Back to the Homeland

Kind gestures like this seem to be very commonplace in Israel. In the last 2 weeks I have met tons of people who have gone way out of their way to help me, give me detailed instructions on how to get to their favorite places, and offered me a place to stay if I ever want it. Of course this has something to do with the fact that I actively seek out and have a great sense for nice people like that, but I’ve found it so much easier to make new friends and meet like-minded people in Israel than I have yet anywhere else in the world.

I landed in Tel Aviv at 2:30am with no clue how to get to the hostel that I would be working at for the next month. I didn’t have a flight out yet but I got lucky with the airport security and they didn’t ask any questions. I found out that the next train wasn’t until 4:00 so I found a guy going to the same neighborhood as me and split a taxi with him. During the 20 minute taxi ride I asked him where he likes to hang out and he wrote me a detailed list of his favorite restaurants, bars, and beaches in the Tel Aviv area.

Throughout the next few days I met a ton of new people at the hostel and explored Tel Aviv with them to get to know the city a bit. The weather has been amazing so I’ve spent a large chunk of time every day swimming in the Mediterranean and taking naps on the beach. My job at the hostel is to work a few breakfast shifts per week and to help lead the pub crawl. The breakfast shift includes replacing food that runs out, trying to make sure everyone washes their own dishes so that I don’t have to do them, cleaning up the kitchen and putting everything away after breakfast, and washing the sheets and towels from the people who are checking out. The more fun shift is the pub crawl, which happens twice a week. My job is to promote the pub crawl and get people pumped up about it during the day, and then to take them to a few bars and clubs around Tel Aviv all night.

The only theft so far has been by an old lady (a cell phone). It was pretty ridiculous. She was probably in her 60s and really wanted to call home to France but couldn’t figure out how to get her calling card to work, so she spent hours complaining to the receptionist who couldn’t understand a word of her thick French accent. Then she went into the kitchen, came back out with a completely different attitude saying something like “even though you couldn’t help, I appreciate your effort and it’ll be ok. I have a booking at another hostel now so I’ll go there” and left the hostel. This was weird because she also had a room booked at this hostel. Soon after, a guest realized her phone was missing so we looked back at the security camera footage and watched this lady swipe the phone off the table, put it in her pocket, and walk out. The receptionist did a bit of detective work and went to the hostel that the lady said she was going to, found which room she was in, and knocked on her door and got the phone back. The lady’s excuse was “I found it in my pocket so I put it in my suitcase”.

Apart from a few weird people, life at the hostel has been great.  I’ve completely fallen in love with Tel Aviv and feel like I could stay here forever. It’s such an exciting city to live in, with events going on every day of the week, beautiful warm sunny beaches filled with surfers and groups of friends chilling around a hookah and some beers, and it’s so easy to get anywhere in Israel from here. There are constantly campouts, nature parties, and desert raves happening all over Israel and Tel Aviv’s central location makes it possible to get to all of them easily.

My first weekend in Israel I found out about a big campout in the woods called the Rainbow Gathering. I posted on the facebook group and found a ride out there. Rainbow had already been going on for nearly a month and I got there just as it was about to finish, but there were still about 150 people on my first night. Everybody I met was amazing; so open minded and so generous. The main purpose of the gathering was to relax, share the love, and work together as a collective community. For the meals, some people would volunteer to cook and make a giant meal for everybody, then we all sat in a circle and ate together, with a few more volunteers as servers and at the end someone would collect donations for the next meal. This community was great because there were few free riders; nearly everyone gave something for the benefit of others. Those who had money helped pay for everything, those who had musical talent helped keep the positive energy flowing, those with other talents organized workshops like yoga and meditation, people helped cook and clean and collect firewood, and everything got done and everyone had a great time. The love for everyone else in the community kept anyone from becoming a free rider; everybody wanted to help out, and the more they did the more everyone else would do. Seeing a community that collectively functions so well without any sort of enforcement other than love is really refreshing when living in such an every-man-for-himself society. I hitchhiked back from the Rainbow Gathering to Tel Aviv and got a ride with yet another man who was excited to see a traveler and wrote me out a very detailed list of his favorite campsites in Israel.

The canyon was called Wadi Og and there was a trail running through the dry steam bed at the bottom of the canyon. It began as a narrow slot canyon which later opens up into a wider canyon with several rocky sections and small cliffs with ladder rungs built into the rocks to climb over them.

 The Judean Desert landscape was incredible. The rock scrambling and climbing possibilities made it feel like a giant adult playground. After several hours of winding through the canyon, we began the ascent up to the mountains above and eventually out to the road. Along the way we passed the remnants of a 1600 year old monastery, a herd of goats with a Bedouin farmer and several guard dogs, and climbed up out of the confines of the canyon into a completely different mountainous landscape. My favorite thing about the desert is how you can get lost in the canyon mazes and then climb up out of the canyon and into the open and it feels like you’re discovering an entire new universe. 

Eventually we made it back to the road, and, after a solid 6 hour hike, got a bus back to Tel Aviv just as the Independence Day festivities were beginning. Celebrating the day that Israel was created as a country, the city of Tel Aviv took to the streets with beer, music, arak (Israeli anise liquor, basically the same as sambuca), and more beer. It was a really ridiculous night with streets overflowing with dancing, singing, and drinking. I wish I could write more details about it, but my memories from the night aren’t quite clear enough to say much else. Just know: if you like to party, Independence Day in Tel Aviv is something you should definitely experience.

A few days after Independence Day, I went to another party with my sister which was really fun. The party was held as a fundraiser for one of the camps at Midburn, which is an Israeli festival similar to Burning Man that I just signed up to work at in May. The party started at noon (finally I found a place with day parties!). There was a big table selling beer, arak mojitos, and some food. It began with a few yoga workshops and something called a 4 elements workshop where we discussed significant events in our lives in order to try to get to know ourselves and each other better, and then a few hours later once everyone had several drinks, the paint was brought out and the music was turned up. Everyone began smearing and throwing paint at each other as the party evolved into a huge psychedelic trance rave. Round after round of arak mojitos were brought out and the paint somehow kept replenishing itself as people were covered head to toe in color. An amazingly talented woman played the didgeridoo along with the music and everyone danced like crazy. It felt like Table Manners (a weekly party at Pomona) but with even wackier crazier dancing. I met tons more amazing people and had a great time dancing as wildly as I could with them. It made me incredibly excited for Midburn. 

Since then, I’ve done a bunch more beach chillin, and I spent the last few days in Ramallah, the capital of Palestine. I’ll cover that in my next post though because I have quite a bit to say about Israel and Palestine after visiting both sides.

Ciao!