This began with an epic running start when my co-fellow and friend Jessica and I suddenly decided to hit the road from Beit She'an and we had less than three hours to pack a bag and catch the one bus out of town!
When you live in a rural and religious town like Beit She'an, all transportation out of town shuts down over the holidays and your plans can get waylaid for a couple of days until the holidays pass and things resume as business as usual. In terms of Sukkot, this meant that we needed to make a quick exit from town in order to maximize the time we had to travel.
The first destination was a bus station in Afula, where we were picked up by one of Jess's friends from her birthright trip and drove us the rest of the way to Tel Aviv for an epic and late night out in the city. It was really a shock to finally be out of Beit She'an and in the middle of a modern and vibrant city. Tel Aviv does not stop for Shabbat or the holidays, all types of bars and restaurants were open and everyone was out. People looked nicer, shops had more expensive merchandise and I discovered Israeli "toast", which is a bagel that's been panini pressed after you filled it with your choice of cheeses, veggies and sauces. It's amazing, revolutionary and exactly what you need if you're up and drinking till 4 am.
Jess's birthright friend Keren lived back in Nazareth, so she drove us almost two hours back to her house, where we all fell into bed at 6 am and slept till noon. When we woke up, we piled back into the car, picked up Keren's younger sister Sharon and headed to the beach in Haifa to relax in the late day sun and surf. The beach was beautiful and once we had had enough, we put the blankets back in the car and then walked to a restaurant on the beach to enjoy some hummus, salad and eggplant as the sun set.
We were still recovering from our late night in Tel Aviv, so we took it easy that night and stayed in, watched a movie and checked out the blood moon on the horizon over Nazareth.
The next day, Jess, Sharon, Keren and I all got into the car and headed southwest to Caesarea (pronounced Quesariya) the ruins of a seaside town built by Herod the Great around 25-13 BCE. It's very well preserved and you can see huge mosaic floors, great examples of columns, a hippodrome, restored amphitheater and great seaside views. We took full advantage of the great location and goofed around and took many pictures.
I'm kind of in love with Israeli sushi; it's no culinary achievement, but they get the general concept of it and just really go for making the rolls very large and filled with all things tasty. When it comes to vegetarian rolls, they don't have any idea what that actually means, so they just cram all the vegetables that are available into a sushi roll. This means I can have a tofu-sweet potato-carrot-cucumber roll, which is delicious dipped in fish sauce!
Later that night, Jess and I happily reunited with two of our fellow Beit She'an roommates, Jake and Joe, who had successfully made it out of the town and over to Haifa for their own vacation! You have to understand that at this time, none of us have Israeli SIM cards in our phones, so unless there's wifi, it's a Sukkot miracle that in the third biggest city in Israel, we could find each other! It was a Tuesday, so it was not exactly an exciting night with lots happening, but we managed to grab some Gold Star beers, hear an outdoor concert and then found our Netanya friends to join our retinue! All of us trooped through Haifa and looked for something that was open and could fit our American-speaking entourage. The only thing with room was an apparently Arab run, open air hookah bar, that looked like a former car wash with the decor of a quinceanera. So of course we alighted upon this place and filled the up the night with laughter, American humor and tales of our first month in Israel.
By this point, a good amount of the night had gone by, and my friends and I needed to return to Netanya, which is a couple of hours south. At 2:00am there are very few options for transport and the plan that we began to pull together was that we needed to take a 2 hour nighttrain to Tel Aviv, and then catch a shirut taxi back to Netanya, hopefully arriving before 6:00am. But how often does one find themselves trooping through the velvety night from city to city in Israel with only a backpack?! The Haifa to Tel Aviv Nighttrain certainly had an air of mystery about it since I'm not sure what brings most people to be riding a train at 3:00am, but my friends and I treated it as a grand adventure, which had the happy resolution of us finding out that it did actually make a stop in Netanya, saving us around two hours off our commute! So at 4 am, my friend Stephanie sleepily welcomed me into her room in Netanya and I found my way to a pleasingly comfortable bed and fell asleep.
When I awoke, my fellow Nighttrain veteran friend Drew took me around Netanya and showed me the sites: I saw the shuk, the local market brimming with fresh vegetables, spices and goods; the shops, restaurants, juice stalls and most importantly, the local hummus guru. He made one hell of a hummus and put on quite a show as he mixed together chickpeas, tahini and olive oil.
Later that day we gathered up a couple more friends, Julian and Stephanie and headed down to the main event in Netanya: the beach!
Over the next couple of days, I really relaxed and enjoyed Netanya. Right next door to the apartment building the Netanya Teaching Fellows were housed was an organic food market. Have you ever had tears spring to your eyes when you lock onto some agave nectar? Until then, I had never experienced this emotion! I stocked up on chia seed, quinoa cereal, almond milk and edamame pasta. I know how ridiculous this all sounds, but homesickness can come in many forms and mine apparently takes the form of organic foods!
I also had the chance in Netanya to try something new and a goal of mine: surfing! My friend Drew and I got up early one morning, rented a surfboard and headed out to the surf! Neither of us had any idea how to surf or where to begin our endeavor, but we were certainly determined. Drew graciously suggested that I be the sacrificial lamb and start with the board, and in an out of character move, I hopped right onto the board and paddled out through the waves and right up to a guy on a surfboard with that really cool Israeli surfer dude vibe and said: "Hey! I've never surfed before! How do I start?" He looked at me as if I was crazy, which I can't blame him for and said, "Well, don't start with these waves and hang your feet off the board more!" So with these wise words, Drew and I moved closer to where the waves broke and began a 5 hour adventure of teaching ourselves how to surf. The surfer dude I asked for help, turned out to be named Asaf, and he ran the local youth surfing center and was apparently impressed by our newfound cavalier surfer take on life, so he invited us both over for coffee. We went over to check it out and met Asaf's lovely wife and they invited us to come visit them for dinner on the kibbutz. This is just how it goes in Israel, complete strangers easily share their lives with you and selflessly invite you to their homes and to share a meal with them just from a brief encounter.
By the end of our day with the board, we had learned that your eyes can burn from the salty water; you can actually begin to bleed from the scratchy texture of the surfboard and rough sand on your skin; I had learned that a flimsy bikini is not proper attire to surf in and as a result most of Netanya had seen most of me; you'll be covered with bangs, scrapes and bruises; and forgetting to put on sunscreen will haunt you for weeks afterwards - but both of us could stand up on the surfboard and carve a little on waves. It was worth every burn, bump, bang and nip slip. We returned the rented surfboard and walked back to the apartments very tired and very proud of ourselves.
I spent the next couple of days in Netanya and found myself slipping into a relaxed and comfortable lifestyle that was almost a beach-y version of my life at home. I could drink juice, visit Tel Aviv and go to bars, restaurants and comedy shows, I had more delicious foods, went shopping and found a great running route.
Jessica came and joined us and along with Drew, Julian and I we decide to do the weirdest thing we could think of and go to a rave in the middle of the day. None of us would say that electronic music is our thing, but this event sounded too bizarre to miss, so we showed up to check it out. It was a weird and wild experience and the most entertaining were the younger guys who were so tapped into the the best of the music that they just needed to have cathartic dance offs as they whipped their shirts around their heads. Many a time, we had to dodge a spinning Israeli guy who was just so enraptured by the beats and intent on dancing that he had lost sight of his surroundings!
The trouble with vacation is that it ends and eventually I had to pack up my things and try to cram the new clothes, organic food and all of my original belongings back into my bag and catch a bus back to Beit She'an. I was very sad to say goodbye to the beach, awesome and welcoming friends, comfortable beds and showers with heads attached to the walls! Returning to Beit She'an was a bittersweet feeling, since it does feel like home and it was good to return to a base, but a certain je ne sais quoi disquiet had sunk in about returning to living on the periphery. The desire to be near the bright lights and big city part of the rest of Israel had hit and I've had trouble shaking it ever since. My next vacation isn't until Chanukah in December and I feel like I'm already chomping at the bit to get back in it.
Over my travels, there were many moments that I wished to send postcards, or correspondence to friends and family back in the states. Israel is a lot of things, however sentimental is not one of them. It's surprisingly difficult to find good postcards or cards of any kind in this country! I apologize that I have not yet found a remedy to this, but you are all in my thoughts and I miss you a lot.
Currently, my computer is not holding up, so I'm using my iPhone to fulfill all my blog writing needs. So if anything is misspelled, or formatting is weird, blame the iPhone!:) And any time that you'd like to get in touch, ask questions or just say hi and tell me how much you miss me, feel free to comment, or send a FB message!
Lots of love,
Hannah
Girl, give me your address, and I'll send you a postcard from my part of the world! I've found some mildly funny ones, particularly because they relate to my specific neighborhood in San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, yay for vacations! I'm rather jealous of all the ones you've been able to take so far! Oh, yes, I suppose there is something to be said for separation of church and state, but it does bring back nostalgic memories of traveling through Cairo and Paris during the many Catholic holidays that occur in Austria in the springtime. Ah, the memories.
So lady friend! I'm happy that you're having some happy times too! Soak them up as much as you can (though it doesn't seem like you need that advice!). You're the bomb dot com!