Hospitality in the Caucasus
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hospitality in the Caucasus with the families of Russians returning from IS duty in Syria. But do they regret joining up in the first place? Baalbek in Lebanon, the next best thing for those who miss travelling in Syria, and the hotel that's trying to recreate past glories; threshing hemp in Hungary for less than half the minimum wage to make socks for the Swiss; living with leprosy in a quiet corner of Romania; and the vicious flora of a former French penal colony in the South Pacific.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.6 | Hello, today to the City of the Sun, a tourist destination for at least 500 years, |
| 0:11.4 | it's Balbeck in Lebanon now host to many refugees and a |
| 0:16.7 | hotel hoping to recreate former glories. In Hungary they're making trendy socks out of hemp for export to Switzerland, |
| 0:25.0 | but with the equally modern problem of very low wages. |
| 0:28.0 | It's been about for thousands of years and it's still around leprosy and we meet a woman in Romania |
| 0:35.3 | who's lived with it for six decades and we encounter the flora of a former French |
| 0:40.6 | penal colony in the South Pacific and it's vicious. |
| 0:45.0 | In this country we have the case of Shamima Begum, the teenager who joined ISIS |
| 0:50.8 | and who wants to return here. Across Europe, governments are facing the question of how to deal with the extremists former enthusiasts. |
| 0:59.0 | In Russia, they've been bringing women and children out of Iraq and Syria since 2017. |
| 1:05.8 | It's thought that some 4,000 Russians left to join ISIS, most of them from the mainly |
| 1:10.8 | Muslim North Caucasus. |
| 1:12.8 | Sarah Rainsford has just been to the Republic of Dagestan |
| 1:16.4 | to meet some of those who've come home. |
| 1:19.1 | I'd never tried Dagestani Chudu before. |
| 1:22.0 | Thin rolled and soft, the pies are stuffed with cheese, |
| 1:25.4 | herbs or even pumpkin. |
| 1:27.6 | They are delicious. |
| 1:28.9 | And on this trip I ate a fair few of them. |
| 1:31.9 | That's because all the people I interviewed were women and I |
| 1:34.7 | met most of them in their kitchens. Babushka Sakinat had plate loads of |
... |
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