cab, and it turned out he was going the same place we were, so he hopped in and we split the fare. He was a really nice guy, maybe a little older than we were, and he was on a somewhat similar trip, though in the other direction. He had started in Cairo and was headed up through to Croatia of all places. We parted ways at the station and went to hop on our bus. We were the first ones on, but it slowly filled up, and then it left and went back into Damascus, which was kind of annoying, and there it picked up a lot more people.
When everyone was on, we headed back out, following signs for Al-Urdan, the Arabic name for Jordan, and it was only an hour or so before we had hit the border. It was exciting to be headed to a new place, but I think we were all disappointed by how little time we'd gotten to spend in Syria. It was definitely one of the most surprising and fun places of the trip, and in retrospect, Peter and I both often place it as the highpoint of that journey.
So, we arrived at the Syrian embassy some time around 10 or 11 AM, I believe. It was unbelievably hot, and there was no AC inside, just lots of big open windows. The place was pretty dingy: a long, large hallway with lots of counters along the side for various nationalities to get their passports stamped. There were no other Americans, so we were kind of on our own, but already we got to see how friendly Syrians were. We'd stand around and look confused and someone would come up to try to help us. Eventually, some officials came out from behind a door and determined that we were Americans and needed visas, so he led us back to an office where we sat around for a bit and then got grilled about all of our travel plans. The officials spoke a little English, but we had to conduct a good portion of the transaction in Arabic, so it was really helpful to have Matt with us. It actually wasn't quite so intense as we might have expected. The one dodgy bit was when we got to discussing getting from Jordan back to Cairo. Of course, Syria hates Israel, and they don't grant entry to any person having an Israeli stamp on his passport, or even an exit stamp from a port adjacent to Israel, as that obviously implies an Israeli entry. This was the primary reason that we did the trip in this direction, rather than going up through the Middle East and flying home from Athens. If we'd done that, we'd have had to worry about keeping Israel from stamping our passports.
Anyway, they wanted to know if we'd be passing through Israel on our way back from Jordan to Egypt. I'd of course made sure that Matt knew not to tell them that we had plans to visit the Holy Land, but I failed to brief him adequately on the details. When they asked us how we'd get from Jordan to Egypt without passing to Israel, he told them we'd take a train. The thing about that is, Egypt and Jordan share no land border, so you either have to take a ferry or enter Israel. When we got back out to the lobby, I asked Matt about that interaction, and when we realized what had happened, we started to get a little worried that they'd think this meant we in fact were going to Israel. I began to rehearse my Arabic for, "I planned the trip so he didn't know that we were taking a ferry from Aqaba to Nuweiba. We will not be taking a train and we will not be going through Israel." After worrying about that for a little while, the boredom began to set in. We tried to read or study, but it was so sweltering that we could hardly concentrate. On top of that, our only sleep from the previous night had been on the bus, so we were all exhausted. I was the only one brave (or stupid) enough to act on it though. I laid right down on the floor and put my head on my backpack and fell asleep for somewhere between two and three hours. I was very impressed with myself, though apparently I was quite a source of interest for all the folks passing through: the dirty sleeping American kid.
When I woke up, we still had heard nothing back, so we each took turns walking down to the duty-free shop, though we didn't really want to spend any money there until we knew how much the visas were going to cost. This was a source of some concern. Visas at the border were supposed to be around $20, but Americans who get their visas from the embassy in Washington have to pay $100. We didn't know if that extra $80 was a result of the additional bureaucratic levels it would have to be passed through coming from the US, or if it was just a tax for being a rich American. We were of course hoping for the former. After another hour or two of waiting, one of the officials who had interviewed us motioned to me to come over. He proceeded to confuse me greatly about what he wanted me to do, but I went off to try and do it anyway. There was something about how I had to pay in American dollars for something that was equivalent to some amount in Syrian pounds. After wandering around trying to gather a little more information about what exactly I should be doing, I recruited Matt to come back with me and help me figure out what my task truly was. They seemed a little annoyed that we were having so much trouble, and so they told Matt the same thing they told me, but we were still confused. On the third return, they realized we were hopeless so one of the men escorted us around the place. We had to take the American money which we had obtained across the street at a restaurant because the actual money changer wouldn't change Turkish money and we had to bring that money over to the bank to get it changed into Syrian pounds which we then had to buy receipts with which were then used to obtain stamps from this little office way in the back of the place which we then had to take back to the office and then we were given everything to go to the main counter for non-Arab foreigners entering Syria where they then applied the stamps. Ugh... how they expected three far-from-fluent Americans to figure that out is beyond me.
But we made it, and it cost us less than $20 each! So with our new Syrian visas in our passports, we left that damned sweltering hall where we'd been for the last five or six hours (better than we had hoped for, especially considering one group of our friends was stuck there for more than twelve), and we walked through the border. We were hoping to see a bunch of taxis waiting on the other side. There weren't any. Looking at my map, I guessed we were maybe sixty kilometers or so from Aleppo. Way too far to walk. But we started walking anyway, and for the second time in our trip, we pointed our fingers down at the road and tried to hitch-hike it. We only had to wait two or three cars before a little fat man in a little fat sedan stopped for us. We told him we wanted to go to Aleppo, and he motioned for us to get in. It was awesome! He was from Turkey and spoke no English or even Arabic, so we had to communicate in hand gestures and the tiny bit of Turkish we'd picked up over the past week or so, but it was really nice. He was very friendly and the ride was pleasant enough. When we got to Aleppo, he let us out somewhere not far from downtown. There were plenty of taxis so it was good enough for us. I tried to pay him but he absolutely refused. He seemed just happy to have been of help. It was a really heartening experience.
At that point we hailed a cab to go further downtown, and the driver was once again just overwhelmingly friendly to us. He didn't try to rip us off and he was very excited to meet Americans, in spite of governmental tensions. He gave us a quick tour of the city as we drove through it, and he let us out right at the Clock Tower, one of Aleppo's central landmarks. It's a really neat old building, one of several things in Aleppo that feels more like it belongs in Europe, but somehow still works well there. We headed from there to one of a couple hotels recommended by the Lonely Planet. Since we had been unsure of our ability to get in to Syria, we hadn't booked any of our hotels from here on out previously. The first hotel we asked in at was booked, so we kept going just down the alley to the next closest hotel, and they had a triple for us. It was a really cute little place with comfy beds, our own bathroom, AC, and even a little, inscrutable TV. Matt was exhausted and even dirtier than Peter and I, so he decided to stay back and take a shower while Peter and I went food-hunting. Syria, and Aleppo in particular, is said to have some of the greatest food in the world, and our first experience certainly affirmed that. We wandered around the nearby alleyways until we found a little shawerma stand. We'd of course been eating lots of shawermas back in Cairo, but Syria is the source of this type of food, and so we were pumped to try the real mccoy. We bought three of them, along with a big order of french fries and three Fantas as well, and this is when we first saw how absurdly cheap this country was, even compared with Egypt. All of that together cost us a little over one hundred Syrian pounds, or two dollars. Amazing!
After eating and chilling for a little while, we decided to hit up what we could of the city before it got too late. Syria definitely felt like the most cramped period of the trip, in terms of how much there was to do and how little time we had to do it. I absolutely need to go back there at some point in my life and do the country more justice. Anyway, we headed up to the Christian district. Most of the attractions up there being churches, we figured they might be open late. It was a really enchanting area. The district is all interwoven by these tiny, picturesque alleyways, and you emerge from them into the courtyard of some great church. This really felt like Europe to me, like some town in Northern Germany or something. After wandering around checking that stuff out for an hour or so, we headed to a little restaurant in one of the alleyways that the Lonely Planet recommended as some of the best light fare and drinking in Aleppo. It was incredibly classy, but of course still very cheap. We got some hummus and some wine and beer and started to get a little tipsy. It didn't take too much drinking before we were convinced of what we were going to do with our night. Ever since our hammam in Istanbul, we'd been craving another scrubdown. Unfortunately, they were pretty pricey throughout Turkey, but as early as Bandirma, I'd noticed in the Lonely Planet that Aleppo and Damascus both had some very reputable hammams, and like everything else in Syria, they were absurdly cheap. Whereas we'd spent around $30 or $40 each at the hammam in Istanbul, the ones in Syria were quoted at four or five bucks tops. We finished up our drinks, went back to the hotel to get a change of clothes, and then set out to take advantage of the cheapest professional massages we would ever get without dating a massage therapist.
The hammam the book most strongly recommended was women only on that night, and the second one it mentioned was closed. So we headed for the third one. It was a very serene, antique place, just like the one in Istanbul. There were a few men laying around the big open tea room, and they were very excited to see some tourists looking for a bath. It was just as cheap as the book had predicted, and so we undressed, threw on our towels, and headed in. There were probably a dozen men hanging out in the sauna, all of whom were immediately very friendly and spoke the best English we'd encountered so far in Syria. One guy started talking to Matt and Peter, while another guy came over and introduced himself to me. He was wicked nice, asking me all about what had brought me to Syria, where I was from, what I was studying. It was all good and nice... until he says to me, "So, are you gay or are you straight?" I blinked at him for a second and then asked him to repeat himself. "Are you gay or are you straight?" "Oh, I'm... I'm straight." He nodded and looked a little bit miffed, but still friendly, he asked me, "What about those two?" He said, motioning toward Peter and Matt. "Are they gay?" "No, I'm pretty sure they're straight too." I almost apologized, but fortunately I caught myself. "Is this a gay hammam?" I asked awkwardly. In a very matter-of-fact tone, he replied "Yes," and nodded firmly. As he began to walk away, I struggled to get Matt and Peter's attention without being too obvious. Once I managed to pull them aside, I told them of my discovery. They were skeptical, however. We were, after all, in one of the most conservative countries in the world, a country where homosexuality is illegal, not to mention severely punishable. I put it aside and tried to relax. Soon enough, though, another man had come up to me and we had a nearly identical conversation. Once again, after he'd questioned my sexual orientation, I asked him if this was the gay hammam, and he told me that it was. I didn't need any more convincing after that, and I told the other guys once again about what I'd discovered. At this point they started to believe me. No other men approached us to ask about for which team we batted. I assume they all spread the news pretty swiftly and so we were politely ignored... for the most part. We went into the room with fewer men and managed to relax a little, that is until one surly-looking Syrian man entered it and sat down not far from Peter. Slowly I began to notice that this man was only looking at Peter, nowhere else. He was, in fact, staring at Peter. I began trying to make Peter laugh, as he had clearly noticed, and he was trying with all his might to ignore it casually. It was pretty hysterical. Matt was, of course, totally oblivious, just basking in the warmth of the steam. Just then, a wiry old gentleman entered and motioned to me. It was time for my massage.
I went back into the other room where he laid me out on the stone and began to soap me down. As he began massaging my legs, it seemed to me that his hands were getting a little close for comfort. I began to fear this was a little more than just a gay hammam, that perhaps these Syrians were also engaged in the world's oldest profession, but then I told myself that even if a gay hammam could slide by under such a regime, certainly a combination gay hammam and male brothel would be a bit much. But I couldn't really know. I decided that if he touched any of my no-no bits, I'd just ask him to stop, and being a friendly Syrian man, he would understand and comply. To help relax, I just began imagining how awkward Peter was about to feel during his massage. Of course, he didn't touch any of my no-no bits, and all-in-all it was a very relaxing, if a little disconcerting, massage. As I got up and went to go sit down again, I saw him bring Peter in and I smiled at him, told him to have a good time. Sure enough, as soon as Peter was finished, he came in looking a little shocked and told me about how close the man's hands had gotten and how he'd kept tugging down on his towel. The man had waved his hands and indicated that there was no problem, that he was just doing his job, but still Peter was very uncomfortable. Of course, after he'd had some time to recoop, he admitted that it had in fact been a very good massage. After sweating for a little while more, we rinsed ourselves off and headed out to the tea room to dry out and drink some tasty tea. Once we'd settled up and redressed, we headed out and laughed our asses off in the street. We'd found maybe the only gay hammam in Syria, just our luck. Why couldn't we find the only hammam in Syria totally owned and operated by beautiful Syrian women? In the end, I found it to be a pretty positive experience, though, actually. It was interesting to see what homosexuals do and how they surivive in that part of the world, and even if it was a little awkward, we were alive, our no-no bits in tact, and we'd gotten to witness something very rare as well.
Needless to say, after all that excitement, we decided to call it a night.
The next morning, we got up early and headed back to the Christian Quarter to check out some Armenian churches and other spots that had been closed the night prior. Apparently Syria has a large and old community of Armenian Christians. It was here that we ran into our first AUCians of Syria, and we ran into a good many, in spite of the visa issue. It became clear that our worrying had been somewhat unfounded, and that the Syrians were just talking trash when they said Americans can't get in without already having a visa. So we explored the Armenian stuff and then headed back downtown to check out the National Museum, which was full of a lot of the same archeological junk from the same empires that had ruled the rest of the places we'd already seen, but it was still neat. We headed back toward the Christian Quarter once more to grab some lunch at a very classy and delicious establishment. After that, we went down to the old city, the Islamic part of town. The suqs, or markets, in Aleppo are supposed to be some of the most amazing in the Middle East, and they were pretty overwhelming. There's just miles and miles of tunnels filled with shops and people and all sorts of things I can't even remember. After perusing them for a little while, we emerged at the Citadel, which was totally awesome! It's a huge elevated fortress surrounded by a vast, albeit dry, moat. There's a huge stone bridge shooting up to the Citadel. It's all very breathtaking. We went up inside and found a vast palace to explore: quite elaborate. There were theaters and dungeons and throne rooms and mosques and all sorts of neat shit. There was a sweet tower on the far side which afforded amazing views of all of Aleppo. After we'd had our fill, we headed back down to the street and went to a quaint, if a little touristy, cafe where we smoke some sheesha, drank some tea and fruit drinks, and generally relaxed. Aleppo is a pretty focused city, and we'd covered most of it already, so it was nice to relax a bit. On our way back out, we stopped by the Great Mosque, the sister mosque to the elaborate and historical Umayyad Mosque which we would soon see in Damascus. It was a beautiful structure, and it was filled with prayer and children playing. I've probably said this already, but I so prefer the mosque atmosphere to that of a church. So much more laid back. By this point, it was dinnertime and most sites in the city were closed, so we headed up to get some food. Our sleeper train for Damascus was to leave at midnight, so we had a few hours to kill. Luckily the restaurant we chose for dinner was a very good place to kill them. It was a really nice setting right on the roof of a building downtown. We spent most of the time surrounding the huge and fantastic meal teaching Peter how to read Arabic and having quite an intense discussion on philosophy. Afterwards, we headed to the internet cafe to kill some more time. We'd toyed with the idea of doing another hammam, but I think Peter was still a little wounded from our last experience. At the internet cafe, we ran into more friends from school, and I got to chat for a long time on Skype with my mom and sister. It was very weird to think that I would see my mom again so soon, before I saw Egypt again even, and yet there she was on the webcam hanging out with my sister in New York. Technology is wiggidy wiggidy wiggidy whack.
Finally, around 10:30 PM, we headed up toward the train station, which was somewhat confusing, but we got everything worked out and got on our train in time. Peter and I shared a cabin, while Matt slept in a room with an Iraqi refugee, which was pretty crazy. Once again, the sleeper was delightful, although I think we all wished it had been a little further between Aleppo and Damascus. We only got about five or six hours of sleep, but it was worth it.
When the train pulled in, we stumbled across the platform and tried to figure out where we were. We were a little too exhausted though, so we gave up and just got in a cab and told him to take us to the center of the city. From there, we managed to sort of make our way around and find a hostel, though the map the Lonely Planet has of Damascus is terrible. I feel like our experience there was somewhat marred by the fact that the map was so bad and we kept getting lost. Everywhere else was easy-peasy; we had zero problems. But in Damascus we were hopeless. So we found a hostel and got some breakfast there. It was a little while before stuff started to open up, so we took our time hanging out and talking. Finally, we got moving and decided to begin by securing our bus tickets to Amman, which we'd failed to be able to do in Aleppo, much to our chagrin and nervousness. I'd read that those buses filled up fast, and the last thing we needed was to be unable to get out of Syria for a week and miss picking my mom up as well as some classes most likely. Of course, that's overreacting a little, but we were a little nervous. I really wish I could do this trip again, now that I understand how simple most of that stuff is and how little there's really anything to get worked up about.
So we walked toward the bus station from which the Lonely Planet claimed buses to Amman left. We got there, and it appeared to be just a big empty parking lot with a few stands and buses scattered around. Looking very confused, we began walking around it and soon enough a cab driver came up to us to try and give us some help. When he found that we needed to go to Amman, he told us we were in the wrong place, that the correct bus station was out of town a little. I was reluctant to believe him, but after a week and a half of this sort of stuff, I was growing pretty tired of this game, so we just got in his cab and he took us to this other bus station. He was of course quite friendly and sure enough he was right about the bus thing. Perhaps it is possible to take a bus from the station we went to, but this was just as easy. As he drove us back in to Damascus, between dancing to the Arab music on the radio and asking us about America, he told us he'd pick us up the next morning in time for our bus. We shook on it and went out to explore the city.
Working as best we could with our terrible map, we managed to work our way to the old city, where most of Damascus's sites can be found. We started with the suq, which, though less laberinthine than it's counterpart in Aleppo, seemed much vaster and more impressive. We walked down a long main artery of the suq to emerge in front of the aforementioned Umayyad Mosque, and if I thought I had been impressed by the Great Mosque, the Umayyad Mosque freakin' blew my mind! It was huge and open and beautiful and filled with astoundingly intricate gold mosaics. To top it off, we ran into even more friends from AUC! The other cool thing about this mosque is that it was built on the site of an early Byzantine church, which in turn had been built on the site of a Roman temple to Zeus. Among the awe-inspiring mosque were ruins of these other two centers of worship. Sweet!
From there we wandered over Salah El-Din's (or Saladin, as many Westerners call him) mausoleum. That was quite a guy. He freakin' kicked those Christian devils right out of Arabia. Quite a legacy, so it was pretty neat to see where he is now: a gaudy, overdone tomb with a big gift shop attached. I think there was a gift shop.
After that little gem, we wandered over to get some lunch and then realized we needed more money. The Lonely Planet was informative enough to tell me there were no ATMs in the old city, so we had to head back toward our hotel. We had a pretty neat walk out of the old city, in spite of the fact that we got lost again. We saw this neat modern Muslim academy and then we started talking with this really nice guy who showed us how to get where we were going. He and Matt seemed to have a really good conversation. By the time we made it back to the hotel, we were exhausted, and though we only meant to lay down for a minute or two, we passed out for about two hours. When we woke up, everything was starting to close, and we'd missed some of the stuff we'd wanted to see, but once again, after ten or eleven days of non-stop touring and getting up early, we didn't beat ourselves up too much about taking a nap.
But still we headed back to the old city to try to make the most of the time we had left in Damascus. We went for the Christian Quarter again, which is pretty historic since some of the first Christians settled in Damascus back in the day. Some stuff was closed, but we did get to check out the House of St. Ananias, which was basically a little church in an old basement, but it was neat. From there we walked back to the Umayyad Mosque to what the Lonely Planet calls one of the best sheesha places in the Middle East, and it was pretty great, though mostly for the atmosphere. We were right in an alley coming off the mosque. It was phenomenal for people watching and the mosque itself was pretty awe-inspiring that close to us. We smoked sheesha and drank tea for an hour or two, and it was probably one of the most serene experiences of the whole trip.
Afterwards, we decided to head up and get some dinner across town in one of the newer districts. We got marginally lost, but we found it and it was pretty nice. We toyed with the idea of another hammam, but we decided it would be best to get to bed early so we wouldn't be too tired the next day. Of course, by the time we got back and fell asleep, it was past midnight anyway, but whatever. The next morning we got up around 6:30 or so to go downstairs and wait for our cabbie from the day prior who was slated to pick us up to bring us back to the bus station. We gave him about fifteen minutes, but he didn't show up, so we just grabbed a cab. We were talking with a Mexican guy while hailing the cab, and it turned out he was going the same place we were, so he hopped in and we split the fare. He was a really nice guy, maybe a little older than we were, and he was on a somewhat similar trip, though in the other direction. He had started in Cairo and was headed up through to Croatia of all places. We parted ways at the station and went to hop on our bus. We were the first ones on, but it slowly filled up, and then it left and went back into Damascus, which was kind of annoying, and there it picked up a lot more people.
When everyone was on, we headed back out, following signs for Al-Urdan, the Arabic name for Jordan, and it was only an hour or so before we had hit the border. It was exciting to be headed to a new place, but I think we were all disappointed by how little time we'd gotten to spend in Syria. It was definitely one of the most surprising and fun places of the trip, and in retrospect, Peter and I both often place it as the highpoint of that journey.
1 comment:
Love You! Thanks for taking the time to share the stories, but I keep wondering, 'why did they need so much money?'
Post a Comment