"Baghdad" a Baghdad Travel Page by MProcher

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Baghdad - city of 1001 nights.
It sometimes excited me and sometimes disappointed me.
I must admit that I had expected I city that would show me much more of the old oriental feelings, more the Baghdad from the stories of 1001 nights. But Baghdad is a modern city with all these modern facilities. Unfortunately tradition cannot fight modernity, not at all.
I was there in 1998 and was well surprised: the war was not long over and the country doesn't have money today, but - just a very few signs of the destructions!
Bridges - rebuilt, houses - nothing remarkable, and so on...

People nowadays have a big problem in Baghdad: to afford life!
On the countryside they can work as farmers, if not 100 %, they can do so for that part to earn their food from the fields.
In Baghdad that's completely impossible. Engineers had had been working in the petrochemical industry are jobbing as taxi drivers, selling anything no one needs on the streets. Teachers are having minimum 2 jobs to finance their families. People from tourism are trying to attract visitors from abroad (religious visitors from Iran have become very important). Many are smuggling whatever into the country from the Turkey and Iran.