Days 54-57. Syria

Day 54.

   Walking between the Turkish and the Syrian border stations, we were stopped by a whistle. From the sentry post on the hill, a well-armed soldier indicated that we stop, we can’t walk onwards. We wanted to turn back but another whistle found its way to us. We were not allowed to walk neither forward, nor backwards. We were standing on the road, kept isolated from the near...

Day 137.

   In the afternoon I said goodbye to Abuseif and set off on foot out of town. After a brief „you’re standing in a bad spot, I’ll take you to a better one” ride, at nightfall I was still at the border of Dayr az Zayr.

   At the other side of the road, there was a little station controlling the weight of lorries and vans. After a while the guy who was working there came to me and we began a conversation. T...

Days 132-133.

I spent the weekend in Damascus. I found a small, but centrally located hotel and checked

into a room on the top floor. A hard bed with some dirty heavy blankets, a broken night

table and a washbasin: the room’s so-called furniture. But at least it could be closed, had

a roof and was cheap.

Through Mohamed, a journalist I had met, I got myself four programs tickets for of ...

The original plan had been that we split up there in Damascus. I would go back to Tripoli

via Beirut and Peter would head north towards Turkey via Palmyra. That was the old plan. The

new plan was that we both go together to Palmyra, then we split there and I head back via

Homs. We went into town with Alaa one last time even though it meant going in the wrong

direction because we needed cash and apparently there were no ATM's between us and the ...

On the road again! It had been too long since we'd had ourselves a trip beyond Beirut. For

Peter it was the start of another leg, a long one. For me it would only be a round trip to

Syria and back. But the feeling of hitting the road was there in me too. We had decided to

hitch over the mountains to Baalbak and go south and then east from there, instead of taking

the highway via Beirut. The mountains we would have to...