I just read a fascinating story online about a couple of guys who drove from Istanbul to Iraq and back, just on a lark:

The whole thing was just weird. I don’t quite know how to convey how surreal it is to leave a country that maybe, just maybe, might join the European Union and enter a country that is a poster-child for wrenching war-torn catastrophe and have everything around me dramatically improve all at once. But that's how it goes these days when you cross into Iraq from Turkey.

Michael Totten: Back to Iraq (six parts)