Krak des Chevaliers (Castle of the Knights). Hosn, Syria
Sunday, November 25th, 2007
I stayed in a small Syrian resort town of Hama for about five nights. The claim to fame of Hama is the local water wheels. Thats right, water wheels. You know, Walton’s Mountain type water wheels. Big ferris wheel looking contraptions that sit partially in a stream and used the current to turn it and thereby transporting the water or turning an internal wheel for grinding wheat or grain into flour or as a millery. Man it was fascinating, truly mesmerizing. They were really big too, some as wide as 20 meters. That and the groaning sound they made as the wheels and axle were wooden. Actually the only one that is currently working was the mock up miniature one at the bus station, but even that one was a master piece. Okay, I am a big fat liar. I stayed there because the room in the hotel that I stayed had sort of satellite tv. Actually, it was like ten channels, but one of them was “M”BC which was a sort of Middle Eastern Action channel. They had all the shows like LOST, Vroom Vroom, NCIS, a new action movie every day, etc. That, and at 8:30pm, one of the Syrian channels ran CSI Miami. Heaven baby. I watched tv for about 15 hours a day and used one hour to go out and eat, chicken Mensaf, this kind of Tapioca pudding stuff (Tapioca is not made out of fish eyes as told by my sister when I was like 4 and therefore never ate the stuff for 35 years.) which was topped with shredded coconuts (I also hated coconuts until I started living on Islands, but now they are not bad, Beets however still suck ass.) and Pistachio shavings, fantastic. I also sweetened up a bit with this kind of honey covered, nut covered, sweeten granola crust stuff and this filla dough covering a sweet clotted cream rolls. Coke of course was also present. But beyond that one hour of scurrying out for supplies, it was horizontal watching my picture perfect 13” tv. Magnificent.
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