Tuesday 3rd August 2010
We got up late, around 10.30am, after a 4am bedtime there was no way we were going to even try and catch a morning bus to Damascus. We packed up our stuff which was the cleanest it had been in a long time, had a shower, washed hair (with the nice new conditioner) and sat and talked to William while having some breakfast. We said goodbye outside the classroom and started on the thirty minute walk to the station talking about plans for our future garden in New Zealand. At the bus station we arranged a service taxi to Damascus and after a little wait for the other seats to fill up we said goodbye to Irbid and to Jordan. Our fellow passengers were both older men; the one in the front was an ugly middle aged Arabic yuppie with an awful earpiece glued to the side of his head and the other guy sat in the back with us and was a young crinkly with benevolent eyes and a kind smile – good grandpa material.
The trip took about three hours in total. Our first overland border crossing was fairly uneventful, the idea of going overland between countries was more exciting than the reality of it. We had a minor hiccup when the receipt for the departure tax disappeared from my passport on handing it over to the last set of guards, he eventually waved us through but not until everyone had got out the car looking for the slip of paper.
Past the border and into Syria, the land was much the same as in Jordan and I slept for a while with my face covered by my sarong. The taxi dropped us off well outside of town and we all had to make our own way into town. The first taxi tried to overcharge us by five times and when he refused to use the meter we jumped out and found another guy who tried for only twice the true amount but eventually agreed to use the meter, we ended up paying 60SYP instead of the 250SYP that the first taxi tried for. I hoped that it wasn't the start of a middle eastern Egyptian experience. It wasn't and once we arrived in the centre we were helped by some friendly old dudes with directions to a cheap hotel, we found it – tired, sweaty and dusty – we left our bags on the open dormitory beds and left to go explore the city and hopefully get some of the delicious looking pastries that had caught my eye on the walk to the hotel.
The down town area of Damascus looked pretty grotty, ugly buildings leaking streaked with brown dirt and inside/outside air-conditioning boxes scattered under most windows. Damascus is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities – not many can lay claim to that – but only the dirt looked old and that doesn't really count, my bedroom as a teenager could have rivalled some of the grot we saw for antiquity. Our hotel was tucked away in a very quiet and rather clean oasis, it looked very sanitised compared with the rest of the grunge but we decided that it wasn't authentic enough so we left it behind. The city was absolutely baking, even though it was early evening and the sun was starting to go down, so we got some freshly made lemon ice and slurped our way through the dirt looking for a camera shop. We mooched along at a leisurely place and although there were plenty of people about we seemed to have missed the hub of the city, for almost twenty minutes we didn't see one place to eat, and then... hallelujah! A pastry shop, Djalma tried to pull me past the window like he had done before but without the weight of our backpacks or telling me that he didn't want a fat wife, he couldn't do much to stop me. I looked through the window at the stacks of nut filled pastries in different shapes, the guy behind the counter saw me salivating like a dog looking at steak and gave us a small deep-fried, syrup soaked pastry to try, after little persuasion we accepted, man it was good but I was hankering after the layers of buttery filo pastry tenderly embracing a crunchy cluster of deep green pistachio, not wanting to overdo it I asked for one and after some talking to the manager of the shop he gave it to us for free. Not quite believing our luck we thanked him profusely and hurried away with the tiny precious bundle in my hands, before he could change his mind. A safe distance away from the shop, the pastry burning to be eaten, we stopped and unwrapped our little treat, I took a small mouthful and nearly cried, it was the most beautiful, perfectly made piece of baklava I'd ever had the pleasure of eating, actually it was so good that I made Djalma have some. Usually I'm not really into sharing food, especially if it's good, but as Djalma doesn't have much of a sweet tooth and doesn't really like buying these things I insisted that he try it (hoping that it would change his mind about sweet things) and even he gave me the face and said it was something else. Wanting to savour the flavour in my mouth long after it had been eaten, we put of sullying our taste buds with the greasy chicken shawarma we ended up having for dinner.
Feeling slightly nauseous from all the grease we wandered back to the hotel, passing a cinema which was showing old Van Dam films – we were tempted but gave it a miss. We arrived back at our hotel, had a shower and got ready for sleep on our metal hospital-like dorm beds.
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