Subject: Post: Just some more thougths about Iraq: The country really surprised me. We knew beforehand that this area of Iraq would be safe and the people really hospitable, but we didn't expect it to be like it was. All totally random people we met were really friendly and helpful, and they wasted hours of their time just to help us with some little thing.<p>Having no common language did not prevent that, we could understand each other with some effort and surprisingly many people also spoke basic or even really good English. By the way, after all of these years not needing Swedish for anything it was a surprise to find ourself being in Iraq and Swedish being the only common language with many people :)<p>Also, in many ways Iraq was way more advanced than I had thought it would be. The cities were mostly in at least decent condition and all the normal modern technological things were available. The people didn't seem that poor at all, I guess they are actually doing pretty decently financially compared to many other countries even in Europe.<p>At any point I didn't see safety as an issue. I have to admit I was a little worried passing through the suburbs of Mosul even though I knew the road should be relatively safe, but we really didn't have any problems there either. In the cities I felt they were maybe the most safest ones I have visited for long time. The normal everyday crime like robberies and pickpocketing of almost all big cities doesn't seem to be an issue in there, nobody touches the belongings of each other.<p>Much more than anything else I was afraid of the traffic in there, just like I will probably be in the other Middle East countries. That will be the biggest risk for us, as lanes and speed limits seem to be only recommendations and guess do they have safety belts? no. Well, they wouldn't probably even help if crashing at 160kmh..<p>One day I definitily want to see Baghdad, Mosul and all those other really historical and supposedly still beatiful cities, but that won't be possible in years. Probably in ten years or something those areas of Iraq have calmed down enough to be possible to visit. We met a few casual people coming from Baghdad, can't say anything negative about them.<p>To sum it up, people said we would have to be mad to visit Iraq, and total lunatics to do it in July. The later I agree at least partially, temperatures were horrendous first before we got used to them, and still hot after that. But, I'm really happy we did visit there. The experience was great and changed our views of the country a lot. The only thing I regret is that we never got a chance to swim in Tigris then :)<p>Note: There's now also a video clip of the Armenian church in Diyarbakir posted. Latitude: Longitude: Security Code:
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