I recently had the opportunity to visit the Kurdish city of Sulaimani in Northern Iraq. The following is a brief account of the first hours in Iraq. As we the wheels touched down at the Suli airport I was nervous as a rush of adrenaline shot through my body. As you can imagine Sulaimani is a little more off the beaten path than your average Spring break destination. Suli is also much safer than most of Iraq but until you have seen the streets and met the people first hand it is still just Iraq in your mind. The place of wars, ethnic cleansing and the unspeakable atrocities that come along with those.
Within 20 minutes of getting off the plane I had made it through passport control and collected my things. The driver who was supposed to pick us up hadn't left the city center yet so my brother, also my tour guide for the next 3 days, decided we should take a taxi into the city instead of waiting. Anywhere else I'm probably game but in Iraq I'm a little nervous to stray from our itinerary. The taxi turned out to be fine and gave me my first experience of the Iraqi highways. Think 2 lane highway with 3 cars wide, no lines and lots of dirt instead of blacktop.
We made a quick stop at the hotel to drop my things off in the city and then it was out for a big night of bowling. The bowling alley in Suli is like any other bowling alley in small town USA ten years ago. The lanes are in decent shape, the balls are over used and the pin return gets stuck frequently. The oddest thing about the whole night of bowling was that no one wore bowling shoes. All tennis shoes all the time in Suli.
After a few games the entourage of people that we were with including friends, siblings, mother's and father's and a few children moved upstairs to the restaurant for some classic Kurdish dishes. The food in Suli is good some of it was even great but I don't think any of it was healthy. I take that back there was a chicken and rice dish along the way that had the allusion of health. For the most part though things are fried and veggies aren't prevalent in restaurants (I dont' count the random pickled things as veggies). A few kebab's later and my first night in Sulaimani was done...
I'm still trying to digest the whole experience along with editing through almost 1000 pictures. I've decided that it's easiest to break the rest of the trip up into a few posts. Over the next week or so I'll be adding more tales from Iraq like taking Jack swimming for the first time in his life, the abandon Amusement Park and negotiating the Kurdish Bazaar.
Thanks to everyone in Suli for all the gracious hospitality and the chance to share a few days in your amazing city!
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