After I left Syria yesterday I had to teach a police officer English. I had to show him all the electronic devices and clearly name each one in English: "Camera." "Mobile phone." "Portable computer." Then he let me pass to the actual border crossing.
We spent quite a lot of time searching for Slovenia's code in the computer system. First, they wanted to make it easier and were about to introduce the code of Russia and it took me much effort to explain that we don't have anything to do with Russia nor we had with the former Soviet Union. Of course they grabbed Yugoslavia's name with enthusiasm, they said Slovenia still didn't figure in their computers, and the code was almost entered. IIn a joke I said I woud have to write a letter to the king to buy them new computer programs, if the ones they are using are more than 12 years old (Slovenia has been independent since 1991).
But I found the right touch only when I reverted to Jordan history and ttold Abd er-Rahman that if I'm Yugoslav, then he's Turkish. It worked and we went to another building to the central computer. We checked all the countries of the world, and finally, we found: Slufiniya, code 362. We had even more fun, but at the end I recognized that Abd er-Rahman is Jordanian and not Turkish.
I can feel extreme hospitality at every corner. The police officer that accompanied me from the customs to the police, from there to the insurance company, and to the bank, then back to the customs and to the police again, didn't want any kind of reward; he said I am a foreigner and he was pleased to help me. The soldiers on military check-points along the border with Palestinian occupied territories wish me warm welcomes, even the chief of the check-point shouts "Welcome!" from his hut.
The roads are completely European, as are the driving habits. Soon after I reached the Dead Sea at night I received a short message from Barbara and Klaus (the Germans I met at Palmyra), asking me where I was. I was sure they stayed in Amman despite my intentions to spend the week-end at the Dead Sea. Through the GPS coordinates they sent to me I realized they were just about a kilometre away. There I also met Oliver and Sandra from Munich who are traveling to South Africa with their Toyota Landcruiser. They had problems with their laptop on which the WIN98 freezed completely as they wanted to run drivers for the external burner. You can see what they are doing at www.gilles-unterwegs.de (when I'm at home already they will still be somewhere in the middle of lions and elephants).
During the day I managed to float on the Dead Sea (it's really funny, your body actually floats on the surface, namely the salinity is as high as 30 %!), to wash the clothes, (I'm drying them in the car) and above all, rearrange the luggage in the car and the roof box and especially to take the heaviest things out of it. The reason is I had problems with it as I walked too much on it and the arched roof racks stretched, thus not fitting well onto the roof anymore. A nice guy 'Omran helped me bend it again in front of Krak des Chevaliers in Syria, but the speed-breakers into which I was bumping sometimes at 90kph made the heavy roof-box swing and the arches were stretching again. Now the problem is solved, the heaviest things are inside the car.
In the evening Barbara and Klaus invited me for a dinner, after making me some great pancakes for the breakfast. They are very kind and probably we'll travel parallel for a while.
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