Israel is of course a Jewish nation and celebrates Saturday, the Sabbath, as its holy day. Since weekends are two days long and the holy day must be the second of the two days (apparently), Israeli weekends are Friday and Saturday, and Sunday is a normal workday. It’s like the new Monday. So, I flew in on a Wednesday afternoon (June 10), spent Thursday at the beach in Tel Aviv with my roommate, Daniel (Daniel McCue ’11), and woke up Friday morning ready to start exploring.
Having heard a lot about a city called Jerusalem and a bank known as the West Bank, I decided to make those my first two stops. I hopped on a bus to the Tel Aviv central bus station and found another to Jerusalem, where I arrived around noon. I walked toward the Old City, the famous part with the Dome of the Rock and all that, which appeared to be a couple kilometers down the road on the map.
Jerusalem has a ton of serious Jews. The rest of Israel does too, but the streets in Jerusalem were full of the black-hat wearing, curly-haired ones—Orthodox Jews, as they like to be known. They walk around in their black jackets and look like they mean business.
On my way, I passed a bustling market place, where I bought myself some new shorts (since I only brought one pair to the country) for about $5US. I also picked up a bag of raisins and a slice of olive pizza, which they sell everywhere.
I continued the journey and had some worry that I might accidently miss the Old City. It turns out this would be impossible: I reached a hilltop and saw the city’s massive walls towering in the distance. I made my way over, entered, and wandered the streets all afternoon exploring the various districts.
As evening approached, I decided to secure myself a place to sleep for the night and checked out various hostels. I ended up at one in the city’s Muslim Quarter, where I’ve since learned that all Jewish people are afraid to stay, that cost half the price of all the others. Sometimes it’s nice being an American with no religious affiliation.
To my surprise, there was an Asian girl talking to the owner in the lobby, and when she told him that she was Korean, history told me that we’d probably end up talking. Thirty seconds later, she turned and introduced herself to me. Her name was Jeanjoo. Coincidence had it that she was also traveling alone and interested in seeing the West Bank, so we went out to dinner, explored the city by night, and decided to go to Bethlehem together the next day.
When we met up in the morning, she told me she had met a Korean man and woman who were apparently well-known TV producers over there that were in the process of writing a book about Israel. They planned on going to Bethlehem that day as well, but were religious and wanted to go to church first. We decided to accompany them despite neither of us being Christian since there was the promise of free Korean food after mass. Plus, I couldn’t remember the last time I had been to church—I had more recently sat though a service in a mosque while dressed as a Muslim (summer ’08).
We met up at one of the city gates with the man and woman, both of whom appeared to be in their forties and spoke a bit of English (which was good since I know surprisingly little Korean). They led us fifteen minutes to an inconspicuous chapel labeled “Church of the Nazarene.” To my amazement upon entering, it concealed about fifty Koreans! I have no idea what they’re all doing living in Jerusalem and even less of an idea how they all know to come to the same church. Anyways, after sitting through an hour-long sermon that I couldn’t understand and rising appropriately when people started to sing, we all went into another room and enjoyed a delicious complimentary lunch.
The four of us then briefly visited a nearby English garden that claimed to contain the cave in which Jesus died (or lived, rather). It looked like a fake to me though.
Being a Saturday, everything Jewish was shut down, including the buses. However, the Muslim-run buses in Jerusalem stay open, and at last, we boarded one heading for the West Bank.
It turns out that there’s actually a pretty sizable wall reminiscent of Berlin’s and tight security surrounding the whole region. We had to pass through a gate on foot and show our passports—those little pieces of paper allow us to cross freely a line that millions of residents cannot. On the other side, we got a taxi to Bethlehem. When we arrived, the man and woman gave us some directions and went to interview somebody, leaving Jeanjoo and I alone to explore.
We went straight to Church of the Nativity, which was built a while back on the site where Jesus was supposedly born. It even boasts a small hole in the ground marking the exact location where He popped out—the claimed accuracy in all these biblical sites never ceases to amaze me. It was indeed cool to see such a famous place though.
Realizing that the rest of Bethlehem is just a bunch of churches, we decided to spend the afternoon wandering the streets and browsing the Palestinian marketplaces. The men that I talked to were all quite friendly when I told them I was American. Even the ones that spoke little English knew the word “Obama.” One friendly guy offered to pay me $50 on the spot for my Nikes; I politely refused the offer. Despite the constant war-zone depiction in the media, the West Bank, or at least the part I saw, was really just full of a bunch of happy people trying to live peacefully.
Jeanjoo and I ate dinner, returned to Jerusalem, and parted. I trekked back to the bus station, waited for nightfall for the rabbis to declare the Sabbath over and the station open, and around two hours later arrived back at my apartment in the suburbs of Tel Aviv.
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