Day 11 Jaffa and Tel Aviv
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2008
1
11
15
Trip End
Apr 05, 2008
Tel Aviv,
Tel Aviv,
Israel
Monday, March 31, 2008
By name Jaffa is where all the yummy oranges come from, yet I couldn't spot a single citrus tree. The ancient port town has long been swallowed up by metropolitan Tel Aviv. It still has some Medieval charm in the winding alleys between the sand-stone facades of the towering portside houses, the church of St Peter and the calls to prayer from the many minarets. Yet I was somewhat disappointed by its small size.
It was now time to bid farewell to Steffen who had to return home. He was dearly missed thereafter, especially in our nightly games of Ligretto and Solo.
Udo then gathered all his courage to drive through the crowded streets of Tel Aviv to visit his friend Zvi Bacharach and Zvi's wife Hannah
St Peter's church, Jaffa
. Now driving is something Israelis are not good at. They have driving schools, but the vast majority of drivers on the road can't have spent a lot of time there (if they went at all). If there are no traffic lights (which are generally heeded), the law of brute force reigns. Whoever honks their horn most ferociously, curses loudest and inches furthest onto an intersection eventually has successfully fought for his or her right of passage. And they can't park. We've seen quite a few people just pull up diagonally across two handicapped parking spaces just to jump out and amble into the local supermarket (sometimes armed, as mentioned above).Zvi, on the other hand, doesn't have a car. He doesn't need one because he lives near train and bus stations as well as the beach. He's just about to turn 80, is an Auschwitz survivor, a pioneering settler in Israel and a professor of history specialising in the Holocaust. It was an absolute honour to meet this very humble man and his wife over coffee and cake and listen to his stories. I still feel enlightened and blessed by the experience.
We concluded the day with a stroll along Tel Aviv's endless beach, a snack and a sunset beer.
