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Dee Rock on Tour
Tel Aviv, Israel
When I said the first stop on my trip was going to be Israel, my mother not only had a canary but also near enough churned out an aviary all to herself. However I'm very quickly discovering that safety whilst travelling is all about the person travelling and not the country you are travelling in.
On arrival into Israel I was amazed at the small-scale security in Ben Gurion airport. It was 5.25 in the morning right enough but still - I'd expected a lot more. To be honest I expected tanks in the airport and laser targets all over my body but knew that my movie imagination was running wild on the way over. People I have been speaking to in the hostel in Jerusalem, have warned me to be prepared for a little bit more on my departure. I'm as prepared as I can be I guess.
Spent the first 3 nights in the hustle of Tel Aviv. What a great city this is for anyone over 23! I say over 23 because the majority of the nice bars and clubs are very strict about the age limit and 23 seems to be the most common age you have to be over to be able to enter. Once you master getting into these places they are filled with gorgeous people dancing to what could easily be NOW79 or wherever the NOW series has NOW reached. During the days I lay on the beach watching kite surfers and eating ice cream preparing for another night with my new friends Jack Daniels and the Scissor Sisters.
Day 4 and I've managed to catch a lift to Jerusalem with Josh, an American I met who is living here just now. He works at an International School teaching sports in Tel Aviv, and travels to Jerusalem once a week. He's heavily religious and has been a great guide towards the ongoing changes here in Israel and in Jerusalem in particular. Not only does he promise me, in between singing Tequila Sunrise, to take me to Jerusalem on Saturday, but he will also drive me round to the dead sea in the morning and back through the west bank to Jerusalem. Thankfully I was drunk and agreed to it because if he'd asked me this sober I think I'd have stayed with the kite surfers.
The Dead Sea is as amazing as you would expect although not as built up as I'd pictured which adds to the charm. A long descent takes you to over 400mtrs below sea level, the lowest point on earth and it feels like it. There are a group of hotels lined up along the bank for a quarter of a mile or so that don't seem that busy, a few people selling ointments and a couple of shops but not much else apart from the main attraction. In the sea I can only see about 5 people floating around. It takes a while to get to grips with the floating, though the main trick is to avoid this 'water' getting anywhere near your eyes or mouth because the salt content is, obviously I suppose, very very high. Floating is pretty easy after a while but standing straight again in the water proves to be a challenge that allows me to taste just how salty the water is. The largest natural spa in the world, this mini-universe has its own unique microclimate - it only gets about 15 days of rain every year and you can tell. The majority of people I have seen so far have very bad skin conditions and are presumably here for the seas healing qualities. I'm just glad I'm not sharing the hotel pool with them.
After standing under a cold shower for nearly half an hour trying to get rid of the salty feeling as much as I could - it's time for us to set off. We drive back out the opposite way following the sea and Jordanian border into the West Bank, or Judea as Josh refers to it. I think this is a translation of one of the Hebrew biblical names or something like that. He told me but I wasn't really listening by this point because I was getting mildly concerned I had been kidnapped by a religious cult member who was taking me to my enrolment parade. We reach a crossroads that points right to Jordan, ahead for Jericho (the oldest city in the world he tells me), and left for Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Tel Aviv again. It was at this point, I had what I can only describe as 'a moment'. You get a real sense of being somewhere special around here and I don't fully know what did it. It could EASILY have been 2000 years ago if not for the VW golf we were sitting in and the bottle of Diet Coke in my hand. Nothing else looks like it has changed around here and the small pockets of civilisation you see from the main roads look like nobody has entered or left them in quite some time.
Jerusalem is by far the most outrageously beautiful place to ever end up in the middle of such a weird land war. I suppose the serenity of it kind of fits in with the uniquely odd situation of the West Bank. There are nearly 3 million people in the West Bank and two and a half of them Palestinian. From the Wailing Wall to the small crowded markets in the back streets this is a place everyone should see at least once in their life. If you have no religious background it doesn't matter. I'd be surprised if you didn't leave with a sense that something really important happened here no matter which side of the fence you are on.
TBC
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