I chatted with a colleague about the press coverage today. He said he reads French newspapers and that it is obvious that they take sides. He said that he could understand Israeli or Lebanese newspapers taking sides — but that there was no excuse for a French newspaper. He said that they should stick to reporting facts and leave out the opinion. I said that even that wouldn’t be good enough to claim impartiality because so much can be done by reporting certain facts and leaving out others.
In the evening the boss took us out to dinner to a stekia (approximate spelling) in the centre of town. We had to park a couple of hundred yards away and I really enjoyed the walk up the street. It was the first time I have been somewhere other than the hotel or the office.
Jerusalem is very different to any city I have been to. It seems to be a cross between a European city and a Middle-Eastern one. All the buildings are of the same yellow limestone. The area of town we were in had quite narrow streets and the buildings had a kind of ramshackle look to them — all the more charming for not being slick and modern. The streets were quite crowded with people and traffic. Shops and restaurants lit the place up.
At the stekia we were first served a selection of about ten different salad dishes with pitta bread fresh from a traditional looking oven — so hot you couldn’t touch it and thing enough to tear bits off and dip in the humous, eggplant and salads. Each dish was made with different herbs and spices and each was very tasty. There were also Morrocan cigars which were I think beef wrapped in a crispy batter, and some kind of egg shaped minced beed coated in breadcrumbs thing. It was tempting to fill oneself up on these but the main course was various types of meat on skewers and marinaded, and rice with lentils mixed in. There were other kinds of main course available too — I was tempted by the Jerusalem mixed grill, but on learning that this was various kinds of offal (or “inside bits” as the waitress helpfully warned me) I chickened out and went for the less adventurous option.
The drive from work to the restaurant and back to the hotel finally gave me some bearings and a sense of scale. The boss helpfully pointed out various local landmarks, too. Jerusalem is relatively compact and I should have no trouble walking around and exploring at the weekend.
More Jerusalem Travel: previous day; next day; exploring the city;Â first day.