Israel Part 3: Jerusalem. Big Booms and Hangry people

“Jerusalem you evasive city, I finally got to you.” And boy do I want to go back.

It marks my third of the big three Christian cities, Rome, Constantinople (Istanbul), and Jerusalem. I remember driving in and being a little annoyed by the traffic. Apparently in Israel people use their cars without using literally any semblance of thought. That’s exciting for bus drivers, and ours was top notch. We were trying to get to our recently upgraded very nice hotel to drop our things off so we could go through Hezekiah’s tunnel. It was a pretty sweet tunnel filled to mid calf depth with nice cool water. I hoped that this wasn’t the water we would be drinking later, and as far as I know, it wasn’t directly (they of course have water sanitation plants there). I loathe how people back in the day weren’t as tall. I was bent almost completely in half for about a mile and a half, in the dark, using the light of my cell phone as the only buffer between happiness and brain damage.

After the shenanigans of straightening my wizened, bendy-straw self out were done, we moved on to search for food. A smaller part of the group wanted to walk down Ben Yehuda Street to get such food. I of course wanted to explore, so I went too. Here is where I found out I could fit in just fine. I had Israelis not native to the city asking me for directions, one asked if I wanted something for the Sabbath (in Hebrew) and was surprised when I told him (in English) that I didn’t live here. It was kinda fun. All that happened within about 10 minutes. I’m still not sure I wasn’t being filmed for a TV show or something. I ate food, then bought a sack lunch for the next day and walked back to the hotel. I did okay figuring out where it was in relation to us the first time through. Navigating isn’t that hard if you just pay attention.

The hotel was nice. Like, not the nicest I have ever been in, but I still haven’t figured out where I’ve been in one nicer (except maybe later in the trip). It most certainly wasn’t a place I would have paid for on my own. But there was a buffet (yess!) wifi, and a really nice shower. Now, the significance of a nicely functioning shower should not be downplayed, it’s really hot in Israel.

After supper at the buffet from heaven (no I really understand why Jesus came to this part of the world), we went to the Western Wall. Friday night at the Western Wall is pretty cool. It is one of the best cultural experiences that I have ever had. I walked through just watching everything. You see it in pictures a lot, but unless you have been there, you don’t even come close to getting a sense of it. This also may be more so the case coming on Friday night instead of a random part of the day on a weekday. Friday night is festive. It was crazy cool. There were dudes jumping up and down singing in circles, and then another group a little more charismatic, then there were the stoics worshiping from their chairs they set up, and just so much in between. A thing that at first didn’t stand out to me but once I saw it, I saw it everywhere, was that there were guys, dressed just like everyone else, with M16s on their backs. I say I didn’t notice it right away, because they were in the groups of dancers, they were in the group of stoics, they were in the group praying at the wall, and they all wore the gun like a backpack they take with them to school. It intrigued me. Then all of a sudden BOOM! “What?” BOOM! “Did people just die?” Nope. End of Ramadan. While the Jews were celebrating and dancing in the square below, all the Muslims were sitting down to eat for the first time that day ending their Holy Day with their family as the Jewish one began. Suddenly I understood why people seemed so hangry all day. It made sense. I would have been too.

Because I have a complex about needing to find the highest places and view cities from them, I wanted to get to the roof of my hotel (not the highest place in the city but it’ll do) and watch the sunrise. I don’t read Hebrew, not even a little. But I was pretty sure the sign to the roof said, “Emergency Exit,” and an alarm would go off if opened. Pictures help. It was either that or there was red and yellow wifi on the roof. So I went down to the front desk to ask if there was roof access to view the sunrise. They looked at me like I was some unscrupulous pariah. A simple “no” would have sufficed. No worries, I was going to the Mount of Olives later and would have a splendid view from there.

I did. It was awesome.

Later we walked through the Via Dolorosa, which was less cool for us than traditionalists because we knew pretty conclusively that Jesus would have walked somewhere else. But it was a pretty walkway through an Arab bazaar. Knowing where it was and where it ended up saved us the next week. We followed the Via Dolorosa to the Holy Sepulchre, which was cool in that, “what in the world am I looking at” sort of way. It was a church divided up by like 5 (or 8, cant remember) denominations and they have turf wars, and none of the church is free standing and there are a lot of people and there are turf wars and liek5 (or 8) different scents of incense and…

I never thought it would be less chaotic to walk through an Arab market. But it was.

The next week was more digging. For the purpose of this blog, it is the same routine as the week before. There were several marked differences, but far be it from me to make an academic blog about something I know very little about. After that week was finished, we were back in Jerusalem for the weekend. We visited Masada, Qumran, the Dead Sea (Strange place) and I spent basically an entire day autonomously exploring my newfound joy of a city.