We landed in Istanbul mid-morning local time, which was pre-dawn internal clock time, which equated to coffee time, particularly because I hadn’t slept on the 9 hour flight from New York to Istanbul. After casing the entire terminal in about fifteen minutes (which may have actually been the entire airport), we settled on what looked like a typical airport food and drink kiosk. Part of the reasoning behind our choice (over Starbucks and some fancier looking cafes) was that we figured this place would be cheap. To punish us for having made such a bold assumption, the universe arranged it so that we ended up with run-of-the-mill machine drip coffee for $6 each. Welcome to Turkey, thanks for the cash.
We knew that flights to Tel Aviv would involve a little more security than other flights, so we made sure to head to the gate with plenty of time (we had to go through a special line when we landed in Istanbul just to head to the connecting terminal). That proved wise because we got to the gate to discover that the gate assignment had changed, just that minute, to a gate way over on the other end of the terminal. We trudged back the direction we had just come from and found no one at the new gate except a guy standing at a lectern in front of the door that led into the gate, which was separated from the other gates and the airport riff-raff. He was a special Israeli security guy and he waved me over.
“Tel Aviv?”
“Tel Aviv. Right gate?”
“Let me see boarding pass and passport.”
I handed them over. He looked them through and said: “Okay, I take your boarding pass, give you new one.” I thought, okay, the new one reflects the new gate assignment or something. Sure. So I took them, thanked him, and walked away. I walked to Sarah, who had witnessed the exchange, and she asked if she should do the same. I said yeah, probably.
Then I looked closer at the pass he had given me. Different seat number. Same wrong gate as was on my last boarding pass. Wrong name.
I wheeled around, expecting him to have vanished. Israeli security uniform: you can probably buy those at duty-free, right? He was there. I walked back.
“That’s not my name.”
“Yes.”
Was he agreeing or did he think it was my name? The name on my new boarding pass, by the way, was Ajay Acharya. I do not in any way look like my name could be Ajay Acharya, at least not without some extraordinary explanation that I’m sure would make traveling hell for a person.
“No. No it’s not my name. Why did you do that?”
“I take your pass.”
“Yes, you did. Can I have it back, please? This one is not mine.”
“No, I keep it. Want to see if my agent notice your name does not match your passport.”
I did not have a choice in this matter. So I went and sat down and waited for boarding to begin.
I had read previously that the Israelis are very strict about airline security. I read that they are all experts on profiling people and will kick you off a flight if they’re suspicious. I read that one of the reasons there is very little crime in Israel is that security personnel roam the streets with large firearms. I read that you don’t mess around with Israeli security people because they don’t hesitate to punish you with abandon. Previously, I hadn’t had a problem with any of these things because I hadn’t planned on ever doing anything to irritate one of them. Suddenly I was part of a training exercise that as far as I knew involved a machine gun and me being banned from Israel for life. And my part in this was to play it cool. Sarah thought this was hilarious.
When boarding began I walked up to the gate agent and gave her my passport and boarding pass. She was talking to the other agent while she absently signed my pass and circling the random circles that gate agents make on boarding passes. She was putting my pass back into my passport to return it to me. I knew her boss was standing behind me somewhere, watching. Suddenly I was terrified she wouldn’t catch the mistake and she was going to get into big trouble. Suddenly I thought she would be getting her own boarding pass to Siberia. Suddenly I had mixed feelings. Then:
“Oh, hmm. Sir, is this your only boarding pass?”
“Uh, um. Yup. That’s my only one.”
Cold sweat.
“Oh, because your –…”
Her boss appeared and snatched away the bad pass and gave her my real one. She checked it against my passport and gave them both to me, seemingly bored, like it happens all the time. She waved me through. I found myself disappointed with the anticlimax.
When we landed in Tel Aviv, we hadn’t even made it to the end of the jetway before the next leg of Israeli security was upon us. We tried as hard we could to look like zombies who couldn’t possibly be security threats and just wanted to get their bags, but to no avail. A guy about my age swooped in and was very interested in the Morocco stamp in my passport. I assured him that I was there studying, which was kind of true, and he let us go. I was very afraid that he was going to ask me why I had attempted to board the flight to Tel Aviv with a phony boarding pass. That allowed us to advance to passport control. The passport guy was also very interested in my trip to Morocco. He also asked me if this was my first trip to Israel. I said yes.
“Oh, first trip? Very interesting, no?”
“Very…interesting that it’s my first trip?”
“Yes, don’t you think?”
“I’m…I mean…I’m very interested in being here. Is that what you mean?”
A few language barrier hurdles later I was stamped.
We picked up the car and drove to Haifa. It’s so simple to say that: “We drove to Haifa.” We got in the car, we drove out of Tel Aviv to Haifa, we drove to the hostel, end of story. The detail I’ve omitted is that what should have been a drive of slightly over an hour took about four and a half hours. That’s what happens when no one in the car speaks Hebrew and 98% of the signs are in Hebrew, and that’s when there are signs at all. Instead, we relied on the occasional English sign, the occasional sign with some sort of symbol, and the position of the sun like we were a couple of Mayans (little known fact: the Mayans had a hell of a time with Hebrew signage, which led to their reliance upon the sun).
By the time we actually got to Haifa and an opportunity to hunt for the hostel, our friend the sun had gone down. Not that it mattered. The streets of Haifa are not in a neat, roughly perpendicular grid and named numerically and alphabetically. Rather, they are named long Hebrew words that are spelled differently on my map than on Sarah’s map than on the map the rental car place gave us than on the signs themselves. And most of the times there are no signs at all. The streets are not designed for automobiles, as most can only fit one and a half at any given time. The streets are full of holes (I think their paving was Jesus’s last miracle) and most are on a 70% incline because the city is on the side of a mountain. Cars are parked on sidewalks. So you might say we had a challenge on our hands regardless of the sun’s absence; it was just a bonus.
Literally hundreds of wrong turns later we accidentally found the hostel. We found some dinner and, thanks to some fun discoveries at the hostel such as our dorm mates being asleep which meant we had to fumble through our stuff with the guidance of cell phone lighting and the fact that one’s shower is delayed by the length of time one would like one’s shower to last due to the need to warm up the shower with a timer device on the wall, we didn’t get to sleep until 2.
I woke up at 6:45 in anticipation of breakfast. Breakfast is part of the deal at the hostel. Israeli breakfast typically includes a variety of fresh vegetables. Apparently there is such an abundance of fresh vegetables that they are eaten at every meal. For breakfast this morning I had: fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, yogurt and honey, orange juice, bread with butter and jam, some fish that I wasn’t able to identify, and several espressos. Quite a leap from $6 coffee.
After breakfast we walked around the surrounding neighborhoods. We wanted to be at the Baha’i Gardens for a tour at noon so we had a couple hours to roam. The hostel is near the city port, so we saw the port and the shipyard. We walked around the Arab quarter and wandered into some residential neighborhoods. Many of the streets were not on our maps so we just sort of kept going uphill, knowing the meeting point for the tour was near the top.
Some observations on the street life of Haifa. There are no beggers. Okay, so we saw one on the way into town yesterday, but that was it. I fully expected them to be a common sight. I guess they really do have an abundance of vegetables.
I can’t emphasize this one enough: it feels safe here. I knew crime was not a problem in most Israeli cities (they do a good job of screening all the fake boarding pass holders) but I figured at best I would feel as comfortable as I do in DC. The fact is I feel even more at ease. People just don’t bother you. They don’t yell random things at you or pester you or try to sell you stuff or beg or even shoot you many strange looks (some, though, for sure, but not many). We’ve walked around in random, out of the way neighborhoods and during the night and not once have I felt any risk. It’s kind of amazing.
It took over an hour and a half to wind and feel our way up the hill to get to the meeting point. The hill, which might actually be a mountain, is approximately a whole lot of feet high (which is equivalent to a heckuva lot of meters), and is a serious incline the whole way. It was worth it. The Baha’i Gardens are a gorgeous, symmetrical dedication to equality and open acceptance of all religions, not to mention nice to photograph. At the base of the Gardens is a large shrine. The shrine is supposed to have a big golden dome on its top but apparently the top is currently at the cleaners, so the shrine was just a headless column. The Gardens were kind of peculiar because when you walk through each garden you can see that the flowers are just plain flowers, nothing fancy, and the whole setup is kind of boring. The trick is taking in the whole scene. The Gardens are carved into the side of the mountain and when looking down upon them from the top or up at them from the bottom, the big picture comes together beautifully.
Lunch was at a place at the bottom of the hill. More vegetables and hummus and bread and cheese, a combination I don’t see getting sick of. The vegetable and cheese plate was enormous and we couldn’t finish it. The waiter asked if we had room for dessert. I said no. He said something to the effect of “No dessert? You must be Canadian!” I don’t see the correlation, but I said no, not Canadian. When I told him I am from Washington, he told me he has been there but doesn’t like it at all. Then he gave us free dessert. Figure that one out for yourself.
In the afternoon we went to a church way up on the mountain. I took some pictures. That’s all to report there.
More general commentary to come at some point that I am not exhausted.
Tomorrow: scuba diving in Caesarea in the morning, exploring Akko in the afternoon, driving to Tiberias in the evening.
