Travels in Syria, featuring The Perfect Day

Two weeks ago, I went to Damascus, Syria with a bunch of people from our program. I'll start from the very beginning with our issues at the border, transitioning into the lame night, into The Perfect Day, and to our last great day.

THE BORDER

Basically, they made us wait 6 hours. We didn't have any sort of problems, they just made us wait. Because you know, we were Americans trying to cross into Syria. Our cab driver was furious and nearly abandoned us once or twice, despite us warning him that none of us had visas. We ended up paying him like 20JD extra for being such a trooper. And the visa only cost US$16, when it cost about $130 from the Syrian Embassy in the US. So that was a nice bonus.

FIRST NIGHT

The first night was actually kind of lame. We did get to the hotel though which was really pretty, especially considering how little we were paying for it.

Here is what it looked like:



After that we went to this club called Dominoes, filled with extremely lame and gross 30-40 year olds. Me and a few people decided to leave and went to a liquor store and had a relaxing night in the hotel instead.

THE PERFECT DAY

The Perfect Day (yes, it must be capitalized) began when the group of 11 of us headed to Syria's National Museum. For the most part, the theme with these museums is once you've seen one Middle Eastern museum, you've kind of seen them all. Looking at a bunch of similar rocks does get boring after a while, although there was a pretty neat synagogue from way back in the day that featured paintings from many biblical stories. Other than that though, it was kind of boring, which led me and my friend Peter to decide to depart from the group to go wander around Damascus. He wanted to get our friend (and fellow UNCer!) Stephen since they had agreed to be "wingin' it buddies" (guys are so weird) and he was with our friend Chris, so the four of us rolled out.

This would not have been a مشكلة, (pronounced mushkila, meaning "problem") if we had not left one guy back with 6 girls. And if the text I sent to one of the girls in the group had arrived on time rather than 45 minutes later. And if I had known she couldn't text back. This led to a little bit of drama that doesn't really need to be discussed here, but I really don't think it's that big of a deal anymore.

Anyway.

From the museum we went and sat in a beautiful park for a while. Peter and Chris figured out which way to go with their manly directional skills, using the sun and time of day to figure out how to get to the main area of town. This led us to a fruit juice/slushie stand, which was some of the most delicious juice I've ever had. I think mine was rasberry. Just a really nice way to start off the perfect day.

From there we continued walking and exploring, and ended up in a souk (small market) that was definitely all stolen goods. We continued wandering until we found the real legit souk, although most places in there were closed. However, we did find an ice cream place, which served large cones of vanilla ice cream covered in pistachios for what is less than an American dollar. This experience also led to the perfect picture:



We also got approached by a Syrian girl, probably around 15 years old, that asked to take pictures with each of us individually. Believe it or not, this isn't the first time this has happened to me.

From there we went to a tomb of Saladin, who was a great war hero in Syria back in the day, sometimes referred to as "The Conqueror of Jerusalem." That was pretty neat.

From there we went to the Citadel, which was closed because a concert was to be taking place that night. There we randomly ran into two other guys from our group, Paul and Darren, and invited them to join us for dinner. We went somewhere that claimed to have food, but actually just grabbed a menu of a nearby restaurant and acted as some sort of middleman. It was all very entertaining, actually. We ate, hung out, smoked some sheesha, just chilled.

From there we split off with Darren and Paul and went to explore the big mosque in the middle of the city. I was given a large robe to wear and we started walking around the beautiful main courtyard area. It was here when our day would really pick up the intensity.

We got called over my some شباب (pronounced shabaab, meaning youth) all wearing blue and orange. They asked us if we were going to "the game" to which we replied "which game?" They leaped onto this opportunity to teach us all about the team they cheer for, pronounced Karrama, and gave us a free flag (after taking a bunch of pictures of us holding it of course) and advised us to go to the game that night.

We continued to walk around, Peter with the flag around his neck, and continuously got stopped for pictures, cheers, etc. It was quite amusing.

We went to the stadium and it was PACKED! We bought a ticket outside for the equivalent of about US$2, bought some more cheap flags, and headed inside. We sat right at the midfield line in one of the front rows, where things were a little less crazy but our view of the field was awesome. We noticed a large banner that seemed to signify that this was indeed a championship game, most likely between two Syrian teams, although Karrama had a much bigger following there.

The game was getting ready to start and the crowd started getting rowdy. People started throwing firecrackers onto the field (seriously) until kickoff. Karrama ended up winning 3-1, with crazy celebrations including fireworks, flares, and fires being set from the middle of the bleachers and stands.

Upon winning, all the Karrama fans stormed the field. We figured "when in Syria..." so we joined them all on the field for the celebration. One guy that had been sitting near us for most of the game asked where we were from and when we told him, he continuously yelled "WELCOME!" in English for the next half hour or so. He also handed me his phone and made me talk to a bunch of his Syrian friends, which wasn't even slightly awkward.

Anyway, as we were all on the field, throwing our flags around, waving at the players that were being carried off the field by other fans, and trying to get on television, all of a sudden COMPLETELY out of nowhere, everyone starts sprinting and shoving hardcore back toward the gate we had come out of. As it turns out, the Syrian (riot?) police had begun chasing the mob off the field with their nightsticks or whatever you want to call them. Luckily through the chaos the 4 of us were somehow able to stay together and managed to get off the field without too big of a problem.

Afterwards, we ate dinner at a very fancy Italian restaurant but because we were in Syria, the price came out to less than eating at an Applebees or something. From there, to complete the full circle of the perfect day, we got delicious juice again, and stayed up talking and hanging out at our hotel until the wee hours of the morning.

LAST DAY

We shopped. That's pretty much it, I believe. Had no trouble coming back through the border.

I realize I am well behind on my blog posts (I have to write one about Beirut, where I was for the past 5 days) but I'll try to keep up if I can. Next weekend is looking like an Israel/Palestine trip, so I'll try to get my Beirut stuff up before then.