IRAQ First Impressions | Walking the Streets of Erbil (friendliest people)

Okay, everybody say hello.

We want to say a big thank you to Trade for sponsoring another episode. If you want to learn how you can get 50% off a delicious bag of coffee, then hang around to the end of the video.

But first, let's go to Iraq.

Today is our first day in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and if you missed yesterday's video, this is a place that we never thought we'd visit.

It's our first full day in Erbil, and I'm so excited to explore.

Might be the most dangerous part about being in Iraq.

So if you've watched any of our videos in the past, you'll know that we aren't big museum people. But the Erbil Civilization Museum sat right across the street from our hotel. It's free to visit, and this is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world, so we thought this would be a good place to start.

So the director of the museum took us under his wing and told us a little bit of history about Kurdistan. And you may be more informed about Kurdistan than we were before coming, but he told us that before World War I, Kurdistan was this massive region of Kurdish people. And today Kurdistan is split between four different countries. Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey, which makes the Kurdish people the largest people group in the world without a nation. So hopefully, when we refer to the Kurdish region of Iraq, that makes a little more sense now.

So we spotted these cable cars as we were coming into the city last night from the airport, and we thought it'd be a good way to, like, get an aerial view, to kind of, like, orientate ourselves with the city. But I think they're painting them or something. There's newspaper all over the windows on them, and nobody's around.

Like, from our hotel to here, we've passed zero other foreigners, but we're on.

Our way and very few people.

We're on our way into the city center. So I'm really curious to see if there are tourists over there or if nobody comes to Earbil at this time of year.

Also, just from, like, looking at a map, this city is just filled with these giant parks that, from what we have experienced, are also empty. Lots of green space, though.

Beautiful parks, fountains everywhere. I mean, it's a gorgeous city.

Oh, I really wanted to ride the cable car.

Wow. Oh, thank you. Oh, it's still just soaking in the grease. I don't know what I'm eating. I assume it's like a donut, and it's going to be delicious right out of the fryer.

Oh, wow.

So I think they're frying him up in the grease here, and then he just lets them soak in this big vat of liquid sugar.

Pusa.

Wow.

Thank you.

Oh, wow. Bye.

Bye.

I guess he's going to sell them in the streets. This is seriously, like, the best donut that I've ever had. That nice, crunchy outside. And then when you bite into it, like, the sugary syrup just, like, goes everywhere.

We walked by this place, and literally, Nate just walked in, and the guy handed him one. We haven't asked what it's called, how much it costs. Everyone's super nice in here.

Can I pay you?

I literally have sticky syrup on my shoe, on my pants. It's just. It's gone everywhere. Those guys were so nice. I. I tried to pay for it, and they wouldn't let me. Seriously, all morning, as we've been, like, walking around for the past hour, the people here have been so incredibly nice. We've had people go out of their way. Like, I think they're just curious. We obviously stick out like a sore thumb. We've had people just go out of their way to walk by and say hello. Like, they'll pass us once and then realize that we don't belong. And they'll make another circle just so they can walk by and, like, wave at us. And it's so nice.

And about five seconds before we walked into that bakery, we walked by a street vendor. You know, the kind that normally annoy you and try to get you to come buy something. He tried to give me a pair of his sunglasses that he was selling, and then he just wanted a picture.

Who does that? The people I just like. I think we're fine finding more and more. When you go to places that don't normally get tourists, like the kindness of humans.

Come out.

How did this get so big? It's so small.

He's good. I really slowed his job down. Okay. To the side.

So I've just wandered into a breath job. They put me to work. I'm not helping, though. I'm just slowing down progress here. They're just cooking nod in these huge tandoori ovens. Beautiful. And they gave me.

No, too small. This. This is how big they're supposed to turn out. And this is how big mine turned out. I think I'm going to be forced to eat this one.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Goodbye. Goodbye.

We just wandered by this bakery. They invited us inside, gave us free food, wouldn't take money, and even let.

Nate bake a little bit, which I've Learned I'm a very bad baker. He made it look so easy. He was spreading these things out in like two seconds. And I couldn't get mine any bigger than like. My favorite part is when they were coming out, he was just throwing like a frisbee across the room onto the floor.

Well, we have definitely found all of the people. We are near the center of town now and there are people everywhere. And we just stumbled upon this local market.

Say hello.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Nice to meet you. What's your joy? YouTube. YouTube? Yes. Make videos.

Do you watch YouTube?

Yes. Every day Kara and Nate like this.

We have a lot of new friends.

Everybody's gotten camera shy now that the cameras come out. Well, we've taken a lot of pictures with a lot of people. Everybody is very curious and very, very friendly.

What is your name? Well, that was unexpected. We were literally just walking and one guy said, take my picture. And so we took it and then we started talking. And then before we knew it, there were like 20 local males literally in a circle around us.

It was like as soon as we stopped, everybody took that chance to come, like, figure out what we were doing here. The funniest thing was everybody wanted their picture taken, but they didn't want to take it with their cell phone. They just wanted us have their picture. Oh, wow.

We eventually said we have to keep walking.

They would have just. I think they would have just stood there and looked at us all. Yeah.

And that was the other thing. Yeah. It's like when we weren't talking, they were just smiling.

Like one of them spoke a little bit of English and that's how we were communicating with the entire group. I. I don't know what I expected here, but this definitely wasn't it.

Wow.

We have just found the bazaar.

Look at this place. Oh, I want everything.

We are traveling somewhere very cold after this trip. And so I just couldn't help myself when I saw this super cute hat for less than four doll.

This is unlike any bazaar we have ever been to. We've probably been shopping for about an hour now, and not a single person has told us to come into their shop, tried to get us to buy anything. Everybody just smiles. Like normally I have to just kind of walk by like this.

So we've made it into the main square and immediately upon entering the square, these brown drinks were forced upon us by a man wearing this giant metal teapot.

It was a really cool setup and we were like, no, thank you. And he was like, okay. And then he poured us two cups.

I made it to a more touristy area of town that wasn't just like a hospitable gesture. He wanted money for this.

First time something like that has happened.

This is like the place to be, though. It seems like everybody in the city is just hanging out in the square.

There's also like a sad part of it, though. There's a bunch of children walking around selling things like chewing gum. And you can just tell that they've been told, like, not to take no for an answer. So they just follow you around holding chewing gum. And it's just.

Like whether they need the money or not or if it's going to their parents, like, no matter what the reason is, it's sad to me that there are kids who are being forced to do.

Yeah.

But I mean, it's just the reality of the place we don't want to only talk about.

So far it's been a glowing review of.

On YouTube.

Okay, video with me.

We made new friends.

So we were trying to ask these guys what the beads were that all the men were holding. And now they've given us theirs and they won't take them back.

Thank you so much.

Everyone here is so nice. So I would say in the square it's probably like 80% men to women. And all the old men in the square have these, these beads. And we were trying to ask them what they were because they spoke a little bit of English and then they just pulled theirs out of their pocket and gave them to us and would not take them back immediately.

Like we were like the bees. And they both went, oh. And handed them to us. And I will always remember the kindness that we encountered here. So sweet.

Photograph.

Hello. Hello.

So we actually got lost in the industrial area of town and now we made some friends and we're having tea with them on the side of the road.

This is great. I think we're at a shop that sells adhesive. The adhesive shop offered us some tea. I felt like. I felt like this wasn't a ploy to get us to buy some adhesive. Normally when someone invites us in for tea, I think they're trying to sell us stuff, but I don't think we're going to be buying any 5 gallon adhesive jugs behind us.

Nothing in return. Oh, taking a selfie.

Selfie.

Hello. Hey. Take it over.

We just came up to the top of the citadel, which is the very center of the city of Erbil.

And this is the part of town that has been continuously inhabited for the last 5,000 years, making this One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

I cannot believe the sun's already gone down. Today has gone by so fast and all we've done is walk and eat free samples that people have given us. And so we didn't even have lunch.

It has been such a good day. Like you go into a new city and you hope that like you can get to talk to a couple locals and just like have a local experience. But it's never something that you can plan. And so today was just really special.

Yummy. We ordered the Iraqi kebab plate. I honestly don't even know what kind of meat it is. We just got it because it was called the Iraqi kebab plate.

I just really hope that today's video came across like half as good as today actually was. So good. So, I mean, I don't know, we booked these flights. We were a little nervous. We thought we'd come see a new place. We had read great things about it. We hoped we would experience good hospitality when we came here. But like it went above and beyond what we could have ever hoped for. Once again, thank you to Trade for sponsoring this video. For those of you who haven't heard about trade, they're an awesome company that connects coffee lovers like ourselves with roasted to order coffee from 50 award winning roasters around the United States.

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Totally forgot what I was gonna say.

This is unlike any market we've ever been to. Is this a market?

Where are you from?

Usa.

Usa.

I wish I knew what was going on.

Camera. Juice is very interesting.

Yeah, it's. I don't know if actually if we should be drinking this or not. We'll figure out soon enough I guess.

Sit down. Sit down.

He knows the words. Sit down and chai.