Week Sixty-Two

Up in the morning and there is indeed hot water - way-hay.
Today, top of our list is getting visa extensions sorted out - this is our 14th day in Syria and, according to both the signs at the border and our Bucharest visas, we need an extension if we're going to stay more than 15 days (it seems we are). Lonely Planet tells us that extensions are issued from the Baramke Immigration Office, just past the Baramke bus station (a different one from where we arrived last night). En route, we take in the post office to post some cards - together with a vocally rambling orthodox priest we go in a side door to start with, before being directed to the correct, large entrance. Next up is Tourist Information, but there's no-one in the little office: some people at an adjacent shop/office direct us round the corner to the Ministry of Tourism - a man at the gate there directs us back to the first office, so we give up and decide to try that later.
We head north instead, easily finding the bus station (but only the microbus and Karnak areas - we'll return at some point to figure out where to catch buses to Lebanon from): unfortunately, finding the Immigration Office is much more difficult. No-one seems to know where the street, Sharia Filasteen, is. We walk all the way round a sports stadium, past a school, past some residential blocks, and finally find it after about 40 minutes hunting! Enquries are thankfully really simple, since we find an English-speaker: the regulations have apparently changed, and we no longer need an extension unless we're staying more than 30 days. The uniformed man (they're all army in the office) also tells us that we no longer need to arrange re-entry visas (from Lebanon) in advance. After exploring the bus station in more detail (and finding lots of options ot Beirut), we pick up a shwarma (as in Lattakia bus station, there's a huddle of people hiding inside eating) and head back towards the hotel, looking for somewhere to have a coffee.
There are a number of places around where we're staying for coffee, but they all seem to be closed during the day (during Ramadan): goddamn. Im order to check our new information, we nip into another Immigration Office just along from Martyrs' Square (the office for arranging re-entry visas, according to Lonely Planet). Again staffed only by the army (there's men with big guns), this office is pretty much devoid of English-speakers: even so, we find someone who inspects our passports and says no, we don't need to arrange re-entry in advance - apparently we can buy new visas at the Lebanese border now. Hopefully we've understood each other correctly.
After that we nip back to the hotel, lie down, both fall asleep and suddenly it's evening.

We start to explore the famous souks of Damascus' Old Town, starting with the large and broad Souq al-Hamidiyya, arched over with 19th-century girders. The shops are only just starting to open again, but what we see is pretty typical of Syria so far: clothes, worked metal objects, enamel and inlaid-wood products, gold and silver jewellery, nargile (hubble-bubble pipes) and so on. This particular souq runs to the western entrance to the Umayyad Mosque, just before which are the remains of the western gate of the Temple of Jupiter which used to stand on the same site.

Walking south takes us to the old Roman main street (imaginatively called Via Recta, or Straight Street): surprisingly it still runns east-west right across the Old Town and is still straight (unlike pretty much any other road in the Old Town). The western section is mostly shops, and the covered streets around it are shops as well (almost exclusively clothes, as far as we can tell - and mostly the same stuff over and over again). At the very western end of Via Recta we find a cluster of pancake places, and one of them gives us a couple of free (fried) samples with cream inside - they're excellent, so we'll be coming back. After shopping for new socks for me for a while (my cheap Bucuresti ones are wearing through), and finding no interesting options except a Scooby-Doo pair (size 38-43: I'm 45), we carry on east along the old Via Recta to a Roman arch (standing pathetically in a solitary triangle of grass) which pretty much marks the start of the Jewish and Christian quarters. From there we turn north, passing the new Greek Orthodox Patriarchte (sic), a bunch of recently done-up old houses (now cafés and restaurants), a shopping selling sachets of 3-in-1 Nescafé (includes creamer and sugar - our favourite, easy option) and the dull-looking outer gate of the apparently very impressive Azem Palace/Museum (it's obviously closed at this time of night).
Before returning to the hotel, we stop off for an ice-cream at a place in the al-Hamidiyya souq which we saw earlier - it's strange, very thick yoghurty ice-cream (presumably to stop it melting too quickly in the heat) and is covered in pistachio: interesting, but not one we'll be trying again. Finally we have another shwarma, this time from a side street just of the Umayyad Mosque, and return to the hotel.

I get up early, have another hot shower and wash my hair, and then write for a bit until Milla stirs. We eventually leave the room a little before midday (gosh), and discover that the hotel is accumulating building materials on our floor (paint and stepladders and stuff like that): we'll see what they're planning with that lot. Outside, Milla is impressed that they've already finished re-laying a street which we saw them digging up last night: hugely efficient compared with Romania (and the UK).

First off, we thought we'd try to confirm yesterday's immigration information (which sounds too good to be true): we have a business card from a guy we met in Aleppo - he was helping groups of foreigners across the border from Turkey, so we figure his company will know. Unfortunately the name of his travel agency is "Kimal", and there are lots of companies called "Kimal" in this area - we select one, pretty much at random (his card isn't overly precise about the address - like the Damascus Yellow Pages, it gives phone details only). They don't really know, but we mention "your representative told us . . ." and suddenly they want to help: they sit us down and one of them heads out with our passports to inquire (in Arabic) what the exact situation is. Eventually he returns with two pieces of information: firstly yes, we can get a visa at the border on the way back and secondly, before leaving we'll need a "departure stamp" in our passports. We can, apparently, get this stamp in the nearby Immigration Office: that's the one with the uniformed guys who initially told us we could get a re-entry visa at the border.
We hit that office again, but a series of enquiries reveals that we should try over the road - there's another immigration office, which we hadn't noticed (it's on the first floor, and there's no soldier outside). Almost immediately on going inside we meet a funny little English-speaking officer: yes, he says, we will need a departure stamp, but that can't be issued until we've passed the 15-day mark. Eh? He suggests we return in a couple of days which, to be honest, is fine by us but baffling. So far we've had a number of different stories, and can't figure out any kind of background logic which would allow them all to be true. We're a bit pissed off (me especially - I've taken a real dislike to Damascus with its dull 19th century architecture, its over-priced pastries and its souqs full of crap: all this Immigration chaos isn't helping, and it's taking time).

We head for Tourist Information: there's a guy there today (yippee!) who doesn't seem interested in speaking any English (fantastic!), but who does furnish us with a number of leaflets and maps (most of which we already have, but some of which are new). Next door to Tourist Information is an old madrasa (or possibly mini-Khan) which has been converted into an upmarket Artisanat, a bit like the ash-Shouna Khan in Aleppo: about 50% of the stuff looks genuinely handmade/local, it's mostly nicer versions of the rubbish in the tourist shops of the souqs, but it has pricing to match. The original buildings here were part of the Sinan-designed Takkiya Mosque complex: the outside of the mosque itself is very Ottoman and fairly dull (though unusual for Syria), and the inside seems closed for renovations (some mats have been laid around the outside for determined worshippers). In other buildings which were previously part of the mosque complex there's the Military Museum, and in the otherwise tranquil grounds are French and Russian fighters in Syrian Air Force colours, around which (and the market) live an extended family of cats.

We head back towards the hotel, detouring into the old and grand but disappointingly small Hejaz Station: the main hall seems to be a bookshop now. Out the back is much more impressive (in a different way than most stations are impressive) - the lines are partially overgrown, and there are old engines and carriages parked beside the platforms: it looks totally disused, even though there's still an open ticket office inside. Out the front, incidentally, we find a little guy selling President Bashar T-shirts, but they're not in a useful size for Milla to sleep in.

We wait at the hotel (only two or three blocks from the station) until the post-sunset hiatus is over, and then set out again (taking a shwarma from the juice place and getting them to fill one of our bottle with juice - a mixed cocktail, this time, which we can therefore take away with us). We walk up by the Salah'din statue which stands outside the Citadel - it's particularly action/heroic-based: I'm sure those are Crusaders he's trampling underhoof. The "Citadel" in question is a solid, squarish castle filling the northwest corner of the old city walls - the Roman fort was on the same site, suggesting a continuous castle-presence at this location, but the current citadel only looks a few hundred years old. We walk around about half of it (detouring through the mostly-closed leather souq - don't know if suunset ends their trading day, or if they just re-open particularly late), but fail to find any entrance other than a couple of unpromising locked metal doors.

We enter the Old City from the north, heading for the clothes areas on a hunt for socks - my Bucuresti cheapies are fading fast (5 pairs for $1.00, but hey - they've lasted a few months!). The search takes a while, sincec I'm looking for socks with something interesting about them: we find a Batman pair and a pair with a little Saltire, but again only in sizes 38-43. After that point (and after consuming our juice - it was infinitely better than the strangely horrible pomegranate), we just search for any plain socks which they have in a decent size (ie. 45). We eventually find a couple of guys with a barrow who gave us a decent pricee yesterday and come away with 5 pairs for $2.00: decent enough socks this time, but very dull. After that we manage, with some backtracking, to locate the pancake stall again (finding your way around that part of Damascus Old City is nearly impossible - worse than Cordoba, because it's a lot bigger: your only hope is to find the Umayyad Mosque or Via Recta), buy four for $0.50 (cream, pistachio and cheese), and find a little fountain in a fairly grid-like corner of streets nearby, beside which to eat them.

After that we nip into a little internet place near the hotel: as expected, the main email portals are blocked (all internet connections effectively go through one government-controlled server). The guy running the place has a little bit of software which masks the IP address, then he redirects to another proxy server (don't know where) and bingo - unnrestrricted web access for $2 an hour (it was $1 in Tartus). After half an hour for Milla's email (I still don't trust it not to be monitored), we head back to the hotel. They've definitely started working on the other rooms on our floor, and we have a sneaking suspicion that we're the last ones living there: through the evening the electricity goes off and on a couple of times - presumably as they work. Great.

Well, today's an easy day to write about: were both overcome with lethargy and total indifference about Damascus. We lie around doing very little - Milla sleeps mostly; I write, and check our finances, and read about other placecs. We dine on instant noodles, coffee and supplies from yesterday (despite the fact that the builders cut off the electricity for four hours) and, about 19.00, we finally decide to leave the hotel room. We've had enough of listening to the workmen working and stopping (oh, and one of them has a guitar).

After a shwarma, we head straight back into the souqs of the Old City - today's hunt is for a present for Milla's mother of the Arab-style dress for dressing-gown-type wear. There's nice stuff, but mostly outwith Milla's budget (even after negotiated 60% reductions), and the prices don't vary much from souq to shop to stall. The kind of stuff within her price range is badly made and ugly. We try looking at headscarves instead, but they all turn out to be 80% acrylic and no-one has better ones. It's very much (again, yawn) the concept that everywhere pretty much has the same stuff and that stuff is crap.
We're really not impressed with Damascus - it's the epitome of everything that's bad about Syria: everything's badly planned and badly executed, most of what you can get (including foodstuffs) is crap (with some compensating amusement - there's a range of "HP" sauces, where HP stands for Hamamji Products). Okay, so they're more relaxed about headscarves and Ramadan, but this apparently doesn't mean they're clued up about anything else. They (the stallholders) are more of a pain than elsewhere with their "Where are you from?", which actually means "Let me adjust my price based on your nationality": the answer "Romanian" normally leads them to terminate the exchange with "Welcome to Syria". Their mosques (some of them) have rotating, shining red crescents on the top of the minarets (actually we've seen that elsewhere). Oh, and we keep accumulating plastic bags (you get one with any purchase, normally black, no matter how little you buy). And, of course, there are the eternal car horns. And the fact that the entire city is used as a rubbish dump and sewer by the locals, particularly the foul-smelling "river" to the north of the Old Town.
At about 22.30 everything's closing (again), so we give up and head back, pausing only to buy 20 sachets of instant 3-in-1 coffee and to detour via the fruit and veg market (a kilo of mandarins for 13p, half a kilo of tomatoes for 7p and a sizeable slab of salty cheese for 40p). Proving that Syria's redeeming feature is its cost, we also get a kilo of rolls (14) for 35p and half a kilo of baked biscuits (actually not so good - too dry) for 20p. And then, after a day of almost total inactivity, we drift into the early hours of the morning accompanied by bad guitar playing from an adjacent room - it seems the builders are staying over.

Today we're quite serious about getting up and out and finally seeing the various places of interest in Damascus (we seem to have been avoiding them, and only seeing the souqs). Our first stop, though, should be fairly straightforward - the nearby Immigration Office, which we get to just before 10.00. Unfortunately, there's no sign of our friendly little English-speaker. Instead there's a total chaos of little queues, shouting and forms: we've got a good idea which room we should be in, but not who we want to talk to: no-one (out of five or six) in that office admits to having any English. Ah well - we join the likeliest looking queue and meet a French guy (with a little old local woman) who confirms our choicec: apparently we need to get forms here, then bribe the officer next door to put stamps on them, and then we'll get departure stamps in our passports - great: it sounnds like Romania. Actually, it seems worse than Romania when the guy at the desk (when we finally reach it) decides not to notice us when we ask our simple question in our bad Arabic: he shuffles papers in his desk drawer instead. A nearby Iranian guy who speaks English translates for us, but Mr. Desk looks the other way - it's an Arabic technique for achieving . . . something, presumably. I consider waving my hand in front of his face and saying "yoo-hoo" loudly, but figure we might need his help later.
After a little more futile wandering about, I decide to forget the whole thing, trust the guy at Baramke and just head for the border (boy, some aspects of Syria are just medieval) but on the way out of the building Milla intercepts a local girl just going in, who seems happy to help us. Back upstairs, she bypasses Mr. Desk and accosts one of the others (whom we've already tried to talk to - magically, he now has a basic knowledge of English). She leaves us in his now-capable hands, he fills out a little page with details frrom our passportst, pops a stamp on them and directs (actually escorts) us to the the officer next door: this is the guy whom our French friend bribed, but he stamps and releases our forms for only $0.20 each. It's suddenly all going swimmingly, and our new friendly guy takes us finally to the officer who will put the relevant departure stamps in our passports: this officer, of course, studies our passports in detail and tells us that we need to get visa extensions first, from the Baramke office. We try to explain that we've already been there, and they say we don't need them, but he seems adamant.
Goddamn country. I have visions of us being stuck in Syria forever, just because no-one'll give us whatever stamps we need in our passports to leave.
We trek back across town to the Baramke office (at least we know where it is), it turns out to be open (yippee!) and we find the same English-speaking guy as we met before (double yippee! probably). He seems surprised to see us again and re-iterates that we don't need an extension, and can get re-entry visas at the Lebanese border: we show him our little form (with stamps) and explain what they said at the al-Merjeh officec. He takes our forms and reads them, and even shows them to a colleague: "The person at that office," he says diplomatically (and with a bit of a twinkle in his eye), "may not have been informed." He then explains that they know the rules here, and at the border, so we'll be okay: as for our little forms - he suggests we keep them as "Souvenirs of Syria. Remember us." Gosh, a Syrian official with a sense of humour. We leave much reassured but still not 100% confident - I suspect we won't be until we've crossed over the border into Lebanon and back.

Around Baramke bus station, incidentally (we pass it on the way back to the Old City), is where we've seen most public displays of affection in Syria - worryingly, it's all between men and men. Between women and men (and normally women and women) the strongest it gets is linked arms: here, between men and men, there's a lot of kissing (full frontal as well as on the cheek), tons of walking hand-in-hand and in one extreme case we saw two guys walking along with linked fingers (brushing the tips against each other, even). I say.

Now, though, we seem to have wasted the entire morning so we head back to the Old City to try and see what we can see. First we detour by the Salah'din statue for a photo, and magically discover an open gate into the Citadel: we wander inside, but are stopped by a security guard (there are several). Part of the complex appears to be being used as a further education facility so there are students wandering in and out (showing ID): apart from them, and some people working on the restoration, no-one's allowed in - this applies equally to foreigners and Syrians. Inside, we can see from the gate, is just a large courtyard with thick stone buildings surrounding it and a few low, stout towers. The guards won't let us into the courtyard, and they wont let us take photos from where we are either, on the basis that the restoration work isn't finished (?).

We press on through the souq to the Umayyad Mosque, passing through the old Roman gate to the western entrance: people there direct us up to the northern entrance, where we find a little building with a "Tickets" sign. There, for the extortionate price of SŁ50 each, they give us a little leaflet and let Milla take a black smock from one of a collection hanging on racks against one wall. Our ticket is also valid for the Maussoleum next door - there are a few tombs in the garden and two inside the little white building. One, in marble, was donated by Kaiser Wilhelm II and, as far as we can tell, lies empty: the decorated wooden one beside it contains the body of Salah'din (laid to rest, as befits the founder of the Ayubbid dynasty, just outside the Umayyad Mosque).
After being suitably respectful, we press on to the north gate of the mosque (being briefly confused by an earlier door, clearly locked) and in we go, with very little of Milla visible. No-one checks our tickets, and there are black cloaks also available at the door (for local women - trousers or separate skirts, rather than long dresses, appear to be unacceptable) so we're not at all sure that we needed to pay anything at all. Ah well. The gate takes us into a large courtyard: there's a fountain in the middle, a big room on eight columns and decorated in mosaics over to the right (once housing the treasury), and an elegant little gazebo affair over to the left (once housing the mosque's clocks). Floored in marble, the courtyard's very pleasant in the suunn and there are numerous groups of mostly Arab visitors wandering around taking photos of each other. There are still some stretches of bright, rich mosaic on the surrounding walls, most notably above the main door to the prayer hall: apparently all the walls used to be covered, but the centuries have taken their toll (it was built in 705 - before that is was a church to John the Baptist; before that a Temple of Jupiter; before that a Temple of Hadad).
The prayer hall takes up the southern part of the complex - there are elegant minarets at either corner (a third is above the north entrance) and a 45m-high dome in the middle. Inside is full of individuals and couples (couples!) and families sitting around relaxing: there's also a very ornate shrine inside which contains a coffin (the Prophet Yahya, apparently - don't know who that equates to): it looks a bit big for John the Baptist, but we take a photo anyway. It's pretty laid-back and relaxed inside and we hang our for a little while before leaving to explore further. There are smaller halls along the other three sides of the courtyard - most are firmly locked, but the one of the east side is open. There's a chapel inside and, off to one side a much smaller room where we find (in a locked metal cage) a small, head-sized coffin - "the shrine of Al-Hussein's head, peace be upon him": ah - this'll be John the Baptist. There are a lot of very devout (or mad) muslim women here, wailing and crying - one old dear shakes the bars so furiously that I'm worried that the lock will give way. We contemplate the casket and then leave, reflecting that we've already seen his skull 9or at least a slice of it) in Istanbul: since Damascus was (obviously) Byzantine and Ottoman, I guess it makes sense that they might have cut a little bit off for the capital. Or, more likely, that they're both very old fakes.

After dropping off Milla's stylish and fashionable coverall, we wind north to two old madrasas that face each other across a narrow lane. Both have ornately carved doors (we're learning that that's normally the best bit of a madrasa) - we look in the one on the right, the Madrasa al-Zahiriyya, where an old man ushers us in and unlocks one of the rooms for us. It's a grubby little room, with a grubby little cenotaph inside: this is the last resting place of Beybars who (although virtually unknown in the West now) did much more permanent damage to the Crusader kingdoms than Salah'din. The guy also tries to show us the madrasa library (it's still a functioning school with students wandering around), but we politely leave (having seen what we stopped for), feeling sorry for Beybars' apparent obscurity in the Islamic world as well.

We trek east along a wonderfully winding lane of life and little shops and come to another mosque (Sayyida Ruqayya) - quite different from what we've seen before: it's Shiite (no, seriously) and built in the Iranian style, low and white and gold - all pointed arches, and with an onion-type pointed dome on top. It's another black sheet job for Milla, this time with words on the back ("I'm with Stupid"?), and there's a little man at a desk who looks after our shoes while we're inside. The interior is also unusual (after the chic white courtyard) in that the walls and ceiling in the centre and along the entrance are covered in mirrored tiles - a not entirely unpleasant effect, but it seems quite unsuitable for the purpose of the palce: the maussoleum of Ruqayya. The Prophet had a daughter called Fatima - or Lady Fatima the Virgin: oddly, for a Virgin, she married a close relative and appears to have had three children by the time she was 14 (possibly they were adopted): Ruqayya was the daughter of the middle child. There are separate accesses to the tomb (behind bars again, as protection from mad, wailing women) for men and women - we meet again in the common area, the regular prayer hall, where a man hisses quite vehemently at Milla for having some hair showing.

From the mosque we head further north and east to the as-Salaama Gate: the approach is through the normal defensive twisting and turning alleys, but from outside the whole thing is quite visible though sadly dull and solid and . . . well, gate-like. There are also some stretches of the city wall visible here, facing the "river", but they're even more dull and nondescript (ie. wall). Unusually, they don't have layers of buildings stacked against and over them, probably because there's construction/demolition work going on: there's a crane working, half-parked in the stinking stagnant water, as locals looks on and kids lob rocks.

We strike south through residential areas and up and down a little hill, and emerge back into the built-up/shopping/tourist area just to the east of the Umayyad Mosque - there's another ex-Roman temple gate here as well. From there it's reasonably straightforward to wind past the "Journalists' Club" to the Azem Palace, apparently glorious but currently closed. A weird guy with wild haior opens the little wooden window in the gate, apologises got having closed and advises us to come back at 09.00 tomorrow morning. It's just gone 16.00 now, so we've got a little over half an hour before sunset. We head south along a street of confectionary and spice stalls, avoiding the locals on their bikes (they don't have bells, but use klaxons or simply whistlye instead), to Via Recta/Sharia Medhat Pasha and then turn east for a kilometre or so, right to the end.

Our target is the supposed home of Ananias (remember in Acts? God told him to go into Via Recta, find Saul and restore his sight; Ananias quite rightly said "That's the same Saul who's been killing Christians in Jerusalem, yeah?"; God said "Just do it, okay."). It's now a chapel (and has been for ages) and tourist attraction, particularly to ageing American tourists (about the first we've seen since Istanbul - they must be on some Bible Brigade tour) and local teenage girls (the schools are just out). It's basically just a cellar which was presumably at street level 2,000 years ago (you go down a flight of steps to it) they have little coloured cartoon pictures of the life of St. Paul hanging on the walls of one room. They also have tourist posters with the dreadful tag-line "Have a Vision - Take the Road to Damascus". The most interesting thing we learn there was that it was a Syrian Pope, Anicetus (155-166) who decreed that the clergy shouldn't have long hair.
From the chapel (where I manage not to pick up any teenage girls - they keep staring at me when they think I'm looking the other way) we head back through the old Christian Quarter. It's slightly more upmarket here than the area immediately to the west, with a number of newish-looking restaurants and cafés in the old buildings. We get back to the hotel (which stinks of paint now - thank God we're leaving), and Milla almost immediately heads back out to buy a large bag of sweet fried pancakes: her first trip alone, since we're both feeling comfortable in Damascus, turns out to be an interesting revelation of the hassle-level individual women get from Arab guys (and she looks pretty local) - even our pancake man is apparently much less friendly.

We're up at 06.45, which should give us plenty time to see the Azem Palace (opens at 09.00) and catch a bus to Beirut during daylight hours: it's a Friday during Ramadan, so we expect tempers to become more volatile as the day progresses. Despite the time, and our recent problems with the facilities in the room, Milla decides to take a shower after breakfast (at 08.10): naturally the water stops, mid-shower, at about 08.20 and she has a loud scene, hitting and shouting at the bathroom fittings. Me? I'm already pissed off that she's decided to have her shower this morning instead of last night, and am even more pissed off when she starts shouting at me. I find the hotel guy downstairs (we've been the only people on our floor, apart from the builders, for three days now), get him to open a room there and check there's still hot running water there. Upstairs again, Milla doesn't like the fact that I slammed the door on the way out and shouted at her, and won't use this alternative.
Time is still ticking by on what should have been an easy, early start.
Eventually, we dump our rucksacks in a little admin room they have and go to pay and check out. We didn't have hot water today; didn't have electricity the day before; we're not happy - what are they going to do about it (I want a couple of hundred pounds discount). Apparently their tactic is to ignore us (looking the other way, walking away, and so on), much like Mr. Desk at the Immigration Office yesterday - this is probably a bad tactic to choose (I'm still pissed off by that guy yesterday). We collect our rucksacks, I decide a 25% discount is in order, and put the money on the desk (which I'm also tempted to spit on, to get their attention, and remembering the value of symbolism in the Arab world). Suddenly they're all shouting, but still refuse to enter a discussion (their English seems to have deserted them) - I suspect they would have tried to lock us in, but by now we're already half-way out.
We march away, initially at speed and through busy areas (in case the management have lots of friends with knives), and through the Hamid souq (the shops are mostly closed, on this Friday morning, but there are a lot of clothes and knick-knack sellers with their wares on sheets on the floor instead) to Azem Palace. The wierd guy is there again, greets us like old friends and gives us a hot cup of herbal tea while we look for and talk with a little, vocal cat. He lets us leave our rucksacks by his ticket booth, and also lets us take our glasses of tea around with us - oh, and he gives us a student discount.

There's a nice little courtyard, then the main courtyard (with water and trees), and a final little boring courtyard - each of these has multiple rooms off it (most with mannequins displayed inside), arranged in three or four large buildings. Most of the frontage of these rooms, particularly around the main courtyard, is very decorous - it's a little odd to think that the Azem family still lived here up to 19-something (the complex dates to the 1750s). There's a nice hammam/bath complex, the Reception rooms are very imposing, and the Artisans' Rooms are amazingly decorated (particularly the ceilings): some of the family living rooms are a bit on the kitschy side, but overall it's a wonderful little peaceful oasis in Damascus and well worth the visit (though obviously no Alhambra or Topkapi, it compares nicely with the Ibrahim Pasha palace in Istanbul).

We use their toilets, collect our rucksacks and trek over to Baramke bus station (again), pausing only to stock up on mandarines, cigarettes, coffee and water. We arrive just before 12.00 (we know there's a 12.00 bus - it's okay, though not great, and at least has a compartment for us to put our luggage). We keep 3,050 Syrian Pounds, which should be enough for our brief intended return visit (Lebanon's only got open borders with Syria, so we have to either come back through or fly out of Beirut), and the bus (promised to leave at 12.00 - the woman laughs when we ask when it really leaves - 12.15?) leaves at 12.20. Damascus, as we pull out of it, gets a lowly 4/10: the major buildings are merely average, the shopping is much better in Aleppo, it's just concrete for large sections, and the ancient city has left almost no remnants (a victim of the fact that Damascus has been continuously inhabited - the oldest stuff is mostly late medieval). Ah well - good to know.

More general thoughts on Syria? It's a strange country, that's for sure - we met some really laid-back cool people (the guys who gave us a lift from al-Bara, for example), but there are lots of paramilitary/uptight things as well - the kids in their school uniforms for example, or on the bus from Palmyra: there was an old Bedu guy who surreptitiously tried to light up while everyone else was asleep - the steward spotted him, switched on all the lights, marched up and snatched the cigarette away from him, shouted for a bit, ,and then doused both him and the immediate area with deoderant. That was kind of uptight. We also heard a rumour that the centre of Hama is all nice parks now because part of the Old Town was torn down after political protests there - again, pretty uptight. But then, occasionally seeing vehicles parked beside the roads at prayer time and people with little maps and compasses out in the middle of the fields praying - that was cool. As was the street-washing machine in Aleppo (a truck full of water with a guy holding a high-pressure hose walking in front, soaking parked cars and shopfronts and pedestrians, but really only relocating all the dirt). And the fact that reversing cars all play tinny digital versions of Lambada. And that locals think the abbreviation "rest" for restaurant is a valid English word (as in the boast "I have a rest"). We didn't like the way a lot of kids demanded pens or dollars (for a fairly anti-American country, they really love dollars), but some were really funny with it. Oh, and somewhere in Syria there's a really popular guy called Akbar - at regular intervals all the loudspeakers on the minarets call out 'Allo Akbar. Ho-ho.
Anything else? I'm still overwhelmed by the way they round prices to multiples of 5SŁ - that whole idea of currency convenience rather than value-based pricing still seems very alien to me. On the subject of numbers, all the phrasebooks and so on make great play of the fact that even though the writing is right-to-left, the numbers are left-to-right: actually this is deceptive, since the locals write the numbers right-to-left as well. That means they think the entire number system backward from us - eg. one and forty and five hundred, instead of five hundred and forty-one: the accidental result is that the numbers look the right way round to us. Our way must seem equally odd to them. Their way of running businesses is quite different from ours too, in that they're very family-centric affairs and seem to be thought of as something to do: if someone has a shop, then his entire family is included in the running of the shop - even if they serve no function, all the men will just hang around there and outnumber the customers. This is probably connected with phenomenon that everything is small shops rather than larger chains (a.) one business has to support a whole family and b.) why open two shops when you can fit the whole family into one?): one amusing exception is "General Matic" (white goods and electrical) - amusing to us because Milla's maiden name is Matic ("mateech"). Bizarrely the surnames of my sister's and my spouses, Matthee-matic is Romanian for maths. Em . . . like Turkey, the television in hotel lounges are always on and always watched (maybe it's still a novelty in the area). And it's really sweet the way they claim to have invented everything of value: I mean, I'm a Scot and everyone knows we invented everything (telephone, whisky, golf, TV, even thermos flasks) but even to me it seems excessive. Their claims range from the unlikely (first churches) and unprovable (first use of the word "Christian", or presumably Aramaic alternative), through the untrue (first alphabet - they're big on Ugarit) and nationalistic (like everything in Syria was built by Syrian Arabs) to the ludicrous (from a tourist leaflet about a 16th century BC stadium: "The ancient Syrians used the stadium for their sport seasons, a practice which was picked up by the Greeks after 8 centuries, and was called the Olympic Games"). Ho-ho again.
Anyway - that's a few jumbled and random thought which I don't think I'd mentioned before.

Getting back to the plot, the border turns out to be not too far past the outer suburbs of Damascus. It's pretty quick and straightforward: there's a note in Milla's passport that she's travelling with her husband, and the passport controller takes my passport and checks it before releasing Milla's back to her. There was no queue for foreigners (just us and a Turkish guy on the same bus), so even with that little delay we're done before the locals (allowing me time for a last piss in Syria), and there's no customs check. Almost before we know it we're over the border, filling out entry cards and handing them and our passports over to a Lebanese guy. Although there's no-one waiting, this is where everything goes a bit pear-shaped: apart from the fact that there's a list of visa costs and we would've been much cheaper getting them at the border here than in Bucuresti, there's a problem with Milla. They examine her passport and entry card in detail, ask questions about her address and work in Romania, and then disappear with them into a back room.
After a while Milla (already miffed by the double passport shuffle in Syria) marches outside for a cigarette, complaining about how these countries just don't like women, or Romanians. The problem, of course, is nothing to do with her gender or her nationality but (as becomes obvious when they starting asking me details about her international press card) the fact she's put "journalist" down as her occupation on her entry card. Finally, long after everyone else on the bus is cleared (they're standing around outside - the steward joined our queue to find out what the problem was), the 30-minute debate ends and they return both our passports with entry stamps in them. Thankfully, and saving some embarrassment before the other passengers, the little Turkish guy also seem to have some problems and a 10 minute delay. There doesn't seem to be any kind of customs check, so off we go down the sharp hills into the infamous Bekaa Valley. It's a northern extension of the Great Rift Valley, like the Jordan Valley and the Gulf of Aqaba further south, and as a geological rather than erosion creation it has very steep sides and a wide, flat centre - like someone's cut a giant trench through the hills.

The bus stops at Shtura, just before the hills start again (the Mount Lebanon range on this side, rather than the Ante-Lebanon Range we came down), and I look at the prices in the little roadside place and figure Ł1 should buy me between 1,500 and 3,000 Lebanese Pounds (not very accurate, but it's a start): somewhere we'll have to get currency. We start again after a while (I still don't understand why in all these countries the buses have these long stops - is it because Arab men have problems with their underwear?), pass several military checkpoints (there's a strong military presence here, so presumably tensions from the war still occasionally flare up - or people fear they will) - many of which appear to be Syrian army (the Civil War only really stopped when the Syrians moved in). There's one large Lebanese checkpoint just as we reach the top of the hills and then no more (it's like we're suddenly really in Lebanon) as we cross the desolate and largely-deserted upper slopes of the mountains.
Eventually we start our descent towards the Mediterranean coast: from quite high up it's pretty solidly built-up, despite the vertical drops and hairpinning rodas: there are a lot of churches (more than mosques, which is kinda exciting after Syria) and, uniquely, bullet-damage on the walls. It's the sight of this damage single holes, and in tracer lines running across the concrete - which brings home suddenly the fact that we're in Lebanon, a country at war with itself for most of when we can remember. Also from high up we can see the skycrapers of Beirut, on a square headland jutting out into the sea: again, a familiar shape from maps on countless news bulletins - muslims on the west, Christians on the east, the "Green Line" between them and Yasser Arafat somewhere in town, being shelled by invading Israeli tanks. At some point I suppose we should find out a bit more about who was fighting who - for now, though, as the bus drops us at the entrance to "Charles Helou" bus station, we need to find somewhere to live. Lonely Planet recommends a place "up the steps" from the bus station - unfortunately, after dodging a swarm of taxi drivers (a third of the bus station seems to be one giant taxi rank), "up the steps" takes us into an empty and mostly blocked-off multi-storey car park.
We can see likely buildings beyond the car park, but reaching them entails a long walk (with rucksacks) and then an extensive doubling back. En route, as it starts to get dark, we ask directions from two local girls: not only is their English almost impeccable, but they're wearing what we consider normal clothes and have no headscarves. Gosh - it's like another world. We eventually reach the hotel - the owner's a friendly little guy who tells us we arrived from the wrong direction (there's obviously a shorter way), gives us a cup of tea and shows us a double room: there's also a strange little smelly woman working, and perhaps sleeping, there. We take the spacious room, which has a TV, but agree to find something better tomorrow: after Syria, the $10 seems excessive especially since the toilets/shower are pretty manky and the glass-windowed door pretty much opens onto reception.

We relax briefly and then set out to see at least some of Beirut - we're just to the east of the old BCD (Beirut Central District), much damaged during the war and focus of much of the reconstruction effort: a good starting point, if we can find it. Actually, it's really easy - we go west, cross a wide dual-carriageway (the actual crossing doesn't seem to be functioning) and then an open square with some excavations which we can't really see in the dark, and suddenly we're outside the new and shiny Virgin Megastore. Up the hill from there is a sandstone clock tower at the centre of the circular Place de l'Etoile: this is Beirut reborn - every single building here is either new or has been completely renovated (all in the same sandstone). There are tons of information boards with before-and-after photos, and in odd corners there's still construction work going on - there are also guys in uniforms with serious hardware, patrolling the streets and totally failing to mingle with the crowds. Oh yes - there are well-dressed crowds here, being seen, drinking at the little cafés and coffee houses which seem to line most of the pedestrianised streets radiating outwards (Starbucks and the like - the majority are foreign chains). We identify the exchange rate as 1,500LL to $1 (it seems pegged), which enables us to withdraw money and also to price a range of coffees here from $4 to $5. Ouch.

The effect is extraordinary, considering the timescale they've had, but all the buildings have a certain artificial sameness (even the cozy little Parliament building on one corner) - it's like a holiday village at a theme park, and you half-expect a giant Mickey Mouse to come wandering through. Also, after Syria (and even Turkey) the European-ness (even if it's just a copy of an idea - it's like someone trying to build a European-style city centre without having ever seen a real one - in a city requiring a massive security presence) is like we're in another world.

We push out and on, lookng for something (affordable) to eat - ideally McDonalds: we've promised ourselves a McDonalds as one of the first things we do here (there aren't any in Syria). Within a couple of blocks we're in areas which they haven't quite (75% done) finished yet, but it's only going to be a couple of years: we end up at Ain al-Mriesse, where Lonely Planet suggests there are cheap hotels (good area for McDonalds, then). The eastern part (it's on the shore) is all new luxury hotels, but the western half is still bullet-pocked walls and minimarkets, and here we find McDonalds - it's fucking expensive, but hey - it's our treat.
From there we follow the coast road (Corniche, actually Avenue de Paris) and promenade, avoiding joggers (yes, joggers) and noting the low 10% headscarf incidence: it's all very non-islamic (after all, only 50% of the population are muslims), but there's still a noticeable lack of the usual clutching and groping and kissing couples. Of course, having found the perfect romantic spot (the Mediterranean, the lights of East Beirut over the water, the lines of palm trees) we have a (another, in fact) major argument: I don't seem to be coming out with the right romantic words when asked questions like "Describe my personality". Eh? We eventually make up and decide to head south to the Ras Beirut/Hamra districts around Rue Bliss (or Rue 33 - roads in Beirut also seem to have numbers, normally only numbers: I think they're phasing out the names, to make it more confusing to invading Israelis).
Our first couple of attempts to ascend the hill inland take us to the high walls, wire fences and gates-with-armed-guards which surround the American University of Beirut (AUB) campus. Unsure if we can just stroll in, and more unsure if we can find our way out again, we decide to go around it (it turns out to be pretty large). We finally navigate past and find ourselves in a quite different area of Beirut - very much taking over as the commercial centre during and after the war, it's now on the decline but is still lined with shops, banks, fast food places, cafés and so on. It's getting late, but it still seems pretty much open. We find an okay supermaret and pick up basic supplies (particularly of the things which we couldn't find in Syria), and find an internet place (there are plenty) for an hour (at $2 each: there must be cheaper elsewhere).
From there, feeling that we've just seen the heart of Beirut (Hamra, BCD, the Corniche), but haven't really seen anything which could be described either as a landmark or as a tourist attraction, we wander back to the hotel: it takes almost an hour, and we pass through the still-busyish BCD on the way.

We wake up in Lebanon, country 24 for me, in Beirut: I'm up at 07.00, Milla a couple of hours later, and by the time we have breakfast, experiment with the dodgy showers (I end up taking a cold shower, unable to find the boiler controls - Milla asks) and pack our rucksacks (we'll look for somewhere better or cheaper to stay today) it's 11.30. We wander up the little hill away from the sea (we're only a couple of blocks from the port) into our little local area (Gemmayzé): according to Lonely Planet, the area around Charles Helou bus station is good for cheap hotels - and I guess this is that area.
Despite their words (they're not doing that well so far), we don't find any hotels: we do find a long Western-style suburban shopping street (like Portobello, or Corstorphine): fairly quiet, despite the insane driving of the locals (the Lebanese always feel the need to drive as fast as possible, even if they're just nipping down the street to buy a loaf of bread). There are minimarkets, a few internet places (1,000LL to 1,500LL per hour - instead of the 3,000LL we paid yesterday), a post office, a police station, hairdressers (Milla's interested), little bookshops and so on. There are a couple of exchange places, and we confirm the rate of 1,500LL to the dollar.
Having failed on the accommodation front, we head back downhill and strike west from the hotel instead (I'm sure we passed a couple of options during last night's walk) - within a few blocks we find another hotel. The guy inside gives us a little bottle of fruit juice, sits us down in the little hotel lounge (it's really a hostel - they have little dorms as well as singles and doubles). As well as having laundry and internet facilities, he's a nice guy and has a nice double room with satellite TV for the same price as the place we were in last night. Excellent - we take it and tell him we'll come back this evening with our bags: for now we set out to retrace our route of yesterday.

Quick geographical summary of Beirut: it's set on a little step in the otherwise pretty much north-south Lebanese coast. Most of the city's coastline is therefore to the north of the city, with some to the west (round the headland): to the north-west, running along the shore, is the Corniche; up the hill from it is the AUB campus; then (on the flat) are the Ras Beirut and Hamra shopping/commercial areas; at the east end of the Corniche is the little promontory of Ain al-Mriesse. To the east of this wodge is a really boring stretch with nothing in it. Then, not quite at the shore, is the BCD; east of the BCD is the port (and bus station); inland from the port is our Gemmayzé district; and further inland and uphill is the more exclusive drinking and shopping area of Achrafieh. So it's kinda like Beirut has two centres.

Firstly we look for the souq/souqs - there are signs up pointing to the "Souqs of Beirut", but when we follow them we find only shops and shopping centres: either we're being really stupid, or else the city planners have decided that traditionally-laid-out souqs are inappropriate for shiny new Beirut. I take some photos around the BCD: there's nothing specific to photograph - significant buildings include a number of mosques and churches (all now restored with bland exteriors, including the Great Mosque - a converted Crusader cathedral) and public buildings (the dull Parliament, the large and originally Ottoman Grand Serail, housing the Civil Service, and the Municipality Building) - all of them, especially the mosques and churches, looked much better at night (though still not great). More photogenic than the uniformly bland completed buildings are the construction works and the occasional un-facelifted building - there aren't so many in the immediate centre, but more as you head out from it. One quick note on churches - there are quite a few to St. George: Beirut is apparently where he killed the dragon, though there's some debate and several claims over exactly where in Beirut.

We circle past the Municipality building (yawn), then west through to the Corniche again: most of the big hotels on this route have also been completely rebuilt/renovated. In this city of amusing contrasts, though, we find a fearless family of large rats living in a tiny square of waste ground just around the back of the shiny Phoenician International Hotel. There's a lot of waste ground across Beirut (entire blocks, and little individual plots), which gives the city a nice open feel at the moment. We presume they'll get around to building on most of it soon - land in overcrowded Beirut is just too expensive to leave empty (reminiscent of Singapore): that's why the city stretches up right into the mountains, onto land that no normal population would consider using as anything other than picturesque backdrop.

Bypassing AUB (which from the outside looks like a curiously transplanted American university campus, appropriately), we hit Hamra via a long street of opticians (Milla's still short of a contact lens). Hamra (al-Hamra) provides us with a photo-developing place, and we sit outside the Café de Paris while they do their stuff - Damascus was beginning to get a bit miserable (it being winter), but Beirut is noticeably warmer. After that, we take the photos back to the new hotel (Talal's - it occupies the first, third and terrace floors of a little building just off Avenue de Charles Helou) and then collect our rucksacks from the first hotel (we spare the guy's feelings by telling him we're heading for Tripoli, rather than that we don't like his hotel, and only just stop him from booking us into another place in Tripoli).

Talal's has a cozy little lounge where we meet other residents (couple of Japanese, some local arabs, etc.) and exchange information: the most depressing discovery is that the border has been issuing free visas since the end of summer, in a bid to encourage tourism in these regionally tense times. Also, the locals don't seem to care much for Syrians: it's almost with glee that they tell us Charles Helou bus station stinks, even though it's completely cleaned regularly, because the Syrian drivers don't use the free toilets.
In the evening we eat at a local café/diner a block down the hill, which has the advantage of being pretty cheap and the disadvantage that Milla's "Lebanese Sausages" turn out to be heavily laced with hibiscus and she finds them pretty revolting. That night, as we go to sleep, a ferocious thunderstorm breaks - torrential rain and lightning: it's the first real rain we've seen since Lattakia (also on the coast).

After all our lazy days in Damascus, we have a lazy day here in Beirut: there's a wide variety of reasons for this, not just our innate lethargy. Firstly, with a large proportion of the population Christian (lots of Maronites and Armenians, who arrived here after beind persecuted elsewhere) almost as much is closed on Sundays as on Fridays (including Tourist Information, according to their little notice which we saw yesterday). Secondly, it's still raining (intermittently heavy) outside. Thirdly, thanks to lightning damage, the cable-based internet is down in this whole area - the owner (Zaher, not Talal - Talal is/was his elder brother) says I can use the PC free since there's no connection.
Milla spends most of the day either sleeping in the room, showering and washing her hair, or meeting the staff and fellow-residents: I meanwhile set up a bunch of text files and bash lots of words into the PC - I can copy them into the site when the connection's back. Actually, that's virtually it for the entire day, though Milla does go out and picks up supplies from a nearby minimarket. Oh, and we look out the window at the weather quite a lot.
This is the most hostel-like place we've stayed in since Istanbul, and in the evening we exchange tales of travels with other people: one long-timer (he's been here a month - we spotted him in Hamra yesterday) is Dutch Jan-Willem, also heading south via Sudan, and we swap notes. Sad, huh?