Hello there, Israel!

Vinkeleskade, Amsterdam. The view from our house. The canal isn't frozen over yet but soon it will be. 

Last Friday, I arrived in Tel Aviv. On the plane over there, the old lady next to me was so near-sighted that she broke my heart. She had the sweetest eyes behind Coke bottle glasses. She showed me a little press to dry flowers. And I think I saw some snippets of old love letters. She beamed mischievously like a young girl. After a gazillion security checks we left the snow in Amsterdam behind us. The old lady told me she felt like Nils Holgersson on the wings of the goose. I guess I was Nils’s little hamster.

Jerusalem, people walked on the Old City rooftops on an overcast Saturday morning. 

My friend Itay picked me up at the airport and we decided to go to Jerusalem, which is a 40-minute drive from Ben-Gurion International Airport. The sun was setting quickly and we arrived in West Jerusalem after the Shabbat had started. Only a couple of odd people and merchants were still outside – the merchants hosing down the street and cleaning their stalls. You could smell the typical pungent smell of left-over fruits and vegetables and who knows what else. A good thing the guys were scrubbing away. To me, it felt very secretive and exciting to find the open hang-outs in a city that otherwise shuts down on Friday nights.

Jersusalem, Hebron Road.

Itay’s friend Shaked gave us directions over the phone and he joined us in the Russian quarter, the place to be. We went to a gay bar that easily could have been in East Berlin or Paris. It’s astonishing how alike we all are at the end of the day. Never mind that we were in the middle of a city with a lot of religious zealots. Some people had created a beautiful safe haven. Jerusalem’s gay bar Video is a typical gay bar where boys check out other boys and girls look at the girls and the only nuisance is the occasional bar-hopping straight bachelor party where the groom-to-be walks in with underpants on his head or in his hands and gets easily bored because there is little action for him. It was wonderful to connect with people who grew up in a very different place but who felt so close to me. And there is nothing in the world that connects us more than dancing together. Shaked and I twirled in a beautiful sea of people. Itay, on the other hand, lent his ear to an Italian admirer who tried to woo him.

Orthodox couple close to Dung Gate (Old City). Look at how the husband wrapped his special hat in a zip-lock bag to protect it from the rain.

The next morning, I did what every tourist of this special city should do. I visited the Old City on my own. Just the way I like it. Or wait, that's actually untrue. After a quiet walk on the roofs of the Old City, I decided to go through the little souks. I got stuck in a maze of alleys where an army of hustlers of all stripes did their best to chase me away with their sales pitches. Again, it struck me how we are all so alike across the planet. And how I get annoyed at sales talks no matter where I am, whether I am listening to a used-car sales man in California or to a guy "celebrating the opening of his souvenir shop and offering beautiful discounts especially for me." They all manage to bug the hell out of me in a heartbeat. 

I initially wondered why only very few people walked through the butcher alley. I should have known better, of course. Look at the sheep's heads in the container on the left.