Shalom,
I am pretty sick right now and not really able to leave my bed, so I thought I write another Blog entry about my last weekend.
As you can guess we (Mirjam, Kathy, Luca and I) had been to Jericho. It is a small but well recommended city near Jerusalem, on the other side of the boarder. For volunteers and tourists in general it is easy to cross the boarder. We went their by bus on Friday morning, which took about 3 hours. Then, finally, we had been at a bus station in the middle of nowhere, because there is no bus straight to Jericho. You have to walk or to hitchhike. Surprisingly, that worked very good and for less then 10€ a man took us to Downtown. There we realized, how cheap the Westbank is. Falafel for 5 INS (-1,25€) Hostels for 60 INS (-12,50€) and so many fruits. We walked a little bit around, without a real plan, ate delicious Pita, drank good coffee etc.
One time a guy came to us, who offered to show us some churches and cemeteries only he could show us...of course. He said, that the next day we can't do anything, because the city strikes, what made us a bit nervous. More or less Jericho is in the middle of a war zone, so we were a little bit afraid, that something would happen to us. I denied his offer and the sentence he said destroyed the whole weekend a bit for me.
"Are you jewish, you look like one. Why are you listening to him, because he is jewish?"
There is a sign in front of Jericho, which says, that it is not wise to go there as a Israeli and/or jew, and that was the moment I realized that the jewish are really not wished here. The whole weekend I was afraid and didn't felt comfortable with the situation. Nothing happened, but I think when you are in a city in a war zone, where everybody do not like the ethnic group you are belonging to, it is quiet understandable, that I didn't feel safe there.
We kept going on. Mainly we just ate, made photos and gained a impression of the city. There are beautiful churches, but the rest is dilapidated. The streets are dirty, they burn their trash, the buildings do not look good and half of them aren't finished. The people do not seem to have that much money, although they are a lot of expensive cars driving around. Beautiful is the surrounding. Jericho is settled in the middle of the desert, but with a lot of hills, so the panorama view over the landscape is gorgeous.
When we finally walked to our hostel, it is a little bit outside so we had to walk for one hour, we saw a quiet shocking thing. There had been three children and a man killing a cow in a kosher way. It means, that they cut the throat and let it bleeding out. It was right in front of us, exciting to see, but it gave us some of questions. Why directly in front of the street? Why children? This was one of the most formative pictures we made there.
The evening we walked a little bit through the streets. When you are visiting these kind of areas as a tourists, everybody is saying hello and is trying to communicate with you. At the beginning it was quiet annoying and frightening, because you have the stereotype, that they just want to steal from you or to hurt you, but if you delete that stereotype and just say "Hello" back, just to be kind, then it turns
out, that most of the people are just exciting to see other people. For the people in the west bank there is nearly no possibility to go out of that area, so I think it is just logical, that they are happy to see people from elsewhere.
With a mixed feeling we went back to the hostel and the really nice and kind owner made us delicious typical arabic food!
The next day we went to a monastery in the hills. Before that we visited an excavation, which should proof, that Jericho is the oldest city on earth, but it was a little bit disappointing, because it just looked like somebody put some wholes with an excavator in the ground.
There was the possibility to go up to the monastery by cable car, but we didn't want to spend money, so we walked up their, what was partly very beautiful! Up there the view was beautiful! The Monastery too, but not that impressive. We spend a little time there and went down again, where we spend more time drinking coffee and watching football, until the first bus at 7 was going to drive again.
The way back was...thrilling. We wanted to take a taxi to the bus station, to take the bus, but there was no taxi, that wanted to take us. Everybody offered us to go directly to the boarder, so we could walked back to Israel. We finally took a taxi that brought as near the boarder, where we could take a bus straight to Jerusalem. After the Taxi driver took a break and drank coffee, delivered a package and made another break, we finally were on our way to the city near the boarder. We waited a while for the bus, which didn't want to stop, then we waited another while for the next bus, which took us to Jerusalem. From there it was easy to go back, but you can imagine how you feel in an area, where you are not wished, trying to get home and not everything goes as you are expecting it to be. I can say I was really really happy to be back home.
I do not know, if I want to go into the Westbank again. There are beautiful places, but for me as a jew it is difficult to deal with the situation. You always feel threatened, although they may not be a reason.
Now I will not travel a lot, because some friends and family are coming and I have to work a bit more, so I can have more holidays, so do not wonder, if I won't write that much!
I can not say, that I learned something new on this trip, but I definitely saw, that it is always good to put off the stereotypes you have.
Lehitraot,
SK
PS: Some of the photos are made by Luca!
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