Day 30 Nothing to Report

SYNOPSIS: Today’s post is about the uneventful transit in an overland bus from Raqqa to Aleppo, the search for a hotel and about meeting “George”.   Also:  A request to let me know who is reading this blog.  Send me an email if you don’t want to comment in public:  ezt@wccnet.edu THANKS.HOW EVEN A NON-STORY CAN BE TOLDI was sure I would have to skip a day as there really is nothing to report. I was in transit to Aleppo.  By now you know how that goes:  You get to the bus station, have to show your passport to the tourist police who want to know everything from your father’s name to the reason why you are in Syria, to your age…  Then you board one of those comfortable overland buses where you get served tea and water and even have assigned seats.  They guy at the ticket counter must have liked me as I got seat #1 which meant I was in the first row and could look out.  The trip was uneventful.  If I have never mentioned this:  Syrian transit roads are in great condition.  Not the pot-hole riddled roads we love so much in Michigan…I am catching on to these drivers now.  Nobody ever wears a seatbelt in Syria.  The taxis and buses only have a belt for the driver and the front passenger.  No other seat is equipped with one.   Yesterday, when I took the van out to the lake, I was in the front passenger’s seat searching for the seat belt.  There was one.  I wanted to clip it in, but could not find the other end of the buckle.  It must not have been used in ages.  Various taxi drivers stood around and all waved their hands:  Just forget about the seat belt.  When I insisted that I was not going anywhere without a seat belt they laughed as if this was a great joke!  None of the drivers ever wears their belt.  But then you see them – seemingly out of the blue – reaching for their belts and hanging it over their shoulders in a “pretend” kind-of-a fashion.  Ah, the traffic police!  And without fail, there will be a traffic police check point and as soon as that is passed, the belt will be discarded again.What is it with these people?  They drive like the devils, they have accidents all over the place but they refuse to take the most simple and straight forward safety precautions!  I think traffic in Lebanon and Syria is crazy.  But when I met Ivan, who had just returned from Saudi Arabia, he said this was nothing, but really nothing, in comparison to the driving in Saudi Arabia.  He said that every day he kept count up to ten traffic accidents, big and small, that he would witness.  Then he stopped counting.  Every day!  That is indeed unbelievable.  I have seen about five accidents with my own eyes over the last month.  I guess that is mild in comparison.I was supposed to go to a German Guest House today.  But I did not prepare properly and so I only had a name, a phone, a P.O. number, and no address. The taxi driver had no phone and spoke zero English, so I resorted to a Lonely Planet budget hotel instead.  But it was full.  That’s what happens with the LP recommendations.  They book up so fast since every tourist goes by the LP as if it were the holy book itself.  I feel for the other businesses around which are often equally good. But since they get no mention, they don’t fill.  I wonder how much economic damage LP is doing by having such a monopoly in the business.You literally see the Australians, the Germans, the French, etc. all walking around with the LP in hand, me included.  And don’t get me wrong – it is tremendously helpful and often right on the mark with observations and recommendations on what, where to, and how, etc.  I would be lost without it.Just up the street was a second hotel mentioned in the LP as a budget option – and I am back to that:  budget.  This hotel has a cute interior courtyard around which the few rooms are located.  A reception desk is located outside the courtyard with a TV area.  Rooms are simple but have a heater, a closet, and a towel as well as clean sheets.  That’s all I ask for and: my own bathroom.  That is back to a shower-sized stall in which the shower head is literally placed above the sink and the toilet so that all and everything gets wet in there when you take a shower; not to mention that you can hardly turn.  The concept of a shower curtain is literally unknown.  Even when I had the wonderfully big bathroom in Deir Ez Zoor, I splashed water all over the floor due to the lack of a curtain and it was meant that way. There is a drain in the floor and even the cheapest hotel will provide rubber slippers to enter the bathroom.  I know – you are really interested in all these details!  ;-) But remember, I am telling a non-story today.As LP predicted, the Internet – which is always second on my check list - was within three blocks.  This one is a full-sized café with lots of snacks and computer stations all around.  You will have noticed that I caught up with many of your comments.  Thank you so much for them!  I love seeing your thoughts and appreciate your additional information.  But I would love to know who you are!  Only about a handful of people are faithfully submitting comments and I know you.  But every day there are between 80 and 290 (peak day) looking in.  Who are you? Are you former students, colleagues, people in Michigan, people somewhere else out there in the world???  Will you please let me know?  I understand that not everyone feels like sending a public comment.  But here I am – writing for my friends and family, but there are other people out there and I would like to know what makes you come back and how you got to the blog in the first place.  Will you humor me?  ezt@wccnet.edu I hope to hear from you.  Thank you so much!  Well, despite the extremely long loading time – every comment needs to be opened and then be sent off which can take minutes for each  – I was very happy about this opportunity.  Because of this slow speed, I will keep relying on my posting team at home for the posts for now.  I would like to understand this system though:  There is clear blockage of things like blogs and Facebook.  But why not everywhere?  Why not consistently?  It’s beyond me.P.S.  Today, I cam to the same Internet café to send of this post and could not get into my blog again.  In fact, I think I got a virus, too…  What a pain.After returning from the Internet café I realized that my nice looking courtyard had only one tiny window way up high connected to the outside world.  My room had a window into the courtyard and none other. The air in this hotel will kill me!  There is no air movement.  The smoke levels from the receptionist and all the other visitors and guests are so high that the air is gray and it all goes right into my room with no clean air input.  And I have to sleep in this!   Am I the only one who objects to this kind of poisoning?  LP makes no mention of it. This would be crucial information as far as I am concerned.  I will have to rough it tonight and move out as fast as I can tomorrow.  Grrrrr, I hate this.To escape the air and to get a feel for the town I strolled around for a while.  Only a short while before I had picked up another unsolicited “attachment”:  George, if I believe this to be his name; a short, bold, middle aged guy…  Maria and Solveig, you won’t believe this – he studied in Karl-Marx-Stadt, old East Germany!  He spoke German and as I said, just attached himself to me.  Before long, he started to lead and take me here and there at record speed.  I kept saying:  Mr. George, you are running.  Slow down, please!   I had no idea of where he was going and was trying to keep up with the general map I had at hand.  My agenda was to get to know town, not to race after George!  But I did not want to be impolite either and I saw another opportunity to ask somebody a lot of questions who could actually understand and answer them.  We reached a pizza place and stopped for a bit to eat.I ran through my whole list of questions that I had prepared for Ra’ad.  I got a very interesting reaction:  First, he did not want me to mention the word “America”.  It slipped out a few times when I was trying to make comparisons.  He always hushed me down and insisted I should replace this with “where I am from”…  I tried my best.  He also said that I should not ask anybody else all these questions or people would think that I am a spy.  But I am a teacher, I explained!  I need to understand.  His drift was:  Syrians all get along perfectly.  Things are quiet now; no armed conflict.  People are relatively free; reforms under the new president have made things better and now, nobody should get involved in politics but just enjoy whatever they want to do.  That’s a life’s philosophy I could hardly argue with.  But it surprised me how paranoid he was.  Of course, he also refused to have his picture taken… Well, he got me to a store that sold German chocolate and to a store that sold Syrian wine.  So, here I am with a bottle of god-awful Syrian red wine.  After three sips, I dedicated the rest to the toilet.  The German chocolate made up for it.And that was a whole report about nothing.  It can be done.  :-)And the pictures have nothing to with anything since George refused to be photographed.  But I hope you enjoy them anyhow.Good night.