One of the most fun things about Google Earth is zooming into God-forsaken places in the middle of nowhere. Sure, it's usually the cities which are mostly in high-res (Google Earth slang for high-resolution) but sometimes you get really lucky and some place far from any metropolis is very clear.
Take, for instance, Syria. While Damascus is hardly visible, the border areas between Turkey, Syria and Iraq are crystal clear. Here are some pictures I took of the area!


This is a Syrian town called Tall Kujik. It's right at the Iraqi border - in fact, there's a town on the other side called exactly the same. The train visible in the picture must have been standing there since the border between Iraq and Syria was closed ages ago.


This is a stretch of the border. As one can see, a sort of mound has been made to mark the border and all there is around here is desert.


Here we have a village in Iraq right next to the Syrian border. A sort of fortress is visible, as is the border itself.


A lonely and abandoned tank in the middle of the Iraqi desert (pointing at Syria, by the way).


This is at the northeastern corner of Syria, where Iraq, Turkey and Syria meet. The Turkish flag carved on the ground is impressive, as is the slogan (by Atatürk) under it.

I made this post because ever since I was small I've been fascinated by borders between countries. Now that it's so easy to travel inside the EU, it's actually boring because one hardly notices crossing into another country by land. But things are a bit different in the Middle East. I'd like to know when someone last actually stood at the spot of the Turkish flag which is in the picture.