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Published: November 17th 2009
After running around Jerusalem and various other parts of Israel for a few days, it was time for me to get down to the main reason for my trip: visiting my friend Jess.
Jess, like me, is taking a year off from the real world and is volunteering at
Yemin Orde. A youth village outside of Haifa, Yemin Orde is home (or at least a temporary or part-time home) to about five hundred kids, mostly high school age. While there are some orphans, most have families. Some families have recently immigrated to Israel, while others are back in the kid's home country. Yemin Orde provides the kids with a place to live, a school, and a strong Jewish community while their families are going through a difficult time or trying to start a new life in Israel. The ethnic make-up of the village shifts as the world changes, but at the moment, most of the kids are Ethiopian, Brazilian, and Ukrainian. Jess is working with a group of eleventh grade boys in the evenings, mainly helping them with their English, but she had only just arrived when I got there. This meant that while they were introducing her around and figuring
out how to best utilize her, she had plenty of time to hang out with me!
I had called Jess once and emailed her a couple of times while in Israel, but the details on how to get to Yemin Orde were pretty sketchy. I jumped on a bus from Jerusalem to Haifa, then took a local bus from the main bus station. I knew I had to get off at the stop for Ein Hod, but my Hebrew skills are practically non-existent. I soon found out the way to get around this is to ask the cute Israeli soldiers for help. They are all about 18-22, and most speak at least some English and are eager to practice. They were an invaluable source of help in various bus and train stations. Anyway, once they made sure I got off at the right stop, I was standing on the side of a highway and had to hitchhike up the mountain. My instructions were to walk up the road going up the mountain a little bit, point at the ground, and when someone stopped, say "Yemin Orde, b'vakasha." As ridiculous as it sounds, it's entirely legal in this part of
Israel. There are only a few things up the mountain, so everyone's pretty much going to the same place. Fortunately, another girl got off the bus at the same time and helped me hitch up the hill.
We hit up the artists' village, Ein Hod, one morning. It was an Arab village that was left empty following one of the conflicts in Israel in the 40s. An artist visited it shortly thereafter, and just moved in. I didn't realize you could do that, but it has turned into an amazing place. There are sculptures everywhere, and people are selling all sorts of antiques and artwork out of their workshops or homes. We got caught in a horrific downpour (apparently I brought the rainy season with me), but fortunately we found a cool café that doubled as shelter from the storm. We met the guy who makes beer and pizza in the village (he's listed by name in the Lonely Planet guide, so it must be good!), and got lost several times (which is very impressive considering how tiny the village is).
We attempted to head into Haifa on Friday morning to go to the Baha'i Gardens (the second
holiest site for the Baha'i and just plain gorgeous gardens for the rest of us). We were about ten minutes down the mountain when the heavens opened up and dumped water on us. We managed to swim back up the hill and hung up our drenched clothes, settling for watching Halloween-themed movies indoors.
Caroline, another new volunteer, and her friend Shaina were sharing the volunteer apartment with us, so it was a mostly full house for Shabbat (the Jewish sabbath). I have been to several Shabbat dinners before, but this was my first time following the orthodox rules. I had been dressing modestly (skirt at least to your knees, most of your upper arm and chest covered) due to the rules of the youth village, and Shabbat just added more rules to follow on top of that. On Shabbat, which starts Friday at sundown and continues until sunset on Saturday, you are not allowed to do any sort of work on the day of rest, and "work" includes things like turning on/off light switches, using any sort of electronics, driving, writing...even wringing out your hair after your (cold) shower! Dinner on Shabbat is really important, so following prayers at
sunset, we ate delicious food, drank a lot of grape juice, sang songs, and socialized.
Jess and I decided we wanted to go to Akko, which is a coastal town north of Haifa. We walked down the mountain, I stepped on a screw (good thing I've been vaccinated for just about everything known to man!), and caught a bus to the train station. As soon as our train pulled out of the station (following us asking a cute soldier for help in buying our tickets, of course), it started downpouring. Again. Just our luck. It had mostly stopped by the time we got off at Akko, but the sky was an ugly shade of purple. Oh, and the streets were flooded. Fabulous.
We stuck it out, wading through six inch water in some parts, and I'm glad we did. Akko has some of the best-preserved Crusader ruins in Israel. The town used to be a big port city, and there was a huge meeting hall built for the knights. We bought a ridiculously cheap combined ticket and saw the Knights' Hall ruins, the Templar tunnel (and underground passage allowing the knights to be sneaky), the art museum, and
the ethnographic museum (though we ran out of time before being able to see it). The town, like nearly every other town in Israel, was pretty much destroyed at one point, and the ruler at the time decided to just bury the Crusaders' halls and build over it. This means the ruins are about 8 meters below street level, and they're still in the process of trying to uncover parts of the tunnel and other parts of the ruins.
The rest of our day was spent exploring the old town, which is all enclosed by a stone wall, taking pictures of the Mediterranean, eating falafel (which really was an integral part of my trip, haha), and wandering through the streets and markets.
I was a bit concerned about getting to the airport for my flight back to France, but then we met Shifra. She and her incredibly adorable triplets just moved back to Israel, and she offered to drive me down the mountain so I wouldn't have to walk or hitch in the dark. When she found out my flight was actually the next morning at 6am, she vetoed my original plan of leaving Mount Carmel at about
10pm and just waiting in the airport overnight. Instead, she fed us soy schnitzel (I miss vegetarian food!) and avocado and drank tea with us until 1am. She drove me all the way to the train station, convinced the security guard to let her into the station without a ticket, and made sure I got to my platform in one piece. She wants me to come back to Yemin Orde and volunteer when I'm done with my contract in France. And who knows...maybe I'll take her up on that.
Once in the airport, I figured I was good to go and could just go through security and passport control on autopilot. Wrong-o! After being questioned by a security agent, she slapped a sticker on my passport, my bag, and my carry-on. From what I can gather, everyone is given a number that corresponds to their perceived threat level. I was given a 5. Out of 5. Everyone else around me had a 1, 2, or 3 and was pretty much able to sail through x-raying bags without even getting their bags searched. My bags were x-rayed. Twice. I was sent to get my bag checked, then redirected to wait
for the head security guy to check my bag. Once they took everything out of my pack and checked it thoroughly, I was told by the check-in counter that my bag couldn't go with everyone else's. I had to carry mine to a special location and leave it with a special security guard. Going through carry-on security checks, I was redirected to my own special line (1s through 4s could all stay together and go through a less thorough check).
The only reason I can come up with for this treatment is that I have visas for two Muslim countries in my passport. Many people don't know this, but once you get an Israeli stamp in your passport, you are no longer able to travel in a handful of Middle Eastern countries (like Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Lebanon). If I ever feel the need to travel to one of these countries, I will need to get a new passport, and once I have that stamp, I'm cut off from traveling in Israel. Politics are so complicated and frustrating. Anyway, Senegal is not on the list of Muslim countries not on friendly terms with Israel, but the security agent asked
me repeatedly about my visas and looked through every stamp in my passport three times. She also asked me several times about my Hebrew skills (which by this time included me being able to say, "I have a camel, and his name is Shlomo") and was I sure I had never learned Hebrew?
They eventually let me through, and I spent the last of my shekels on Israeli chocolate. I arrived in Budapest, was able to get through EU passport control despite the fact that my visa has been fully validated yet. I was slightly concerned about not having my visa lined up, but it's really out of my hands. I've been waiting seven weeks for France to tell me when to show up for a medical visit to complete the process (French bureaucracy is overwhelming and ridiculous). Legally, I should never have left France, but the nice thing about an American passport is that no one really looks at it too closely in Europe and you get waved through as a tourist.
And so my trip to Israel ended after an amazing nine days...I cannot wait to go back.
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Julia
non-member comment
Shlomo
"I have a camel, and his name is Shlomo" is the best quotation ever ever ever. I felt I received A LOT of scrutiny in Britain for being just a tourist. Maybe not a 5, but def a 3.