My Israeli adventure, Part 1: How I survived the flight + border control and visited Tel Aviv :)

It's been quite a long while since I've written anything on my blog, but I haven't had much access to computer and writing a blog entry from my tablet would have been a torture (you know, I'm not so fond of modern technologies) ;) At the moment I'm at my Dad's place in Belgium and trying hard to recover from zombie mode, but while I'm still to sick to travel anywhere, I may start telling you about my journey to Israel. :) I've got so many thoughts and impressions that I don't even know what should I start with - it will certainly take me more than just one entry.

Let's start with the flight. There's a huge gap between the euphoric feeling of booking a flight to a country you've never been to and actually taking it! I'm not as aviaphobic as I used to be, because I realize it's all in my head - I've been afraid of flying since the very first time I did it in 2004 because I had told myself that it should be scared. I know quite a few people, who are totally opposite of me - they get positively excited about flying from the very beginning! Now that I've had this phobia for such a long time it's quite hard to get rid of it, but I've made some progress. A few years ago I used to believe that the chance of my flight crashing was always 50% - it either crashes or not! :D Due to my poor understanding of physics, I still don't find it completely normal that planes fly, but I try to trust the stats saying that it's one of the safest ways of traveling.

The wing of a very scary plane!

Still, I was quite anxious before my flight to Tel Aviv. First I was afraid it might be cancelled due to poor weather conditions in Israel, especially that the boarding was delayed. When we finally boarded the flight and took off (that's one of the scariest parts of flight for me, along with landing), I started thinking of how the Israeli border guards will surely not let me into the country and wondering, whether they'd let me fly back to Budapest an hour later or whether I'd have to wait for my deportation until the next day... Yeah, that's me! :D When we finally landed in Tel Aviv and I was standing in a queue for foreigners at the border control, suddenly a border guard called me to come to the part for Israeli citizens, as there were no people anymore. That's when I got really scared and asked "But... I have no Israeli passport... Can I go back to that long queue?", but the guy insisted on seeing my passport. Now I think he could see how terrified I was and wanted to prevent me from getting a heart attack if I had to wait for 15 more minutes! :D I've read so many articles about scary Israeli border control on Internet, but in fact the whole thing took less than 3 minutes. I only showed him my passport, invitation letter from my Israeli friend and the return ticket to Budapest, he asked how did I meet my friend, wished me a nice stay in Israel and that was it! I was even brave enough to ask him to put an Israeli stamp into my passport, but unfortunately they don't use them anymore, at least not at the Ben Gurion airport. This means I can still travel to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and some other lovely countries without getting myself a new passport, but I'd still rather have that stamp! :( Anyway, apparently I didn't look very suspicious. ;) I don't know, whether it works like that for everyone or whether I was just lucky, but I have the impression that a lot of stories about Israel are way exaggerated. They need to take some safety measures that foreign tourists may not be used to, but that's simply necessary and they try to be as polite as possible at the same time. 

My friend and her parents were waiting for me at the airport and took me to their village, which is some 40 km away from Tel Aviv. They've been so nice to me and I was really happy to spend those 5 days with them and their crazy rabbits! :) But I think I'll tell you more about it in my next entry, and for now I'll try to stay serious... ;) The first place I've visited with my friend was Tel Aviv. We went there by a real Israeli train!

רכבת [rakevet] - One of the most important words in Hebrew :D

Israel doesn't have a very well-developed railway network, but they have some trains and that already makes them more lucky than countries, which don't have them at all, for example Iceland. :) It took us only about half an hour to get to the center of Tel Aviv. My first impression of this city (apart from my famous "Wow! There are palm trees!!!") ;) was that it's very modern and feels kind of... American, which I can't really explain, because I've only been to the USA once and that was a long time ago. But somehow Tel Aviv felt more American than European to me. 

An old German neighborhood... and a palm tree!

There are some relatively old quarters in Tel Aviv, for example this small German neighborhood, but even those are surrounded by very modern architecture. One of the biggest misconceptions that I had about Israel was thinking that Tel Aviv was the capital. Actually, that's the information you can find in many foreign resources, because most of countries don't recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital for political reasons, so I'm not totally ignorant. ;) But in reality most of the government buildings can be found in Jerusalem and that's the city which Israelis consider their capital. On the other hand, there are a lot of embassies in Tel Aviv - again, for political reasons. It's all quite complicated. Still, this city can be called the cultural capital of Israel and probably the most liberal place in the Middle East.

The White City

Tel Aviv is also known for the White City - a bid modernism style quarter, which is on the UNESCO list. I wanted to see it once it's a part of the World Heritage, but I wasn't really impressed, as I have a strong preference for old places. I wasn't even able to find nice postcards there. But at least I've seen it and know what it looks like in reality. :)

A street in Nevek Tzedek

Fortunately, Tel Aviv also has some really nice neighborhoods, for example the Neve Tzedek. It was the first Jewish quarter built outside of the old Jaffa. Tel Aviv didn't exist back then, but nowadays it's considered to be the oldest part of the city. We've spent some time in a cafe there and written postcards together for our mutual penpals. :) I still find it quite amusing how our beloved penpalling world seems to be a tiny village where everyone knows each other! :)

Seeing the Mediterranean Sea for the first time!

Then we came closer to the sea, which looked really beautiful with the big waves in sunset. The weather was slowly deteriorating, but I must admit we were very lucky that day anyway, because it wasn't raining for most of the day and so we were able to visit all the places that we planned.

Dark clounds and some palm trees on the wind :D

In case you've been thinking of visiting Israel and choosing the right time for your trip, I'd say that January probably isn't the best option. I really enjoyed my journey and don't regret doing it at the worst possible time - I knew what I was doing! ;) But the truth is that the weather can be quite unpredictable at this time of the year in Israel. When my friend first told me that it might be raining a lot in January I couldn't really understand, why would it be a serious problem. But in Israel it is, because once it rains, it rains a lot, there are floodings, many roads are closed and the country is paralyzed. Oh, and people get excited about seeing 1 cm of snow just as much as I get excited about the palm trees! :D Yet when I'm looking at my photos from Israel now I realize that despite the bad weather which made us change some of our plans, I've managed to see a lot of amazing places! :) And I'll continue telling you about them soon! ;)