Helsinki happenings

Suitcase syndrome - a rare disease encountered only in one Damascene household. Contageous to humans.

It's now been just over a week since I came back home from Damascus. There hasn't been a dull moment here in Helsinki, which just is the best city in the world to spend the summer - and what a summer it is here, with temperatures reaching thirty degrees celsius and all the bars with their open-air terraces open. I just came home from a rock concert in Kaivari, and it was really nice to walk all the way home through the quiet streets. Today was a day like most of the days of the past week - waking up around 11, lunch at a cafe or snack bar after 14, out in the evening. In between, I have finally started reading Anna Karenina, watched "Six Feet Under" and sorted out almost all my clothes.

Of course this doesn't mean I don't enjoy visiting Damascus - as anyone who has been following this blog for the past month must know already, it's a place I could always go to. And next time I will plan a trip all the way to Istanbul. Another place I should get to sooner or later is Petra in Jordan. There will always be things to see and trips to make from Damascus, but with the Israeli army now also attacking the highway between Damascus and Beirut (which I have travelled through a couple of times), I start thinking about what COULD have happened, if I had made my trip to Syria two weeks later and would have now gone to visit my uncle in Lebanon, like I did almost exactly a year ago. In the worst case, I just would have been trapped in Lebanon for who knows how long.

And it doesn't stop there: I was reading the newspaper the other day and there was this big story about how Eastern Turkey has once again become a very insecure place, with demonstrations and riots by the Kurds taking place in the major cities - the media claims the whole region has been on alert since March. I don't know whether my plans would have been affected if I had known this before I went, but I'm very glad I went anyway, because I didn't experience anything unpleasant.

Okay, well I'll start to get back into the routine of writing posts here. Stay tuned!