Syrian Bus Service

I was in Damascus and booked a relatively cheap flight from Beirut recently. Given the short distance between Damascus and Beirut there are no direct flights and you have to take a bus or rent a taxi. Renting a taxi is an easy venture but I was travelling on a relatively low budget which is why I decided to take the bus instead.

Suomrieh is the bus station serving southern Syria and Beirut, located near the south-western Damascene outskirt of Ma3dhmiyeh. After passing the security checkpoint with its impressive x-ray, I went to the '2000' office to buy a ticket for as little as 400 SYP. Time till departure: 75 minutes.

I sat down in the shadow and checked my e-mails, sent SMS, watched people running around and buses coming and going. Every few minutes some young guy would pass by and try by all means to sell me chewing gum or coffee, or clean my shoes. Being used to this, it was not a big deal for me. But I could spot some tourists who definitely felt offended. After about half an hour, a guy travelling to Amman sat down next to me and we reminisced about travelling in this region.

15 minutes before scheduled departure I spotted the '2000' bus in the distance, waiting to be admitted into the precinct. Soon I would be aboard sleeping, reading, playing Sudoku and listening to music... 15 minutes later, I started getting a little nervous and walked to the bus. The driver explained to me that the 11am bus was cancelled following an engine failure and that his bus would only leave at 3pm. I was not mad at him but I was mad at the bus company. No information was published at all and people were losing time because of this failure. Ahla w sahla - welcome to Syria.

I walked back to the company's office and got my money back, then went to the taxi stand and shared one with 3 other guys at a reasonable rate of 700 SYP. Had I known about this hassle before, I would never have waited over an hour for the bus!

As you can see, quality of service in Syria is not high end till now. Day after day you can see some promising attempts and developments, yet the mass of services you will receive will not be satisfying. Neither for the Syrian national nor the visitor or expat. I see that the European Union is trying to help us implement better standards. The website www.qualitysyria.com is only a beginning though, and 12 million Euro will not help creating anything sustainable in termns of quality here. Much more effort will be needed, and as we all know such investment will pay off. Time to think. Time to change things.