MyTLVadventure

Friday, 25 May 2012

"It's your last week; make the best of it"

I am now on the home stretch, will be flying home in less than a week. After three months, some things that I know are different and were 'new' three months ago, are now actually routine -- and I don’t even notice them. Time to go home. I miss Rafi and my real life.

I probably still have little Stars of David in my eyes and do not care (I was told by someone I respect and like that I am a bit naive about Israel - and I think he was being kind). My appreciation for this country has grown immensely. I am resisting the urge to start analyzing what I got out of this trip, what it all means. Maybe it was just a vacation, and that is fine too. Regardless, I will have the rest of my life to think about it.

Rafi gave me some good advice: "It's your last week; make the best of it." But it is not as easy as it sounds considering I have done so much and enjoyed so much. What do I really want to do again, one last time?

So, here are a few of the things I have been doing to make the best of it.

I went to the beach, Frishman beach, which is a 12 minute walk from the apartment. I parked myself on a chair under an umbrella, with a copy of Ha'aretz newspaper (they were out of the Jerusalem Post, so I held my nose and acquiesced) and enjoyed the little picnic I had brought. Five hours later, I went home.

This picture was taken earlier last week at another beach but it captures the feeling

The next day for dinner, I had kibbeh soup at the local counter on Kikar Rabin, even though it was probably 25 C at 7 pm. While I was there, there was a huge commotion outside and I rushed out to see what it was. I am glad I had been at this small restaurant many times before, otherwise the waiter would have thought I was leaving without paying. It turned out to be a sub-group of the Breslover Hassidic sect, colloquially known as the “Na Nach's.” I had heard they conduct on-the-street outreach with its roving musical vans and dancers, but I hadn’t seen them before. The funniest (to me, anyway) and most predictable thing was that I had to explain to the waiter who they were and what they were doing. The waiter is a third generation Israeli.


"Na Nachs" dancing on the street

The following day, I had an Israeli breakfast at one of the two cafes next door to the apartment while chatting with the owner. Pure bliss. (And no, I should not have had the Nutella, but it was all for "one last time" purposes.)

I then crossed off the list the last major site in Tel Aviv that I had not visited yet, the EretzIsrael Museum, as I joined the group from Machon Avshalom (the institute for adult studies I meant to but rarely did go to because I got too busy from week one on), one last time.

The Museum is a multidisciplinary museum covering a variety of fields, including Archaeology, Judaica, Ethnography, History and Culture of the Land of Israel and traditional arts and crafts (i.e., a high-brow mish-mash but, to be noted, their gift shop probably has one of the better store selections in Tel Aviv).

The unique character of the Museum comes across in the many pavilions spread over the vast grounds that form the Museum Park, with each pavilion dedicated to a different cultural theme. Unfortunately for the rest of the Machon group, they spent a lot of time telling me and E., the Chilean-born person I had met there, to lower our voices. For the little that I attended, they will remember me as "the troublemaker."

At the Eretz Israel Museum

The most interesting part was seeing the reconstructed Israelite house from the Biblical Monarchy period (Biblical scholars have dated the kingdom from c.1026 BCE to c. 930 BCE, though there are differences of opinion as to exact dates. Why am I not surprised about that part?).

Keeping house

Authentic reconstruction of Israelite house (minus the air conditioning unit at the back, which carbon dating would probably place as more recent than the Biblical Monarchy period)

From there, my friend Lea picked me up and we went to the beach (to a seaside restaurant, to be more specific) this time in Ramat Aviv, North of Tel Aviv. We had an excellent time talking about childhood friends and classmates (not always the same thing), always under the "cone of silence" of course.

With Lea in Ramat Aviv

Continuing with only "making the best of it" in my last week, yesterday I had the pleasure of taking the train and going to the Galil to lead a planning workshop for a company there, my first real, bona fide Israeli high-tech client.

While I do not want to write about work on this blog, I can say that those who know me know how much I love my work, so engaging with the smart, creative and open-minded client team yesterday was a big part of my goal to experience what life here is all about. The experience certainly is a significant highlight of my Israeli adventure.

Also in the name of "making the best of it" I have been doing a bit of shopping. In Israel you can find all the big name-brands in the shopping centres, but there are also a lot of really nice Israeli designers who produce good quality (I hope), well designed clothing, shoes and purses. I now own a few examples - and hope all the paperwork to get the VAT back at the airport pays off.

Today I went to get my hair cut one last time here. D&B says there are 2,307 hair salons in Israel and I am guessing 2,001 are in Tel Aviv. There are probably one hundred hair salons just between my apartment and Eli Berga's Salon on Ben Yehuda Street. But Emanuela, who has Yemenite-curly hair, introduced him to me and I love how he cuts my lame-curly hair. I know that when I come back next time, I will call Eli first.

With Eli Berga

Today is Friday (and since "Sunday is Monday" here, then "Friday is Saturday," right?) and one of my favourite things I absolutely had to do this last week was to go to Dizengoff Street, walk along the street and enjoy the crowds at the cafes. This is what Tel Aviv is all about -- at least for this naive visitor.

So, from getting my hair cut, I went to meet a new-found cousin, Micol, for lunch at Cafe Michal on Dizengoff.

Micol is a cousin of my late father on his mother's side, who connected with my sister via the web a few years ago (Micol had drawn a family tree for me). When she found us, it was quite remarkable, as my father became an abandoned orphan as a nine year old during the Holocaust, and he remembered very little about his mother's family and so we knew even less.

Micol is a Librarian at a local University but (sorry, here comes a cliché), she is exactly the opposite of what you would expect (however, now that I think about it, it is probably because she is a Librarian that she has become so good at finding relatives). Micol is chatty and has a great laugh and is very creative in a number of arts and crafts. I very enjoyed finally meeting her and look forward to many rounds of DrawSomething Free with her (I trusted her enough to let her in my online addiction to it).

With Micol at Cafe Michal

Micol told me at lunch that she is passionate about genealogy and has found relatives all over the world and connected them to each other. Many live in Israel and they actually like each other and have become family again. An amazing example of collecting the shards and releasing their light.

Monday, 21 May 2012

It's Petra time...and more

Last night I deleted a post called “A Story in Three Cafes” because of the offensive postings by anonymous web visitors (among other things, I was called a “liberal” – OK, that really crossed the line!). Thank you to those of you who managed to read my post, the comments and my single rebuttal before I took it down, and have emailed me your support. I owe you one! And now I shall move on and continue blogging about my personal experiences during the visit, the people I meet and talk to and the things I do, hoping the blog doesn’t get hijacked again.

Jenn left over a week ago. While she was here, we mostly hung out but managed to do one special trip to Eilat and Petra.

On May 7 we flew to Eliat for a three-day getaway. A couple of weeks earlier, Jenn had been at "another" sort of beach, Hall Beach, in Nunavut, Canada, right above the Arctic Circle, so a getaway to a really warm place seemed in order.

Before: Jenn in Hall Beach, in Nunavut, Canada

After: Jenn poolside at the Hilton in Eilat, Israel

Eilat, part of the Southern Negev Desert, is Israel's southernmost city, a port as well as a popular resort. It is located at the northern tip of the Red Sea, on the Gulf of Aqaba, with a population of about 50,000.

It is pretty much adjacent to the Egyptian village of Taba to the south; the Jordanian port city of Aqaba to the east; and really within sight of Saudi Arabia to the south-east, across the gulf. (Yes, Israel is a very surrounded small country.)

Since Rafi and I had been there 4 years earlier, I was completely aware of Eilat’s well-deserved reputation (tacky) and its nickname ("Las Vegas with waterfront"). The place lived up to all of it.

It takes about 5 hours to drive to Eilat, so we flew instead. But rather than fly through huge Ben Gurion airport, we flew out of the small Sde Dov airport, which mainly handles scheduled domestic flights and is about a 20 minute cab drive from the apartment. It is a really small airport, so the hassles were minimal. The flight took about 1 hour so we left early and by 9 am we were there.

We stayed at the Hilton, which unfortunately did not live up to its reputation. The room was nice, with a lovely view of Akaba in Jordan, but the pool area closes at 6 PM (which is crazy, as it is long before sunset) and the staff has a penchant for housekeeping the common areas and gardening the grounds at peak times. On our first day, we wanted to lounge by the pool and did so until it got unbearably hot (it is the dessert after all) so we went to our room until about 4, when we went back to the pool area. Well, at around 4:30 the pool workers started stacking the chairs all around us. The noise of deck chairs being dragged on the pavement was drowned by the power tools the hotel gardeners were using as they started trimming the palm trees and making the area dusty, with leaves flying all over.

Hilton Hotel palm trees, pre-haircut

Outside the hotel in Eilat

The highlight of the trip was our day excursion to Petra the next day.

Petra is a historical and archaeological city in Jordan, famous for its rock cut architecture and water conduit system, established around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans. At its peak, the Nabataean Empire stretched from modern-day Yemen to Damascus and from western Iraq into the Sinai Desert ... at least, according to some historians. No one is really sure how large their empire really was. That is how illusive and mysterious the Nabataeans were. While their caravans traveled widely, it is hard to be certain of the borders of their kingdom, or the extent of their travel. Incredibly, they were able to control the water supply that led to the rise of the desert city, creating an artificial oasis.

During the Roman period a road was built to link the area where Eilat is located with Petra. So Jennifer figured we had to go.

Going to the dark side...

While four years ago on our tour of the Negev we learned a lot about the Nabateans who built and lived in Petra (which motivated me to read up on them and Petra after we got home), I wasn’t particularly excited about the idea of crossing into Jordan.

I sought advice from Israeli friends. To my question of "Is it safe to go?" my friend Nurit, hedging her bets, wrote that "safe is relative." OK... So when I emailed back, she seemed a tad annoyed and wrote back "Don’t be ridiculous! You aren't going to Kabul!"

(Jenn pointed out that I think comments like that when coming from friends are funny and I laugh, but I get mad at her when she makes them. Precisely).

Since I was lukewarm about going, Jenn took care of everything: initiative, research, insistence, persistence, longing eyes, phone booking… (OK, I did something: I gave her my credit card). We only told Rafi about the trip after we got back to Israel by emailing him a picture of us in Petra with the subject line "Where are we?" He guessed. (I had left clear instructions with Nurit as to where to contact Rafi and what to say should we end up, well, "unable to call").

For our visit to Petra the next morning, we had to get up at 6 am so we could get a decent, non-hotel cup of coffee (we weren’t in Tel Aviv). Luckily, the local Aroma was just across the street from the hotel and open 24/7.

The tour company's jeep picked us up at 6:45 and drove us to the Jordanian border where we met the rest of the group to cross the border and get on the escorted tour bus.

Our ride to the border

At the border

Once on the bus on the Jordanian side, not surprisingly, the landscape looked the same as on the Israeli side, but it took me a full 45 minutes to start breathing fully. The tour staff consisted of Ali, the guide who did an outstanding job in English and Hebrew (there were Israelis on the tour as well; they weren't worried about going to Kabul); Mohammed the driver; and the (armed?) guard (didn’t catch his name...). Every 50 km or so, I saw a police patrol parked on the side of the road. Being guarded by Jordanian soldiers didn't quite feel the same as by Israeli soldiers but, with my understanding of the contribution Tourism makes to the Jordanian economy, I figured they were all "motivated" to get us back home safely.

<Note: Rafi just pointed out that "very 50 km or so" would not be much... Yikes!>

The drive to Petra is about two hours. We first drove through Akaba, the port town (could be the "sister city" to Eilat, but not) with a population of about 110,000. Akaba is 320 km from Amman, the capital, and is the only Jordanian coastal town -- so much depends on it. It looks like a newer town and I saw a lot of construction cranes all over, mirroring what Ali told us about it being the fastest growing town in Jordan, thanks to Tourism and the fact that it is a tax free zone. It gets over 1200 tourists a day from the cruise ships alone.

On the drive thought the mountains, we saw lots of villages that had black Bedouin tents as well as homes, lots of farming going on, breathtaking desert areas, lots of camels and donkeys, sheep, goats. A few shepherds here and there. Lots of old men wearing red kaffiyehs on their heads, lots of women and little kids, in traditional clothing but their faces weren’t covered. (Unlike Saudi Arabia, for example, Jordan seems to consider religious compliance a matter of personal choice - and who would choose to wear a blanket over their face?).

As we drove North to Petra past small and dusty villages, we were able to see Israel all along.

The Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace was signed in 1994. It normalized relations between the two countries and resolved territorial disputes. Jordan is only the second Arab country (after Egypt, and let’s see what happens after their elections coming up) to normalize relations with Israel. In Israel there is a strategic doctrine that states that even if their implementation is not perfect, the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan must be preserved for as long as possible. The very existence of the treaties prevents an all-out war.

(I read today that a senior Israeli defense official believes that given the current state of affairs in the wake of Arab world uprisings, Jordan would have trouble maintaining the peace treaty with Israel should Egypt annul the Camp David Accords. “For Israel, peace with Jordan is an asset that is no less precious than the agreement with Egypt, and even more so at this time.”)


Entering the road to Petra...just walk 750 m to get there. Then start walking.

Petra was the capital of the Nabataeans, and the center of their caravan trade. I had seen many pictures but can honestly say the pictures, which are impressive, don’t do it justice. Jenn and I were in awe.

Entering the road to Petra

Once you get to the entrance area, you have a choice of walking in, hiring a horse and buggy (which the Bedouin drivers whoop up to amazing speeds), or getting a ride on a donkey.

High-speed horse buggies

There are also horses and horseback riders (but I can't say I saw anyone but locals riding them; Lawrence of Arabia would have swooned).

A Bedouin on camel

Bedouin horseman

Kitchy locals dressed like Nabateans

From the eastern entrance one walks steeply down through a dark, narrow gorge (in places only 3–4 m wide) called the Siq ("the shaft") which is a natural geological feature formed from a deep split in the sandstone rocks and serving as a waterway flowing into Wadi Musa.

Siq

A tree grows from the rock

At the end of the narrow gorge stands Petra's most elaborate ruin, Al Khazneh ("the Treasury"), literally carved into the sandstone cliff.

The Treasury. Pictures do not do its majesty justice.

The Treasury

Rock formations

A little further from the Treasury, at the foot of the mountain, is a massive theatre. It was placed that way so as to bring the greatest number of tombs within view. At the point where the valley opens out into the plain, the site of the city is revealed -- and it is striking.

The amphiteatre area

The amphitheatre has been cut into the hillside and into several of the tombs during its construction. Rectangular gaps in the seating are still visible. Almost enclosing it on three sides are rose-coloured mountain walls, divided into groups by deep fissures, and lined with knobs cut from the rock in the form of towers.

So impressive!

Closer to the caves

Bedouin family selling pop...

Local police

We could have stayed there much longer, as you are actually allowed to climb into the caves and explore. But it was already about 3 pm and lunch was beckoning, so we walked back for about an hour and reconvened with the group at the "Indiana Jones Snack Shop" (Petra was the location for parts of the 1989 film Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade).

Indiana Jones Snack Shop

Lunch was a bit disappointing (who serves lasagna at a restaurant in Petra!?) but plentiful and after hiking for so many hours I was starved. The ride back to the border was smooth and most people on the bus (us included) napped.

Itzhak Rabin Border Crossing

Back on the jeep

The trip to Petra was remarkable and memorable and definitely worth doing. I am glad I went - and that is wasn't Kabul. That night we were too tired to even go to dinner - and fell asleep while watching a movie in our room.

Next morning we cabbed to the CoralBeach Nature Reserve, "One of the world’s most beautiful marine reserves." The last time I did this here I was 18 years old, so it had been a while.

"No Lifeguard on Duty"

While the beach is very arid and quiet, the underwater "place" is amazing. The moment you put your head in the water (with a diving mask, of course) one is captivated by the scene (dinner?).

You don't really dive but float with the right goggles and watch the corals and the fish. The views here are spectacular. There is a coral reef some 1,200 meters long parallel to the beach. It is one of the most ‘densely populated’ coral reefs in the world and the only one in Israel.

"There is a combination of strange and beautiful corals that create colorful underwater ‘gardens’ navigated by a variety of wildly-hued tropical fish. These include butterfly fish, parrot fish, Julie fish, nocturnal fish, and many other species, along with sea lilies, giant shells and much more". OK, to be honest, I did not see all of these, as I was too lazy/scared (no lifeguard) to float too far away from the shore, but the photos on their website look great.

The water is very cold, which is OK because outside the temperature hovered around 40 C.

The beach

There are many reasons to visit Israel (cultural, religious, archeological, political, etc) but not all are high-brow. The country receives many sun-destination tourists as well, and the highest concentrations are here in Eilat and the Dead Sea. Around us at the Reserve were mostly Russian tourists interested in baking. A group just next to us had a table stocked with the most quantity and greatest variety of alcohol I have seen outside a liquor store, and spent the whole time imbibing.

Looked like a good party; we weren't invited.

Jenn and I, on the other hand, since we were not invited, spent a very relaxing day chatting, reading, snorkeling and enjoying the sun (SPF 55).

Coffee and cake back at the hotel, before the flight

We had a late flight back to Tel Aviv, so we fully enjoyed an great day in Eilat, tackiness and all.

Sunday, 20 May 2012

Deleted Post...

Friday, 18 May 2012

The Ultimate Tel Aviv Restaurant Guide...so far!

This evening I was invited for dinner at Suzanna's by my cousin Bella and her husband Silviu, and one of those amazing things that I so love happened: I ran into Joel and Ilene-Jo from Vancouver, who were also dining there (I only saw them because I had complained about a less than desirable table we had been given, so there).

With Ilene-Jo and Joel, at Suzanna

Talking about restaurants, something really cool has been happening, that makes me feel I have attained one of my goals for the trip, which is "living like a local" for these three months.

There is an expression my long-gone mentor taught me to determine when there is a trend, and it goes something like "Once is coincidence; twice is happenstance; three times is enemy action." In other words, look for the rule of three's to know is something is real.

About 10 days ago, a friend who lives outside Tel Aviv called me as I was walking with Jennifer to the beach and told me she and her family were visiting a certain area of Tel Aviv and wanted to know which restaurants I would recommend there. I was flattered and proceeded to list a few places I knew and had enjoyed plus a few I had heard good things about.

Then, about a week ago, a friend who used to live in Israel but who lives overseas now told me that, as he planned a family reunion in Israel, he had read my blog post about spending a day in the Judean Hills and it had reminded him of the great restaurant I had described, Rama's Kitchen, plus had learned about the wineries in the area and decided to organize the family reunion there. Naturally, I was enormously flattered by that comment.

And then today, a third person, my cousin Bella with whom we had made plans to go for dinner, asked me which restaurant I would recommend for us to go. I was thrilled to be asked.

Well, while this most certainly is the opposite of "enemy action,” the rule of three's applies and I want to thank you for the gift. You have certainly helped me attain the goal I have had all along in my little mind, where I have been role-playing "what would it be like to actually live here." So now I know: I would eat out. An awful lot.

So, for the record, I am listing below the main restaurants I have patronized and would recommend, with a few photos farther below (I am not smart enough to intersperse photos with text on this blog).

I am blessed to have gone to these places mostly with Rafi and/or with Jennifer and/or with other people I like (such as relatives, business associates, friends, and business associates who have become friends).

Alone, I have not eaten out much. When I have gone, I tended to go to small, casual places where I can take out my iPad and either try to translate the menu word-by-word (laughing hard at the clearly inaccurate translations due not to Google Translate, but most likely to my poor Hebrew typing) or to blog, and where no one would care how long or short I took staying there.

Also, and just because I am lazy and it is late in the evening, I have used TripAdvisor.com as mnemonic device and so most of the links below, in random order, are from that website (they contain the address and phone numbers of the restaurants). Unless otherwise stated, all restaurants are in Tel Aviv.

So, drum roll please...