Catching a Movie..

Syrian cities have a lot of decrepit movie theaters. Posters of past shows are stapled over the entrances and they're all for T-and-A or B-grade action flicks. My favourite was for one called "Lunar Cop" which had the tagline, "He came down to Earth to clean up the mess!" For the sexy movies, Lonely Planet warns that censors usually remove the scenes depicted in the posters.

I had a couple of hours to kill one afternoon so I asked about the next feature. It was "House Bunny" with Anna Faris starring as an ex-Playboy model who ends up as a sorority house mother. I went in.

The theater was completely dark so I waited for the film to start in order to have enough light to find a seat. But the projection on the screen was so dim I ended up taking the seat closest to the door. Even then, I wasn't sure I wasn't about to sit on someone. (Imagine watching TV through two pairs of sunglasses and you'll get an idea of how dark it was in there.)

I couldn't hear anyone else and thought I was alone until 10 minutes into the show when I saw a lighter flash and the ember of a burning cigarette a few rows ahead. The smoker began to emit a high-pitched giggle at unusual times and banged his seat occasionally. He talked sometimes, too, and I don't think he was on a cellphone. He particularly enjoyed a scene the censors appeared to have missed which briefly showed Anna Faris' bare backside.

The lights came on when thew show was over, and I could see that many of the seats were broken. There were some where only parts of metal bolted to the floor remained. I was thankful I hadn't tried to find a seat further in.

The experience cost less than a dollar, but I don't think I'll be doing it again. Unless, of course, "Lunar Cop" is playing.

Meeting Syrians...

There were 17 people packed into the minibus that took me from Turkey into Syria. Three women from one family were wearing burkas and there was a "discussion" at the border when one of their husbands tried to convince the Syrian guard that the women shouldn't have to remove their veils to reveal their faces. He lost and each of the women, for just a quick flash, lifted the black fabric.

This made me worried that Syria would be ultra-Conservative and that I'd have a hard time getting used to it after relatively-liberal Turkey. Fortunately, there are women here without burkas, chadors or hijabs. Some wear T-shirts and are perfectly comfortable approaching handsome Canadian tourists to offer a welcome to Syria.

Lots of people come up to talk to me here. Even Syrians who don't speak English know how to say "Welcome to Syria." They ask, "What is your country?" and when you respond they say, "Canada very beautiful." A group of teenaged boys added an extra "George Bush finished!" followed with "Obama!"

The only time I've seen Syrians unfriendly is when they drive. I saw one laying on his horn while a traffic cop helped an old man with a cane cross the road. In Iran and Turkey, drivers deftly steer around pedestrians. Here in Syria it's like they're aiming for you!

Life Aquatic...

I and a group of tourists were fleeing pirates on the Aegean coast when this photo was taken. We'd staged a mutiny earlier in the day when the boat's crew refused to use the sails like the tour company promised, and also for the fact they continued to blast techno music on all decks despite our repeated requests to turn it off.

The final straw came when the captain ran us aground on a reef because she was too short to see over the bow and missed the warning buoy. She also never offered to pay for the beers my fellow passengers drank at the bar on shore while we waited for the boat to be freed.

I was selected to lead the mutiny because I had the best hat, but things didn't go well. The pirates caught us, and even though we fought them off, they stole all of our ice. Many of the passengers were Australian and their brains rotted when they drank warm beer. A Slovenian passenger remained sane and urged us to turn ourselves in to the coast guard. We made him walk the plank.

So now we are fugitives on an uninhabited Mediterranean island. The cellphone I'm using to text this post will be destroyed immediately to prevent tracking. We've burned the boat. My methods have become unsound.

The horror. The horror.

Gallipoli

Over here, the Turks' defence of the Gallipoli Penninsula and the Dardanelles against the Allies in the First World War is seen as the first victory in the country's battle for independence, which ran from 1919 to 1923. This has a lot to do with the fact that the lieutenant colonel credited with the Turkish success at Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal, later led the independence fight and became the first president of modern Turkey.

More than 40,000 soldiers from Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand and India died in the nine-month Gallipoli campaign in 1915 before it was finally abandoned. Also among the Allied dead were 49 soldiers from the British colony of Newfoundland. On the other side, the Turks lost close to 80,000 men.

Mustafa Kemal later became known as Ataturk, which translates as "Father Turk," and there are statues of him in every town, avenues are named after him, and his image hangs in just about every business. In 1934, he said something particularly conciliatory about the Allied war dead and I'll repeat it here...

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.

And now, on to some business from my last post. I'm hardly surprised most of you figured I would be too scared to venture onto the catwalk shown in the picture. But you were wrong -- it was the only way to get to another section of the fortress, so I walked the entire length of it!