Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Shalom Tel Aviv!
I made it here alive. Holy crap, I'm in Tel Aviv, Israel. This seems so surreal. That past 24 hours have been full of planes and waiting and walking and rooftop adventures so I guess it'll be best for me to start from the beginning. So we got to Newark around 9:30 am EST and spent a good amount of time in line for El Al security. Now, in case you don't know, Israel's de facto state airline, El Al, is more or less the most secure airline in the world. They know what they're doing and they make damn sure you know that. At the questioning station, (yes they have those), their people went through the standard fare. "Did you pack any weapons?", "Did you pack the bags yourself?" et cetera. However, interspersed in between those questions are ones like, "Are you Jewish?", "Do you know anyone in Israel?", and "What was the last holiday you celebrated?". Overall, I think I answered their questions pretty well. I stayed calm answered truthfully most of the time. But alas, I guess I got some combo of wrong answers and my boarding pass was stamped twice with a the letters "SSSS". I soon learned later from another student more familiar with the Israeli security procedures that this meant I was lucky enough to receive extra security screening. Oh joy.
Now allow me to to describe the rather strange security procedure several other people as well as myself had to go through. After passing the initial security screening and passport check and after dropping off my checked luggage, I was instructed to go directly to Gate 58 even though my departure gate was Gate 55. Arriving at the terminal I begin following the row of gates, 55, 56, 57... where it stopped. There was a small hallway beyond this but no obvious gate number like all the rest. I walked around the terminal, puzzled, for a few more minutes until I decided to poke my head into the little hallway beyond Gate 57. About ten feet down the corridor I stumbled upon a door with a faded El Al logo and block letters saying "Gate 58" underneath. Despite the sketchiness of the door and the fact that there was no other personnel or instruction around, I knocked several times on the door. A few seconds later an El Al security officer opened it, checked my boarding pass and told me he would have to take my carry on bag for screening and that I would get it back before the flight departed. So I gave it to him and he promptly shut the door behind him. After waiting for nearly an hour, I was now standing outside the door with half a dozen others on the flight who were also marked for additional screening. We soon came to the conclusion that none of us were Jewish and that this was the reason we were marked. I've heard of racial profiling but I seldom hear of, let alone experience religious profiling. As the terminal emptied of people boarding our flight, we joked about El Al secretly scheming to make us miss the flight to keep us non-Jews out of Israel. Not soon after, we were brought into the room one by one, our shoes and personal items were swabbed and tested for explosives and then we were escorted, yes, escorted from this this fictional "Gate 58" to our gate.
The flight itself was pretty cool. I'd never been on a plane more than 3 1/2 hours so this 10 1/2 hour trek over the Atlantic was sure to be interesting. The food was decent, I watched a few movies I'd already seen, watched as Orthodox Jews got out of their seats every now and then to pray, and tried to sleep. I woke up at some point six hours in or so and saw lights below us. Well there was my first taste of Europe! There was something different from the U.S. about seeing the lights at night though. It was almost if the lights of these European cities I couldn't identify were warmer, more of a gold color rather than the orange to white-ish hues I would recognize from flying in America. They were centralized too and seemed to melt together like veins of gold flowing over the land, concentrating in a few areas while disappearing into nothing in others. In contrast, I'd say American lights are more like constellations in the sky; a bunch of bright white lights spread out over a big area, each with its own individual glow. Deep, I know.
Ben Gurion International Airport
Azraeli Towers, Tallest in Israel
When we finally started landing it was a bit surreal. We came over the Israeli coastline and BAM!, Tel Aviv was right there before us. From the sky it seemed like the city was only full of a bunch of modern skyscrapers surrounded by thousands of squat buildings, all the same off-white color. After I disembarked and got into the terminal, that whole "stranger in a strange land" mentality started to come around. All the signs were in Hebrew of course, but it even seemed more alien because I couldn't even pronounce the words. At least I know if I flew into Mexico or France or Germany, I could get the gist of a ton of words because I could at least manage to pronounce them. No luck with that here. As different as Israel may have been, I found it a little ironic that the moving walkways in the terminals had "OTIS" stamped into them referring the the company in my home state of Connecticut that makes them. But other than that one instance, I truly felt up the river without a paddle.
I'll spare you all the exciting details of arriving and checking in to TAU, but I will say was really anything but exciting. The good stuff happened when I was all unpacked in my
awesome suite. Our dorms had just been renovated a few months earlier, (which was definitely a good thing considering the horror stories about the way they had used to be). There was a flat panel TV, a balcony, news beds, a new refrigerator, the whole works! Anyway, after the room ogling was finished a couple of my roommates and I went down to the super market located inside a nearby mall to get some room "essentials". Of course this meant taking advantage of the lower drinking age for the majority of our purchases but hey, why not? And so the night continued with us celebrating and toasting our way into the beginning of our first full day in the city. Towards the end of the night three of us were exploring the dorms, upstairs and downstairs, and found that we could get onto the roof. This easily became one of the highlights of my first night in Tel Aviv. From the roof you could easily see the lights of the city and the surrounding burbs. This was about as far from Boston as one could get and exactly where I wanted to be, drinking cheap Israeli beer on a warm Israeli night with the largest Israeli city laid out before me. Shalom Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv University
Notes from the Holy Land is the blog I set up to chronicle my life as an American student studying in the Middle East during the Spring of 2010. Check back often for laughs, curiosities, photos you'll wish you were there for, and hummus. Lots and lots of hummus. Also, check out my more local blog: Notes from the B-Line.
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2 comments:
Dear Kevin,
I am glad that you are enjoying my homeland, and I will be reading your blog as much as possible from now on.
I have a few comments:
Regarding the "religious profiling" you mentioned. In many places in the world, Jewish is considered a race, and therefore it is not so different. I remember going through those questions myself, and I was very embarrassed because I had to tell them that I was not bat mitzvahed, but my brother was bar mitzvahed and then I had to go through all of the holidays that I celebrated, that seemed to calm them down... it was quite a funny scenario, but they are quite smart because they saw that my parents were Jewish refugees living in America, so we weren't bothered after that...
Things to do:
-Take a walk on the beach side, and notice how many stray cats there are in Israel... they are kinda like squirrels over there. Scared me to death.
-Make sure not to take any Sabbath elevators on Friday nights and Saturdays, or you will never get to your destination.
-Think out your note for the Wailing Wall ahead of time...
-Don't get caught in a car around sunset on a Friday... people will pull over and start to walk. BAD TRAFFIC!
-Get a picture riding a camel.
-Get a picture with a hot female soldier carrying a rifle.
Shalom <3
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