christopher-hill.com

as-sallam alaykum

I'm back. I'm tired. I seem to be coming down with some bad Damascene cold. If I buy no souvenir when I travel abroad, I can always be assured that some uninvited germs will hitch a ride with me. At least they waited until the final night of my holiday before announcing their presence by pinching my nose, blocking its airways and making my 4:30am rise more daunting than it already was.
So, "How was it?" you ask. I wish you hadn't asked that question. A better one would have been "Did you have a good time?", a closed question to which I could answer "Yes, thanks" before letting my exhaustion overwhelm me and collapse into sleep right here on the sofa. And to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I can sum up the last two weeks in a single blog post.

I'll tell you this, it didn't exactly go entirely as planned, something I had plenty of time to consider as I stood alone on the Damascus highway, in the middle of nowhere, under 35 degree heat, surrounded by nothing but baked dust and the thunder of trucks and tankers passing me, while I tried to flag down a ride to Aleppo. It's a long story, suffice to say I didn't go from Istanbul to Aleppo by train as my lying cheating Turkish Travel agent never actually got round to buying me a ticket on what was now a fully booked train. So I had to go to bus, a bus that it turns out wasn't actually going to Aleppo despite what my lying cheating Turkish Travel agent told me, hence me being dumped at the road side and pointed in the direction of Aleppo.

I think for now I'll just give you a run down of each city I visited...
PARIS - Yeah, whatever. Very pretty and all that, a real picture. My advice, save your money by just looking at a picture of it rather than actually going there.
VIENNA - Well, everything you could want from a city, with the exception of a soul.
BUDAPEST - I really liked it and wish I had more time there.
BUCHAREST - Oh my god what a fucking shit hole. Its only redeeming feature is the fact that you can leave. The rest of Romania looks really nice though.
ISTANBUL - Great city, I'd highly recommend a visit. Visiting mosques has never really appealed to me before, but really that's because I've never really been confronted by their beauty before. With the larger mosques, no photo can do them justice, only the naked eye can take in their awesome scale and vision.
ALEPPO - The newer parts of the city are grubby and choked with traffic that threatens to suffocate you. But go for a wander around the quiet warren like back streets and hectic souks, and the place bleeds character.
DAMASCUS - Another city where I wish I'd allowed more time. As with Aleppo there's times when you simply can't remember why you came. As with Aleppo, when you hit the old city back streets and souks you are swiftly reminded. But unlike Aleppo, there's also signs of prosperity in some parts of the new city. At times it feels like you are in some liberal European country and you have to pinch yourself to remind yourself of the fact that you are in an often brutal socialist military dictatorship.

And that's that. It was exhausting. I think I have had my fill of cities now. The last couple of holidays I've seen big cities, small cities, up and coming cities, done and dusted cities, rich cities, poor cities, noisy cities and noisier cities. I think next year I shall seek quiet and solitude. Maybe a shall try and find the quietest place on earth. From Sheffield to silence, there's a holiday.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 7:55 PM