After a restful couple hours in bed off I went to explore the city of Gaziantep. I soon discovered that this place is full of Baklava. It's everywhere, every shop has some, every baklava shop claims to have the best. I don't know about inner city competition, but every piece of baklava that I had here was better than any baklava I've ever had anywhere else.
They also had lots of Pistachios, I bought 1 kilo for $10 and shelled a bunch for snacks later. Best decision I could have ever made, pistachio`s are amazing and even better when they are that cheap
Simply put Gaziantep was heaven in my mouth, and it was pretty cheap to. While I was exploring the city I discovered a bunch of memorials dedicated to the city of Antep and their resistance against the British and French armies in the aftermath of WW1.

Coles notes of the action that took place here: After WW1 the Ottoman empire was dissolved, and bits and pieces were claimed by different western powers, my understanding was that the French were promised the city of Antep, but British forces were the first to arrive, and had the task of occupying the city until the french arrived.
The citizens of Antep didn't like this so fought back, they had no real weapons, army, supplies, or any hope of victory, but they fought on, but lost to both the English and then the French. No victory in sight, but they fought on.
At the same time that this was happening Ataturk was busy trying to put together a functional Turkish state. In this he eventually succeeded, but not after much trials and tribulations. However Antep was the first prominent city to openly fight against occupation, fighting for a Turkey for Turks.
Interestingly enough Kurds also fought for Ataturk for a free Turkey, turns out it was a Turkey for the Turks, anyone else doesn't exists, and if they do we don't want them. Oh well.
Antep was then granted the honour of "War Hero" which relates to the Gazi at the beginning of their name, thus Gaziantep. Most people still seemed to call it Antep, but both seemed to work when asking where it was.

In the centre of the city there was a massive Castle, originally Byzantine, but occupied and remodelled by the Ottomans a bunch of times. Not much of the castle was open, just one hallway which contained a museum of the fight against the British and French forces. There were many interesting memorials all around the castle and around town as well.

Unfortunatly that was all Gaziantep had to offer, it was rainy the whole time(except 30 mins while I was on the minibus leaving the city). Fortunately this place was more of a transit point to Syria for me than an actual stop.

The next day I went in search of the mini-bus station to the Syrian Border but that`s a tale for next time

Cizre to Antep

Mahmoud was from Cizre and thus had lots of relatives nearby, once we arrived at the Cizre Autogar we immediately were whisked away to a restaurant owned by his cousins. Discussing politics local and global, religion, power outages, car bombings outside his office in Baghdad and how awesome the tea is in the Middle East.
I tried to pay for my portion of the meal, he refused,
After the meal he showed me around town, it was dark so I didn't actually see much, but he did take me to Noah's tomb. Yes, the guy with the ark, which incidentally landed on a mountain within sight of the town but as it was dark and raining we couldn't see it.
I found this connection with not only religious books, but connection to the beginnings of permanent settlement and the beginning of civilization. Cizre is the origin of Mesopotamia, it has basically been around forever, and given that they can lay claim to be the spot where Noah landed, and that nobody cares enough to contest it, I think it's a pretty credible claim to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on earth.
Anyhow after seeing Noah's tomb, his mosque and a few other tidbits around the town I went back to the Autogar to wait, and Mahmoud went to visit more family.

I read, wrote in my journal and copied some addresses down for postcards and finding hotels, basically housekeeping. Got offered tea a half dozen times, and eventually went to find a place to pee. When I came back I went to buy a chocolate bar, and as I was exiting the store I got stopped by a few people my age. They wanted to know where I was from, what I was doing, and so on.
Just like so many other Kurds these guys were really friendly, genuinely curious about Canada and me. They were also really keen on telling me as much about Kurdish Turkey as possible, telling me about their schools and governments, about the mosques in the area. All this conversation made use of my phrasebook and English-Turkish dictionary, they would say some things, if I didn't know what a word or two was we'd look it up, and vice versa.
At this point came the offers of Tea and a cigarette, which I obliged them and we sat down for a bit, and one of the guys runs off for a bit, when he came back he had what appeared to be a rather large hand-rolled cigarette, they offered me some, I asked what it was. They said, "good stuff", again I asked what it was, they said "good stuff" and made some sounds and made actions for someone being high, I asked if it was Hash and they immediately perked up, saying lots of things at me that I didn't understand to describe Hash, they offered and much like cigarettes and tea, when offered pretty much anything of this nature, you must accept, so I took a few puffs and let them share the most of it.

We eventually got to a point the conversation where they didn't know a word, they implied it was a negative aspect of Kurdish Turkey, and eventually found a surrogate phrase: In Turkey, Kurds have no Civil Rights.
That sort of hit me, these guys, all Kurds as a matter of fact, so friendly, welcome, sharing and on and on, and yet, the world still hates them. Wherever they go in a land they've lived in for thousands of years they are hated, I can't imagine what it must be like to live there your whole life. Not just in poverty, but in a state where your own government disagrees over your existence.

Alas the bus eventually came and Mahmoud and I entered the bus to Gaziantep. He and I chatted a while about lots more stuff, and I think I may have made an impression on him on handguns and the sole reason they exist is to hunt people.

Our trip was frequently stopped by military checkpoints, which usually consisted of a military guy getting on the bus collecting all IDs (except mine, evidently the PKK doesn't travel on a Canadian Passport) taking them off the bus coming back and then send us on our way. A few times however they came back on and ordered certain people off the bus, they usually got back on the bus pretty quick, although one stop lasted half and hour. Other times they came on the bus and told us our baggage was being looked through. One time they had a bunch of questions for me about my travels, but far less intense than any Customs screening so I wasn't worried.
All in all there were more military checkpoints on this 9 hour trip than 4 days in Iraq.
At about 2am the bus stopped for a break at a rest stop, but me being someone who doesn't like paying to use a toilet that requires payment, especially just to pee, I went off to find somewhere around a corner to pee for free. This plan backfired when jumping down a wall and around the corner I got chased by dogs, it was frightening, but I made it back up the wall before the dogs got to me.
Not learning my lesson I immediately went off in the opposite direction for the same purpose, this time however turning down an allyway and almost stepping on a sleeping dog, who although was chained up, did not appreciate being woken up, he was angry with me. Just puts truth to the phrase let a sleeping dog lie.

Back on the bus for another 2 hours until 4am when the bus stopped in Gaziantep. Where I hopped in a cab that took me and 2 others to the downtown. So 4am in Turkey is not the best time to be trying to find your hotel, and as it turns out I never did find the hotel I was looking for. Eventually after wandering around for almost and hour I did in fact find a hotel that was open, it was a bit fancier than I was initially looking for and a bit pricier, but nothing beats a hotel that is open, warm running water and a sit down toilet.
Never underestimate the worth of warm running water and a sit down toilet, never.

Leaving Iraq and Borders

In the morning I went to the market to purchase my now infamous black and white keffiyeh then went to meet Vamen in his shop.
Both Vamen and Mohammed came with me to the border in a Taxi. They shut the shop and off we went, naturally we first stopped to pick up provisions at Mohammed's house, was informed that he had 3 kids and another one on the way, he was very proud.
Didn't take too long to get to the border, we swapped passport related stories, and stopped to get some "sand"(more like dust) to take back home from Iraq.
At the border Vamen helped me find a cross border taxi and get through immigration control, it was more of a process than getting in, partially because my friends this time weren't as familiar with the border system.


It more or less consisted of getting my passport photocopied, and handing it over to the immigration officer and waiting and guessing which window to go to next.
At that point we said our final goodbyes and off I went into the taxi which would take me across the border to Silope.
I shared the cab with the driver, a Turkish born Californian working in Baghdad(he turned out to be quite helpful), and two guys(who turned out to be rather interesting). They all went into the Duty free and came back with stuff 20 mins later, I hung out wrote my journal and watched people.

Border crossings are rather interesting places. They are the places where countries, cultures, governments and commerce all comes together. They are a place of business, they are a place of plight. Near most of the borders(except Israel) had lots of poor areas nearby, not sure why, but it seemed connected to the border crossing.
Questions are asked, answered, taxes paid, real security measures. All in all they are quite exciting, and a wonderful place to people watch. Or at the very least figure out who's undercover security, and their patrol patterns(don't tell Israel I did this).

After Immigration and Duty free we were off, to get in line to cross the bridge to get to the first Turkish Checkpoint. This bridge was narrow, two lanes(sometimes three), semi trucks on one side, cars on the other, and whoever was able to convince the Duty Officer they needed to jump the line going down the middle.
I was the only white guy around so the Californian, Mahmood, told me that the cab driver wanted to tell the border officials that I was a journalist doing a story on border crossings, then I was a travel editor for the Toronto Star, we went through about 4 different stories/lies and because of it we jumped 3 of the 4 lines that we had to wait in.

The first thing I did in Iraq was take a pee, the last thing I did in Iraq I took a pee, off the bridge, it was a good call, even with all the line cutting it still took 3 hours to get across the border. It was a long process that involved a pat down, X-Raying the spare tire, and inspecting the vehicle, but we eventually made it past the security checkpoints. Then on to customs.

At that moment I learned what the other two men did for a living, they were cigarette smugglers. I love cigarette smugglers, they are fun to watch, interesting to chat with, and extremely nervous.
The moment the army told us we could move along the smokes started getting put everywhere, spare tire compartment, under the trunk flooring, in the side panelling, under seats, in seats, in jackets, and under the dashboard. You name it, they put cigarettes there.
Customs started with little hope of a quick transit, the car in front had all their luggage out, inspectors more or less gutting the car. Fortunately one of the guys from the car had multiple bags, all filled to the brim with cookies, hundreds of packages of cookies. We bought some for the wait, which was a while.
Then it was our turn, we gave our passports over the 4 other passports were stamped without question, mine on the other had got rejected without question. That was not good. I needed to get back into Turkey, it wasn't an option, they were going to let me in, besides I already had an entry stamp to the country, and had only been Iraq for 4 days.
So we went to the Customs Duty Officer, he also rejected it, and instructed us to go to the passport office, and again first guy rejected it, but directed us to wait for his supervisor, who would have been a rather pretty Turkish girl if not for the stern look on her face, she looked like she could eat your face in one bite, not the kind of person you want to cross.
10 minutes of waiting led to me getting told to take better care of my passport(kind of looks like it's gone through the laundry) but they would let me in.

Off we went to Silope where Mahmood and I hopped in another cab to Cizre where we would both be catching the same Bus to the west.

Iraq was over, it was a fun time, but alas all good things must come to an end, Later on I will make a post with reflections on Iraq, and more observations that didn't make it into the posts on Iraq already.

Turkey once again lay before me, Gaziantep was to be the next stop, and my staging point for my journey into Syria. , with the experience of Iraq behind me I looked forward to the adventures which were to come.

More Iraq

Sorry for the delay, changing my OS to windows7 put this blog lower on my computer related todo list.


The next morning I met Vamen at his shop and waited for Mohammed who was going to take me on a tour of the city in his truck. Before we went for the tour we went for breakfast. Which was similar to all other meals, consisted of far too many appetizers some salty meat soup, some pita bread, then more vegetables. It felt more like what I you would expect for lunch in Canada.
After finishing our meal off we went around the city. They showed me a number of sites around the city. Went back to see the dam, but this time at the bottom rather than top, we went to see the court buildings, but they were closed. We went to a couple other cool places and the off to the University of Dohuk.

The U impressed me. 6 years ago this place was living under a central government that unlike Turkey recognized them, but had tried to eradicate them on multiple occations. This U expanded 10 fold in 6 years, impressive to say the least. We went into the fine arts building and met Vamens sister, pretty little thing taking drama to become an actress, we went to the cafeteria and had something to drink. I met a whole slew of people, although there were fewer people gawking at me, there were more who had the guts to come up and say hi. I posed for a dozen or so pictures with people who wanted their picture with me. It was alot of fun.

After that we went back to the shop, and I walked around the market looking for a Keffiyeh while Vamen worked. We met up later to go check out the lookout spot.
It was dark by this point and we stopped a couple places to pick up the rest of Vamen's friends, and some food and beer.
Off we went, and they hadn't lied, the lookout gave an amazing view of the city, imagine any stereotypical lookout from any movie or TV show, up the beauty by throwing in a sunset, and put it in Iraq where you have to go through a passport check to get there and thats it. Also alot of garbage, I'm sure i've mentioned it before, but everybody just tosses their garbage where ever they are at the time.

We ate we drank we swapped stories, they asked alot about Canada, and I naturally obliged them, told them about health care, the stampede, scantily clad girls and a bunch of other stereotypical Canadian things that set us apart from the Americans.
It was pretty cool, but they had plans to we had to move.
Off we went back down the hill and off to a secluded piece of highway, halfway between two military outposts, because apparently they don't like gunfire close to them, they also don't like automatic gun fire which arouses suspicion, but handgun fire doesn't.

So we pull to the side of the road, we all get out, set up a couple cans to shoot at and away we go. I ended up not firing all that much, 3 times, but by the last shot I hit the target which was pretty exciting. A glock and a Soviet era Chezh gun.
These guys live in a place where carrying guns around is expected, because there is a legitimate threat. I said to them, the only reaso you have a hand gun is to shoot people, they agreed, they knew why they had their guns, one of them had even killed a man(on the order of a judge). This was a part of life, War exists 15mins away from where these guys live. Apparently the big bomb blasts can be heard from Mosul. For these guys it was real. I was just visiting, but these guys live it.

The next day consisted of travel out of Iraq and to my staging point for entry to Syria, although travel sounds boring, this is the Middle East, and the Mid East finds a way to make everything memorable

The 4 Kurdish Amigos

So went to dinner with Vamen and the manager of the shop, who was this small eccentric guy full of energy and questions. Interesting thing was that they didn't know how to eat with a knife and fork, just not something they do, it was strange that they asked me, but I was happy to oblige and teach them.
After dinner, we went to the previously mentioned Hookah lounge where we met some American soldiers that Vamen had worked with in the Army, they seemed like nice enough guys, but I could see them being the stereotypical soldier in Baghdad, full of testosterone, macho, with guns in their hands. We didn't chat for long. We played Backgammon and smoked until Vamens friends showed up.
Just as we were leaving a guy asked me to take his picture, I obliged, and he did a crazy strange dance and struck a pose. Everyone around me laughed, turns out he was the local crazy guy.

Vamens friends pulled up, in a Police truck, I got in back and away we went. I got introduced to Vamen's friends, Mohamed who works at a car parts shop, Jiad, who works in construction and is son of the SWAT leader, and Rayzan who was studying to become a military officer. All were pretty cool guys, all were so interested in Canada, and were extremely accommodating when it came to translating our conversations.

We got to the bar, which consisted of a bunch of rooms on the top of a building, so that the patrons would be unable to see each other. In such a staunchly Muslim country 15 mins from the Warzone of Iraq, this seemed like a resonable idea.
We sat down and then the closeness of violence jumped out at me.
Jiad sat down and pulled out his handgun. As if it were nothing, as if he had been carrying it around all day and it was finally safe to put it down.
Me being a Canadian and being culturally petrified by handguns had to make a comment. I told them all about guns and how they were viewed in Canada.
They were impressed with Canada and how safe it was, needing a gun is somewhat of a given for many people.
They then told me that we were going to go shooting tomorrow night, and that maybe Jiad would bring out his AK47 or maybe even one of his Dads RPGs.
The whole time at the bar was basically awesome, a bit of an eye opener in terms of immersion in the culture, and Kurdish people.
The 4 friends were amazing, they went to great lengths to ensure that I was able to get as much out of my trip in Kurdistan as I could.
For the rest of the night we played cards, they taught me some car game similar to Rummy I taught them blackjack and poker. It was strange, playing cards in the middle east you go counter clockwise, which threw me off a bit, but made sense in a strange way.
At the end of the night we agreed to meet tomorrow and they would show me the lookout point over the city.

I present you: Iraq

Iraq is going to take longer to go through because of the sheer quantity of awesome stuff, so expect a number of posts on Iraq, I'll reflect on the War zone, Alcohol in a Muslim state, the Kurds, Being the only white guy and more, so stay tuned.

So in Iraq both Iraqi Dinars and American Dollars were fairly interchangeable, even on the street. This was unfortunate given the scarcity of both currencies in my possession, is short I was broke.


I had paid for my cab in Dollars and received 10000 Dinars in return. This left me with a dilemma, I was left with 10000ID, which turned out to be just enough for an incredibly filling meal, I literally got a pile of lamb and pita on my plate, and the table to filled with appetizers. It was amazing, I had way too much food, but it was worth every penny. However it then left me with no spendable currency, which as I said was a problem.


The next morning I went in search of an ATM, not an easy task when in Iraq, a place where a 20min drive takes you to Al Queda Central in Mosul. I did in fact fine 2 ATMs and 1 bank with a master-card machine, all of which were broken, which sucked.
I then went to change my remaining Euro into ID to ensure I had some sort of money. However in my wanderings up and down the main street, I got stopped by someone who spoke English.
Vamen was a former Translator for the US army, and in his own words, he "hunted terrorists" He helped me find an ATM, which was excellent. However it went further than that, he became my host.
He took me to see some cool places around town, including a 200BC Kurdish archaeological site, the Dohuk Dam, and their Waterfall, which admittedly looked more like a drainage pipe for the dam.

The whole situation was pretty cool, I went from having no money and no idea what I was doing, to having plenty of money, but not being able to use it, and having a new friend who was taking care of me.

While walking through town Vamen and I chatted about lots of things, including the War, development, poverty, cell phones, school, and Canada. I had lots of questions about Iraq, he had lots of answers. We hit it off nearly instantly.
Vamen worked in a cell phone shop as a cell phone repair guy. So we went back to his shop and he introduced me to what seemed to be the entire market.

Being the only white guy in a city of 1.5million makes you something of a talking point. At times I felt like a celebrity, walking down the street, every head turning to watch me, cars honking at me, at one point an entire school yard full of children was pushed up against a fence to watch me eat some beans. It was odd at times but was neat.
At one point even one of Vamens friends pointed out that his sister had told him all about the White guy who had been at the University that day. I had been at the university that day. I was a celebrity, people taking my picture, I even got asked for an autograph at one point.
Later I met a couple American solders who were taking some R&R away from Baghdad, that ruined the whole "only white guy in the city", but I then changed it to me being the entire tourist industry.

After the shop we went to a place with hookah and baklava, and waited for Vamen's friends to show up to go to the bar.

I will leave you there, because the Bar was pretty epic, it involved a police car, Guns, Beer, a phone call to Calgary, lots of laughs and more