Cleaning, Servicing... and Bulletproofing!

A couple of weeks ago, I managed to catch a ride home with Mu who just happened to be passing by the university at the right time. Suddenly he decided to change course - is it possible that he was provoked by my comment on how filthy the car was? - and head out towards the outskirts of Erbil to search for a car wash. Most of the car washes we passed were just drive through car washes, but Mu wanted the interior cleaned as well.

Finally, on Koya Road, we passed those two Sher gas stations that sit opposite one another. As it turns out, there is a sloping driveway down to a big garage behind one of them. Turns out this young mechanical engineering student (see below) from Turkey decided to come to Hawler and open a garage. We sat in an office while the young man took the car into the garage where they were starting to amass an impressive array of tools (and had strung up those little strings of triangular flags) much like what you would find at a garage in Canada... This garage was clean and uncluttered with the old tires, plastic containers full of gas and bits of scrap metal as you might find in the roadside car repair strip malls I remember passing in my first year in Erbil...
The car came out sparkling and decked out with Express Garage paper sheets on the newly cleaned floor and a little rearview mirror reminder of where cleaning had been done.
And as we drove away, the young man thanked us and sent us off with the promise that if we came back in a month's time, they will have finished setting up and will be ready for whatever repair services we need... including an option to bulletproof our vehicle!