Shady Zen Aldeen
My journey to the Netherlands.
I left Syria on the 11th of July 2015 to go to Lebanon first, from here I went to Turkey. In Izmir, Turkey I took the boat to get to Greece. This failed for over 10 times. Like once the motor stopped working in the middle of the sea. You must know that the waves can be up to three meters high.
© 2016 Shady Zen Aldeen
This was my last boat from Turkey to Greece. This one was more safe and therefore more expensive, than the other ones I have been on. On this boat we were with 24 people.
For comparison;
The other boat travels there were around 54 people and it costs 1100 dollar. For this one I had to pay 1800 euros.
From the island of Chios I travelled by plane, to a vantage point airport in Greece. From the Greek airport, together with thousands of others, we had to walk to the border of Macedonia. When we finally arrived at the borders we had to wait for 12 hours to finally continue.
In Macedonia we could continue to travel by train, from here we went to Serbia. I arrived at the boarder at night time. Where I, and everyone with me, had to spend the night outside. Because we couldn’t pass the border at night, due to police restrictions. We all slept in the forest.
In the end, after several attempts to reach Greece, I finally arrived in Chios, the Greek island on September the 5th of 2015.
The photo you see below, is made in Turkey, just before I left with the boat. The start of a long trip of going back and forth.
I feel challenge in this photo, because it felt like the ship was trying to take the sun with it, at some points, the sun was just a light at the top of the ship.
Another time I went with a wooden boat. We where told that we would travel with 60 people, which is the maximum of this boats carriage. We ended up with 84 people on board. Because of this, water started to get into the boat. Luckily the Turkish coast guards came to save us from sinking. When the coast guards rescue us they bring us back to Turkey, so we had to start all over again.
On one of the journeys I was with 50 people on a boat in the middle of the sea, the commandos stopped by and they took the motor from our boat. Hereby we could not continue our journey. They've left us in the middle of the sea, we waited for hours untill we got rescued by the Turkish police, again.
"They've left us in the middle of the sea"