A miskien () adventure

Hello everybody,

Here an update from sunny Damascus :)
Thank you all for still following me!It is really nice to read all comments and thoughts!
Here a link to the pictures (don't understand waarbenjij.nu picture upload): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=630439&id=895195472&l=e3b6965168

Tante brigitte en oom en tante: wat leuk om wat te horen. Het duurde even voordat de volgende update er was, maar hier is hij.
Sico: sorry, maar het was toch echt iets te duur om terug te vliegen! Volgend jaar zal ik alvast in mijn agenda zetten en vrij plannen!

The last three weeks have been busy for me. First my parent came for a week, then I had a week of studying followed by a week of test. And last weekend I had a backpack trips with some of my friends from school (the title goes about it).

my parents came on a sunday and would leave again on a saturday. Because I had class the entire week, we decided to go somewhere on thursday and friday and they would meet my host on tuesday.
On Tuesday the table was full of delicious home coocked Syrian food! And we had a lovely evening speaking English/arabic.
On Thursday we left at 8 to go to Bosra. This is a 3 hour trip ending in a village with a huge Roman theather and village. In this Roman theather more then 9.000 people used to watch the daily programme. The statues and writings in and around the theater is a mix of Roman, greek and arabic. It is amazing when someone stands in the centre and al the way on top you can perfectly hear what they are saying! Everything was completely covered by sand when they found it. And it is really well preserved! When you walk through the surrounding city it is a strange sight when local inhabitants just pop out these old houses. Yes, they just live there.... crazy isn't it. Could you imagine such a thing in Europe... that people live in the ruines of an ancient site?
Everything is beautiful, but the pictures will say it all.

The next day we went to Krak des Chevallier. A castle build by the first 'kruisridders' and made bigger by the sultan who possessed it after that. The road leading towards it is through beautiful mountains which look like they are made out of sand. and nearer to the castle green fields with yellow flowers. We don't have these in Damascus, so it was wonderful to see it! For the castle you have to get a whole lot higher... a scary trip with popping ears (like in the airplain) and small heart attacks...
But the view is definitely worth it!
The castle itself is the biggest I've ever seen and its just an adventure to walk through it and imagine the amount of people that lived here. And then looking into the secret door with a tunnel to the village, how many people have escaped through here when the castle fell?

Then I had my exams. Some where harder then others, but I made it and will start the next class tomorrow. My grades where good :D 6.6 was the lowest and my average an 8. Now I'll find a private teacher especially for speaking, because I'm learning Fusha arabic (high arabic), but the people in Syria speak local dialect. So my word knowledge is slightely different then theirs. Like: tomorrow is boekra in syrian and radn in fusha. This makes it really difficult to practice speaking with my host. The second thing which makes it difficult is that she doesn't speak english and my word knowledge is still limited. Since she cannot correct me or translate for me, real conversing is very slow and complicated. But is slowely progressing into longer conversations!

Last weekend I went with 4 girls from my class to Deir ez zor from which we travelled to different sites. I was with 3 japanese (of which 1 wears hijab(=headscarf)), and an australian muslim. We confused a lot of people, and sometimes they even believed we were all from Japan.
I call this trip the miskien adventure. Miskien () is arabic for sad in enlgish or zielig/verdrietig in Dutch. We called it like this because a lot of things went wrong and to keep the fun in it we just called ourself sad and laughed about it. because: what can you do but laugh :)
The first thing that went wrong is that we wanted to go by train and after 45 minutes of getting us regestered there were no tickets left.... So we went on a 6 hour bus trip to Deir ez zor. We called to book a room for 5, but when we arrived there at 2 in the morning there were only 4 beds in the room (and the same price). After some arguing we got an extra matras (on the floor) and a discount. The thing here is that you shouldn't get angry, but just argue with a smile... very difficult for me with my limited patience. But it always works out fine.
The next day we left for almoekamaal ( ), which is a city closest to the Iraqi boarder. Because it was friday all the souks where closed, but from there we hired a taxi bus to Mari and Deuros Europos.
The first, Mari, is a castle from the 3th century before christ with a surrounding small village. Because the castle is made out of non-burned bricks the bricks when comming in contanct with the wind will slowely blow away. There is some shield over it, but nothing can really protect it. This hasn't happend yet, because it was due to a fire that the last inhabitants run away. After that the dessert sand came over teh city and due to the fire the bricks where just burned enough to survive. Knowing this castle will completely dissapear in the years to come makes it more special to be able to walk in there. Yes, you can actually walk in this fragile historic place. Here we had to use our imagination, since there is hardly anything written about it and there are no signs or any explanation on the place itself. Outside the castle you see parts of the surrounding village. Though I must at that I don't know what is real and what they are 'restoring'/'reconstructing'. This because we found some 'new stones' (?) and some things looked 'new' to us. But the question mark and '' are because I'm not sure. And who can really tell me?
In Mari 1500 tablets where found, which describe everything about the place in the 3rd century, but these can be found in the museum in Damascus/Aleppo/Deir ez zor/louvre in Paris.

After that Deuro Europos. Also 3rd century. And all ruines. If we hadn't bought a map of the area I'm sure we would have had no clue what we were seeing. And still, it is just believing what the map says, you cannot really see it. What is really special about this place is again you can literally walk through the ruines and inside it. Unfortunately, the local boys use the ruins as soccer goals. This makes me wonder how long they will survive.
What made the ruins also special to me is that it has a church which is build before the times the romans allowed christianity and it therefore thought to be the oldest church in the world! This church is standing among roman temples and a synagoge. According to my knowledge this place was religiously very tolerant. Something which makes you wonder: why can this not happen now?
On one side of the ruines is a long, 9 meter thick wall which surrounded it and on the other side the river Eufrates. Since it is up a hill you have a wonderful vieuw on the river and surrounding lands.

For both these places I most say that the real treasures found there (statues/fresco's etc.) are in the museum of Damascus/Aleppo/Deir ez zor/louvre Paris.

The next day we went to the museum in Deir ez Zor, it is said to be the best informative museum, with clear English signs and good historical explanations. But because this is a miskien trip, it was (ofcourse) closed for reconstruction :(
So, hopefully the museum in Damascus will make up for it!

we then went to Raqqa, from which we would go to lake Assad and take the train back at 11 at night to Damascus. In raqqa we also went to the museum. In this musseum lies a rich history with statues/pots etc. found in the surrounding arreas. But the signs where mostly in arabic and some in German. The german we could read and from it we found that these are things from the 2nd and 3rd century before christ. We saw statues which looked like egyptian figures, images of a man or woman holding brests and which have big eyes. Also findings in graves, with pictures included brons material (from the brons age), juwelry and bodies. All these stuff must have so much to tell, but who is going to tell it? and who wants to see it? Because I don't think the syrians are really interested....

Then to lake Assad. This is a man made lake. HUGE! it is made from a part of the eufrates and holds a dam with which they create electricity. The wather in the lake is used for irrigation programs. This is why on the way down there we saw many green fields in between dessert looking ground and mountains.
The lake itself is surrounded by an immense wood of pine trees. Absolutely stunning!
The castle where we went to is a different story. You can walk on the outter wals, and stand on top of it where you can see a huge minaret, but the rest has not been dug up yet.... which is really strange! You can see a grave chamber though and the guard told us that every summer a japanese team comes there to continue with digging. So who knows in 5 years you can actually walk in the castle.

The last miskien part was in the train. It arrived on time, we got in the first class appartment, which I wouldn't call clean, but it where nice big seats. At 3 in the morning the train all of a sudden stopped for 1 and a half hour. No explanation was given. With a four hours delay we arrived in Damascus where we had to jump out of the train (it had stopped to far from the track (perron)). In total we had been in the train for 12 hours.... And to end things miskien also, we had a yelling taxi driver :)
hahahhahahaha luckely we were good humoured and loved every part of our trip!

Will write again when something interesting happens!

a big hug from warm damascus!

nienke