Alive?

Alive, but barely. I.e. — connected. However, do not expect the usual web mycelium, since I have absolutely no patience to surf. The connection I'm on takes me back many years — I have waited over a minute for blogger.com home page to load. Not to mention, my DSL link has spoiled me rotten — using a modem is like... like... sewing with fishbone needles and agave threads. I was warned I would have to keep redialing, now being the evening, but I only had to suffer three numbers of Hard Beep before being let online.

We arrived in the evening, and already is my brain rife with impressions. We met some interesting people here, Croats on their last day here, so there was some extensive briefing going on. However, I will talk about that some other time. I want to talk about local traffic conditions — the little we saw in the evening.

When we got out of the airport, we climbed into our luxury automatic-transmission car and rode what seemed like a half-an-hour-long highway into the centre of Damascus. The highway was mostly empty at the beginning, and we were zooming at 110 kph through the leftmost lane, just next to the divider. I was riding in the back, looking around, taking a peek at the other cars. Now, I am no prodigy on the automotive field, my expertise is rather limited to discerning cars from trucks, but even I could see that some of the vehicles around me were very nice pieces of engineering, while others are wrecks-on-wheels. There were several times when we spied cars without any lights sitting in the right lane. Oh, wait, they're not sitting, they're actually moving! It took us half an hour at 110, I have no idea how much it takes them at 15. (Figuratively speaking, of course. I had some physics. I could calculate. I just don't want to.) Once we encountered a motorbike with two people on it, riding in our side of the street, just in the opposite direction from us. And even my single proficiency failed me, as more often than not people drove minivans, tricycles (no, a tricycle is something else; these are... umm... see? clueless!)

Oh, wait, did I say lanes? There aren't any. I mean, sure, the streets are marked (mostly; we did see a stretch that was as black as an unsmiling Nigerian, they probably repaired it then forgot to paint it), but noone pays any attention to that. Driving in Syria is an indigenous martial art. When we neared the city it was a car in two lanes, two cars in the same lane side by side, cars weaving around each other and shoving each other like people passing through a crowded corridor. I mean, if cars could concievably be driving in three lanes, they would be doing it here.

And they explained to us that the rules for the circular thingy (my erudition in all things traffic shows) were the opposite from ours. Whoever wants to get on the damn thing has priority; the people that are circling have to wait for them to cut in. However, when we were climbing up to one, a car zoomed by, cutting directly in front of us. Fortunately our driver had good reflexes, or my first night in Syria might have been the totality of my experience. He was not an European, he was Syrian, breaking their own damn rule.

Designated parking areas are wherever you leave your car, and in 30 minutes of driving around we saw three traffic signs. That is a quarter of the number of minarets we passed by. Which are beautiful, by the way, but no replacement for proper traffic regulation, IMHO.

They told us that we needed to have international licenses to drive here. I thank Goddess I don't have mine.

For the end: I am guilty of premature cheer. I have had to reconnect no less than six times (and dial about three times as much) to finish this entry. So there.