Growing up in the Schengen area, I remembered border crossings in Europe from my early childhood as something very easygoing and as a child actually quiet exciting. Well the more you grow up, the more you see.
Nowadays I really don´t like to cross borders. It is also something different going through a border checkpoint on a airport or crossing by land.
Crossing by land means you will cross the same way like smugglers. Crossing in a old and big caravan makes yourself even more suspicions. Therefore we had a lot of police in our car, checking for drugs, weapons and humans. Just depending which direction you go.
That´s annoying and knowing what is happing to people who are trying to cross the borders in Europe illegally doesn’t give a better feeling.
I don´t like it, but I also knew to cross between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan will be a whole different Story.
Just to give you a brief update about Kurdistan: The countries Turkey, Syria and Iraq don´t exist for to long. The borders were more or less drawn in the beginning of the 20th century, splitting the Kurdish area between this countries (also Iran), making them a minority in each country.
Every of this countries has their own Kurdish movement with different ideas. Violence is regularly erupting in the east of Turkey, the situation of the Kurdish area in the North of Syria has become very complicated during the on going war in Syria. Since the beginning of the 90s Kurdish people in Iraq managed to establish a autonomous area, called Iraqi Kurdistan. (There will be more information soon on this homepage.)
Telling this, you might understand that this area is not the easiest one, there is high security alert and we really had no idea what to expect.
Reading in the internet doesn´t help to much as well. That´s why I will write something about it 🙂
Great Story, love it!