Aleppo Cont'd
Trip Start
Oct 20, 2008
1
17
93
Trip End
Jan 31, 2009
Aleppo,
Syria
Friday, November 7, 2008
The National Museum is the worst that I have ever seen. Everything, including the building, is worn out and the labeling is terrible. It is a pitty that there are some great Assyrian artifacts in there.
Went to the Christian quarters where there was a church/ cathedral representing every single Christian group that I can think of. The Maronite Cathedral seems to be the biggest, which could mean that the Maronites are the dominant Christian group in Aleppo. The Greek Orthodox Church has a following of 17,000 and they do not report to the patriarch in Fener, as I had thought. The Armenian Cathedral has a section devoted to the "Genocide".
Inside the Maronite Cathedral
There is nothing worth seeing in the Museum of Popular Culture. It is an underfunded version of the Etnography Museum in Antep.
This city is a labyrinth! It's extremely difficult to find my way around even with the map in Lonely Planet. By the way, there are some mistakes in the Lonely Planet maps of the city, such as the location of the Sheraton Hotel, and they have not included many of the side streets.
There is a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Aleppo! Saw a poster...
I don't believe that the citadels of Anatolia can compare with the Citadel of Aleppo. The ones in Istanbul and Urfa, for instance, are significantly smaller and are not nearly as intimidating architecturally. The Citadel of Aleppo was built by the Umayyads in the 11th Century. It was later used by the Ottomans.
Yesterday, I had thought that the city was somewhat beautiful. Now, I think that it is a city that once had the potential to achieve beauty. When I looked down on the whole city from the Citadel, I realized how ugly and dirty it all looked
The Citadel of Aleppo
. The clear majority of the women wear headscarves. However, there is a significant percentage that do not.
Always amazed to see how Christian communities can live peacefully while so close to the Muslim majority. I heard an Imam preach just minutes before reaching the Maronite Cathedral.
There seems to be no industry in Syria's second biggest city. The economy revolves around trade and small crafts. There are numerous Turkish brands that are readily visible. Namely, Lassa, Vestel and Tofas. Interestingly, there are more Vestel adds with pictures of Kivanc Tatlitug, a handsome Turkish actor, than posters of Besar al-Esad.
I was speaking to a young man who worked at a touristic store. He spoke a bit of Turkish. The dude was telling me that there are many Arabs in Urfa. Naively, I added that there are many in Hatay as well. He got slightly pissed and told me that the situation in Hatay was "different". How much they hate having lost it to Turkey...
