this journal is about being addictive to travel and visit historical cities

It was the winter of 2006 and specifically in January. It was my first time to travel to Kurdistan part of Iraq. Although I’m Iraqi but we didn't enjoy traveling all around the country. Erbil, the city I was visiting was one of the three major cities in Kurdistan and it celebrated its own history by being built rounded and at the center of this circle there is the very famous ancient castle of Erbil. The castle’s history can be tracked to the ancient civilization of Assyria when the Assyrians were defending their newly reconstructed cities from the invading Persian civilization that was called Media. Around the castle there are many main roads connecting all sides of the city. All of these roads are rounded and have easy to be understood and memorized names. The first road is called the 30 road because its width is 30 meters. After the 30 road there is the 60 road which is constructed based on the same metaphors for the 30 road. These two main roads were intersected by many other roads to facilitate connecting the city’s neighborhoods. In my latest visit in 2013-2014 I came to see the 100 road and the early construction for the 120 road enlarging the inhabited area of the city more than 14 times. After 2009 the city played a vital role in providing the necessary needs for living for non-kurdish Arabic Iraqis who couldn't stand the suffering in Baghdad and the south of Iraq and opened its markets to the historical Turkish enemy while enjoying a good relation with Iran. In 2010 and after the unrest started in Syria, many Kurdish Syrians started to migrate to Erbil and settle down. If you visit Erbil today you’ll be fascinated by the number of newly constructed residential compounds and the many two years old only sky crappers being constructed all over the city like a new city being born from the grounds. Its Ainkawa neighborhood which is heavily inhabited by Christians was one day at a very far place from the downtown of the city. Now things have changed and Ainkawa has become a tourism spot with lots of foreigners attending its American, British and Greek bars to enjoy the company of their fellow citizens who came to invest in the metropolitan to be city of Erbil. The recent discovery of oil gave Erbil a push to invest in the petroleum sector and become another oil exporting city in Iraq. I can’t wait for the next 5 years to visit Erbil again and see how it became a contender for Dubai in the Middle East.