A Much Less Ambitious Day

We packed up and headed back to the Old City for breakfast.  It was much quieter at 9:00 in the morning than it is later in the day, but there were still groups of Japanese tourists wearing matching jackets and groups of French tourists singing hymns as they walked down the Via Dolorosa.  We peeked into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre but Benj says he wants a real tour the next time he goes there because he has seen it plenty of times without narration.

Even though the service is unremarkable and so is the food, he took us to a place where we could sit outside.  We sat right across from the Armenian church on the Via Dolorosa so it was a good spot for people watching. The food was fine, the waiter never smiled once.

We are satisfied that Benjamin really likes it here.  He feels amazingly at home, and also privileged because he is an American.  He continues to be his chameleon self: when walking around the Old City, he behaves as an American, speaking English, and gets better treatment.  But most of the time he is a recent immigrant who understands Hebrew better than he speaks it. He appreciates the chutzpah (that he says occasionally goes too far and ends up as rudeness) of the Israelis, likes it that they don't live with an assumption of lots of rules and limits.  His personality is very well-suited to this culture -- he likes being in a place that doesn't dress up for no reason.

I waited, sitting and knitting on a low wall outside the Damascus Gate, while Benj and Jon walked back up the hill to get the car.  I watched loads of merchandise arrive at the sidewalk, to be loaded into wagons towed by tractors.  It is quite a job, getting all that inventory down into the Old City, bumping down those stairways.  An old Arab man sat next to me and tried to make conversation.  He pushes one of those three-wheeled carts that appear to be hired to move smaller quantities of goods around.  We could use a cart like that at Blueberry Hill -- they chain an old tire to the back of the cart to act as a brake, and when they go down steep slopes, they stand on the tire and slide down the hill with the cart. 

We left Jerusalem and headed for Haifa.  While it is a small country, there is still lots of agriculture going on, visible from the road.  And no suburbs, really.  Most buildings in the towns are made of concrete and they look mostly the same: square, unadorned, with small windows, not beautiful.  Anything that is not ancient looks like it was built as quidkly and inexpensively as possible.

Benjamin drove straight to the Technion, hoping to find his department open so he could get a paper he needed, but no luck.  Then we went to his apartment, about one and a half miles up steep hills from school. He bikes to and from school -- I cannot imagine getting up those hills on a bicycle. He says he rides on the sidewalk on the steepest hill because he can't go fast enough to ride on the road,  He lives in one of those concrete buildings, on the third floor, with an elevator.  He has two Israeli roommates who were not home today.  Their apartment is comfortable and tidy with minimal decoration.  Benjamin has made his room double as a darkroom (heavy curtains, towel to block the light coming under the door) and he has his less successful photographs on the wall. He gives away the good ones.

He has a test tomorrow, so he needed to get his brain reorganized and remember his formulas, etc.

We left him and found our way to our apartment, 15 minutes away, much closer to downtown.  Having a car can be a hassle when we are in a city, trying to find a place to stash it, spending lots of money to park, etc. But Benj said we should expect to find creative places to park in Haifa without paying, so that was a challenge.  So far we haven't paid for any parking but the signs are completely in Hebrew and we may end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, eventually.

We drove along the coast, around the top and to the west, and figured out how to get to the beach and park for free.  Stopped for a snack of baba ganoush and tabouli and lemonade slush with lots of mint blended in.  This was just a bar at the beach -- I don't think there are any beach bars with food like this where we live.  There were lots of runners and walkers and children going up and down the beach walk.  We gradually noticed that the beach had endured stormy weather, with plumbing uprooted and beach stuff in the wrong places. But it is a lovely beach to have right in the city, like in Honolulu.

Tonight, after Jon wakes up from his nap, we will walk to the German Colony and look for some less wholesome food.