Jerusalem: An Illustrated Visit

I feel like I ought to post something about my five days and six nights in Jerusalem. After all, few cities in the world can rival Jerusalem for its history and significance to so many people. That being said, I'm having a really hard time coming up with anything remotely interesting or specific to say, therefore this is going to be an illustrated blog entry.

Apparently, when a Muslim returns home after performing the Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia), it's tradition to decorate the doorway of his/her home to mark the occasion. Some do it with posters, others do it with spray paint. NB: I'm pretty sure that Russian little old ladies are not part of the traditional decor....this one just jumped into my shot at the last minute.

 

While waiting in line to access the Holy Mount, several bar mitzvah processions passed by, en route to the Western Wall, complete with drums, dancing and singing; you're looking at two different boys becoming men at the same time, one under each umbrella. It was all very impressive.

 

I'll try to keep the postcard shots down to a minimum, but the Dome of the Rock is one damn spectacular building, and I can't resist posting at least one shot of it in all of it's splendour. I was informed that in the 1990s, the late King Hussein of Jordan sold his very posh London apartment and donated he proceeds to financing the gold leaf finish on the dome.

 

A small detail from the interior of an Ethiopian chapel at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There's no story behind this one, I just like colourful things. 

 

Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in front of what is believed to be the site of the crucifixion of Christ 

 

On the Temple Mount, with dozens of non-Muslim tourists running around in the one hour afternoon visitation period, two girls just shootin' the breeze by the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest places in Islam. It's definitely an upgrade from the neighbourhood watering hole.

Something that I wish I had gotten a photo of, but didn't, is the 'security perimeter/wall/fence' in the West Bank. I wound up making the trip to Bethlehem today, and for me the most remarkable sight was not the Church of the Nativity or the Milk Grotto, but the visual of the fence, as we entered the West Bank. The portion I saw was covered in graffiti, artwork, and political messages; it was very reminiscent of the Berlin Wall, and pretty heartbreaking. The Northern Irish guy I was with told me that it brought back memories of growing up in Belfast. Anyhow, as we were only a few meters away from the security checkpoint, I figured it wouldn't be wise to start snapping any photos, though in hindsight, I doubt that the Israeli soldiers would have really cared either way. This poster is from some street in Bethlehem, and more or less expresses the same message as the ones written on the wall.

I must have been stoned last night when I agreed to meet up with two very sweet German girls at 8AM to head out to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial complex. Normally I don't have a problem getting out of bed early, but 8AM is a little early for me when I'm travelling, especially on a Sunday. Anyhow, as expected, visiting Yad Vashem was a pretty sobering way to spend four hours. The site is huge, and there's an overwhelming amount of information presented, so after four hours, I really felt exhausted, both physically and mentally. When I got back into town, I promptly passed out for a couple of hours.

I have to confess that I was originally a little hesitant about making the visit with J. and K. (the German girls), not only because of the early start time, but because I was concerned about being an intruder on what could be a deeply personal experience for them. When I was in Germany in August, I had some really interesting and educational conversations with a few Germans about 20th century history, and I was quite impressed by the prevailing sense of atonement and collective culpability that was expressed, even by young Germans.  Case in point, as we entered into the museum, J., gave me a sad look and said, "it's so difficult to be confronted with our own history." I think that one sentence pretty much sums up the difference in how we experienced the visit: a site like Yad Vashem has the ability to provoke extremely visceral reactions from visitors of any nationality, and I was definitely affected by the images and information, but perhaps from a position of detached empathy, whereas both J. and K. seemed far more personally and emotionally invested in what they saw. In any case, in the end, I'm glad to have made the trip out there together.
 
Having only a week to spend in Israel, I had originally thought that I would spend just a few days in Jerusalem, and then use the rest of my time to explore other parts of the country. At least that was the plan. Now, after three fairly jampacked and intense days of visiting the sites in Jerusalem, I'm having to reconsider, and may well spend almost all of my time in Jerusalem, with maybe day trips out to Bethlehem (depending on security), and the Dead Sea. I figure it won't be a tragedy if I don't see all of Israel in one go, though I may have to wait until my current passport expires before planning a return visit, as I'd rather avoid another round of border headaches...

On an entirely unrelated note, with only four days left in my stay in Israel and the Middle East, I'm beginning to look ahead to the final European phase of my trip, making transportation and sleeping arrangements, getting in touch with friends who I'll be seeing along the way, and checking the weather forecast for my next destinations... Crappity, crap, CRAP, CRAP!! Those are the words that were running through my mind just now, when I checked the weather bulletin for Munich. With the exception of my brief stay in Cappadocia, in the last two months of travel, I don't think I've been anywhere where the mercury has dipped below the mid to high teens. Especially since arriving in the Middle East, this trip has been all about sunshine and blue skies (it's been 30+ degrees in Jerusalem every day since I arrived), so imagine my dismay when I saw that the three day weather forecast for Munich predicts average day time highs of 5 degrees Celsius, and night time temperatures that fall below freezing! For the record, don't be thinking that a year away without a real winter has turned me into a softy who can't handle cold weather, but at the moment I am particularly poorly equipped to be confronting cooler temperatures, as I have not a single item of cold weather clothing with me. I believe that this qualifies as a real wardrobe crisis, and may justify bringing out the big gun emergency MasterCard and do a little lot of shopping...this could potentially be one of the most pleasant emergencies I'll ever have the pleasure of needing a credit card to remedy;). I just need to stress that I AM a true blue Canadian who can take a little cold weather like a pro, just not in shorts and sandals. I love love love winter and snow, and I can't wait for a good snow storm once I get home, but God help me if I come across any scenes like this between now and November 5th:

Typical February street scene outside my front door at my old T.O. stomping ground

Sleepless in Jerusalem

A few of random observations and talking points from my first 20 hours in Israel (at this time yesterday, I was hanging out in the strip of land that was neither Jordan nor Israel):

1. The sport sandals that were all the rage in North America back in the mid-nineties are still unbelievably popular here. If there's a standing stereotype that you can always spot a Canadian because we have maple leaves stitched to our backpacks (this is a myth!), I'd posit that you can almost always spot an Israeli based on their choice of warm weather footwear.

2. Maybe I should keep this to myself, as it makes me sound like a total doofus, but I seriously expected that "egged buses" would be egg-shaped vehicles....it turns out that Egged is just the name of the bus company that runs regularly shaped buses...that would be my English language centrism coming out loud and clear. Don't worry, I'm also half-laughing and half-cringing...

3. If there's one thing that I'd really like to do in the next six days, it would be to find an opportunity to use the single Hebrew phrase that I've mastered: "Ata ohev(et) melafefone?", which means "do you like cucumber?" It's not exactly the most useful phrase to know, but I'm going to do my best to steer any conversations I have with Hebrew speakers in the direction of salad preferences.

I feel like it's been a recurring theme in my writing as of late, but I am feeling mighty tired today. There must be something in the bottled water in the Middle East, because it has been a long while since I've had a good night's sleep. My first night in Jerusalem involved a lot of tossing and turning, chafing against the heat and humidity (after almost a month in a mostly desert climate, the humidity here is a little overwhelming), and finally sneaking up to the roof at 3AM to snooze for a couple of hours in the cooler air and under the starry sky. It was actually kind of nice to hang out on the rooftop, and to be awoken by the sound of the church bells at 6AM (I'm staying in the Christian Quarter of the Old City), but the result is that I'm feeling far from 100% today. In any case, I've decided that I'm really not in any condition to be doing much in the way of visiting (it's on days like today when coffee is not a nice little luxury, but a necessary crutch for making it through the day), so I'm spending the afternoon planning out the remaining six days of my stay in Israel. I originally had a copy of the Lonely Planet guidebook for Israel and the Palestinian Territories, but opted to leave it behind in Paris for fear of having my bag searched in Syria, which of course didn't happen (ironically, the Israelis were very thorough in going through all fourteen books in my bag...when the guard saw them, she just gave me a 'look' that clearly said "you're insane for carrying around this many books"...every day that I lug my bag around, I'm increasingly inclined to agree with her), so it's actually kind of nice to have a day to figure out how I want to spend my time, since I'm working without a guidebook. 

From Paris to Jerusalem

Holy smokes, what a day....All along, I had assumed that if there was one border crossing that could potentially problematic, it would be the Turkish-Syrian border; if you've read my entry about that particular day, you know that all the stress was over nothing, as I was in and out within thirty minutes...easy peasy! It's all fun and games until you try to cross into Israel with a Syrian stamp in your passport...in all of my travels, I've never ever been stopped for questioning at an international border until today, when I wound up cooling my heels at the Aqaba-Eilat border crossing for four hours of security questioning. On the bright side, the border guards were very nice about it, letting me hang out in an air conditioned holding room (I am definitely equipped to handle desert heat), and giving me a can of tuna, pretzels and chocolate wafers at the three and a half hour mark (I think they felt bad for the silly Canadian girl who hadn't thought to bring lunch). On the downside, I missed the last direct bus from Eilat to Jerusalem, and had to detour to Tel Aviv in order to catch a connecting bus to Jerusalem. In any case, this doesn't bode well for making a quick departure from Israel (apparently questioning can be as intense upon exiting as upon entering), and have been advised to show up at the airport six hours early.

I've made it to Jerusalem in one piece, which in a way brings this journey to an end. Of course there's another three weeks left before I go home, but as the title of this blog indicates, this entire trip was conceived as a Paris to Jerusalem trek; now that I've arrived at my final destination, I'm almost a little sad that it's over. That being said, fear not my loyal readers! I will continue to update this blog until I set foot on Canadian soil.

Alright, it's 1AM here (and 2AM in the rest of the Middle East), I smell like a bus, and I'm hungry. There are so many things that I'd like to write about, but at this point, the only thing on my mind is getting into my sleeping bag and passing out.

When I boarded the bus in Wadi Musa (Petra) this morning, I had every intention of making the trip down to Dahab, and spending a couple of days chilling out in the Sinai, but somewhere en route to Aqaba, I realized that the time, energy and money that it would take to get to Dahab wasn't worth it If I was only planning on staying down there for such a short period of time. Instead of heading straight for the Israeli border, I decided to hang out in Aqaba for the day, bunking up with J., a very cool Irish girl I met on the bus. It's been an incredibly low-key day, as I had had a seriously restless night, and am feeling a little worn out from Petra, and two months of being on the move.

It's now 5:45PM on Wednesday afternoon, and I'm hanging out in my hotel room here in Aqaba, waiting for J. to come back so we can go grab dinner together; in the mean time, I'm sitting on my bed, listening to Chantal Kreviazuk's just-released new album (I had planned to wait until going home to buy the album, but being the impatient lady that I can be, I caved and downloaded it off of iTunes, the first day that it came out; it's....different...at times very Joni Mitchell), contemplating and writing, and watching the sunset over the Red Sea. Twenty-four hours ago, this was definitely not what I thought I would be doing with myself today, but at the moment I can't think of a better place to be, or anything else I'd rather be doing. Sometimes it just doesn't get any better than this:

What a view, eh? (Aqaba, Jordan)

Random Rambling, vol. II

For some people, coming to Petra is like fulfilling a childhood dream, nurtured through multiple viewings of 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade'; having never seen an Indiana Jones film, and never learned much about Petra, I felt no burning desire to see it, and so I think that I was all the more blown away by what I saw, simply because I really didn't know what to expect. After spending seven hours exploring Petra today, I can definitely say that I am done with ruins for awhile. As far as grand finales go, Petra would be pretty tough to beat, so I'm glad that I saved it for last. I don't know what else to say about the experience, except that it was a great day, and I wish that I understood German so that I could have learned more from eavesdropping on the tour group of seniors being led around the site by a German-speaking tour guide. The only mildly unfortunate incident of the day involved an errant goat that took off with my earphones; as a result, I spent a good part of this evening trolling from shop to shop, looking for suitable replacements, with no success. I'm expecting it to be a long and quiet bus ride tomorrow...

I was glad to have the day to just wander around the site; I've been feeling increasingly pensive over the last few days, and so it was perfect to spend the day alone, moseying along at my own pace, and just allowing myself to be lost in thought for the day. The cause of my pensiveness? To be fair, as many of you know, I'm always a little lost in thought, but for a number of reasons have been more so as of late. As the date of my repatriation draws nearer, I'm realizing that I need to start making concrete decisions about the immediate future. Perhaps most pressingly, where the hell am I going to live, and what am I going to to support myself? There are a couple of interesting opportunities that I've applied for, but the application process takes six months, and so regardless of whether or not either one works out, in the interim, I'm going to need to find something to do with my time. I must confess that part of my angst with regards to the future has to do with the fact that I've been seriously pondering the idea of pursuing something that is radically out of my primary field of study, and that would require a pretty massive time, lifestyle and financial commitment over several years, but is something that I've been seriously considering for the last eighteen months or so. I don't mean to play coy, but as it's something that is rather near and dear to my heart, and I'm really unsure of whether I'm actually going to do anything about it, I won't elaborate any further for the moment.

On a totally unrelated note, I've been experiencing some major communication issues over the last few days. First of all, it has been brought to my attention that several e-mails that I thought I had sent out last week while never made it to their intended in-boxes; I apologize to those of you who thought you were getting the shaft, particularly if you are the special individual who had a birthday last week and felt as though the occasion had gone unacknowledged. Secondly, I have in my possession half a dozen postcards from Syria, all addressed and ready to be posted, but that I forgot to drop in a post box...grrr...this ALWAYS happens to me, and yet I never seem to learn. The lucky intended recipients can be expecting an extra insert in their Christmas cards this year.

I'm coming into the homestretch of my Middle Eastern adventure; I don't know where the last month has gone, but I feel like time has sped up considerably in the last little while. I'm leaving Petra tomorrow, bound for...it's yet to be determined. I'm still trying to decide if I want to take the side trip down to Dahab, or if I should just head to Israel. The idea of spending a couple of days unwinding in Dahab is very seductive, as I have some great memories from my trip there in February, but I'm feeling the crunch of time, and want to spend a good amount of time in Israel. Either way, I'm heading to Aqaba tomorrow morning, and will decide which border to cross at that point. I had originally thought that if I was going to go straight to Jerusalem, I would take the King Hussein border crossing from Amman into Ramallah, in the West Bank, but after several discussions with other travellers, have decided against it. Apparently, a passport stamp from this particular border crossing could cause problems when it comes time to leave Israel, and at this point in my travels, I'm trying to avoid any unnecessary headaches.

Today is the Canadian Thanksgiving, and perhaps not surprisingly, nobody in the Middle East is too interested in celebrating the bountiful Canadian harvest, or their freedom from religious persecution... I spent Thanksgiving in Paris last year, so this is the second year in a row that I'm missing out on Thanksgiving at home with the family, and it kind of sucks. It's definitely on days like today that homeland nostalgia comes creeping in, and that I miss my family and friends back home just a little more than usual. Regardless, I have a lot to be thankful for this year, whether or not there's turkey and pumpkin pie available.

On a slightly more upbeat note, I've left dusty Syria behind and am now in dusty Jordan. Yesterday afternoon, I hopped into a service taxi from Damascus to Amman with four Jordanian old men. They were a pretty quiet bunch until we made it to the Syrian-Jordanian border, and they made a mad dash for the duty free shop. While I had no interest in doing any shopping (small backpack still stuffed with books, increasingly small bank account balance...), they had a FIELD DAY, stocking up on Cubans and Johnny Walker, whipping out the greenbacks as though they're going out of style! Unfortunately for me, they made a long stop at the colognes and perfumes counter, each one trying on half a dozen scents, which made the remaining 90 minute ride down to Amman extremely, um, 'fragrant'...

I had originally thought that I would head straight for Petra today, but after doing a little bit of reading on Jordan last night, I decided to stop in Madaba, a town about an hour south of Amman, in order to visit a church here that is home to what is believed to be the oldest known map of the Middle East. Given my interest in Middle Eastern politics, it would have been almost unthinkable to not to stop. The map is actually a mosaic on the floor of a Greek Orthodox church, and it's a pretty remarkable piece of art work. There's not a whole lot to do in Madaba, so I could have easily made it a day trip to Madaba and spent the night in Amman, but to be honest, after five days in Damascus and a night in Amman, I need a break from big Arab cities. I'm excited about heading down to Petra tomorrow, and spending a couple of days hiking and taking in the ruins. From there, I'll either head to Jerusalem, thus completing my Paris to Jerusalem journey, or will first swing down to Dahab for a couple of days of diving...like I said, I have a lot to be thankful for these days.

A mildly amusing anecdote from the last 24 hours:

Yesterday, at ten o'clock in the morning, I walked in on the owner of the hostel where I'm staying, gazing lovingly and whispering sweet nothings to a bottle of Scotland's finest. He didn't appear to be even slightly inebriated, and there was definitely no one else in the room, but he was definitely having a full fledged conversation with a bottle of scotch whiskey. I always wonder a little about people who speak out loud to inanimate objects, but he seems like a harmless enough guy, and to be honest, I may find myself doing the same thing to the next bottle of decent red wine that I get my hands on. Anyhow, when he realized that he wasn't alone with his beloved, it led to an awkward moment where neither of us knew what to say, but after five seconds he just shrugged and smiled sheepishly, and then offered me a glass. Normally I'm not the kind of girl to turn down a good scotch, but 10AM is a little early for me to be cracking out the booze, so I wound up taking a pass.

It's Friday afternoon in Damascus, and the city is eerily quiet. The streets are all but deserted, and most shops are closed. Knowing that Friday is the quietest day of the week in most Arab cities, I had originally been planning to take a day trip down to Bosra to check out some roman ruins, but I think that I've just about reached my personal limit for the number of ruins that I can see and appreciate in one trip, so instead I'm spending a quiet day in Damascus. I had originally been planning on leaving for Beirut tomorrow morning, but after giving it some thought, I've decided to bypass Lebanon completely, and will be heading to Amman instead. Why the sudden change of plans, you might ask? It's a combination of visa, time and budget concerns. Simply put, I'm running out of time and money, and I don't want to run the risk of not being able to make it to Jordan, should I get knocked back at the Lebanese-Syrian border. Also, travel fatigue is definitely beginning to set in, as I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately, so I'm really just becoming lazy, and want to minimize the amount of time that I spend getting from place to place. The new plan is to spend just a couple of days in Jordan to visit Petra (the ruins to end all ruins!), and then spend the remainder of my time in the Middle East in the Holy Land.

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Syrian Sojourn

Alright, it's time for a proper post about what's been going down since I arrived in Syria. It's been a pretty exhausting nine days of navigating my way down the length of Syria, but I've made it from Aleppo to Damascus, with stops in Hama and Palmyra along the way. My first couple of days here were a little rough, as I had an unsettling encounter with an overly friendly hostel owner the first night I arrived, which left me feeling pretty skeeved out, followed the next day by the exploding bus incident, but since then it's been relatively smooth sailing. Having backpacked through Morocco and Egypt relatively recently, I'm not completely unfamiliar with travelling in the Arab world, and I'm finding Syria to be both easier and far more challenging than either Morocco or Egypt. Syrians are an incredibly friendly and generous bunch, the country is beautiful and full of amazing ruins, and it's a backpacker's dream, in terms of budget; the hard part of travelling in Syria (beyond gaining entry to the country), is the lack of tourism infrastructure (not necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely makes things a little more difficult), the incredible amount of noise and air pollution, and the constant stares and unsolicited attention.

A lot of people have asked me why I wanted to visit Syria, and I've often asked myself the same question. For many, particularly North Americans, Syria is not the most obvious travel destination, and often times, the second question they ask is, "is it safe?" The idea to come here had been germinating for about 18 months, after I took a course on Arab and Ottoman history in my last semester at UofT. Also, having spent a good deal of my studies focused on the politics of the region, I've had a certain fascination with Syria and the Middle East for a number of years. Once it was determined that I'd be spending a year in France, I decided that it would be my chance to make it over here, and see with my own eyes the things and places that I'd only ever read about. Although what originally drew me to Syria was its history and politics, and some of the spectacular Roman sites that are now practically deserted, what's keeping it truly interesting is just being here, and seeing how people live, dress, behave, get from point to point, and how they interact with one another. I've been pretty charmed by the hospitality and curiosity of the Syrians who I've met. In terms of safety, regardless of what CNN or Fox News might lead us to believe, the public crime rate in Syria is close to zero, and despite the occasional creepy advance from horny men (and to be honest, these kinds of encounters are almost as likely to happen at home), the greatest challenge to my physical safety has been choosing buses that won't break down in the middle of no where and avoiding maniacal taxi drivers.

A very sweet little girl discovering the wonders of photobooth for the first time....clearly she had gotten more sleep, and was having a better hair day than me, but I take comfort in having a complete set of straight teeth...

Today is day 51 of my trip, and in exactly two weeks, I'll be on my way to Ben Gurion airport to catch a red eye flight back to Munich, and in exactly four weeks I'll be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, en route for the Great White North. Although there's still almost a month left in my trip, I'm psychologically already beginning to prepare for the end, and in my mind, this trip ends when I leave the Middle East. Once I get back to Munich, I'll be joined for the last two weeks of travel by O., one of my best friends from home. For me, the last two weeks of my trip will be about chillin' with O., seeing some special people in Munich, Passau and London, and just enjoying what may be the last European vacation I'll be having for quite a long while.

Hello loyal readers,
 
This is the first time I'm posting via e-mail, so here's to hoping that it works! My apologies if it appears that I've reverted back to my old ways of being a teerribly lazy blogger. I haven't had a lot of internet access here in Syria, and blogger and facebook are both banned websites, therefore I'm not posting much (though I am dilligently putting my thoughts down in a Word document, and will post all the juicy details later, once i'm in Lebanon), and not responding to facebook messages in a timely manner. Anyhow, just let it be known that all is well, and that I have thusfar avoided finding out what the inside of a Syrian prison looks like....
 
 

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It has been a pretty insane few days here in Aleppo. From wandering around for several hours yesterday trying to find a neighbourhood clearly indicated on the map (I'm normally pretty good with maps, so I'm CONVINCED that the neighbourhood doesn't exist), to my adventure of escaping from a burning vehicle in the middle of nowhere, watching part of a field go up in flames, and being stuck by the side of the road for two hours this afternoon (true story, no exaggeration!), it has been CRAZY! I'm having a hard time thinking of anything specific to write about my experience thus far, so for now I'll just say that it's been a challenging first three days in Syria, but I'm having a blast. Apologies for the brevity, but I'm feeling pretty beat right now, so I'm going to cut this short and crawl into bed now.