Middle East Odyssey - Part 1 (June, 2005)

June 28, 2005 / Throught the border with a piece of paper?
I went to the embassy yesterday to try and figure out how to sort out this little passport problem I have. They gave me a paper that states that my passport is still valid even though the biopage is coming off and yadayadayada. It will be interesting to cross the border the next time :)

I've been meaning to update about the wedding and stuff, but got a slight stomach bug yesterday, so haven't managed anything. Hopefully soon :)


June 26, 2005 / Stuck in Syria
Well guess what, I will most likely be stuck in Syria for at least a month WITHOUT a passport as my f**king passport is falling apart! The page which holds all the vital information is attached to the rest off the passport by a plastic strip and that strip is poor quality and thus the page is almost unattached now. I'm surprised I didn't get into any trouble on my way back from Lebanon today. Have to go to the embassy tomorrow, they will most likely send my passport to Finland and it'll probably take a while to get it back. I will start drafting a complaint to the company who manufactures the passport. As you can imagine, I'm a little angry right now. Of all the places in the world, my passport has to fall apart in the Middle East.

Update & photos from Lebanon trip later.


June 23, 2005 / A people without a state
It turned out to be quite difficult to buy stamps here. After a week's searching I finally had to admit defeat and go buy them from the main post office. I managed to get the correct (I hope) stamps with my rather funny Anglo-Arabic mix. But of course, being the blond I am, I forgot to put the postcards into a mailbox at the post office, so tonight my evening stroll was to the nearest post box. We'll see how long it takes for the cards to arrive, mail here is notoriusly bad.

Besides stamp-hunting, I spent the day shopping. I went to Takiyyat as-Suleiman, an alley of handicrafts and jewellery shops just behind the military museum. So far it's my favourite shopping place for traditional stuff here. It's never crowded like Hamidiyya in the Old City and people aren't trying to shove things at you. I bought silver & pearl earrings for less than EUR 10, a silver & pearl bracelet for about EUR 14, another silver bracelet for about EUR 8 and a pearl & stone necklase for less than EUR 50. A very sweet elderly man in a brass and copper stall explained to me how the copper tables and other things are made, and about lots of other things. In the store where I bought the necklase from, the owner (Joseph) offered me tea and did lots of talking. I think I must have been there for 40 mins or so.

Did I already mention that everything here is cheap? A meal in a good restaurant is between EUR 6 - EUR 15, and the food is very good. A chicken shwarma from a street stall is less than euro. Yesterday I had to buy clothes for the wedding, and I got trousers, a top and shues for EUR 40. I can see myself do lots of shopping :D

By the way: Palestinians living in Syria are not issued passports and are not allowed to leave the country. I'd assume this applies to Palestinians living in Lebanon, Jordan and other places as well. They are not regarded as citizens of this state and as such have no civil rights. 'Ali, my Arabic teacher, is Palestinian. Despite of being a pretty lousy teacher, he's an OK guy. He's promised to take me to where he lives, aka. a Palestinian refugee 'camp' near Damascus. Raija & Maria went there before and they said that it's not really a camp at all, more like anyt other suburb in here.


June 21, 2005 / Is it a name or is it a noun?
Well I had another rather frustrating Arabic lesson today. Not only does 'Ali not speak English well, he also knows nothing of grammar, which I keep finding out the hard way. He keeps repeating things like "there's no grammar in this sentence" or "I will explain grammar to you later". What he doesn't understand is that it's kinda hard to try and learn a completely different and difficult language if nobody explains the basic building blocks to you. How can I make a sentence if nobody tells me in which order the verb, object and subject should be? In languages there's always a rule, but all 'Ali says is "you have to hear it"! So tomorrow I begin the hunt for a good Arabic teacher, the languages is hard enough to learn without bad teaching. Oh, and the book we're using, it sucks. It is solely based on imitation (kids may learn that way) and explains nothing. It even uses incorrect sentences to "keep things simple"..

Talking about languages: one thing you notice here is how ridiculous a language English is in terms of pronunciation. All restaurant menus here are full of spelling mistakes, but the mistakes make sense (cf. sourcream and sawrcream). Today I saw a bus that had "Happy jerney" written on the side in big letters. That, too, makes perfect sense :)

Enough nonsense for one night, need to sleep as going shopping tomorrow for something to wear to the wedding on Friday. I think I'll need to avoid pools for a few days as my skin colour is rather crab-like after today's sunbathing.


June 20, 2005 / A wedding in Lebanon
A friend of mine from SOAS invited me to his cousin's wedding in Lebanon this Friday. I've never been to a local wedding celebration, so should be fun. At least I get to go to someone's wedding this weekend, even though it's not the wedding I would very much like to attend: my friends Eeva & Chris are getting married on Saturday and I can't make it (for obvious reasons).


June 18, 2005 / Nothing much going on
Sorry about the lack of updates. Been writing these things on my laptop but just haven't manage to come to the net café to update. Uploading photos online at the moment, hopefully will have that sorted out soon.

Went to Le Meridien's pool yesterday. It appeared to be full of Scandinavian UN soldiers, lots of Swedes at least. I was talking to a Scottish guy who's lived here for 2,5 years.

I've been searching for Arabic courses at the institutes around here. Not very happy with my teacher as he's pretty bad. Can't explain anything and doesn't always even know how to translate the texts into English.

I think I'll go to Beirut next weekend.


June 16, 2005 / Suitor no. 2 (aka. flirtyboy) is back...
And then there were two. Maria left today so now it's just me and Raija, director of FIME, here. At the end of the month Raija will leave for her holiday, but the next day Finnish embassy's intern will arrive so I won't be all alone.

I went to see the Hajj exhibition at the Danish Middle East Institute today It's an exhibition of Hajj pictures from a village in Egypt. The most astounding part was the institute itself, tho! It is amazing.

On the way to Madhat Bashar street I was crossing the road and suddenly this guy comes to up me and says that he's seen me before at the internet café. He was the one who was standing outside the café for 45 minutes on Sunday trying to get me to come talk to him. I didn't recognise him, which I had to repeat about 4 times before he believed me.

Tomorrow is Friday, places will be closed and I will not have Arabic in the evening. I think I'm off to the Le Meridien or Sheraton pool.


June 15, 2005 / Chicken forepart, anyone?
Tonight we went out to dinner up Mount Qasyun. Found a fancy(ish) restaurant called the Best View and had a dinner of chicken forepart with a bunch of Japanese tourists in the next table. The menu was quite fancy but it was also very strange. Every other page was an add for one Western thing or another. The adds included Nokia and Naf Naf to name a few. Also, English translations of dishes are not always correct... Some of us had chicken forepart (we assumed it was chicken breast) and one of the dishes included spurge, torteia, pica nits and sawrcream. If anyone knows what spurge is, please let me know. Spelling mistakes are very common, and mostly they make total sense: if I'd write sour in Arabic, I'd probably translitterate it as s w r. Colgate is kuulgiit :) (Haha, I know letters by now!) ;) But still, seeing sawrcream and chicken forepart on the menu made me laugh. although I think the first glass of red wine in over a week might have had something to do with that too... :)

The views from up there were truly gorgeous. I wonder if anyone's ever counted the number of minareths this city has, but there are a lot, and when it gets dark all the minareths have green lights. Apparently the mosques' have their own power generators, it would be cool to see Damascus from up the mountain at night with a total power outage :) Nothing but the minarets...

There is (so far) one thing I can't stand about this place: CELINE frickin' DION! She is everywhere! Yesterday on the pool they played My Heart Will Go On about 4 times in as many hours. Not to mention the endless Chris de Burgh and George Michael and their sickeningly sugary lovesongs, I've lost count of how many times I've heard Careless Whisper by now...


June 14, 2005 / Hesburger visit & frustrating Arabic lesson
Today's mission was to find Hesburger. That means nothing to you people not from Finland but all Finns know of the hamburger chain hailing from Turku. Well they have a joint in Damascus and we went there today. The place looks exactly like any Hesburger in Finland, and the burgers tasted pretty much the same, even their garbage bins said 'kiitos' as well as sukran. The only difference was that there was NOBODY there but us and it took forever to get the food. Apparently it's a franchising thing. The guy who runs it had decided that Hesburger was the most politically correct choice for a hamburger chain in the Middle East and he's now thinking about expanding to Jordan and Egypt. I do believe the place would be thriving if it was in downtown Damascus, but only a bunch of crazy Finns are willing to endure a 20 min taxi ride in a steaming hot cab to go to a Hesburger...

On other 'news', my Arabic lesson to day was very frustrating. As 'Ali doesn't speak English that well, he doesn't really explain certain grammatical things and issues that well. I've come to the conclusion that if I only study classical Arabic here, it's a waste of time. I want to learn to speak. I can always go to elementary modern standard Arabic lessons in Helsinki. I have a very good opportunity here to actually learn to say something, and right now I feel like it's being wasted. For those of you unaware of the nature of Arabic as a language, think of it this way: right now it's like I'm trying to speak Latin in Rome: people get some stuff but and the basis of the languages are the same, but if you wanna get by in Italy you need to learn Italian. So to get by here I need to learn colloquial Syrian Arabic. And when I go to Lebanon or Jordan or Egypt, it'll be different... yay! :/ Tomorrow I won't have a lesson, which is nice cos this stuff needs to sink in, too. It's Maria the intern's last evening here and we're heading out to dinner. (Yay, proper food! I've been eating once a day pretty much all the time -> unvoluntary dieting ;)

Tomorrow Umm Ahmad, the cleaning lady, is coming in the morning so I actually have to get up relatively early. I've been thinking about going for a walk in Old Damascus as I haven't been there yet. Or I might just lazy about here before going to the pool with Maria.

PS. The Arabic word for squirrel is sinjab.


June 12, 2005
I am invincible :) I got the pages working (just a minor glitch I hadn't realised).

So today at the net café: I'm sitting here doodling with my laptop and this +30, heavy, blond Arab guy comes in and starts explaining how he's looking for a foreign Muslim girl to marry. He asked me if I wanted to stay here forever. I told him that I wasn't a Muslim and that I wasn't gonna stay here forever. 5 mins later he comes back and starts explaining how I can convert and then marry him! He was offering me his business card and saying how he's from a good family and has parents and everything. I was so bummed that he just walked in from the street to "ask my hand in marriage" that I barely knew what to say. I thik I did make it pretty clear that I wasn't interested, tho. Apparently he has a baby clothing shop near by so must remember to stay out of those in this neighbourhood. At least the flirtyboy from the corner has vanished, he stood there for over an hour trying to flirt with me.

OK, so Arabic is, like, really hard! ;) I'm still having trouble reading all the shop signs (especially if they've used calligraphy) and why on earth do the letters have to look so much alike?? Don't even get me started on pronunciation.. My Arabic teacher doesn't speak much English, it's quite interesting sometimes when he's trying to explain something but doesn't quite know how to. Also, the book we're using is completely in Arabic, the only English can be found in the vocabulary...


June 9, 2005
I think I have all possible traveller annoyances at once: upset stomach and sun poisoning. And I haven't even spent that much time outside because it's too darn hot! It'll take a while to get used to the weather.

I accidentally found a café today where you can connect your own laptop to the internet, so hopefully one of these days I'll manage to go there with my laptop and actually update all this monologue for everyone to see :)

I think I've gotten used to the prayer calls at all possible hours because last night I didn't wake up at 3.30am to the echoes of allahu akbars coming from the surrounding mosques. Or then somebody forgot to make the call ;)

Damascus is actually pretty nice, more people should really come here on holiday. And wait 'til I get to Lattakia and send you gorgeous photos of the beach! I could also take a ferry to Cyprus just for the fun of it. Ah, a bunch of drunken European tourists, what could be better, eh :)

I'm starting Arabic lessons this Saturday with Ali who works for UNRWA. Two hours five days a week. I'll be a champion when I get back, or not ;)

Time to sign off. More to come when I have stories to tell. Wait for a story from Quneitra on the Golan Heights at least. I need to get a permit to go there but apparently you can get one quite easily. Just requires a trip to the Tourist Ministry (seriously, these people have a ministry for absolutely everything!)


June 7, 2005
At 6am this morning I left my apartment in Helsinki, got on a bus to the airport and boarded a plane to Vienna and from there to Damascus. Both flights were uneventful, as usual. From Helsinki to Vienna I was mostly asleep as I hadn't slept much in the last few nights... I did get to enjoy Vin Diesel in The Pacifier on the way here from Vienna, tho ;)

Now I'm sitting in my room in Maysat, Damascus, it's past 9pm and still hot as hell. When I was on my way to FIME (Finnish Institute in the Middle East, where I'm staying) from the airport it was +33°C and the sun was shining from a cloudless sky. Apparently it was cooler last week so I guess summer is starting here now. Perfect timing, eh :) Already got some freckles when I was sitting on the terrace finishing a book this afternoon. I may need to avoid being outside 11am - 2pm for the first few days to avoid bad sunburning.

FIME has an internet connection but it's a slow modem connection. I think tomorrow I'll go and see if I can find an internet café with wireless LAN so that I could actually get these pages online.

Well, it's 9.22pm now and I can here several allahu akbars echoing around the city, time for evening prayer.


The Beginning
At 8:00am on June 7th 2005 my plane will take off from Helsinki towards Vienna. From Vienna I will continue to Damascus where I should land at 2.45pm. The reason I'm going is to study Arabic in an authentic environment.

Originally I had three options for the city in which I wanted to study Arabic: Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. Damascus is by far the smartest option for me because fewer people speak English or French and it's cheaper than Cairo or Beirut. Damascus is also perfect in size: you can walk almost anywhere, not that taxis are expensive, tho...

During my stay in Syria, my plan is to visit several citites and sites, including Aleppo, Hama, Lattakia, Homs and so on. If time permits, I'm also gonna scoot to Turkey and go to Antakya and what not. Once I finish studying Arabic in early August, I'll start making my way towards Egypt. On the list of countries to visit are Lebanon and Jordan and possibly Israel. As it is the Middle East, however, things change rapidly and certain events, such as the Egyptian presidential election in September, can alter my route.

If all goes to plan, I'll go from Syria to Lebanon to get lost in the wonders of Beirut, the Paris of the Middle East, and all else Lebanese.

After Lebanon I'm off to Jordan where I am going to visit Amman, of course, Petra, Aqaba and other sites I'll find interesting. I might also trek from Aqaba to Eilat on my way to Egypt. The tricky thing with visiting Israel is, tho, that I will either have to fly to Tel Aviv from Queen Aliah airport in Amman or get a new passport once I get back to Finland (if I want to come back to Syria or Lebanon, that is). For example Syrian officials won't let you into the country if they find proof in your passport that you've been to Israel. Such proof would, for example, be a stamp from Israel-Jordan or Israel-Egypt border. I will probably just go to Israel from Jordan or Egypt and not worry about the stamp business. I'm gonna have to get a new passport relatively soon anyway, cos I have friends in the Americas and the US is soon requiring all that biometric BS in passports. They already have my fingerprint and eye scan, what more do they want?

Anyway, after Jordan it is time to head to Egypt. Most likely from Aqaba to Sinai and from there to Cairo. As I've already visited Cairo once, with excellent guides, I won't spend much time there, but will instead head down to Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel and then to the Red Sea coast. After the Red Sea, I'll head up to some cooler temperatures in the Mediterranean coast and visit Port Said, Suez, Alexandria and so on.

Originally, I was planning on trekking through North Africa to Spain and flying back to Finland from Madrid, but it would have required more time so I decided to do that journey at some other point.

The first priority of my trip is to learn Arabic. At this point I know the numbers, and some of the letters, but my vocabulary consists of sukran (thank you) and marhaban (hello). Hopefully by the time I'm done studying in Damascus, I'll be able to communicate in Arabic a little. The second priority is to see some of the Arab countries and some of the most famous attarctions in the world. And sun sun sun!