Thanksgiving in Tel Aviv
Trip Start
May 07, 2005
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61
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Trip End
Ongoing
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Tel Aviv,
Israel
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Dave
We made a snap decision to leave Nuweiba a day early so we could have an extra day to travel to Petak Tekvah, a suburb of Tel Aviv where we would spend Thanksgiving. We learned that the bus to Taba would leave at 9:30 so we did a superfast checkout. We were held up because the credit card reader was grumpy (nothing is easy in Egypt). Also just as we left the hotel the instructor from the dive school chased us down and told us she forgot part of the bill for the diving. I didn't have enough cash to pay the difference so we had to use the hotel credit card reader which cost an extra 5%. The manager ran the credit card a few times and kept getting a strange error message. I realized that the reader refused to accept my card twice on the same day so I had to give him the backup credit card. This all took a long time and we expected to miss our bus. Fortunately we got a cab and arrived right before the bus left.
The ride to Taba was pleasant although the coast was littered with resort hotels in various stages of completion. In Taba we picked a promising direction and found ourselves at the Israeli border.
Leaving Egypt was painless but the Israel border control was tough! First they asked what had happened to Kim's passport (it had been washed). Then she got interrogated twice about being born in Morocco. I overheard her listing states and thought they had asked something like, "if you really are American name 10 states" but she was just giving them the history of where she had lived.
Cat Attack!
I had a relatively easy time although they did examine my belt very carefully and swabbed my pack for chemicals.When we crossed the border our first welcome sight was a water fountain! After buying bottled water in Egypt it was sooo good. While waiting for the bus a cab driver offered to take us for the same price as a bus ticket. What a difference from Egypt where the bus drivers sometimes try to charge taxi prices.
In Eilat we changed money, had an awesome felafel, and checked email before taking the five hour bus to Tel Aviv. It was strange and intimidating to see men and women with machine guns on the bus. Israel is the only country that forces women to serve in the military. The ride was fairly nice. It was interesting to see the patches of perfectly aligned trees in the middle of the desert.
Our first impression was how tight the security was. We thought Egypt was tight with checkpoints between each town but Israel goes so far as to have checkpoints at every mall! And the eerie thing is to see people pass through with knives and machine guns. You just feel something is wrong when they are looking for things more dangerous than machine guns!
We got to our hostel. It was the first hostel that really felt like a hostel and not a budget hotel. There were scungy people and lazy dogs watching TV in the common room. I overheard one person being informed that paying for half an hour of internet wasn't enough to qualify for free coffee. The walls and doors had spacey paintings that reminded me of a Yes album cover.
Dave Gets Picked Up
Our room wasn't bad except it was on the intersection of the two busiest streets in Tel Aviv and was noisy.The next day we wandered around and mostly hung out on the beach until we were ready to find Amy and Larry's house.
Thanksgiving (Kim)
We got instructions from Amy over the phone on how to get to their apartment. Part of it involved taking a bus and getting off at some landmark and part involved a short hike through a neighborhood. Petach Tekvah is a largish suburb about an hour bus ride from Tel Aviv. We had decided for this mini trip from Egypt to travel extremely light. I was glad for that because we got lost (as usual) on our short hike to the apartment. An older lady with a New York accent tried to help us out. She did point us in the right direction after giving us a short lecture about the merits of knowing where to go.
Meeting strangers is always just a little intimidating. Meeting your husband's old friends in Israel is probably slighter more so. Amy is a highschool friend that Dave has kept up with over the years mostly through email and at a highschool reunion. I think even for him it might have been a little nerve wracking to meet up with someone after so many years. All that was unfounded. Amy and her husband Larry turned out to be a great and funny couple. They are expecting their first baby in a few months.
We were invited to join in on the massive effort to prepare Thanksgiving for more than 30 people! That made me feel right at home instantly.
Dave On Beach With Tea and Laptop
I love to cook. Amy, Larry, and their friend Nathaniel were all excellent in the kitchen. Both Dave and I were completely clueless as to how a Kosher kitchen is maintained so we got a crash course in that as well. Basically, you keep dairy and meat dishes/utensils separate. There are 2 sets of everthing including 2 different sinks to wash dishes. There may be more to it than this but this was the big concept I picked up out of all of this. There is a category called "parv" which is something like neutral. Parv foods are allowed to use either kind of dish. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable when people go through a lot of trouble to be respectful of my personal diet. I mostly eat a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet and I eat fish. I felt pretty low maintenance after seeing the extent to which others will go to respect the religious beliefs of another's diet. I got the chance to help out with the baking. Amy has some great recipes including one Austin, TX recipe from Threadgills. We made pecan and apple pies, orange bisquits, 2 large turkeys, grilled veggies (a Larry speciality), stuffing with homemade chickenbroth, garlic mash potatoes, fish for Kim :), marshmellow yams, and the list goes on... Everyone who came also brought something. We knew we had died and gone to heaven! After our paltry diet in Egypt for the previous week this was such a treat! Amy and Larry have a special voice over IP phone (like Skype) that has a great connection. Calls to the US were free so we ended up talking to friends and family for several hours that night. Another rare treat as calling the USA has largely been inconvenient and at times costly. We stuffed ourselves silly that night, met lots of neat Israelis and stayed an extra day to help eat up leftovers. All in all it was a fantastic, relaxing and calorie ridden experience much like our cruise :)
