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Viewing all posts tagged "travel"
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Pics from Eastern Europe
I’ve posted up all the photos I took from Prague, Warsaw, Krakow and Budapest, and will be adding descriptions over the coming days. A lot happened on this trip and I’m still processing it all!
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Eastern Europe Trip - The Food
The easiest way for me to describe my recent trip to four cities in Eastern European is through a series of thematic posts. This is how I will remember the trip, anyway. And to anyone reading this, it’s probably more interesting than the usual chronological re-telling of events or “activity stream” that attempts — incapably — to have you experience the trip exactly as I did. What a pointless exercise! Instead, I want to describe what I took away from the trip personally and share a few photographs.
The Food
I like food. I like to cook it, I like to eat it. I like to try new things and learn how to make them. For these reasons, Eastern Europe was a major treat! I have never eaten so much meat (82718 pigs worth) in such a short period of time (10 days). Here are some of the dishes I ate and where:
- stewed pork goulash with bacon dumplings (Prague, Czech Republic)
- roast pork with boiled cabbage and bacon dumplings (Prague)
- half a duck, roasted, with stewed cabbage and dumplings (Prague)
- ham cold cuts with cheese on dark rye toast (Prague)
- grilled pork neck with roasted potatoes (Prague)
- ham sandwiches (train to Warsaw, Poland)
- grilled sausages (Warsaw)
- scrambled eggs with tiny chunks of pork in them (Warsaw)
- roast pork fillet stuffed with bacon, mushrooms and cheese, breaded & deepfried, topped w/ melted cheese (Warsaw)
- pierogi dumplings with shredded meat (Krakow)
- ham cold cuts and cheese on toast (Krakow, Poland)
- more scrambled eggs with sausage (Krakow)
- tomato soup with beans and sausage (Krakow)
- roasted chicken breast wrapped in bacon (Krakow)
- more pierogi dumplings (Krakow)
- stewed pork goulash and spicy rice balls (Budapest, Hungary)
Did I mention yet that all of these food was C H E A P as hell? But when it got so frigid in Warsaw that I needed to buy a new hat and gloves at the local H&M, it struck me that the exact same items sold back in London for significantly less.
We found the locally produced fare in Eastern Europe to be very cheap, from food and drink to clothes and toys. On the other hand, imported goods from the USA, UK, and other European countries are way more expensive than the local Eastern Europe equivalents. We found this to be true with most consumables, for example vodka (Wyborowa vs Absolut) and groceries (Albert vs Tesco).
Signing off now so I can go for a bike ride and burn off more meaty calories!
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(via socialsciencevisualized) (via strangemaps)
Cool! But by this map my apartment’s in Warsaw. Too cold.
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Syria makes it into the New York Times top 10 destinations
Damascus ranks number 7 in the top places to visit in 2010, mainly on the basis of its new boutique hotels. Thank you, Don Duncan, former correspondent for the Global Post Beirut, for your insightful review of a city in which you don’t even reside. Forget the great mosques, markets, museums, and mausoleums: you can travel halfway across the world and stay in a luxury hotel with an “inviting courtyard”!
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First week in Damascus
Although this is the first time I’ve ever been to the Middle East, a region of the world I’ve dedicated so many brain cells to and yet had never seen for myself, I’d like to think I’m a little more informed than the next person when it comes to history, politics and society of the Middle East, especially the Levant countries. Regarding Syria in particular, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from all the reading and speaking with others who had lived or travelled here before. The American Scott C. Davis’s book, The Road from Damascus, was an entertaining read that kept me smiling throughout. The blogs Syria News Wire and Syria Comment helped me sift through the news and stay up to speed with current events. The Damascus photo group on Flickr and the Syrian School television series provided visual context. No less than a dozen friends have helped immensely with their first hand knowledge and experience. So far everything has been just as promised, from the Syrian people’s friendliness and the yummy cheap food to the government banned websites and insane drivers.
So what am I doing here?
The reason for moving to Syria was not to stir my imagination, have a spiritual revelation and “find myself” for the first time, as is often written in pretentious travel guides. No no, I’ve already found myself. The reason for moving here was to learn Arabic, period. So, why? I touched on the reason before, but re-explored it yesterday when completing my language institution’s application form. I’m sure most of the information I provided on this form will be typed into a system by someone only half paying attention, only to be lost in the bureaucratic jungle that is the state of Syria, never to be seen again. But I was compelled by my compulsive attention to minutiae to take this banal question seriously once again…
Why would you like to learn Arabic?
Career development - I want to increase my understanding of Arabic media, both print and online, so that I can apply myself in a professional role where knowledge of Arabic is preferred or required (for example, with an international organization, NGO, etc.)
So there it is in one sentence, yet again. :)
Where I’ll study Arabic
The Arabic Language Center at the University of Damascus apparently has the largest enrollment of Damascus institutions teaching Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or fusHa. MSA is not spoken on the streets normally. It’s too formal. Fortunately, people in Syria, Lebanon and beyond understand spoken MSA; it is, after all, used in newspapers and television. This means I can practice new vocab and grammar immediately after leaving the classroom; and, in fact, since arriving, I’ve fared pretty well speaking the limited MSA I already know. The 120 hours of part-time Arabic lessons I’ve taken before were not a waste! Thing is, when I speak MSA to locals I am answered in the local dialect, nicknamed amiye (colloquial Arabic), which forces me to learn local words and phrases quickly. This is good.
This is about the only thing I’ll say on politics
Many Americans find it hard to believe that it’s okay for me to be here. I understand why they feel this way, but I can’t believe it, if that makes sense. I can’t believe they’ve fallen for the propaganda, the scary picture that’s been painted by the mainstream media. I’ve found the best approach with this attitude is to calmly counter it with facts. Thus, on the occasions when I was faced with comments like, “Have fun dodging bombs!” or “Will you be safe?” or “Aren’t they socialist?”, I’d smile and patiently explain how, to the contrary, I understood from first hand accounts that the Syrians were warm, kind, helpful people, that petty crime and civil disobedience were very rare, and that reforms have led to greater economic freedoms (in some sectors), less corruption (though still very much of it), and more modern civil infrastructure (but still under-invested). In other words, it’s (mostly) all good.
Other accomplishments since arriving:
- Found at least two comfortable, clean cafes with tasty coffee and snacks, plus reliable, decent-speed WiFi (Sale Sucre and Moka & More)
- Got a Syrian SIM card which worked effortlessly with the unlocked HTC Desire I purchased in the UK a few months ago
- Opened a bank account, a process which took all of 30 minutes (!)
- Learned the routes of three micro-buses, arguably the best way I’ve ever seen to get around a city (imagine a taxi that’s there whenever you need one, carries up to 10 people, picks you up and drops you off wherever you want along its pre-defined route, and costs a flat fee — 10 SYP ($0.20) — no matter how long you stay aboard)
- Basic sightseeing, such as wandering the souqs (markets) of the Old City and the super gentrified area of Abu Rumanna
- Took a few photos
A square outside the Umayyad Mosque
View of massive Syrian flag from Muhajirin apartment -
Getting from Damascus to Mar Musa (Christmas trip 2010 - part 1)
I’m starting to understand why Syrian guidebooks etc. never really tell you exactly the right way to go or how much things actually cost or where things are located. It’s because once you’ve waded through the uncertainty and figured things out for yourself, you want to protect the knowledge — you earned it, so enjoy, and let the others try their best. Or perhaps more likely, it’s because there isn’t exactly one correct way to go, things don’t necessarily cost the same for different people at different times, locations of things might change, etc. Syria is an inexactly country, and Syrians know it. They’re also aware of the strong likelihood that foreigners / tourists are not mentally prepared for their country’s inexactness, and, perhaps as a kind of compensation, Syrians often go out of their way to make you, as a foreigner, feel comfortable. This is a very good thing, although I’ve written before about how Syrian hospitality can sometimes be overwhelming.
On the road to Mar MusaFinding our way…
A young girl ran to catch up with Jennifer and me as we trekked the 1.5 miles from the highway where the bus from Damascus had dropped us off. We were hiking this last bit to the small town of Nabk where we hoped to find some sort of transportation to the old Christian monastery of Mar Musa. The girl was one of a pack of 8 kids we had passed a couple minutes before. As we passed, they had laughed and yelled and said “hello” in English. A couple boys, perhaps in training for adulthood, simply stood and stared at us with with the typical Syrian man “zombie gaze” that we’ve become accustomed to. We smiled at the kids and continued walking past, but the one young girl — she couldn’t have been older than 8 — separated from the pack and ran to catch up until was walking in stride with us. “Hello,” she said in Arabic, “where are you from?”The entire conversation from this point was in Arabic, and, much to our delight, mutually comprehensible. She asked where we were going (and why not drive?). She asked if Jennifer and I were married; we said we were as that’s sometimes the easier option. Eager to practice my vocabulary, I asked the girl if she was married too. This resulted in a little sheepish grin that grew into laughter as she said, “La!” (No) The three of us said a few more things to each other before she offered us a handful of the sunflower seeds she was carrying. This was not the first, nor the last time a child would offer us sunflower seeds. We graciously accepted and Jennifer asked the girl, “Bikam?” (How much?) Again we got the cutest little grin from the girl, but this time her expression was less of surprise than of “come on, you should know better than to ask me that — please just take!” So we did, said goodbye, and continued on.
As I wrote above, the two of us were walking toward the town of Nabk, where we hoped to find a bus or taxi to the monastery of Mar Musa. Less than 5 minutes down the road, before we reached what looked like the town’s entrance, a car pulled up next to us. The driver said something very quickly which neither of us understood, but he was clearly gesturing for us to get into his car. Was this the taxi we were hoping for?? That car wasn’t marked as a taxi and there was a second man already in the front passenger seat, but when I asked the two men if this was a taxi, the driver replied in the affirmative. We asked if a ride to Mar Musa was possible (“hal mumkin nadhhab ila Mar Musa?”); the man said yes. We asked how much; he fetched a wad of cash from his pants pocket, fumbled around with it and held up 250 SYP.
Jennifer and I consulted each other. The Lonely Planet travel guide had said a car to Mar Musa would cost about 300 SYP but it hadn’t specified exactly where to get a car or whether it’d be marked a taxi etc. — it just said, in the typically vague Lonely Planet fashion,
Once in Nabek, you should be able to negotiate a driver for the 17.5 km ride to Mar Musa. You have a good chance of getting a ride in.
Great, thanks for that. Basically this meant hitch-hike and hope for the best. Well, we figured, we’d gotten this far on our instincts and the stranger in the car seemed nice enough. The other guy also gestured and encouraged us to get into the car. “Okay,” I said in Arabic, “Let’s go.”
Where is he taking us?
We quickly found out that the driver of this car, like the 8 year old girl, spoke not a word of English. The difference was he spoke faster and with longer words and more complex sentences. We didn’t really know what was going on, but we were in this man’s car now and heading to Mar Musa — or so we thought…We drove into the town of Nabk and started winding through what looked like a residential area. This was clearly not the mountain highway through vast, barren desert plains that we’d been expecting. We continued deeper into the winding streets of the city. We made so many turns that even with my trusty compass there was no way I could have led ourselves back out of town to the main road, as I had no map and had lost all sense of direction. All of a sudden, we pulled over — the man in the front passenger seat pulled some money from his pocket, handed it to driver, and exited the car. Maybe this guy was a taxi after all!
We proceeded to drive the narrow streets for some more minutes and eventually turned into some kind of compound. The buildings looked to be partly residential, partly unfinished. The driver pulled over in front of a small house, turned off the car, exited and headed toward the house door. Okay…
Turns out the man was picking up an elderly lady, which I can only presume was prearranged. As the four of us drove to another area of Nabk, the driver and elderly lady spoke to each other and to us, though we didn’t understand much of anything. They both laughed when I revealed I was American — and the lady was clearly very pleased! She remarked in Arabic that America is a very big country and very pretty. I replied “Thank you” and wanted to say something insightful or interesting about Syria. With my limited vocabulary the best I could say was, “America is pretty. Also, Syria is pretty.” She and the driver nodded and agreed in unison. After some more minutes we pulled over again and let the lady off, not before she offered Jennifer and me a couple apples from her bag! We tried saying “no, thank you” — the lady was clearly very poor — but she insisted, so we accepted. She also gave the driver an apple along with some cash for the ride.
View from the stairs looking back down the canyon“Yalla, ila Mar Musa!”
The driver evidently finished his other taxi fares and it was now time for us. We snaked through a bit more of Nabk until…. now we’re on a desolate, arid highway headed into the middle of nowhere. Jennifer and I grinned to each other: we were on the right track. On the way we hardly spoke another word. The landscape was like nothing either of us had ever seen. The driver broke the silence to ask if we were sleeping at Mar Musa, as many travelers do (rooms and meals are free, though you’re expected to contribute to the running of the monastery — that is, by doing dishes, keeping common areas tidy, helping with dinner, making tea, etc.). We had not intended on staying the night but only for a couple hours, so we managed to agree with the driver to meet us later to drive us back to Nabk. I gave him 300 SYP, 50 more than he’d asked for, and we said goodbye to each other.The sun was starting to set so we strapped on our packs and started the mile-long hike up the steep stairs carved into the side of the mountain, leading up to an all-stone-and-wood compound looking thing at the top. What immediately struck us was the sheer silence — no cars, no people, indeed no weather. It was utterly still. Difficult to capture on our cameras, but we tried. Water break about two-thirds of the way up, before the stairs got extremely steep. At the top we were met by a very nice man speaking English with a Scandinavian accent. He welcomed us to the site, disappointed we weren’t going to stay the night. He gave us a quick tour of the living quarters — men slept on one level, women on the other — before pointing us toward another complex of buildings containing the church, kitchen, laundry and eating areas, and other common spaces.
We looked over the gorge. Incredible. The night was now fully upon us but the moon provided more than enough light to see all the way down the canyon. Did we just climb that?
Another man showed us into the church, an ancient church some 1000 years old with frescoes painted on all the walls. Three layers of frescoes, in fact, dating from the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, surrounded us on all sides. The floors and shelves were “littered” with holy texts, hymnals, candles and religious icons. The shiny icons, frescoed walls and multicolored carpets covering the floor was quite a sight. You never would have guessed all this vibrancy was housed within a crumbling sandstone block of a structure.
We drank some tea with a German couple — probably in their 60s — who were staying then night, then bid our farewell and started the hike back down the mountain. The time we might have saved in walking downhill was offset by the darkness of night, although the moonlight did just as much to help us along as my basic flashlight’s humble beam. We were met at the base of the stairs by the driver from before — yes! He came back for us! On the drive back into Nabk we explained to the driver that we were next heading to the city of Hama. We aimed to get there that night, hopefully before midnight. He apparently understood and said many things to us, of which we probably understood only about half, but at this point he has gained our complete trust so we went with the flow. He dropped us off at a kind of intersection where many buses, vans and cargo trucks were passing through. He stopped the car and helped flag down the correct bus for us… and away we went to Hama!
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From Hama to Apamea and beyond (Christmas trip 2010 - part 2)
In Hama, on the morning of the second say of our Christmas break tour of Syria, J got very sick and stayed sick for the next two days. This was a major sadface. We got to know the Noria Hotel staff very well, watched a lot of E.R. and Oprah, and had simple meals of chicken, potatoes, rice and salty pasta delivered to our room. I wasn’t at 100% health either, as my lingering digestive problems remained an issue. Hama itself is small and can be experienced as a tourist in a day or two. Of note are its water wheels, the “old city”, and the Azm Palace.
View of HamaThe 4th day we both felt strong enough to attempt one of the excursions we had planned, using Hama as a central base. We ruled out the Krak des Chevaliers and Dead Cities as we expected these sites to involve a lot of hiking and would likely not have very good toilet facilities. Apamea, or in Arabic Afamia (آفاميا), on the other hand was relatively closer to Hama (35 miles), more flexible in terms of access, and apparently had a toilet. Turns out neither of us would need one — hooray!
Getting to Apamea from Hama
Getting to Apamea was extremely easy. First we found the Cairo Hotel near the clocktower on the main road with all the shops and stuff. The street is apparently called Qwalty, but we never found a label anywhere. It’s right next to the Riad Hotel, across the street from the Noria Hotel where we were staying. In the Cairo Hotel, we asked the check-in desk clerk if it’s possible to join a tour to Apamea. He said Of course!” and pointed out different itinerary options on a map of the region. We wanted to see the ruins of Apamea, some traditional “beehive” desert houses, and a castle en route called Ibn Wardin. The man gave us a price of 2400 SYP ($50) and told us to return in 45 minutes. At that point we weren’t sure if this was to be a bus tour or a private driver — it turned out to be the latter, which was much preferred.The driver was not a tour guide, it must be noted, and there was no negotiating the itinerary once we’d set off. This is why the price was only 2400 and not the 7000 SYP ($150) that Lonely Planet says is the cost of a personal chauffeur for the day. On the contrary, this man drove us to the Afamia site and waited 2 hours; drove to some beehive houses and paused to let us take some photos; and then returned us back to the Cairo Hotel in Hama. The whole excursion took about 5 hours, made to feel much shorted as we chatted with the driver most of the way. We learned that Hama — all of central Syria in fact — flourishes with agriculture. The region grows, apparently, everything, and sells it for very cheap — much cheaper than in Damascus, we learned.
After the beehive houses it was mutually decided to skip the Ibn Wardin castle because the site closed at 4pm and the sun was setting anyway. No problem; we’ll be back at some point to see the Krak des Chevaliers and Dead Cities, so we might be able to fit in Ibn Warden then. My hot tip: start your day trip from Hama earlier than noon in order to avoid sites’ early closing times in the shorter days of Winter.
Afamea itself was really neat…
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