Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Afee Mushkaila (Problems)

Here's a tip, from us to you: don't fly Jordanian Aviation.



Dan and I had to get from Jordan to Cairo by the 26th to meet up with Christy. Getting from Aqaba in Jordan to Cairo involves taking a ferry across the Red Sea to Nuweiba, Egypt, then getting to the bus station, then getting on a bus to Cairo; it takes about 12 hours. Because of time spent elsewhere, we were a little tight, so we decided to go Jordan Aviation. The flight left the morning of the 26 and was only about an hour to Cairo. We would get an extra day to stay in Aqaba and snorkel in the red sea (sidenote: we did! it was amazing! we saw sea turtles! and tons of fish!)



So, 7am, we get up, get ready, go to the airport. We go through customs, check our bags, and sit. And sit. Boarding time: 9:40. 9:40 passes. 10am passes. 10:30 (flight time) passes. no one is moving. unfortunately, no one is speaking english, either, so we don't know what's going on - we're the only non-Arabs on the plane.



Maybe 10 minutes after the plane is supposed to leave, they board us. The plane has been sitting on the tarmac in the sun all morning, and we walk up the stairs and get into our seats. The aircon in the plane isn't working, so it's at least 105 degrees, probably closer to 110, and humid (hello, sweaty people). we sit, and sweat, and fan ourselves with postcards, and sweat. Another 15 minutes go by, maybe 20. The flight attendents hand out water, and Dan and I can see them taking turns ducking into the bathroom to mop themselves off. People on the plane start revolting, and just get up out of their seats and walk back onto the tarmac. Having no idea what's going on (has there been an announcement of some kind? we wouldn't understand it), Dan and i get up and walk off the plane as well.



Then some official looking men in blue uniforms come out and start yelling at us in arabic to (we assume) get back on the plane. Some passengers yell back. Slowly we get back on the plane. We sit for another 10 minutes, and then people all get back up and file off the plane again, this time aided by the very same men who had just yelled at us to get ON the plane.



We go back to the terminal and wait around. Dan goes off to find someone who speaks English. He asks one official looking man what's going on:



'Health' the man says.



"Health? Is there something wrong with the plane? Is the engine not working?"



"Nono, Health."



'Ok, well, how long will it take to fix?"



...long pause....



"One hour?"



After a little while, an engineer looking man came out made some sort of announcement. A number of Middle Eastern men went over, crowded around him and began yelling. The engineer yells back. Women look pissed.

I go off to find someone who speaks English, and manage to talk to the man who had originally checked us in. He tells me there is something wrong with the plane engine (health, indeed), but the major problem is that there is no representative from Jordanian Aviation in the airport, so no one can make any decision about anything. He thought they´d called headquarters, and maybe they were going to try to fix the engine, or maybe get another plane in. but he didn´t really know cause he was Royal Jordanian.

we sit, and eat chips, and sit. they make another announcement, people get up and yell. then people are gathering at customs. apparently, they´re telling us we can leave, but we´ve already been stamped out through customs so they have to go back and amend it or something. we get in line. they take our passports and instead give us little green pieces of paper. they refuse to give us back our passports.

dan and i want to leave, but we have no idea where to go or when we need to be back, because we have no idea when the plane is leaving, if at all (at this point, it´s probably 2 in the afternoon). some people seem to have left, but a number are still hanging around. we wander outside to see if there´s a bus or something. there´s nothing, not even taxis.

finally, a bus comes and everyone piles on. As dan says, it was the first time in a long time that we´d gotten on a form of transit with absolutely NO idea where we were going. Dan makes friends with a Saudi man, who speaks a little english (actually, this happened earlier. but we sat next to him on the bus). we are going to a hotel, possibly to eat.

we get to the hotel, and everyone gets out - there´s a restaurant on the 6th floor and everyone is in line to get in the elevator. i get ushered in with the women in children. they try to get dan to go with us, but he decides to wait. then, dan gets in after me with about 7 arab men. the elevator breaks, and dan is stuck in there for 30 minutes with 7 men who speak no english. he manages to explain that hé´s from the US, and they think he´s from texas and try to get him to pry open the doors. he is unsuccessful.

finally he gets out and he and i go up and eat some food. the engineer guy is there and he explains that headquarters is deciding whether to refund all our money or send another plane from cairo.

after eating we go back down to the lobby (taking the stairs, obviously). finally another bus comes. everyone goes outside then all the jordanians are like ´´amerikeeya´´ ´´amerikeeya´ so we get on the first bus.

back to the airport. finally, maybe at 8pm, another plane arrives. it sits on the tarmac for a while then they let us on. it has an entirely different flight attendent. i have no idea what happened to the first set of flight attendants. i sit down in my seat which had duct tape all over the arm rest (reassuring!) and go to buckle my seatbelt. the right part of the seatbelt pulls out of the seat entirely, and i´m holding it dangling in my hand. it´s attached to nothing.

finally, the flight leaves, and it takes less than an hour in the air to get to cairo. we arrive finally at the hostel at 11pm.

the irony? it took longer to do that than it would have to take the ferry, then the bus.

all this, i have to say, pales in comparison to what is currently happening with our flights to brazil. dan and i are now in day 3 of being stuck in madrid.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Jordan

Our friend-making has continued apace in Amman, Jordan, beginning almost as soon as we stepped off the bus. We were failing to hail a cab and a man pulled over, introduced himself, showed us his business card for Governmental Industrial Relations, then drove us to our friend Saif's house, where we were staying. We met up with this amazingly friendly man, Samir, a few nights later, for an evening of lounging in a local-strewn downtown cafe topped off with midnight hummus, falafel, and fuul (fava beans & other stuff). Samir told a joke about an American soldier running from being sent to Iraq, hidin under a nun's dress, then discovering that the nun is actually another American soldier trying to go AWOL. Samir was full of jokes but also spoke seriously about the bombings in Amman not long ago and about tensions in the street between Lebanese and Syrians. Samir is a Jordanian and was instantly suspicious of our Iraqi friend, Saif, immediately wanting to know how we know him and telling us that "we don't trust all Iraqis." Samir later emailed us sweet pictures of himself and his children. For Saif's part, he said he didn't like Samir's vibe, said that he reminded him of state security and that he'd rather not come with us to meet him. A million or more Iraqis have poured into Jordan over the past four years, as it and Syria are the only countries accepting Iraqis without visas, as far as I know. We really saw the effects in Amman: locals complaining about the rising prices, Iraqis clustering in certain neighborhoods, Iraqis lounging about bored (they cannot get work permits), and the mainly Shia Jordanians exhibiting distrust of the many Shia Muslims among the Iraqis (the bombings were perpetrated by Shia Iraqis), and the influx of Iraqi money must be part of the drive behind the many cranes and construction sites around Amman. Iraqis are a new 10% minority in Jordan, a small country. But they are the richer, more educated Iraqis, on average. And they can be sent back to Iraq for even minor infractions, we heard from some of the Iraqis.

That's it for now. More later about the shirts (the newest one is Ultra Violent [sic] Sun Block), Saif's family in Amman, Petra, and the million miniature melting rushmores in the towering rocks of Wadi Rum.

Good night, or at least peace be upon you, wherever you are.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Saif on ABC News

Here's a link to a bit on ABC news that aired recently about the Hometown Baghdad videos (which you can find on YouTube). Our host in Amman, Saif, is featured on many of those videos and appears on this ABC piece:

http://www.dailymotion.com/chattheplanet/video/4331966

Haleb

Looking back on our time in Aleppo, Syria...

Amazingly, after making friends with incredibly kind strangers on our way to Aleppo, we weren't in Aleppo more than a few hours before we made more friends out of the ether of friends that seems to lie waiting for us everywhere we go on this trip. We stepped out of an internet cafe in the downtown area, and pulled our guidebook to help us sniff out some falafel, and suddenly a soft voice asked in English if we might need any help. Two young men in western-style clothing were standing next to us in the packed evening crowd, Hasam (pronounced "Ha-zim") and Fares (pronounced "Far-iss"). College juniors, they had recently finished their exams and were on their summer vacations. Fares, who did most of the talking, just as Hasam did a great deal of the laughing and rapping, quickly indicated the golden trophy falafel stand and we were soon monchmonching down as described below. The amazing thing is how instantly devoted they were to us and how kindly they spent hours and hours just walking around with us, showing us around their beautiful city. Their only worry was that we might have other plans, seemingly oblivious that being shown around by locals was the best thing we could have possibly imagined happening to us.

Hasam is an Aleppene studying pharmacy in Amman and his father an architect ... I can't remember what his mother does. He's been friends with Fares since high school as they share an interest in rock music, which isn't all that popular in Aleppo. They described a rare rock show that drew little over 40 devotees of the form. They both especially like System of a Down, but Hasam also loves Biggy, Tupac, and other rap, and has an amazing capacity to issue forth with several lines from these rappers in an English that is otherwise less fluent. He plays the electric bass and played over his cellphone some raps he's recorded in both English and Arabic. He especially likes calling things "old school," and we had some good laughs saying this repeatedly as we pointed to the old american cars and extremely old buildings that fill Aleppo. Hasam is one of those people who radiates warmth and friendship, and I felt an immediate kinship with him despite our greater difficulty in communicating.

Fares is an Aleppene studying English literature in Aleppo and his father a veterinary pharmacist ... again, I can't remember what his mother does. His outlook is remarkably secular and in manys I felt I was speaking with a friend from back in the US. He plays the piano and was trying to get a band together with Hasam and some friends. They're looking for a drummer and a vocalist. He told us that, at 21, he's too young to be involved with girl. It's complicated to be involved because dating is frowned upon and he feels he's not ready to marry. Before we left, he invited us to meet his family at their apartment. His brother, 16, who loves classical music, played some pieces on the piano and they both griped to us about the rote-learning that bores them to death in school, and Fares mentioned a professor who had been caught selling exam answers to his students. He talked wistfully of perhaps coming to Canada, the US, or the UK for a masters degree.

I had a conversation with Fares about politics in America, after he had already asked us if we were Democrats or Republicans -- he stated firmly that he thought the Democrats would make the world safer and seemed primed to grill us if we had said we were Republicans. By the way, everyone who greeted us on the street, and found out where we were from, was unfailingly positive about America, but several said that they did not like George Bush and said things like "Enough George Bush" or, in the case of one fellow, made machine gun sounds, said "Bush," then shook his head. One young man, outside a mosque, explained to me in good English that he would not let us into the mosque unless Kate had a head covering, and stated that this was simply the rule, and that he welcomed us in his country warmly despite the aggression of the Bush administration, which he disapproved of but knew was separate from us individual Americans. Fares asked many questions about politics in the US, and ended up concluding that he thought the world would be a much better place if Kate and I ran the country. He really made me feel a renewed conviction to get involved, out a sense of responsibility to his voiceless (as in without a vote) sincerity for change.

Fares and Hasam took us to cafes, accompanied us in walks through the trendy parts of town where the youth hang out at night, brought us to a music store, introduced us to their friends (who presented us with an Egyptian singer's CD they thought we would like), and guided us in taxis around the different parts of the city. Without their help it would have taken us four days to do part of what we did on the first day. Fares even accompanied us on a tourist excursion to the Cathedral of St. Simeon (qa'laat samaan) just outside Aleppo and helped us immensely by ascertaining transport routes and bartering for rates with a local's skill. He seemed so happy to have people he could talk to about his secular views (he described how he on many occasions has to put on a religious front). He explained how he adheres to the first pillar of Islam (there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet) and believes that living a moral life is all that matters, which is possible outside of religion. He recounted a conversation with a cab driver; the cabbie had lived in Switzerland for many years and was bashing the secular life there, with naked people in the streets, but then the cabbie added that he thought people there were quite moral and ethical, perhaps even more so than in Aleppo ... Fares took this anecdote as emblematic of his belief in the possibility of separating morality from religion. To say the least, I was not expecting to have this conversation with a local on my travels in the middle east.

Fares also mentioned a bit about what is like to live under the Syrian state. He told us never to say the word "Israel" in Syria, never to send him emails from Israel, and said that the security people knew everywhere we had gone, everyone we had seen, and everything we had done, most likely. We observed that Syria is very safe and he confirmed that crime is rare and, owing to the large number of informants the state retains, that criminals were almost unfailingy caught extremely quickly. He would not talk to us about the elections in Syria a few months ago. He did tell us that there are a lot of police and that it not uncommon for them to seek bribes. He described one occasion when he was pulled over while driving and detained on trumped charges until his father came to bail him out.

Fares is probably checking his grade on his Victorian Literature exam and I know he's done well as his English is arrestingly good. I will miss him and hope to see him on his visit in the US one day. It was for him that I titled the last blog post "save room for falafel," the joke CD title we offered his insipent band and which he found hilarious. I'll be saving room for Allepene falafel.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

We're in what country again?

Today was our first full day in Amman, and we went to the mall (two malls, actually). Well, first we hung around and watched some tv. Then we went to the mall. While at the mall, we visited such stores as: Claire's, ALDO, Nine West, and Safeway.

For lunch I ate Sbarro and Dan ate Popeye's. We decided not to go to TGIFriday's or Applebee's.

We almost went to see Transformers, but we were too late.

Really, if it weren't for the men in full Saudi dress (long white robes, red and white checked head scarves) and women in hijab, this was probably the most 'typically' american day I've had in years.

Some Like it Hot

Another thing you might not expect to find in Syria: a coffee shop themed after Marilyn Monroe.

It's in the Christian Quarter of Aleppo, and it is apparently THE place to see and be seen. At night you need to have a reservation or know someone to get a table outside.

The chairs all have leopard print fabric on them, and one wall has a number of posters of old movies with Marilyn. The other wall has a number of bizarre modern art-ish pictures with nearly naked models wearing nothing but strategically placed coffee shop accoutrements (saucers, espresso cups, etc). One girl is stepping out of some sort of pool, wearing only a teaspoon bikini. Artistic!

Dan and I went there a couple of times with Fares and Hasam (more on these two later. the short version: our syrian best friends). We drank mint cappuccinos and cinnamon roll lattes. We did not partake of the giant 'american style' subs, which are covered in mayo and ketchup and served with doritos.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Save Room for Falafel

Alright, it's time for the RPHDBD (Ranking of Public Health Disasters By Deliciousness):

1.) Public grazing stand at the golden trophy falafel stand in Aleppo.

These folks are geniuses in Aleppo, where the official passtime is snacksnacksnacking away the hours between official meals, judging by the near saturation point of ice cream cone per hand in the afternoon crowds. But you've been dutifully saving room for falafel. So you buy a falafel for about fiftten American cents and you get your watered down chilled salty yogurt drink (ayran), and amble to the back of the joint where about fifty men are crowded about a feeding station nursing a falafel in some state of jagged dismemberment in the left hand, while the right hand darts out onto a table replete with overflowing buckets of mint stalks, green hot peppers, diced carrots, pickled vegetables, cucumbers, extra tahini sauce, small bowls of salt, and bowls full of arugula, maybe some sliced radishes (varies by grazing stand) ... it's not uncommon to see a full grown man dribbling tahini down his chin and trailing a fullblown stalk of mint out the side of his mouth as he munches it steadily closer to down the hatch.

So nobody washes their hands and everybody picks out of the common feeding station ... that falafel and all those extras are so seductively tasty and satisfying to the human grazing instinct that this is easily the most delicious public health disaster in all of Syria.

2.) Orange Juice ('aseer bortakal) pretty much anywhere, but especially outside the big brother umayyad mosque in Damscus.

So the man doesn't wash his hands or cutting board or knife and pours sketchy tap water all over the squeezer ...but this stuff is pretty wholsome and very delicious and, bless those reassuring oranges, they come in their nifty protective peels.

3.) The bus ride from Palmyra to Damscus.

I didn't mind that the bus conducter had to physically remove a small child from a seat in order to present me with "the seat" I had just paid for (OK, it made me feel quite guilty), but then some other little kid vomited on the hot bus (a ripe odor, as I recall) and the conducter walked briskly up and down the aisle spraying liberal quantities of air freshener in an unventilated bus while we were stuck behind a large truck and were consequently already swimming in diesel fumes AND the bus driver was clamly chain smoking ... this was a decidedly undelicious public health disaster. So I stuck my nose under my shirt and got some giggles out of a pair of hijab-wearing young women who caught sight of this olfactorily besieged foreigner.

4.) The food at the bus station in Homs.

I didn't want to go to Homs. Kate and I made specific plans to stay in Hama instead of Homs, but there I was sitting for several hours one afternoon in the Homs bus station, getting whoosy from the thick cloud of tobacco smoke that had accumulated in the upper leverl where the only seats are located. So I took a walk to get some fresh air. Innocent enough. Then the shwarma man trapped me with his delicious-looking chain of pita sandwiches he was dolloping with something-or-other. So I bought a stale crusty one from a pile behind him, one he probably had dolloped yesterday morning, and I decided to get some of that fresh yogurt drink (ayran) I love so well to help wash the stuff down ... ayran is not supposed to taste vaguely of bad tahini. This food was not exactly delicious, but it was delcious in the context of being trapped in a bus station around meal time, and it was almost certainly the meal that had me bedridden for the past two days. Blech.


Unrated, to date:

- Everywhere from Aleppo to Damascus I've seen this smartly dressed chaps with large, elaborately wrought silver jugs strapped to their bellies. From observation, I've determined that they take a glass from a few they keep in holsters around their waist, open a spiggot on the jug, fill the glass with a black liquid, hand it to paying customers who gratefully quaff it down, then spray water from another spiggot, rinse out the glass, and replace it in the holster. Who knows how many people's lips a day touch those few glasses. Certainly a public health hazard. But, more important, who knows how delicious is that black liquid? Not I. Not yet. And some of these clever fellows bob blackberries in this mystery drink. Tantalizing.

- I've already mentioned how the sweat just wicks off the body here, but (and as I type this I'm about to get up and get some water from the cooler in the internet cafe) it really is remarkable how quickly body moisture disappears with each breeze, with each split second of direct sun exposure, with each breath. Now, I find it equally hard to convey just how many mosques there in Syria. One at every few steps. These pious, easy to find, some might even say blessed-by-God buildings, are aso kind enough, each and every one of them, to offer a public water faucet with a tin cup or bowl chained to the faucet. These water sources are always extremely close to a holy building and are almost certainly maintained by holy men, but how can anybody ever wash those cups when they're chained to the faucet, and where does that water come from? It might be unimaginably refreshing in spiritual as well as physical ways...


***

Upcoming list: Funniest English language shirts for sale in Syria

Teaser: Lesberado, Alan Greenspan

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Pictures

Hey all-

There are some new pictures up. Sorry they aren't in trip order.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/74468987@N00/

Kate

Saturday, July 14, 2007

The Coming War

In Aleppo (Haleb, if you will), there is a coming conflict (some may even say it has already started).

It's not between the Christians and the Muslims, who actually seem to get along quite famously (Aleppo is about 20% christian).

No, the current conflict, barely contained beneath a thin veneer of calm and good feeling, is between two slightly less traditionally combative groups: the followers of yoga and the Pranic healers.

That's right: a significant portion of the youth of Aleppo do yoga. Another significant, but distinct, group of young Aleppans do Pranic healing. And they hate each other.

From what we could gather, the yoga people think pranic healing is a lot of crap, and the pranic healers think that yoga is crap for thinking they're crap. apparently, it's come close to blows.

as an interesting sidenote, we do now have a pamplet all about pranic healing in arabic.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Some things that are exactly what you'd expect of syria:


1. women fully covered. There are are a significant number of women here who wear long black head-t0-toe robes. Many of them wear black gloves and socks. Some have only slits for the eyes, but many of them wear an additional piece of black cloth that goes over their faces, so there is literally zero skin that is visible. it is basically a burka, except always black and more than one piece.

2. the government is watching. i think i'll write a whole post about this later, but yeah, they basically know everything we're doing. and you can't even say the country, um, 'occupied Palestine' (what they call it) out loud. this we know from our syrian friends, who would lean over and whisper very very quietly whenever they had to say it, which they avoided at all costs.

3. there are big pictures of the president EVERYWHERE. huge billboards, posters in almost every store, car decorations. i guess maybe this is to reinforce the idea that the government is watching. there are more pictures of him than of any other leader of any other country I've been in.

Some things you might not expect in Syria:

1. people really like americans. i think they're not too keen on our president, but everyone is always asking 'what country' and when you say 'amrika' they all say 'welcome in syria' and some version of smile/thumbs up/'good.'

2. aleppo, the most conservative of Syria's big cities, has a pimp. they call him the yellow man of aleppo. He dresses in bright yellow, head to toe (inc. hat and shoes) and stands on a certain street corner all night, cell in hand. we did not stop to chat.

3. just as there are women covered head to toe, there are a significant portion of young women (mainly christians) wear tank tops, tight jeans and tons of make up. even a lot of young mulsim women wear a headscarf, tight clothes (but long sleeves) and tons of makeup.

4. they already have die hard 4 in theaters.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

No Problems (Afish Mushkaila)

Maybe two miles before you actually reach it, you can tell that you're coming up to the Turkish-Syrian border. Large trackor trailer trucks wait in line on the right lane of the road, one after the other, kind of like cars on an enormous cross-border train. The line is so long and slow moving that the trucks are actually parked right in the street, and the drivers have all gotten out and sit on little stools in the shade the trailers make, drinking tea and playing cards.

cars and minibuses (like ours) move to the left, but things get awkward when cars try to come in the other direction. There's a lot of honking.

When you finally get up to the leaving turkey border, the structure is new, but it lacks a little in traffic planning. the closest thing i can compare it to is this: it looks like a set of two tollbooths, but instead of just going through, you have to park in the middle of the highway (no parking lot), go up to the tollbooth window, and fight the other people to get your ticket stamped. while waiting in this pedestrian tollbooth line, you have to be very careful not to be run over by the people who have already gotten their tickets (ie, passports and papers) stamped and are now driving their tracker trailers through the road about 3 inches from where you're huddled against the wall.

once you get your stamp, you go back, get into your car/minibus, and drive through, trying not to crush the toes of the new batch of people huddled in line to get their stamp.

the syrian border has no such pretentions that the system might one day be efficient: everyone has to park and go inside. once inside we had to be bounced from one person to another to another all of whom poked and prodded at our passports and asked us the same questions over and over. the first guy looked at it for a while, sent us to a side room to a guy who took our passports asked us a number of questions (and who was also highly amused that my last name is Jordan and Dan's can be transliterated as Arrabia if you felt like it), wrote our answers diligently down on a piece of paper, gave us our passports back and then sent us back out to the main area. it was only once we were back in the main area that we realized that he had not marked or stamped our passports at all, so we got back in the big shoving line, gave our passports back to the first guy, who then looked at it for a while and began to have issues with the same things - at no point did side room man and front room man have any kind of contact to let each other know that we were ok, and yes we already asked about the new pages in the passport. i started to shout afish mushkaila afishmushkaila and point to the side room where the jolly man had asked us all kinds of questions. this was apparently enough, and he stamped our passports and we were on our way.

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Hakan

We arrived around 2 PM today in Aleppo (Haleb), Syria, after spending one night in Goreme, Kappadokya (Central Turkey), where we saw some ancient underground caves and hillside caves, early Christian frescoes, and a heckuva good sunset.

We left Goreme for Keyseri, where we would catch a bus to the Turkish border with Syria at Antakya (Antioch), but we had about 4 hours to spare in Keyseri, a rather large, industrially important city with a definite flavor of Soviet-style architecture and Soviet moustaches. We put our bags down in the waiting area and after I came back from the WC mere moments later Kate was holding a baby and talking with local women ... I sat down and this kid sat down and started to talk to me in Turkish. The women showed us pictures of their family, beamed at us a bunch, then hugged and kissed us in warm Turkish style when they had to leave. Hakan, the seventeen-year-old kid, stuck around.

We got out a pad and pen because we had a lot of trouble communicating. He gave me a shell casing as a present, which was a bit ominous, and we gave him postcards from New York City and San Francisco with our emails on the back. He finally got across that he wanted to show us Keyseri and Kate and I stashed our bags but then we balked at the door ... who was this kid? Why was he hanging around the bus station? He seemed hurt but accompanied us back inside and took some tea with us and played "complete the square" with us on a pad. He found a young man in the waiting area who spoke English and this fellow translated for us for awhile ... turned out this kid was in earnest (the third party verification was comforting), and the English speaker gave us some key translations and clarifications. We ended up going into town for dinner with Hakan. He had assured me through the translator that he could understand me but that he just couldn't say much in English. I thought about this statement of his later on the bus and I came to appreciate it more and more; I feel that he was expressing that we could communicate on a basic level below words and that he was emphasizing this because he wanted to be friends with us.

Anyhow, it turned out that Hakan had missed a train earlier in the day, and he deliberately missed the next train in order to stay with us until right before we had to board our bus. He ended up calling us his "uncle and aunt" and insisted I smoke a cigarette with him (smoking is a bigtime male passtime in Turkey). I left amazed by his kindness and earnest desire to connect with us ... in a bus station, of all places!

Oh, another English speaker encounter outside of Istanbul (where the language barrier was surpiringly hard): on the bus ride to Keyseri we sat next to a fellow who spoke English quite well and he inspected our Lonely Planet Middle East travel guide, scoffing at the cover photo, which is of an arab smoking a hookah and smiling a jagged yellow smile. He wanted us to be sure to explain to people back in America that this picture was not what Turkey is like, and he added that there is so so much more to do in Turkey than our cursory giude listed. His pride in Turkey was very much on display, as was his kindness, as he explained how we should visit certain town on the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. I took his umbrage at the photo to heart... it certainly seemed, from his eyes, to be a strange way to label a region. How would we like it if a North American guide book had a photo of a toothless, smiling trucker drinking a coffee on the front? His critique was immediate and emblematic of the endearing pride I've encountered in people: Ohran, our host in Istanbul, described Istanbul as a prostitute, because she seduces you but you're never quite satisfied, which I though was a description full of a self-deprecating sort of pride; and our tour guide in Kappadokya was careful to emphasize to us that he did his work because he loves Anatolian history and learning new languages, not for the money.

Here's a link to some photos Kate took in Istanbul:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/74468987@N00/

Kate's uploading more photos, which is slowslowslow, so I'm just gonna start writing about the food part of trip, because I'm hungry. Oh, I showed Hakan my Turkish/English cheatsheet and he started laughing when he saw that fully three-quarters of all the phrases I had seen fit to copy out of my guidebook were names of foods. I patted my belly and then pointed to my brain and he cracked up, nodding. So, Kate and I have been devoted to "portakal suyu" (orange juice) because it's fresh, hydrating, and full of good electrolytes (the sweat wicks right off but you feel the fatigue). I learned that fruit is "mayveh" and we got some melon, plums, fresh figs (oooooo!), and apricots. The "beyaz peynir" (goat cheese) is choice on some peasant bread or "simit" (these round seasame breads that are like the skinny cousin to the seasame-seed bagel), as is "goezelme peynirli" (a buttery, cheesy pancakey bread). Kate's a vegetarian so I've been going light on the meat, but the "pastrimi" (yup) in a grilled cheese sandwich, the "ishkender kebab," and "kofte" have all done me well. We had some "fasulye" (white beans), "patlican"(eggplant), "ashure" (special pudding), and bulgur that really satisfied after excessive cave-viewing. An interesting note is that orange in Arabic is "bortakal," which sounds a lot like "Portugal" and makes me wonder as the name is constant from Turkish into Arabic. Oh, and when we asked Orhan, our Turkish couchsurfing host, what he would have wanted us to bring from America, he replied simply, "Alcohol and pork." heh.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Leaving Istanbul

oooooo... Prayer call. Just amazing. Sitting on Ohran's porch, listening to prayer call a few moments ago, the way different callers chime in all over the city from various distances... mesmerizing. We happened to be standing between the blue mosque and the aya sofya mosque at prayer call and the two callers tossed the call back and forth over the public square and I seriously got chills up and down my spine. The tune is plaintive and plainly ancient. Also, the contrast crackles when they lay similar melodies over trance beats in the nightclubs on thewaterfront.

We watched a crowd of Turkish students sway to the Buena Vista Social club, loving it, and even saw one couple salsa dancing on a rooftop behind the open-air venue.

We've gotten on the wrong boats a few times and thus inadvertently toured the Bosphorus, we've showed up just a few minutes too late to see the Topkapi, and we've walked all over - and I mean all over - our part of Istanbul. The highlight so far, however, has to be jumping up and down dancing to "Istanbul" by They Might Be Giants at a local bar ... the dj threw it on twice and the Turkish kids LOVE it. Our host, Ohran, is a party animal and kept us out till 5 AM or so. After dancing he dragged us to this rock club where he knows the owner and this lovely guy poured us at least four, maybe more (I can't remember), shots of "sex on the beach" drinks, talked to me very earnestly about "rainbow people" gatherings in the mountains of turkey, played "Love Me Two Times" by The Doors at least three times on the soundsystem, and then destroyed me in Streetfighter at dawn. What a night ... the nightlife in Istanbul is tops... now we catch the bus the Kappadokya, an all-nighter.

Monday, July 2, 2007

in some ways, jetlag isreally useful. there's something about the bleary eyed, heightened-awareness, what-time-is-it-here-and-also-where-are-we, is-that-sun-rising-or-setting-out-the-side-of-the-airplane overtiredness of jetlag that gets you ready. It gets your body so completely turned upside down that when you wake up in the middle of a park overlooking the bosphorous at 430 in the afternoon while just maybe leaving a little bit of quite unladylike spit on your traveling companion's shoulder and the man with the cart overcharges you for an ear of boiled corn with salt you're like 'yeah, of course' and continue on your merry backpacked way without even stopping to think 'holy shit, i`m in istanbul.'



Holy shit, I'm in Istanbul.



And away we go...

Istanbul - day 1

First off:

My name is Dan Irby and I am traveling with my friend Kate Jordan from Istanbul to Cairo overland during the month of July.


We arrived yesterday at about 1 PM and rode the tram for about two hours from the airport to the Beshiktash neighborhood where Ohran, our Couchsurfing.com host, lives. This is right along the Bosphorus and we sat on a bench in a little park, next to a mosque watching the ferries dock, quickly dozing off waiting for our meet-up time with Ohran, but not before I got into some language confusion buying sesame bread (simit) and some corn-on-the-cob.

The call-to-prayer rang out next to us and echoed throughout the city around 4 PM and we soon walked northeast along the coast to Ohran's neighborhood, sat drinking tea, walked up to his apartment, found him not home, and then sat in a park by his building looking nervously at a pack of dogs. A passing vendor in the park asked us our nationalities and upon hearing American he laughed, declared us "Rich!" pointing at his bag of snacks. Kate finally walked over to a group of stoned guys and managed to gesture her way onto their mobile and Ohran and Marion, a couchsurfer from France, came to meet us. Ohran, some kind of polyglot computer programmer, last night alone hosted two French girls, two Americans (us), Marion, his brother, and he is currently sleeping on the living room floor of his three-room flat. He is some kind of awesome. Apparently this is the way he lives normally.

Showering is good. Down the street we tried to order some vegetarian meze (Kate eats no meat or fish) and ended up with some bread, stringy green stuff, and eggplant ... I gestured to a dish on a neighboring table and our well-inentioned host brought us the rose on their table, so we laughed a lot. We supplemented with ice cream up the street and the cashier told me, upon hearing we are Americans, that he would be traveling to West Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Long Island, Boston ... what for? He thought for a moment then said, "BIG shopping!"

Passed out. Sights today ... arming myself with a crib card for language barrier. This part of the city seems full of mostly locals and these young Istanbulites dress super metro.

güle güle