holiday destinations top3 syria lebanon

Holiday destinations TOP3: Syria, Lebanon, Iran

Apart from trying to get used to the French way of life, I have also

been making plans for January. The lessons at university end in the

end of December. In January there will only be final exams. As I only

have one final exam, I want to travel.

I am planning a trip to Syria and Lebanon as I am in this part of the

world at the moment. It is a lot easier to travel to Middle East now

than from Finland.

From Istanbul it takes one day and a half by train to get to Aleppo on

Syria. From there it is another four hour train ride to Damascus. I

would like to spend there some time after, which I hope to head to

Beirut. The ride should take only a few hours from there.

I tried to get my flatmate and friend Nikolia to join me on this trip.

She said she is 90 percent sure she will come along but we'll see.

There is still some planning work to be done.

I am also planning another trip to Teheran, Iran in February. The

registration for the spring term does not start until the middle of

February so it would be a good opportunity to head east.

My Swedish friend, Ramin, who is of Persian origin has promised to

join me on this trip if it will be possible schedule-wise. He was born

in Teheran but has lived his life in Sweden. However, he is also

fluent in Persian, which could help travelling in Iran a lot.

"Croatia is a warzone"

A lot of people will think I am crazy because of these travel plans.

Most of them are prejudiced. I encountered some prejudicism already

when I announced I am going to do my Erasmus exchange in Istanbul.

I also noticed some prejucidism before I made my backpacking trip in

2005 and headed to Croatia. "How do you dare to travel there? There

was a war over there.", some people said.

Yeah. There was a war in the early 1990s. The picture a lot of people

have is that the roads are still full of mines and street safety is

appalling. The reality is that Zagreb is practically as safe as

Helsinki as a friend of mine said.

Our images of countries are built by pictures supplied by the media.

These pictures become reality to the us. It is only when we actually

go to these places that we see what the reality is.

In a lot of cases, it can be something totally different.