Feb 3-6 Thursday-Sunday
Not much has happened Thursday or Friday. I've been following the news, excitedly, on Egypt and all around the Middle East. The fate of the region is still uncertain, things can lead to several different avenues. But there's certainly mobility in the ME for sure. I neglected the blog for a while and I'm not happy about that. There's still a wonderful road trip to write about. It came as a surprise to me. I was minding my own business at school when Timo called me with good news. We were to get the village car the next day, that was Saturday, to take Julia to the airport. She's leaving to Germany so we were going to take her to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel-Aviv. Driving is exciting but what's different this time was that the village was giving the car with a full depo to go wherever we want after the airport. I wasn't expecting a full depo. Anyway. This is a small country so it's not such a big deal to drive from one end to the other. But there's a lot to see none the less. Dead Sea was the first that came to our minds but then it would have been the opposite direction from Tel-Aviv. Due to our priorities, we decided to go north. Say, Golan Heights and Tiberias and wherever the road takes us. :p
The next morning I prepared a light sandwich for lunch, got apples and bananas with me for the road, determined to save some money. It was a fun ride to the airport, it's rainy and chilly in Tel Aviv but we didn't care. I felt sad that Julia had to leave, it would have been so nice to have her with us on the road. It was me, Leah, Timo and Leila. Three Germans and a Turk. We had a map in the car but it was completely in Hebrew, The only reason we know it is a map is because it looked like one. ;p But as the wise would say, god bless the I-phone and its gps feature. Also Leila. She's been in Israel for the last 5 months and she has traveled pretty much all around. Even though it was an automatic car, I really enjoyed driving. Tried a lot of radio stations, including the Arabic ones, lots of giggles, fruits and jokes. It took as a little more than an hour to get to Tiberias, a very old resort town by the beautiful and serene Sea of Galilee (Kineret) where Jesus was said to have walked its water. It's 300 m below sea level, apparently one of the lowest-lying town in the world. Maybe that's why it was surprisingly hot? Named in honor of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, it's one of the holy cites in Judaism. Ruled my Romans, the Crusaders, Ottomans, the British Mandate and finally the State of Israel. Unfortunately due to several earthquakes, floods and plunder, there isn't much left of its magnificent history. During the Ottoman rulership, the Jewish population seems to be the majority. According to our friend "wiki", the Jewish-Arab relationships were mostly good until the end of 1930s, ended with the British mandate evacuating the Arab population (almost half of the population at the time) even surprising the Jewish forces. While the Haganah (the Jewish armed force) and the Jewish police tried to suppress the Jewish looters and prevent them from ravaging the Arab properties, most of the houses that belong to the Arab and Jewish families were demolished around 1949. I recently saw a documentary about Tiberias, but I need to see it again and update this post.
Anyway, in my eyes the water makes it all perfect, and the Galilee is perfect. Despite the serious environmental issues that are putting this beauty at risk now. Wiki says "increasing water demand and dry winters have resulted in stress on the lake and a decreasing water line, at times to dangerously low levels. The Sea of Galilee is at risk of becoming irreversibly salinized by the salt water springs under the lake that are limited by the weight of the freshwater on top of them." Just like Gidon Bromberg told me, small countries, scarce resources, not enough cooperation between countries and communities. Nature pays the bill for us.
Because it was shabat most of the stores were closed, the town was quite, and I have no objections to that as long as I have the means of transportation. We didn't spend a lot of time in Tiberias, it was around 2 when we started driving up towards the Golan Heights, to take a panoramic look at the Kineret. It took us a while to find the Gamla Nature Reserve and when we did it was too late to enter. But we stopped by anyway, hung out and took some pictures by the gate. It was very much windy. We didn't make any plans for after Gamla so I just drove around until we spotted an "official" scenic view point of the Golan Heights. It was impressive, the sea is enchanting, lovely. It makes you want to cry, the overwhelming kindness of the sun light over the water.
The wind and walking around becomes exhausting after a while, and we have a long ride back home. It wasn't really on purpose but we ended up driving on the spiraling road down to the Jordanian border. So many curves, along the edge of a cliff, it was a fascinating ride. Timo was super excited to find the sign for the mines. We did. We're still in one piece, meaning we didn't pass the fence. Borders have this weird affect on me, a sensation, or perhaps the lack there of. Borders to keep bad people away from your land, sometimes to keep bad people in if it's the fence that separates the prison from the rest of the society, to emphasize the rules, the ownership of land, respect others right to have land?, a right?, Anyway, I was the only one who had lunch (remember the sandwich? My roommates were planning to eat on the road) so on the way we stopped at the Bet Gabriel Center. It's a theater, art gallery, and a restaurant.. Next to it there's a Lebanese falafel place where my friends had some, well, falafels. On the way back, which was half of that 500K we made, I found good radio stations to accompany me. We were home around 7pm and although it sounds too early, but we certainly had a good day. It took me a while to put this post here and now it's already Wednesday. Tomorrow, I'm going to meet Gidon Bromberg at 8:30 am in the morning, in Tel-Aviv, somewhere close to the Halacha exit on the Ayalon Highway. Two problems. I have to take the train from Lod around 7:20 and have no ride from the village to Lod yet. Second is, I have no idea how to get to the exit. I guess I see a cab ride unless it's a walk-friendly road. I may try another gaga class which I already paid for but we'll see. Always a torture coming back home from Tel-Aviv after dark.
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