Tuesday/Wednesday – Day 26/27
August 16, 2012
Tuesday was the start of the goodbyes, which for Israel weren’t nearly as hard. Probably due to the feeling like I’m constantly going back there. Aside from that, today marked the completion of Sarah’s education, as we finally finished “The Return of The King”, the third in the Lord of The Rings trilogy.
For dinner I went out for a last meal with my cousins the Slonims and Adi to Black n Burger, an upmarket burger joint well known for it’s excellent fare. Which though neither of us quite showed it openly, we both knew that we’d miss each other substantially.
Wednesday I took the first train from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv with my Uncle. Seated in the last carriage so as to avoid the noisy children in an early carriage I started to nod off too sleep.
When I woke up however I was greeted by a surprising sight.
What I saw when I woke up
After passing Beit Shemesh, it turned out that the last carriage becomes a prayer service every day, organised by their community. Loud chanting followed and I stood out of respect at the appropriate points. When the cohanim (priestly caste) got up the back to where my Uncle and I were, he made the comment that they’d conveniently chosen a place so that we didn’t have to move to join them, both of us being cohanim ourselves.
After that it was a final cheese sandwich from Fromagerie Basher in Tel Aviv before catching a bus and train to Ben Gurion Airport. Amazing this time I was quickly waved through security!
My flight with Israir was short and sweet. I watched some TV off my phone, listened to Warren Zevon’s ‘Excitable Boy’ and saw ‘The Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ before landing at 9PM in Berlin. It took some effort to orient myself and to find the train and U-bahn I needed but before long I made it to Rosenthaler Platz where I waited with baited breath for Theresa, my German friend, to pick up her phone and help me get to her place where I shall be staying for the next week.
Rosenthaler Platz