Chapter Eight - Next hour in Jerusalem!

The following morning we loaded up the bus for the drive to Jerusalem. But first came another hike, this one in the desert near the Dead Sea. An interesting geological property of that area is that the mountains are made mostly out of salt subducted from the sea. Isn't that weird?

Magnificent desolation. This is how I imagine it to be on the Moon or Mars. If anyone ever offers a free ten-day trip to one of those, I'll be all over it. I won't even complain about the lunar or martian equivalent of Zionism.

Most of the hike was fairly uneventful except for some interesting geology. Yuval pointed out some flaky rocks to us and told us to taste them. They tasted salty. I'm sure the soldiers were laughing at us at this point. "Hey, the stupid Canadians are eating dirt!" Tour guides probably have more power than is really wise for any person to have. They can get their devotees to do all sorts of stupid things in the name of tourism.

So we walked through this desert, around mountains and through canyons, until we reached one particularly large hill where a race of sorts took place. Do you remember, on the hike to Tzfat, where Boaz and Captain Azulai showed us the proper way to carry wounded comrades? Well some of the soldiers and birthrighters had a race up this hill with one person carrying another. Israelis against Canadians. You would think that a bunch of soldiers would have a huge advantage, but it ended in a photo finish (literally, Steve was waiting at the top with a camera and had to use it to determine the winner), with the Israelis winning by a fraction of a second.

The race.

At the top of the hill we rested for a while, and Yuval gave another lecture. It was about the history and future of the Dead Sea. The bottom was that it's drying up. How very sad. It really is very cool. So cool, in fact, that it triggered a Raynaud's attack when I was floating in it. God, that's a terrible pun.

The Dead Sea as seen from our hilltop.

Both these girls are named Hila. Isn't that confusing?

We descended from the lookout point and hiked for another little while in the desert. In a clear area we stopped and Yuval told another crazy story, probably from the same book of stories as the one about the hermaphrodite princess. This one was about a white rabbit with a black triangle at the tip of his ear who fell in love with an entirely white bunny rabbit. He went to some nearby train tracks and waited for the train to cut off the tip of his ear, but it cut off his entire head instead. The moral of the story was, "Don't lose your head over a little black triangle." Think about it. The entire story was much more involved than that, but those are the basics.

We trekked on until we reached a gigantic chasm. It was just a giant hole in the middle of the desert. Yuval probably explained the geological processes that formed it, but I don't remember. In any case, to illustrate his warning about the dangers of being so close to this hole, he tossed a rock into it. Tick . . . tock . . . tick . . . tock . . . thud. It was unbelievably deep.

This picture does not do the hole justice at all.

We backed away from the hole and headed to the bus.

This is about the point in the trip where I was so exhausted and overloaded with information that I had to read the itinerary to remember what I did that day. As a result, my notes are not very thorough so I have to reconstruct this all from memory. Please bear with me.

We arrived in Jerusalem by way of an underpass of some kind. It was probably just a tunnel under some highway or something, but it had the dramatic effect of shielding the city from our view and then revealing it in a single flash. I'm sure everyone else was awed. I was so jaded that it made little impression on me. Yeah, fine, the city is very old, but I resent the implication that it has anything to do with me.

Anyhoo, Oren parked the bus near an area where we could overlook the entire city. We took some pictures, and it might have been there that we did our shehechiyanu. I'll pretend I remember that it was. We had some more of that terrible Jewish wine and said the traditional blessing, all while engaged in the "circle of love", which was still a lovely tradition. I may not be a good Jew, but I still enjoy human contact.

Jerusalem, including the fabled golden dome, under which lies the western wall. It was pretty overcast and miserable when I took this picture.

The third female soldier. Luckily this one's name is Nadia, not Hila.

There are stray cats everywhere in Israel. It's an interesting indicator that you're not in Kansas, I mean Canada, anymore.

We made our way down into Jerusalem proper and began our touring. It started with the site at which King David is definitely not buried. His monument is there, but no one knows where he's actually buried. They believe that it's somewhere nearby. I don't know who "they" is. Due to the shape of the room, I was unable to get a really good picture of the monument. That's right, I'm blaming the shape of the room.

The silver inscription reads: "David Melech Yisrael chai v'kayam". "David King of Israel lives and endures." It's a shame he's buried, then, I say.

We then saw the window behind which Jesus definitely did not have his famed last supper. Especially considering the building was built several centuries after he died. Nevertheless, legend has it that this window is the location of Jesus' Passover seder.

Not the site of the last supper.

Some interesting Jerusalem architecture.

More interesting architecture.

You may have noticed that all the buildings in Jerusalem are that beige colour, the same as Tzfat. That's because it's actually a law in Jerusalem that all buildings have to be covered in what's called "Jerusalem stone", so as to give the appearance of age and unity. This ridiculous elevation of form over function was just one of the things that annoyed me about Jerusalem. Also, the communist in me rebelled at the thought of whoever owns the Jerusalem stone quarries getting rich off this law.

So we continued our tour, which came next to the gates of the Old City. Many people have died over this small piece of real estate, as evidenced by the numerous bullet holes in the wall. We toured the Jewish quarter of the city before heading to the kotel, the western wall.

The gate into the old city. You can't see straight through it because they built it crooked on purpose, to fend off attacks.

The kotel. Right under the golden dome, just as I promised.

The southern wall. I seem to be good at those dusk pictures. Except that the top of someone's head got in this one so I had to crop it out.

We finished our tour at the entrance to the kotel area. There's very tight security there, but by mentioning the secret password "taglit" ("birthright") we were able to bypass the metal detectors and body searches. Don't you wish you lived in a country where such security was necessary? Blasted Zionists don't know what they're getting into.

In the grossly sexist kotel area, there were two sections: a gigantic men's section and a tiny women's section. I went with Gill and Josh into the men's area and deposited a piece of paper with my grandfather's name on it into a crack in the wall, as per his request. Then I looked around and saw a number of people prostrating themselves before a collection of stones and mortar. Whatever they were feeling, I wasn't getting it. I'm able to look back on this somewhat dispassionately, but at the time I was getting more and more angry, and I couldn't quite say at what.

When we finally left, we headed for our hotel at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel. Therein lies another story.

The room assignments changed somewhat from the previous night, so I ended up with Ben and Michael (pronounced [mee-(sound of choking)a-el]), a different Israeli soldier. I wish we had stayed with Sela. I liked him. Anyway, the hotel was pretty nice. We had another gigantic dinner. I was seriously overeating all throughout the trip, and it finally came to a head two night later, when . . . you'll see.

Our room in Hotel Ramat Rachel. I took the middle bed there. Michael took the cot. Notice the bottle of some alcoholic beverage on Ben's bed.

The after-hours entertainment came in the form of another club, like the one I already described at Ein Gev. I decided to give it a try. It can't hurt to have an open mind about Israeli culture, I thought. I was wrong; it can. So about a minute after the smoke-inhalation and sonic bombardment started, I ran back up to the surface...

Oh yes. Did I mention that this club was in a bomb shelter? With no ventilation?

...and went back to the hotel, where I wrote this rant.

I signed in on Steve's sheet and went to sleep.

Chapter Nine