Pizza House and nothing but...

Damascus, Syria

So after a rough previous night Saturday started off a bit better and I was sure the 24 hour bug had passed through me. I was still feeling rather uneasy, but Michelle convinced me to head over to the souq with her and the others so off we went. Cruising around the souq in a small group of people that includes girls versus cruising around the souq by yourself is a completely different experience. When I was by myself, I rarely had vendors trying to flock their goods on me. Most of them just acknowledged me with a friendly "Hello" and a "Where are you from?", but rarely did it go much further. With the girls, it was a completely different experience. Every vendor was trying to get their attention. I guess I just don't look like someone looking to purchase silverware or a scarf, which is good because I much preferred my solo experience to this group experience.

Not a ton happened while in the souq, Michelle and I managed to loose Inigo and Bramwen in the alleyways and some completely random guy just came up to me and said "I love you, you're beautiful." (Chalk up one for the ego again, but what's with the gay vendors in the souq???) but otherwise Michelle and I just wandered around somewhat aimlessly, partly looking for the others and partly looking for a bit to eat.

One thing that words just can't really capture is seeing the small delivery trucks driving through the souq. If you live in San Francisco, or some other big city, the closets thing I can compare them to is those pick-up trucks that drive around picking up cardboard boxes for recycling. They tend to be way overload, with the boxes being held in place by some makeshift walls extending up from the trucks bed. Just take one of those and shrink it about 25-50% and you'll get the size of the trucks that cruise around the souq, equally overloaded and seemingly oblivious to the fact that there are hundreds of people in the way. Anyways, we came across one truck attempting what must have been a 24-point turn, at least, with so much foam piled into the bed that words just don't do the scene justice, so here's a picture.

Overloaded foam truck attempting 24-point turn.

While this guy is trying to turn around, add the following into the mix: a) trucks in both directions honking almost non-stop for him to move so that they can get by and b) the foam constantly on the verge of either falling out the back or toppling over to one side, thus forcing other workers to quickly rush to said side to stabilize the load. Eventually the truck just backed into some other alley way and presumably unloaded the foam, but really, I think he'd be wise to take two trips the next time.

After a few hours wandering the souqs, I was starting to feel a little sick again so we worked our way back to the hostel. Along the way, we came across a bunch of kids playing a little game of soccer (football) in the streets. They got all excited when we arrived, asking for the camera and everything. We played around with them for a few minutes and thinking that I was "in" with the local kids, I lightly kicked the soccer ball to a player in the game as Michelle and I were leaving. Well, that didn't go over to well and I went instantly from hero to villain. Apparently you don't mess with a soccer street game in progress when in Aleppo...

Back at the hostel I was down and out for the next few hours until I mustered some energy to head back out for dinner. Something about staying in your hostel room for hours on end, no matter how shitty you feel, just makes it shittier. Michelle and I were craving a little hot chocolate and managed to find a fairly new coffee house called "Baron Coffee" not for from the hostel which served hot chocolate. Sometimes you just have to take a break from all the tea and go for something different. "Baron Coffee" could just have easily been in any city in North America and it definitely did not feel like we were in Syria. Big leather sofa upstairs with flat screen TV, tiled floor, that coffee house light beige wall color, etc... Regardless, it was nice to have a little hot chocolate for a change.

(Though for some strange reason the bathroom, as Bramwen put it, had it's own weather system. When you closed the door it created some sort of wind tunnel effect between the air being sucked in by the grill on the door and the huge vent/fan behind the toilet blowing air out. Very strange to be going about your business while dealing with 60 mph winds in the bathroom...)

Since we were all getting a little tired of felafels and kebabs, we decided to head out to a pizza restaurant that I had discovered earlier in the week called "Pizza House". Now for the most part their are very few western companies in Syria but in place of that entrepreneurial business folk fill the void with places like "Pizza House", which if you haven't guessed bears an uncanny resemblance to "Pizza Hut" back in North America. While the pizza has decent as far as Syrian standards go, I'd have to say that the real Pizza Hut is probably better, which probably puts into perspective the Pizza Hut pizza...

Pepsi, Syrian style at Pizza House.

Back at the hostel after dinner, my body was starting to deteriorate yet again, maybe from the pizza, or maybe I just wasn't over whatever was in me but I sure wasn't feeling all that great. After a few hours of playing some card game appropriately named "Frustration" with the girls, it was back to bed in hopes that night two would finally cure my little, uh, problem...

Kenny