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
Sunday/Monday – Day 25/26
August 15, 2012
Today was spent again with friends. In the morning I walked again in the Jerusalem sun with Yumi, an Israeli girl who had been volunteering in education in Australia for the past year. Though she herself is a Jerusalemite, I still managed to surprise her with an ice-cream shop I knew for it’s authentic italian style and delicious flavours (Noya).
In the afternoon it was already back to Tel Aviv to spend the afternoon with my brother Adi. As a goodbye we decided to go out for dinner and a movie. Dinner was at ‘La Lasagne’ a kosher Italian place on Dizengof street that came highly recommended, followed by ‘Brave’ at the Rav Chen cinemas.
Prior to the commencement of the movie, there was a traditional Pixar short, this time in 3D! It was titled ‘La Luna’ and was one of the most wonderful and sweet pieces of film that I have seen in a long time. It was almost worth seeing the movie just for that.
Brave itself was a traditional Disney/Pixar film, and though there was nothing particularly special about it, there were enough moments to make you smile in delight. All but stiff curmudgeons and those of hard heart would be sure to enjoy it.
After the movie, we talked late into the night before finally, sleep took us.
Monday/Tuesday – Day 20/21
August 8, 2012
Here it is! 3 weeks away! Not really missing home yet, far too much excitement and seeing Adi is wonderful.
For the last few days I have been studying hard, in the areas of algorithms, data structures and programming. I have an interview coming up that could make quite a difference and so I’m sacrificing a little fun time for a great potential benefit!
Monday saw me at my cousin’s birthday in a more religious area of Jerusalem, Givat Shaul. For those of you who haven’t been to Israel this means a rather stark difference from what many of you will have experienced otherwise in travel. The entire neighborhood is dressed modestly, commonly in black, white and bland colours. The advertisements are specifically targeted to cater to the population and feature very few women and if so, in household situations. The food is all kosher and everything closes early Friday afternoon, with nothing at all open on Saturday. The roads close and the streets fill with people on the way to meals and synagogue.
After my stay there it was back to the boys apartment in Tel Aviv where I engaged in some applied research into wireless security protocols, much to their excitement. Apparently programming is cool, who knew?
Also today marked the beginning of ‘The Two Towers’, as I felt it was necessary that Sarah, who considers herself somewhat nerdy, to be inducted into the full trilogy and was somewhat horrified that she hadn’t seen them all already.
My camera has run out of battery and I left the charger in Jerusalem so it may be another day till photos appear.