Do you love Mohammad or we're visiting the North

Palmyra was absolutely marvellous experience!! we met amazing people, we had great adventures, without mentioning camels... ;-) our Bedouins wanted us to stay one day more and spend a night on the desert, but we decided to go to Hama. We met a Dutch guy and a bit crazy Italian girl, who were supposed to give us a lift.

it was probably one of the craziest trips I've ever survived - the car was totally old (1983) and could barely drive. Moreover after 20 minutes of drive we were surprised by the sandstorm!! it's actually impossible to see anything from 2 meters and the sound was everywhere inside the car.. and the guy was listening to some crap Dutch music from 70's... after the girl almost smashed Syrian soldiers standing on the road, I really wanted to finish this trip..

ok, we got to Hama - apparently Syria's one of the most attractive towns with its ancient wooden norias (water wheels), but for us it was a bit boring and stinking (!!) But the hotel was very nice and it organized some trips around Hama. we decided to see Krak des Chevaliers - apparently "the finest Crusader castle in the world" (or rather ruins actually..), which was indeed very nice and interesting, but I think that Polish Malbork Castle is much better :-)

but we have visited also Apamea - another Roman ruins. and it was it!! great place, I think I even prefered it than Palmyra's ruins. and the most impressive part of it was the 2km long Cardo - main street - marked out along much of its length by surprisingly well kept colonnades. It had to be absolutely incredible 2000 years ago!!

we've also seen the Dead Cities and Qual'at Samaan - the ruined basilica -built in the place where the pillar on which the Simon Stylites (Szymon Slupnik) was living. another great great place of Syria. and last but not least thing that really impressed us, was the landscape!! we were thinking of Middle East as of a place full of desserts and which lacks green colour. and northern Syria turned out to be the greenest place I've ever seen!! yeah, greener than my beloved Eire :-)

but the greatest came at the end and it was the city of Aleppo. Very conservative and different than Damascus, but in our opinion much more interesting. First of all a very spectacular Citadel, splendid souq (where we bought a lot of beautiful jewelery, scarves etc. for apparently good money. we keep on saying we're poor students from poor Poland and we have really good deals ;-)), impressing Christian quartier with churches of each rite and of course all these muslims. since we're there on Friday, which is the kind of our Sunday in Islam, we decided to visit the main Mosque of Aleppo. we were observing people (much more conservatively dressed - many women had totally covered face (!) and the best place to do so, was of course inside of the Mosque. it's really funny to watch what the people do there - some of them were eating, some of them sending messages, playing with children, laying on the carpet, reading something (ok, probably Quran), 80% staring at us and just some of them praying.. two girls wanted to chat with us, but they knew just few words, and completely couldnt understand us.. after the question: "you Muslim?", I answered: "no, I'm Christian", but the girl probably couldn't understand the reason of our stay in the Mosque, so she asked: "you love Mohammad?"... well, I lost my words and sincerely couldn't answer. what to answer on such a question while being in the Mosque..? so I wanted to explain her with these five words she knew, that I love Jesus, but she kept on asking: " do you love Islam?", "do you love Muslim?"... it was the most surrealistic conversation I've had for a long time, and yes, at the end I had to admit that I loved Mohammad... I was glad though that I made this girl's day.. :-)