Rob's Blog

I stayed in my hotel today, slept late and went down to the outdoor pool.  There is a snack bar there, which I was relieved to find open, but not much appeared to be cooking.  Are you serving food?  “Only shulli.”  Excuse me?  “Shulli.”  What’s that?  “I show you.”  The barman opened the lid on a vat of chilli.  I was relieved again.  He served me up a huge plastic bowl-full, and added some bread and a plate of olives and gerkhins.  I sat on a picnic table in the shade overlooking the pool and ate, but couldn’t finish it.

I went for a swim, read my book, went for another swim, read my book, it got cold, I went to my room, fell asleep, woke up and went down in search of dinner.

Once again the cafe and restaurant were closed.  Argh!  I went to the desk.  Is anywhere open for dinner?  “Dinner?”  Some conferring in Hebrew.  “No, we don’t have dinner.  Are you in a group?”  No, it’s just me.  “Oh.”  More conferring in Hebrew.  “The dairy restaurant is open in an hour, but only the dairy one.”  Phew!  I like the diary food, and this might mean that Shabbat is finally over.  Everyone will stop joyously celebrating and I can look forward to a reliable supply of food.

Update:  I went down and had a nice dinner of broccoli quiche covered in a cheese and tomato sauce, and the best strawberry milkshake ever, with chocolate sauce smeared over the inside of the glass.  I’m always going on about how good the service is in America, well in Israel it’s awful.  One friend even recommended a place to me on the basis that it was traditional, complete with terrible service.  Tonight the waitresses sauntered around taking their time, and at one point one even walked past my foodless table, looked right at it, and sauntered on by.  At least I got what I ordered and it was good.

Afterwards I went for a beer in the lounge.  It’s quite comfortable, there’s a pianist, and it’s good to have people around when you’re travelling alone.  Each table has two two-seater sofas.  I was reading my book alone when an entire family came and sat round me and then left as quickly as they’d arrived.  Soon after an older guy appeared and sat opposite me.  He said something in Hebrew.  I said that my Hebrew was a little rusty and that started off a conversation.  We chatted for about ten minutes before I left with him wishing me a good flight home.  I’m getting to like the culture here:  people are very rude and abrupt and will barge into the lift without giving you a chance to get out, and they’re simultaneously very friendly and willing to chat to strangers, and to be honest, I can live without false politeness.

More Jerusalem Travel: previous day (exploring the city); next day; first day.

Today was Friday, and my first day off in Jerusalem.  I met up with my colleague, Animesh, from India who is also visiting and working on the same project as me.  He came to my hotel and we set off walking towards the city centre.

It was about a half-hour walk through the suburbs with wide roads and trees and parks.  We — or I should say I — took a couple of wrong turns, and while I was looking at the map and complaining that there are no signs with road names in Jerusalem, Animesh would enthusiastically accost a passer by and get directions.  So it was that, hot and thirsty, we found civilisation in the form of a tiny convenience store on the edge of the town centre and finally got ourselves some water.

A couple of blocks later and we were properly downtown, at the intersection of King George and Ben Yehuda streets.  We explored around looking at shops.  It’s quite a European looking city apart from the buildings which are all yellow limestone.  It was bustling with activity and commerce, but not too crowded.  We looked in a few shops, explored some side streets, and discovered a few possibilities for lunch.  I spotted a girl in a green uniform stood on a street corner with an M-16 rifle.  I had heard that there would be young people around on military service carrying their rifles, but this was the first one I’d seen.  I asked her if I could take her photo and she just smiled.  I took a picture and explained that we don’t see many girls with rifles back home, and she just smiled some more.

For lunch we found a tiny falafel shop with chairs and tables outside and umbrellas to shelter us from the midday sun.  We both had falafels with salad, humous and spicy sauce.  A small boy came up offering to sell us pens.  When we said no he looked all sad and pointed at our food and at his mouth.  He reached for one of my falafels and I shooed him away.  He tried the same trick on Animesh who relented and gave him one.  Ten minutes later he was back.  I glared at him and he just grinned at me, walked up and snatched one of Animesh’s falafels right off his plate and ran away grinning.  I suppose that proves you get more of what you reward — in this case small boys trying to take your food.

After a brief detour for a McBathroom break (I had to get my bag searched by a security guard outside), and stopping in a sweet shop to buy exotic treats, we set off down the hill in search of the Old City.  This is a walled area, the original site of the original Jerusalem, but mainly rebuilt in the Ottoman days of 15-hundred-and-so.  I was a bit nervous about visiting it as it’s the one place that seems to be a bit risky.  The foreign office website warns travellers to “maintain a high level of vigilance” there, and one of my Jewish colleagues said that I should “be a bit careful” there.  It’s divided into Jewish, Christian, Armenian and Muslim quarters, and it’s easy to imagine there might be trouble there from time to time.  So I didn’t quite know what to expect and worried that we might be the only tourists and therefore easy prey for any dodgy elements.

Sure enough, as soon as we walked through Jaffa Gate we were accosted by an Arab guy vhemently recommending that we take him up on his offer of a two and a half hour tour.  He said he could tell us all about the history, show us the Muslim area (“You are Christian?  You should see other side of things”), and even take us up on the roof of “the hostel I work for, over there”, for a view over the city.  And all for a mere 300 Shekels; about £40.  We somehow managed to get rid of him and headed for the information office, which was closed.  I was wondering whether his offer might have been worth it.

We walked down the main street.  The streets were narrower here, the buildings older, there were more Arabs and less Jews, but there were lots of tourists and it didn’t seem that bad after all.  The first major building we came to was the Tower of David.  We decided to go in.  Imagine the Tower of London, but smaller, browner, and with no Beefeaters.  There are walls, ramparts and towers to climb over, and inside some rooms are exhibits detailing the history of Jerusalem.  The first thing we did was climb to the highest tower — the Phaseal Tower — for a fantastic panoramic view over the city.  I was glad we hadn’t taken the expensive tour now, because a good look over the city was what I wanted, and I’d got it for a tenth of the price.

The rest of the museum was well worth it, too.  I learnt a lot about the different stages that Jerusalem has been through.  That’s how I know that in the 16th century the Ottomans rebuilt the walls that had fallen to ruin.  Apart from that the rooms with exhibits were air conditioned, a respite from the heat worth 30 Shekels several times over.

We stayed for a couple of hours, then managed to find a Slush Puppy type drink in the little outdoor cafe there, which we were just in time for as it was closing.

After leaving we walked around some more, and headed down a tiny alley that was bustling with little shops.  This was a proper Middle-Eastern shopping experience.  I’d been told that the Old City was the only place you have to barter, and now I understood.  All the time walking down that alley shopkeepers who stood outside their shops would try to get you to come in and buy things.  My strategy was to smile politely and then ignore them.  Animesh engaged them a bit more, asking how much things cost.  They would then invite him in to look at other wares, and when he walked away they would start lowering their prices.  “It’s okay, I was only asking the price.”  “No, no!  How much can you pay?  30 Shekels?  15 Shekels?!”  It was a little alarming at first but we eventually got used to it and took it in our stride.  And I don’t want to over-generalise: not all the shopkeepers used these tactics.  Some were happy to just let you browse.

The alley seemed to go on forever.  Every now and then we would come to a side alley that also stretched on forever and was equally bustling with shops.  We resolved to just keep going in a straight line or else we would get hopelessly lost.  There were a few T-shirt and carpet shops, but most of the shops sold the same trinkets:  ornamental knives, vases, key-rings, various Jewish paraphernalia, thimbles…  Thimbles!  I have an aunt who collects thimbles with designs and place names on them.  I bet she doesn’t have one from Jerusalem.  I asked how much.  10 Shekels.  Animesh was all, “no, that should be only 2 Shekels.”  The shopkeeper wouldn’t budge.  We tried the walking away trick and this time, when I actually wanted to buy something, it didn’t work!  They must be able to read my mind.  I ended buying the exact same thimble from another shop for 10 Shekels.  In fact, all the prices seemed pretty uniform.  All the T-shirt shops were selling T-shirts for $1 or 5 Shekels.  All the shopkeepers seem to know each other anyway, and probably form into little cartels or at least, working in such close proximities, don’t want to antagonise their neighbour competitors.  They weren’t poor, though: the guy I bought the thimble from was chatting on his mobile phone.

When we reached the end of the alley, we turned around and went back.  Actually, we didn’t ever reach the end of the alley, it just reached a T-junction and went left and right forever, but it was mainly more of the same.

I was pretty exhausted and had seen enough.  We probably could have spent several more hours exploring the rest of the Old City, but there comes a point when you just can’t take any more in.  We got a taxi, which Animesh tried to barter down the price for but I undermined him by settling for the drivers second offer.  We were probably, technically, ripped off because of this, but £5 each for a taxi ride home with a relatively cheerful driver was worth it to me.

I’m now back at my hotel.  The Jewish Sabbath — Shabbat — started just before sunset and goes on until just after sunset tomorrow.  The shops all closed really early.  The hotel lift is in Shabbat mode so that it stops on every floor so that you don’t have to press buttons to operate it.  For some reason the doors beep before they close — I speculate that this is a warning that the anti-crush-you-in-the-door sensors are disabled as triggering them would constitute operating an electrical switch — and I can hear this incessant beeping in my room.

I fell asleep in my room and when I went down in search of food everything was either closed or being used for a Bar Mitzvah.  I could have paid $40 for a dinner, but it would have been a proper “sumptious” Shabbat dinner (shalosh seudot) and I’d rather just have something light, and I don’t know, I feel kind of out of place with all these Jewish families around having their celebrations.  Luckily I have some supplies in my room.  Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to get some lunch, although all the Jews will be having another sumptious meal so I don’t quite know what to expect.   I should probably get over it and go and join them!

More Jerusalem Travel:  previous day; next day; first day.

Today was another work and hotel day.  The highlight was meeting up with another colleague who I’d worked with in LA on a previous project.  We had lunch in the dairy canteen.  I liked the look of some kind of strangely shaped cheese toasty, but the chef vehemently recommended I have pizza instead, and he cooked me up a very tasty mediterranean pizza.

My colleague is a volunteer in an anti-terror force.  He openly carries a handgun at work which is only remarkable because of the fuss some of my British colleagues make about it when they see people doing this for the first time.  I think many British people think that if you have a gun you might randomly shoot someone in some kind of uncontrollable spasm.  Eric Raymond has some insight on that front.

Over lunch we chatted about current events as one does.  It turns out we read many of the same blogs, and we compared notes about the way the media is reporting the conflict.  He put me on to a website comparing IDF women with Hezbollah women.  I’ll get in trouble for saying so, but there’s something about a cute girl holding a big rifle…

He told me that he’s a volunteer medic and spent the weekend up north working in an ambulance crew.  Although luckily no-one was hurt and they didn’t need to go on any calls, it was still pretty scary, and he saw a rocket land not far from where he was near an ambulance station.

I worked late and ate at work.  Again the dairy food was good:  some kind of vegetable pie type thing.  The dairy food is always better than I expect.

More Jerusalem Travel: previous day; next day (exploring the city); first day.

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; first day.

Another day in Jerusalem.  This one consisted of getting up, going to work, and coming back to the hotel again, so there’s not much to tell.

The most disconcerting thing about Israel to me is all the Hebrew writing everywhere.  Sometimes things are helpfully translated into English, but mostly not.  I’m the kind of person who reads all the signs, and when most of the signs are in a script I can’t fathom it makes me feel kind of illiterate, which is unnerving.  People are helpful and understanding, though.

One of my colleagues asked how I felt about coming to Israel what with current events.  I told him I wasn’t bothered.  He commented that everyone is being encouraged to act normal, even though there is a war on.  He said that he has been coping by ignoring the news lately.  I suppose people react to things in different ways.  I suppose I would react differently if rockets were landing on, say, Southampton.  But as far as I can tell, life goes on as normal in Jerusalem.

The same colleague was not at all horrified at the thought of me wandering around sightseeing at the weekend, though, which is encouraging.  He gave me directions and said I should walk — it is a long walk but there are plenty of things to see on the way.  He said there would be lots of other tourists — well, maybe not so many now.  The plane over here was nearly empty, I had an entire row to myself, so it will be interesting to see how many tourists there are.

More Jerusalem Travel: previous day; next day; exploring the city.

I arrived in Jerusalem yesterday afternoon.  I’m here for work so won’t have much time to look around but I will write about my experiences.

Some people at work were quite horrified at the idea of going to Jerusalem, “what with current events.”  One chap said he would have refused “point blank” to go, if asked.  I was unconcerned.  Hezbollah can’t get rockets this far south; there are no reports of unrest in Jerusalem; my colleagues here, who live here and would know, are unconcerned; and the Foreign Office is not advising against travelling here.

My journey here was uneventful.  I got some good views across Turkey from the plane — very brown and very sparsely populated.  I got a good view of Tel Aviv as the plane did a somewhat alarming left turn just before landing.  I didn’t get any photos, in part because the cabin crew announced that it was forbidden to take photos of Israel from the plane.  Just after landing I saw the only thing remotely military that I’ve seen so far: a Hercules transport plane taxiing.

Ben Gurion airport has some impressive architecure.  To get from the plane to passport control you walk around a circular mezzanine above a huge marble rotunda, and then down a ramp in a marble hall, with another descending ramp coming the other way.  I could have made all kinds of interesting photos but was paranoid about causing a security event.  I was asked a few rudimentary questions at passport control, found my case, and found my taxi driver holding a sign with my name on the arrivals hall.

The driver was a friendly Arab guy, full of travel advice.  He asked me what I thought about the situation with Israel.  I was wary of being to opinionated with someone I didn’t know, and just made some comments to the effect that I didn’t feel qualified to have much of zan opinion, given that I have to rely on new reports.  “It doesn’t look good, though?” he asked.  I agreed it didn’t, but that it looked safe in Jerusalem.  “All of Israel is safe,” he said.  “Jerusalem, Tel Aviv.  The trouble is only if you go up north.”

He said, “we are all idiots.”  I disgreed, politely.  “No, we are,” he insisted.  He quoted some official he’d seen on TV complaining that if Isreal wanted to kill Hezbollah, they shouldn’t drop leaflets telling people to leave, they should just kill everybody.  “Isreal is too nice,” he said.

The lesson I took from this is that Arabs living in Israel consider themselves Israeli too, and are just as outraged at rockets being dropped on their towns.  The taxi driver pointed out Arab and Jewish neighbourhoods that we passed, and went on to tell me that there are many more restaurants than a few years ago, and that business is good because the Jews go to the Arab restaurants and the Arabs go to the Jewish restaurants.  Everybody just gets along.

Israel looks a lot like any other mediterranean country.  We drove on good roads with not too much traffic over rolling countryside of green fields and brown mountains.  The city seems like any European city, just a bit browner.  Part of the city — it looks like it might be the Old Town but I haven’t quite got my bearings yet — is on a big hill, so there’s a very three dimensional look to the place.  Outside my hotel room are a few major roads with lots of traffic and the occasional ambulance siren.

People seem very friendly.  Even a small boy started talking to me, and when I told him I didn’t speak Hebrew he smiled and said, “You are English?”  A fellow in the lift commented on the haircut of the Orthodox chap who had just got off.  “Why do they shave their heads at the back like that?”  “I have no idea.”  “Are you Jewish?  Where are you from?”  Etc.

People seem to talk about their religions like they do their hair colours.  The taxi driver asked me if I was Christian.  “Sort of…”, I said lamely.  He replied, “oh, so you are Christian but not very religious?”

I’d like to report on the way the news is reported here, but so far I only have news in English from CNN and Sky.  On the Israeli TV stations I can see talking heads in front of buildings with holes in them that I assume are Israeli buildings.  I can also watch Fireman Sam dubbed into Hebrew, which is wierd.  This morning I got a copy of the Jerusalem Post, an English language newspaper, under my door, so I’ll write some commentary about that tonight if I have time (or it might not appear until tomorrow depending on whether I can get Internet access in my hotel room).

More Jerusalem Travel: next day; Exploring the City

Update: I’m slowly adding photos from this trip.

I’m typing this from my hotel room in Newport Beach, California, just outside of Los Angeles. I’ve been here on business since Sunday night. I’ve never visited the West coast of the USA before, so I jumped at the chance of coming.

The first thing that struck me was the view out of the plane window from about half an hour before we landed. After hours of emptiness in the form of Greenland, New Foundland and the Rockies, the urban vastness of LA was staggering. It just goes on and on, in its fractal grid pattern, for mile after mile. You can drive along ten lane freeways for hours and see nothing but city. The grid just stretches away in every direction.

But that’s not to say it’s boring – far from it. I have done very little sightseeing so far, but there are distinct parts of town that have their own character. Newport Beach, where I live and work, is an affluent area with hotels and business parks near where I am, and marinas, beaches, bars and restaurants closer to the sea. Despite being connected physically to LA by concrete sprawl, it is quite separate in character. Rudendo Beach where some of my colleages are staying, is genuinely a part of LA, but from what I’ve seen of it it doesn’t feel like it’s part of a vast city.

I’m enjoying staying in America partly because it’s an escape from the anti-Americanism I’m bombarded with at home. I like that you can drive around in an absurd, gas guzzling truck if you want. That there are a million types of fast food restaurant, and yet more extremely good and extremely affordable (especially when the company is paying) proper restaurants. I like that nobody here complains about these things, and I like the constant daily reminder that Americans are well balanced, well educated, friendly, helpful people – not the fat, ignorant hill-billies many Europeans like to believe they are.

I’ve noticed that the media is much more diverse here than back home. The first radio station I tuned to when driving from the airport had a talk show in which the host described the French as cowardly and the UN as ineffectual. This is just not something people say in public in the UK! Newspapers and news programmes routinely speak of cutting government spending (especially when talking about Reagan, as they do so much lately). When was the last time the BBC called for cutting government spending as something that could ever seriously be considered?

I’m also struck by how street savvy you have to be to live here. Everywhere you turn people are trying to sell you useless products, or rip you off with get rich/healthy quick schemes. I think many brits would not be able to cope, coddled as they are by the nanny state, they would soon be clamouring for protection if they planned on staying longer than a short visit. People here expect solve their own problems, they don’t go running to the government every five minutes. Political talk seems more about economic and foreign policy, and less about what new legislation needs to be brought in.

And America feels more like a foreign country than I expect it to; more foreign than it has any right to feel being an English speaking country. I’ve noticed this on previous trips too. Thousands of everyday things are different in tiny ways – from the design of light switches, fixtures and fittings and toilets, to fire hydrants and road junctions. The same problems are solved in slightly different ways.

All this makes it a challenging, interesting, exciting place to be.