Today I'm having my first meal in Iraqi Kurdistan then I'm going to this tea house
with decades of tradition, and on my way to a world heritage site I stumbled upon this
I thought they were filming a Kurdish music video but I was wrong. This is one of the
reasons I travel it's because you go to a new place and you just feel the energy you
feel the newness of everything and you just feel like you're immersed into a whole new world that's
unfamiliar to you, yet at the same time familiar because at the end of the day we're all
human, we can all connect regardless of anything, and to be in a place that just feels so cool and
it immerses all your senses, the sight the sound the smell of the kebabs is really really cool.
Wondering why is everyone looking at us and then I realized it's not us they're looking at it's...
Here at this restaurant it's men only and then they have a similar restaurant
next door for women and children and I guess families, it wasn't completely random why we
didn't see any woman or why we don't see any women in here. So this is a yogurt drink, in persian, in
Iran we would call it duke and I know like Lebanon turkey they call it Iran you guys call it.
Yeah because we would say moss for yogurt and ob for water so they say yogurt water, so interesting!
sorry
Oh I should add some onions, the right idea yeah got some onion and this would be
a good time to talk about how healthy a lot of
middle eastern cuisine is because onions help you digest the meat and even yogurt,
I don't know if it's yogurt or the compounds in this yogurt drink actually help you digest,
and sumac is also a a really good spice that helps you to digest your food.
This place is such a vibe it is decked out in photos of people who have been here over the years.
wait mac i think we're supposed to
stir.
Wait what are you doing? To weigh my myself?
Oh how much is it? 250? To weigh me?
I was so confused what that kid was trying to sell and sure enough he was trying to sell
standing on his scale but oh look who's back! I thought that was really cool how that kid
was a little entrepreneur running around the bazaar saying see your weight for only 250.
Versus this guy is actually selling an item so every time he sells you an item
he's actually losing some money but the guy with the scale is a master businessman
because he doesn't have any inventory- He said 'he has iphone you have money, money'
He has iPhone 13. You could tell that this is one of those countries where people really,
you know, stay at home during the day and they come out in the afternoon at night because even
in the past couple hours there's so many more people out. All right we're now gonna check out
Erbil's citadel which is a world heritage site it looks really cool it's open from six to nine or
sorry nine to six, in arabic writing they go from right to left so that's why it's 9 a.m to 6 p.m.
they're filming a movie
or maybe a kurdish show.
Is it a music video?
What are you filming?
but a music video? filming or just celebration?
I still don't fully know what i've stumbled upon but I gotta find out
Okay I'm starting to think this isn't just a music video
because the guy just told me those yellow flags are a political party, here in Kurdistan.
I just thought it was going to be like a fun, cultural music video but I could be wrong.
We fight for freedom we fight
we fight against against fascists, we fight against isis, we fight against all terrorism.
We want peace, we want life.
This whole experience was super surreal I thought we were just gonna climb up that hill
and then everything changed and we ended up getting to see a real moment in history, it was the
democratic party uh doing a video for the upcoming election and it was such a cool moment to see the
Kurdish culture between the the clothes they were wearing, the music they were playing and even just
like watching the director shouted everyone was like so cool to me because it's just like yeah,
a director in any any country in any part of the world would be doing the same thing right? And
it was just such a cool experience being like the only you know pretty much some of the only
non-kurdish people in that area and seeing how friendly everyone was, nobody cared you know that
we were just diving in there and filming stuff it was just like so chaotic but so beautiful at the
same time, so beautifully chaotic, and it was one of those moments that reminded me of why I love love
love to travel so much and not just that I love to travel but that the best travel experiences
come without the itinerary it comes when you least expect it when you make a left turn instead of a
right turn and you just stumble upon a real life moment. Did this change your perception
of what it was like here? Would you actually consider visiting? While you're at it subscribe
to my channel for more vlogs. Find me on tik tok and instagram @UPTIN and I'll see you guys soon.