Friendship Found in the Middle East

During our trip to the Middle East Lindsay and I took a 36 hour train ride from Istanbul, Turkey to Aleppo, Syria. We were both really looking forward to this but we had no idea how much we were going to love it. The scenery and overall experience was amazing but it was the friends that we meet that really stuck with us. From the beginning the journey had some issues. When we arrived at the Haydarpasa train station in Istanbul (after a beautiful ferry ride across the Bosphorus straight) we found our train and were ready to board. However, we quickly discovered that the car/room number on our ticket did not exist on the train. Eventually everybody boarded but a handful of westerners (about 10 of us) and that was the start of our friendship. We were the only Americans but there were people from Switzerland, UK, Scotland, Australia, Italy, etc. We all realized we were stranded and sat on the train platform just laughing and talking. They eventually added another car to the train and we all took our places. Lindsay and I had our own room so we did not see any of them again for about a day. However, after getting close to the Syrian border there was another mix up and we discovered that we had to take a bus the rest of the way. There were many of us that got on the wrong bus and ended up taking a quick random tour of the small Turkish down that we had stopped in. :) Eventually we ended up on the right bus and realized that the same group of westerners were together again. As we rode together on the bus into Syria we all became fast friends. We would laugh, share travel stories, make fun of each other, etc. The border in Syria took FOREVER to cross and this was another opportunity for us to get to know each other. I remember vividly sitting at the Syria/Turkey border waiting for all of our Visas/Passports to clear and having a blast as we all laughed, talked and played “eye spy.” There are numerous funny lines but here are some of our favorites:

Scottish kid asking for a drink to a Syrian man: “I will have a Fanta if you like?” The Syrian man ignores him and pours him a coke and he replies “a coke is fine.”

British kid talking about how all theatres in the UK show Harry Potter films for way to long: “Ya but their all shit though.”

Harry (our Australian buddy and probably best friend on the trip) reply to Marc when he asked if he could translate something for him: “should'nt be that hard actually.” (imagine this with a think Aussie accent and a lisp).

We all became such good friends that when we finally made it to Aleppo, Syria we all meet up in the old town for drinks. For most of the friends that we meet this was the last time we saw them and to this day we still miss them. The two Scottish kids we ran into again at a Mosque in Damascus and Harry (our Aussie friend) we ran into again down in Damascus and he came running up to Lindsay and said in a fake Arabic accent "would you like to buy a rug". We chatted with him and walked together through Damascus and that is the last time we saw him (he was staying behind to live in Damascus an study Arabic and ended up working at travel agency for a year). We constantly still think about the friends we meet on our “trek from Turkey to Syria” and will never forget them!


Above is a picture of Lindsay and our Australian friend Harry.

Above is a picture of our Italian friend...we sat right behind him on the bus into Syria.

Above is a picture I took while traveling on the bus into Syria. You can see our two Scottish buddies and British friend.