Posts Tagged ‘shopping’

Shopping for the exotic

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Posted 27 Nov 2008 — by sarah
Category Journeys

Lovely Strasbourg claims to be the Capital of Christmas 2008.

When I arrive I see people waiting for the shopping mall to open its doors for the day. Thinking of Damascus Souk I go in and look around the same way, as if everything were strange and all the details were deeply interesting.

We head together up an escalator under a pyramid skylight. The multimedia store Fnac’s crammed with gadgets and gifts, including Johnny Hallyday CDs and electric photo frames.

I leave.

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Shopping again

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Posted 25 Nov 2008 — by sarah
Category Journeys

I keep thinking about the Damascus streets.  It’s true the names don’t really matter.  It matters more what’s sold in any particular place.  So you get the spice street and the animal skins street and the alley where they sell wood burning stoves.  That’s Old Damascus, which is part straightened out old buildings.  Straight Street where St Paul underwent his conversion to Christianity is like this.

Just behind all this, tourist friendly part, is another Old Damascus, more for people who actually live there.  There are kids playing football, many old buildings well on the way to falling down.  In among them some Ottoman houses have been renovated.

Elsewhere the huge Four Seasons Hotel, a major landmark, has developed a European style covered plaza complete with coffee shop chains and higher end designer labels.  Behind this is an area known as Sha’alan which has Benetton, Kookai, Promod and plenty of coffee and juice bars. In the evening this is full of people out to be seen and see who and what is around.

Walking in between these areas one evening I passed a young child, about ten, sleeping on a footbridge with a selection of sweets laid out for sale on a piece of cardboard in front of her.

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Adana

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Posted 22 Nov 2008 — by sarah
Category Journeys

You have the Cukorova plain, flat and yellow and green and fertile, and then suddenly this city rises up all modern and thriving with designer shops. When I first arrived I was worried about finding a cash machine but there’s a whole street of banks all clustered together with farmers queuing to take out money. Whatever this part of Turkey has, it’s been selling well up to now.

It’s famous for oranges apparently.

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Antioch/ Antakya

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Posted 17 Nov 2008 — by sarah
Category Journeys

I’ve missed the last bus over the Syrian border to Aleppo, so have to spend the night in Antakya.

The town was founded in 300 BC by one of Alexander the Great’s generals. Being on two trading routes, one the Silk Road to China, it prospered. It was famous for its school of Greek philosophy and Peter and Paul preached here. St Paul having had his conversion on Damascus’ Straight Street by then.

I read all this waiting for a lift into town, having refused a teenage boy’s offer of sex. He rejects my suggestion we hijack the minibus and drive into town ourselves.

I head out of the cold, bland hotel – perfect for the travelling salesman who’s shown me there – and into the market.

This is a fairly small town – population no more than 200,000 – but I walk for more than ten minutes through the souk. I pass children’s military uniforms complete with Turkish crescent, cheap shoes, wooden carrying platforms to fit on donkeys, bird cages, spices in sacks.

Walking out onto the street I see bicycle repair workshops with small boys gaggling by the doors, kebab shops where food is served to passing customers through open windows, a toy-come-sweet shop where a little girl is browsing, carrying a Barbie backpack. There’s a strong smell of wood smoke and then oranges and onions as farm loads are carried by. The only still and sterile places are the doctors’ surgeries.

All of this is along a narrow street, just a couple of feet away cars, minibuses and scooters stream home in the dark.

It’s all frenetically and intensively about trading and it’s very unlike Tesco.

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