Our Paranoid Bus Driver Has an Experience

After waiting two hours to get a minibus to Homs we finally found one. I'd decided it would be nice to travel on with Alan and Katka since we both wanted to go to Aleppo. Still, I hadn't reckoned on this two hour wait and their determination, and that of another family who joined us, not to accept anything more than the lowest possible price for the 60km ride.

Still, I shouldn't complain. Sometimes i'm as tight as anyone, even though as a rule I disapprove of fastidiousness, especially when dealing with prices universally far lower than would be found at home, or even in Slovakia. It was only unfortunate that at this time I was eager to make progress. I was even tempted to blow prudence to the winds and head to Homs by taxi alone. But I'd decided to travel with my companions so that was that. I tried to get used to the phenonemon of sitting around doing nothing wondering when we'd leave. Usually, in these circumstances I'd be reading, but in company I didn't feel this appropriate. It would have helped if there'd been better places to sit, or perhaps a coffee to sip from. Conversation had also somehow dried up, as it can.

We had no problems on the journey until we reached the outskirts of Homs. Our driver was anxious because he hadn't paid the special tax drivers have to when they carry foreigners. He was terrified of running into the police and wanted only to drive on roads where he thought there wouldn't be any. Apparently, this didn't include most of those in the centre of town. We pulled up by another minibus onto which he tried to shift us. In the case of Alan, Katka and I this was ok since the bus driver agreed to take us to the station. But it wouldn't take the German family to their hotel. Alot of shouting and passionate gestures were flung around between the drivers. That this was happening on a main road didn't worry anyone. So it seemed, from what Katka told me, our driver wanted to just throw them onto the street. This made her furious and she asssailed him in Arabic with torrential reproach, asking how he could call himself a Muslim, being so inhospitable. I think this might have freaked him out. I'm not sure he was used to being talked at like that by a woman, or at least not in public. He relented and all was well.