Nothing at All

Ouch. A day without a blog means lots and lots of typing today.

Yesterday we went to Palmyra. Palmyra is some 250 km away from Damascus. After the first 50 km, we've spent all our inhabited city allowance. After that, 200 km of desert, Bedouin tents and isolated habitations (for houses is an overly generous word). The nature there was amazing. After a time you do get tired of seeing nothing at all, but we didn't reach that time yesterday, until we couldn't see nothing at all, when nothing at all went too dark to see. But, I'm jumping ahead of myself.

At roughly halfway to Palmyra (or Tudmor — ﺗﺩﻤﺮ — as it's called by Syrians) lies a curious establishment under the name "Bagdad Cafe". We stopped there to rest for a while, stayed too long, yet not nearly long enough. The visit to the Bagdad Cafe was, I think, the most enjoyable time I've had in Syria yet, and it's not a win by default, either. The staff-slash-inhabitants of the Cafe are among the nicest, warmest and most welcoming people I've met. They were polite, not pushy like some other merchants that we've met, yet very eager to show us their goods and services. We drank some very good tea there, Nisha bought a beautiful... err, put your mouse here to find out what if you're not someone in his family he's trying to surprise with a present, we all took photos in Bedouin garb under a Bedouin tent, and I bought a fossil for 50 pounds and got another one for free. They like Croats very much, they've already appeared in Vjesnik (and hold a photocopy proudly on their wall), and... they're simply great. The good man-with-the-English showed us around the Bedouin place, explained about some Bedouin tools that at first glance some took for massage chairs, and demonstrated traditional Bedouin music on an instrument made from an oil can. We were very sorry to go, but the long lied long ahead of us, and we had to leave the nice Bedouins.

A hundred meters later, we found another Bagdad Cafe. Apparently, the one we were at just a moment ago drew so much traffic that some entrepreneurial soul undertook to copy it, right down to the architectural details of the original, and so take some of the customers travelling in the opposite direction. A bit later, there was another Bagdad Cafe, and then shortly a non-Bagdad-Cafe restaurant. Then, again, a hundred miles of nothing at all, until...

Boom tokkatokkatokkatokkatokka...

My first flat, ever. Or puncture. For some of you, a clarification: I have an apartment, I'm not talking about that. For others, a clarification: I did get immunisation shots, I'm not talking about that.

Our tyre was limp on the ground, like a dead trout. Gone to the caoutchouc heaven. And we were late for lunch. After some frantic searching through the crannies of the car (as nooks yielded no results), we found all we needed to change our wheel. An elegant aluminum cap replaced with a black iron one was almost too much for our car-loving Nisha.

We were worried by then, because if another one blew, we would be stuck in the middle of nowhere. But our luck held, and we reached Palmyra. Actually, almost; we missed it by a tennish kilometers, and proceded to drive to an oil rig. Nisha is a student of the naphtha science, and my uncle promised him to show him the rig, where he could shoot some pictures for his thesis. Pictures were shot. A lot of them. A movie was already in the making, until his girlfriend started to give him significant black looks. It was getting late, and we were yet to see Palmyra, and it was now 60 km back.

Full from the delicious lunch we were treated to, and still in shock from Nisha's find (which consisted not of some fossil, but of a young man working there as a rig manager, who turned out to be his colleague from the university), we came to Palmyra at last, with only an hour or two of daylight left. We climbed first to a tower, or a castle, overlooking the valley, and the view was simply magnificent. That was also the site where Nisha and me were, despite the advices, robbed blind by some Bedouin traders. We paid twice as much for the things we bought than the price we found elsewhere, and probably thrice as much as they were worth. Another lesson in haggling, hopefully learned.

Then we descended to the main archaeological site: the ruins of a huge Roman city. Many arches still stood, and even a building or two survived the ages. What might have been an enjoyable visit was soured by the extremely annoying merchants that locked on to us the second we entered the grounds, and did not leave us alone until we left, even after we bought something from them. There was one that was chasing us around with a motorbike, trying to sell us beads and scarves, and circling to ambush us when we entered the amphitheatre. Some others were trying to convince us to ride their camels, filthy, stinking beasts (not camels in generals, I lack sufficient dromedary expertise, but the particular specimens we were presented with). The worst one was the postcard-pusher, who would not leave our side, even after we bought some postcards, even after we showed we had no money left, even when we told him we would not buy any more postcards, not now, or later, or tomorrow, or ever.

After escaping the ruins and shaking the traders, we went to refresh ourselves in a nearby hotel. We asked about our rubbery transgressor, and the hotel clerk called a craftsman for us. The guy came to the hotel, took our tyre and went off with it. That's how it's done here, apparently. An hour later he reappeared, with our tyre, and a bill significantly lower than what would have to be paid back home. With no haggling needed, either!

In the meantime, we heard about the hotel history: how it was started a hundred years ago by a French countess, how she was a spy during the war, listening to one side chat, then reporting to Lawrence of Arabia, and how she murdered her husband so she could marry another man. We were even shown the room. The room itself is apparently very popular, many well-known folk have stayed there, including Agatha Christie, who seems to have written her Oriental mystery there.

The way back was uneventful, except for Nisha's gushing praises for the automatic transmission, and our having managed to photograph in passing the single Syrian train in existence.