the road to Syria

My blog has been blocked in Syria. The ride here was very long. i left my house at 6:15 on friday and walked down to the bus station office stopping to get some simit. My servis left at quarter to eight. While waiting for the service i was watching tv in the office. After a program about a soldier who had died the first day of bayram there was news on the bulls that had escaped. The current holiday is called Kurban bayram in Turkish. It's the sacrafice holiday, where people usually kill sheep, and apparently sometimes bulls. I had actually witnessed it earlier in the day in fatih, a more traditional neighborhood. Anyways, not wanting to die, some of the bulls had escaped. There was footage of them running into cars, running at people and in one case running into a resturant. Atone point i couldnt help it and i burst out laughing.

From the asian bus station I got on the Jet bus that was to carry me to Antakya, also known as Hatay. I was sitting next to a 32 year old physics teacher. over the course of the journey i learned that she is engaged to another physicist, a friend from school and a good guy, but not the guy she likes. She showed me a photo of the guy she likes. She has also invited me over for food when i return to istanbul.

It was a very long 15 hour bus ride. I slept some, but not enough. Twice during the night we stopped at places built for buses to stop and I had some soup. At these places they sell food, but also toys and other souveneers. They are major operations. The big bus companies all have their own, but since Jet is not a major company, we stopped at a stop for all the small companies. And of course, there is (or nescafe or coke) on the bus. After the tea, an attendant comes by and pours lemon cologne on everyone's hands. The smell of lemon cologne will always remind me of Turkish buses.

We arrived in Antakya at about 11 in the morning. The last bit of the ride was over some very impressive mountains. One woman sat there and prayed as we drove very close to the edge. She reminded me of mom. I took the service into the center and then walked with my stuff to the main bridge in town. On one side of the bridge is a large statue and the other side is the old town, lined with Kunefe shops. I found mom and we went to eat the best iskender kebab (meat, yogurt, bread and a tomato sauce) ever and then had some kunefe. Kunefe is a desert that has cheese in it and is soaked in syrup. It sounds very weird I know, but is actually very good. Antakya is famous for its Kunefe.

And then it was time to continue on to the Syrian border. There was just one problem. There were no vehicles going! It turns out there is a holiday exchange between Syria and Turkey. So for Seker bayram at the end of ramadan, all the Syrians come to Turkey and for the current bayram lots of Turks go to Syria. So earlier in the day they had taken every vehicle that could be spared including school buss es. We got on a bus and waited, but they kept delaying the departure, so 5 of us went off in search of a dolmuş (shared taxi) to Reyhanli, the town right at the border. After about an hour we found a dolmuş. Then, at the border we had to get on a bus that was going across, as the first guard laughed at me when I said we could walk. Apparently it's 5 km.

Getting stamped out of Turkey was no real problem, except once again the guy stamped my passport wrong the first time, making a total of two cancelled stamps on one page. The syrian side was a bit more challenging. We went into the back office and after some discussion, the guy in charge said he would send a fax to Damascus to see if they would issue me a visa. To cut a long story short, we stayed there for 6 hours in that cold office. Not that I can really complain. They were very nice and gave us tea and tried to talk with mom. And I know that it takes much more than that for a Syrian to get a visa for the US. And finally, at 10, after I was investigated by the special branch, we got permission to buy the visa stamps. Mom swears that she heard the guy in Damascus tell the guy in the office "But we sent that an hour and a half ago". Fortunately there was a guy hanging around and he gave us a ride to the place mom and William have been living in Aleppo.

Unfortunately, the goodbye party for mom and william started at 7:30 and we missed almost all of it. Everyone was very nice and waited until we got there to leave, but about 5 minutes later they all left. And I ate some amazing french food that was leftover from the party and then crashed in my very cute room up some very steep stairs in a beautifully restored Arab courtyard house. Door to door it was a 29 hour trip.