From the Arab bus station in East Jerusalem, just off Damascus Gate, I hop on bus number 21 to Bethlehem. My guidebook revealed to me that this way, I won't have to pass an Israeli checkpoint. It will make me feel a bit more subversive. It's also cheaper, for I won't have to take a taxi after the checkpoint to the centre of Bethlehem. I sit down next to an Arab boy, and ask him: "Is it ok?" and he answers "It's ok". He thinks for a moment, watching me from the corner of his eye, then finally asks, albeit a bit haltingly: "How are you?" -"I'm good", I reply with a big smile, "Thank you. And how are you?" He smiles in acknowledgment. "Where you go?" -"Bethlehem. What about you?" "Hebron." After about 45 minutes, ... read more

"Good morning! How are you today?" asks the tour guide. - "Great, thank you!" answer the passengers with one voice as the boat disembarks from the shore of Kinneret. One says "Hallelujah" for a few cheap chuckles and guffaws. "Are you all having a good time?" - "Yaaaaay!" "I just have to announce that once we enter American territory, the captain and I have to jump overboard, as we don't have a Green Card. We're not allowed to work in America." More laughter. It's that type of light-hearted, harmless jokes that tour guides are drilled to tell to lighten the atmosphere and make everybody enjoy themselves. Somewhat unexpectedly, the Star-Spangled Banner starts playing, the on-board speakers ensuring that everybody within a radius of 1km cannot escape from hearing it. Most of the passengers sing along. "...and ... read more

I take the train to Haifa, which only takes about an hour and twenty minutes. It's Friday afternoon, and by the time I arrive in Haifa, the streets are pretty deserted, and no shops are open. There's only very few restaurants open, most of them Arab-owned. I eat a falafel in Wadi Nisnas, a very old and picturesque Arab quarter. There's a maybe 18-20 year old guy hanging around, who speaks American English, but also Arabic, with the locals. I'm not really sure if he's Israeli or American and Jewish or Arab, but he looks like Adam Sandler's aborted conjoined twin fetus grown up with the worst acne I've ever seen on anybody and an overbite that would put every Dutch person to shame. He wears a shirt that says 'American National Guard - established 1645' ... read more

The temperature display in the car says -14.5°C as we are about to depart on our trip to Belgium. It's Boxing Day, and we just spent a good twenty minutes trying to free the car of snow and tenacious, solid ice. Even the inside of the windscreen was frozen, so was the door panelling, surprisingly. Mounds of snow confine the car to its parking spot, making it a bit of a task to pull out. Now I don't wanna sound like a whingy wimp, but I also don't like mincing my words: I really hate extreme cold and snow. That's one of the reasons I'll never get into winter sports. Working up a sweat in those conditions is just not for me. This winter is something else, I can tell y'all. Dropped down to the minuses ... read more

The bus drives up dangerously close to the bumper of the car in front. Our grumpy bald-headed driver blows the horn repeatedly, mouthing unintelligible insults, pressing his lips together in anger. The radio plays Elvis Presley's 'Jailhouse Rock', and he turns up the volume to a deafening volume, adjusts his sunglasses, and proceeds with harassing the poor driver in front of us. We're sitting right behind the driver, who serves as our principal source of entertainment this morning. The ride from Valletta to Ċirkewwa, the harbour where the ferry to Gozo departs, takes around two hours, which makes it one of the longest possible drives in Malta. When we arrive there, the ferry's already waiting. We just walk on with the cars, as there's no separate ramp for passengers. The ticket is payable on return. The ... read more