We decided to go by hitchhiking till the border of Turkey with Syria. In 3 groups of pairs we started our big adventure. My team mate was Andrius. After a while we were the second group which caught a car. One fully day of hitchhiking brought us to Adana where we spent the night at the flat of two couch surfers. Of course we celebrated our strenuous day. Some cheap wine did his work.
The day after we met a Turkish guy who picked us up by the road and he figured out how to put us at the border with Syria. He took us to a bus station and bought us tickets. Before he also bought us ‘Adana Kebab’. He was too good for this world.
The bus brought us to Antakiya. A taxi brought us to the border. We were lucky with our driver, because at the border he arranged everything for us. He even passed by all the waiting people and he entered every door he saw to fix our visa and stuff. Despite this we had to wait a long time before everything was in order.
When we finally crossed the border we first went to Aleppo to meet another couch surfer, Ido, to stay with. While introducing ourselves he told me that he lived for 15 years in The Netherlands. I was very surprised. I was never so far away from home and the first guy I met, could speak Dutch. I was so happy to speak my almost forgotten language again.
Because Ido didn’t had enough place for all of us, we spitted up into a hotel team and an Ido’s team. Daria and me became the guests of Ido. After a short night we met each other at the clock tower. Our day became very busy. There was so much to see in Aleppo. We visited a citadel, markets, ruins, .. and in the evening we ended up in a very good restaurant where we discovered Humus, a kind of Mayonnaise.
Also the second night in Aleppo was a short one. But this day made it all worth. With a mini bus we drove through beautiful landscapes on our way to Apamea. During the ride we could visit some ruins and also a little village where we ate a delicious Falafel.
Our final destination for this day was Krak De Chevaliers. But unfortunately the castle was already closed when we arrived. So we decided to visit the castle the next day in the morning. Near the castle there was a hotel. Because of the good weather we asked the owner if we could sleep on the roof. That was no problem, but he almost asked the same price as for a room. After checking that roof, we decided that sleeping on the hill would be the same or even better. It became history. With our last money we bought some bread and spirituals. We had a great night near the castle. The night was again very short like all our nights on this trip, but when we woke up next to the castle we were stunned by the view.
After a quick visit into the castle we went further to Palmira. Palmira was a lovely place. We really felt like in the middle of the desert. We arrived in Palmira an hour before sunset and we were able to watch it from the top of a castle. It was really great despite their was a radio tower just in front of the sunset. After that we went to a nice restaurant and we ordered camel meat. It tasted just like a normal kebab, but we tried to believe we were eating a camel. The rest of the night we spend in front of our hotel. We were all very tired, but we had a cozy evening talking with the owner and smoking the nargile. The next day in Palmira we discovered the ruins and old tombs in the desert part. We also took a ride on a camel. It was quite an experience for all of us.
After Palmira we went to Damascus, the capital city of Syria. We expected a big and modern city, but it was not like that. We arrived at night and from our couch surf flat we saw everywhere little lights and we heard festive music. But when we were walking through the city by daylight we really disliked this place. First of all, it was so crowded and everybody tried to sell something to us and I felt a little uncomfortable about my belongings. There was a kind of a bad atmosphere in those streets. The second thing was garbage everywhere and the smell was terrible. It looked like the people even didn’t care about it. The driver of every taxi or bus we took, was continuously throwing his dirt out of the window. The only good thing in Damascus was ‘Uncle’s Party’. When we were walking through the Christian part of Damascus we got invited by some Christians at their place. They were celebrating the birthday of their uncle. They gave us some Raki and they talked about the differences between Christians and Muslims. They said that some Muslims in Syria who are very poor, because when a man has more than one woman and they have many children, they just drop them into the streets and they have to live on their own. Because of that many Muslim people don’t have good education or even no education. The Christian population don’t understand their way of life: Discriminating behavior against women, throwing garbage into streets and the most annoying thing is that they hate Christian people and try to provoke them.
We considered it was time to go further to our last location: Latakia at the Mediterranean Sea. We arrived at a very interesting hotel. The owner was a big fan of Kuifje (Tin Tin), a Belgian strip cartoon. I felt like home and was checking out all of his Tin Tin gadgets and books. Later on we discovered a very good restaurant. We concluded it was the best restaurant in our trip. It was an Italian restaurant with food imported from Lebanon. Strange concept but we had a good meal. Back in the hotel we started a last-night-party on the roof were we would sleep. We had a lot of fun with drinking some beers and playing our favorite songs on the laptop.
The next morning we decided to go to the beach. But when we entered that beach we were a little bit disappointed. Like in Damascus the beach was full of garbage. Even you could find pieces of glass scattered on the sand. Only the warmness of the sun made our day. We started to miss Turkey very much and we were very eager to go back ‘home’.
Back at the border we started to hitchhike again. This time it took us some more effort. It took us two days and one night to get back to Eskisehir. In that one night we slept three hours in a gasoline station for buses. It was actually not so bad. We had a warm room and we got free breakfast from the employee of that place. Long live Turkey and their helpful people, we all thought.
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