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Published: February 18th 2007
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The next morning it was time to get up early, which means getting up at 8:30 (lol) Alex and Eti planned a trip with some people into the negev, doing a picknik there and having a good time spending time with brothers and sisters from different congregations. The drive was pretty long and took us about 4 hours till we arrived. I never heard of this place before. It is where Israelis go in spring for picknicks, motocross, walks and pleasant drives. I cant even remember the name of the place. All I know that it was south of Netivot. We had stops at different places, did some walking, enjoyed the green scenery among multicolored flowers, orange trees and cactusses. After the past days of sightseeing this was a very relaxing and pleasant trip. I got to know some people better and tried to get used to the harsh hebrew language (a thing I failed in haha) even though I picked up some phrases and learnt to read hebrew road signs. The hebrew language must be one of the most annoying and headache causing language. hahaha (nothing against you my dear israeli friends!! I admit even german is annoying lol)
Anyway, it was a great day and I made some new friends. When we got back we had a long afternoon nap and were going to go out with a group of people but I felt too tired and so Alex and Eti invited some people to their home and we had dinner together before going back to sleep.
The next morning Eti and Alex left quite early for work and left me thier keys. If you imagine that they met me only 2 days before that.. you get an idea of what the JW-brotherhood is like. If you are JW, you have family everywhere receiving you with open arms even trusting you with their home keys. I spent the morning for relaxing, having breakfast and washing some clothes before catching a bus to downtown Tel aviv. Everybody had to work this morning so I went on my own. I had a walk around downtown, did some shopping, walked along the beautiful beach, ate some ice cream, walked to Jaffa, had a look around the place before walking back towards downtown Tel Aviv. Tel aviv is a really modern city and you feel like in any western country. People wearing
modern clothing, girls wearing jeans and tight t-shirts /tank tops, modern buildings and highrises, shops offering the latest fashion, brandnew cars.
It caused me a bit of a stomach ache when remembering places like Ramallah or Hebron especially and the way how people there live. So in a way I really loved Tel Aviv, but on the other hand it hurt me to see all this wealth and modernity while just 40km east cities are much poorer separated from this beautiful life through a wall. I don't feel like discussing the issue "westbank wall" right now, but I believe every human needs to be treated with a certain dignity and not be treated like animals.
In the afternoon I took a bus back to Ramat gan (where eti and alex live) and finished packing my things before Eti and Alex drove me to the Central train station where I would catch a train up north to Haifa.
The trip was very comfortable and took about 1 hour. My friends Hani and Rania picked me up from the Haifa train station and from the first moment on I felt like a full member of the family. They showed
me their home and told me to feel at home. In the evening I practiced my poor arabic with them and went to sleep quite early.
In the morning Hani and Rania had to work and so I got up and had a MASSIVE walk around town (this day i walked about 20km), explored downtown, walked up mount carmel, visiting the Bahai shrine, the bahai gardens that appeared to be closed when I arrived, so i walked all the way down the mountain to the german colony, visited a big shopping centre.
Haifa is a city for itself. It cant be compared with cities like Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. It is not as religious as Jerusalem, not as modern as Tel Aviv, but for this Jews and Arabs appear to live peacefully side by side without noticiable tensions (in contrast to Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv itself you see hardly any arabs). It has beautiful scenery, some historic spots and great beaches. Thanks Jehovah the short war of last summer has ended and only here and there you see some bombed houses, but besides this everything is back to normal.
On the way back home there were some
confusions with buses as I wasnt sure which bus line to take from downtown. I was so exhausted and my feet refused to do any more steps. I asked some people for the line so I finally could sit down 😊 WHen I was already on the bus the bus driver informed me that he would only pass this street where I needed to get to and that there were no bus stops. End of the story: He offered to drop me at the highway (this would be unthinkable here in germany!!! Being dropped by a bus in the middle of a 6 line highway lol
I was home by 5pm. Rania offered me something to eat but all I felt like doing was sleeping. I was gonna take a short nap and woke up at 23:00, got up for half an hour, ate something together with Hani and Rania and went back to sleep LOL
A beautiful day 😊
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