Travels

Life has been interesting so far here on the travel component. It’s a very fast paced introduction to culture and politics within the countries we are visiting, which means it’s barely enough time to really understand the dynamics at work. Right now I am in Damascus, in Syria, which has proven to be quite a bit more interesting of a place than I expected it. Damascus is officially considered the World’s Oldest capital, a city that has been inhabited for a few thousand years and still has much of it’s original arcitecture intact. The original wall surrounding the city is in amazing condition still. I spent the last several days traversing a piece of history, walking up and down the street called straight. (yah, if you are familiar with it, it is still very much intact). I also visited the best surviving castle in the whole of the Middle East, and the drive through the country in the rain and fog brought seens of Braveheart to mind.

Turkey was an amazing experience. Istanbul is considered one of the European Culture Capitals for 2010, so with that in mind you can understand how dynamic this city is in its location.  It is also an enormous city set around the Bosphorus Straits and Marmara Sea. It has an interesting mix of European influence, with a flare of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern culture. If I ever had a picure of what eastern europe would look like, this would have been it. (Oh, and they’ve even built workout equipment in their parks) Turkey has a hero, a man very similar to our Founding Fathers, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The Turkey he established is very different from the typical Middle Eastern countries, and this man is revered very much in Turkey.

So far it has been an amazing experience to hop from one country to the other, experience the culture, the dynamic political system at work, meet the people living there (have a 2 hour conversation with a man on a bench in Damascus about stock cars and muscle cars and drumming for hard rock and jazz music) all of which are guaranteed to change your perspective of those living outside of Western culture.

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