The Great Race

Already when arriving in Damascus in February had some friends invited us to participate in the Dead Sea Marathon - the 10 km part of it! For some reason, we have said yes immediately, thinking it would be a fun thing to do. The race took place April 11th by the Dead Sea, Jordan side. We went with two good friends, Sarah and Sophie, in a taxi to Jordan for a weekend of race and relaxation.

The race took place early Friday morning - it gets hot pretty quick when you are 400 meters below sea level. The 10 km went great for all of us and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves when we returned back to the hotel for a delicious champagne breakfast buffet and a full day by the pool and floating around in the Dead Sea.

I think we might be back for the event next year....

Aleppo

During Easter we went to Aleppo - a beautiful old city 350 km north of Damascus close to the border of Turkey.

We left Thursday afternoon with the famous fast train. The train is known for its fancy design (from Japan) and fastness, so we were excited about the trip. It was a nice train and it felt more like being in an airplane on business class with comfortable seats and staff serving coffee and tea. There was even a small screen and small headsets making it possible to watch a movie during the ride....

However, the fastness of the train was questionable since max speed was 50 km per hour - still, we made it to Aleppo and on time!


Like Damascus Aleppo claims to be the oldest inhabited city in the world and is a very beautiful city with a fascinating old and new city parts. The old city has a famous souq (market) that opens out to an increible citadel/fort. This place is a very present reminder of the history of the crusades. The citadel was used to protect the citizens against the crusaders - and with success as well. It is still standing but lost of work needs to be done. This doesn't stop the locals from flocking to the place for picnics and family outings.

Also the "new" city is impressive. Small cobblestone streets with plenty of charme and life. This is the Christian part of the city and we were lucky enough to meet the priest of the Armenian church. He took us on a small tour of the many churches in the area and due to Easter there was lots of life and activities in most of these churces.


We also had time for a small trip outside of Aleppo to the ruins of a Byzantian church from the 5th century. According to legend a monk by the name Simon went to live here to meditate without any disturbance. However, the rumour of this monk all alone on a hill spread and people came from all over to see the guy. Simon was not too happy about this and decided to build a pillar to sit on creating some distance from the crowds. More and more people came and it is said that the last pillar that Simon built was close to 40 meters high and that Simon slept with a chain around his foot to avoid falling from the pillar....


Simon died in 459 and today there is little left of his last pillar - apparently pilgrims have taken small souvenirs of the pillar with them leaving little left for tourists to see...Surrounding the pillar a church was built to honour Sct. Simon - and though everything is in ruins today it was a beautiful place to visit.

Weekend....

Unlike life in the Nepali countryside there are several forms of entertainment in a city like Damascus. Already this week revealed some of these….

Here the weekend starts on Thursday afternoon and what a perfect start; I went with 5 female colleagues to the Hammam (Turkish bath) for three hours of steam, Jacuzzi, scrubbing, massage and lots of gossip – ending the evening at a cozy little restaurant with good food and wine (something that can be hard to find in this city).

Friday night we went to the Opera – yes, there is an opera house here. We saw Carmen, and though I must admit that the Carmen I saw in Buenos Aires was of a different quality, it was worth the trip. To finish the experience with a touch of sweetness we stopped by at the Benetton Café for cheese cake….

With one day left of the weekend we decided to get out of Damascus to go and visit a small monastery 80 km. north of the city. Rural Syria quickly revealed the great issue of water shortage in the country the landscape was little more than dry, brown dessert with small half-dead bushes. Occasionally, a small house or village emerged from the dust.

The monastery was rather isolated and well hidden about 1 mile up a mountain side, it was a bit of a hard walk up there. It was abandoned in the 1900 century but has recently been restored and has been turned into a bit of a tourist attraction. It is possible to come and stay there for as long as liked, participate in the services or just hang out and talk. The price is nothing more that a bit of help with the cooking and cleaning! It was a mixed group of visitors including nuns, school children and the mandatory dreadlocked backpacker, the guy with the guitar and the hot chick that sings away and fascinates everyone on the mountain.

Yes, quite the weekend...

Damascus – first impression

We have now been in Damascus for three weeks and it is time to share some of our experiences and impressions with you:

The Syrians
People here are incredible sweet and friendly and on top of that they have another quality which Anne after 1½ years as the Giant Woman of Nepal appreciates highly: they are tall! As predicted by Steve the men all have moustaches and smokes argileh (water pipe). To our big surprise argileh is extremely popular amongst all walks of life here even on the most hip cafés you see young students, males and females, smoking away on this fascinating instrument. In general, it seems that smoking is big here. Everybody smokes and you can be sure that the taxi driver would have managed to smoke at least two cigarettes before you reach your destination – now matter how short the ride might be.

Damascus
Damascus is an increible city and despite more than 6 million inhabitants it seems very small. It offers a bit of everything from the old city with its small narrow streets and Arabian houses to an Opera house with lots of cultural experiences and the Shalaan neighbourhood in the centre with the many shops and cafés. Last but not least you have Sheikh Mouhiddin, our neighbourhood. About 10 minutes walk from the heart of Damascus it lays at the beginning of Mount Mezzah with small street crawling up the side of the mountain. It has a large number of beautiful mosques (kept us awake for the first night in the apartment) and is famous for the local vegetable market. We have found a very nice apartment here and are busy turning it into a home in a city we feel very comfortable in.

The job
UNDP Syria has so far offered plenty of pleasant surprises such as having the Danish Embassy as its neighbour. Having a staff consisting of 80 % women – something the boss (a man – of course) jokingly mentions as an issue simply because the office is too efficient. I have some amazing colleagues who have received me well. The atmosphere in the office is open and cheerful. There seems to be plenty of communication and cooperation across the different sections, something I greatly missed when working with MS in Nepal.
We are still working on specifying my tasks more clearly but everything points toward working with gender mainstreaming of the organization, coordination of donor aid in Syria and finally focusing on including more civil society organization in the development work of UN and the government. So as it seems now there will be plenty of interesting work - I will try to keep you updated on this blog.

…and in the end
After having made it through both Christmas and January in Denmark without too much distress I was somewhat surprised to find myself lost in a snowstorm on my way to an inauguration of an e-library for the parliament. But that’s life; strange and unpredictable….

Welcome to our blog!

New country, new adventures, new blog!!!

We hope to be able to start blogging here from February.Until then Merry X-Mas, Happy New Year and Good Luck getting through January!!!

Anne & Steve