Memories and hints of a travelling IT professional.
When you follow the Dead Sea down to the south, half way between Ein Gedi and Sodom (yes, truly) you will find the escape fortress of Herod the Great on a plateau. The fortification has been built between the years 37 and 31 BCE for the event of an revolt and it received big significance for the Israelis by the siege of the Romans in 73/74 CE.
When you drive along the Dead Sea, shortly before Ein Gedi, the street leads you back from Palestine to Israel – and you have to face another IDF checkpoint. As I remembered those checkpoints from eastern Europe I prepared my passport and visa and waited for a tough questioning or thoroughly inspection.
If you leave Jerusalem to the east on motorway 1 you first pass an IDF checkpoint and see the wall separating both zones. If you don’t turn north to Jericho but continue towards the Dead Sea in the south you will first pass Qumran, well known for its findings in 1947. The Dead Sea Scrolls excavated during years of archaeological work are the second oldest scriptures and proved helpful in exegesis.
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According to the Bible Jesus was born in Bethlehem, now belonging to the Palestinian autonomy area in the Westbank. The place now marked as the birthplace has already been used from the 2nd century CE on. You can enter the Church of Nativity through a 1.20m high door – making every visitor bow down.
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If you want to go to Bethlehem from Jerusalem, you can simply watch out for a Palestinian taxi at the Damascus gate. Or if you are travelling by rental car you can enter the most important border crossing into your GPS: checkpoint 300. At this point you can park your car and get via taxi to the town – but be sure to negotiate the price before the ride.
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It is not a luxury hotel, it is a legend: The American Colony hotel in Jerusalem, only a ten minute walk away from the old town and a safe harbour and second home for travellers. It was founded because the grandfather of Sir Peter Ustinov, Baron Plato Grigorjewitsch Ustinow, was not fond of the Osman hotels where he had to stay during his visits to Jerusalem. Later, Graham Green, Richard Gere and Winston Churchill stayed at the American Colony. And it was also the place where T. E. Lawrence told his story about Lawrence of Arabia to a journalist.
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The motorway network of Israel is in really good condition. Driving from Tel Aviv-Yafo to Jerusalem needs 45 minutes from city center to city center. All road signs are in Hebrew, Arabic and English and there is only one toll road: number 6 leading along the Westbank from south to north. My car was registred for this service, I could simply drive through and was billed afterwards.
Going to a country where a language with an own alphabet is used is always fun for me – because it is often a challenge and you have to learn like a child again. In Israel, Hebrew (Ivrit) is the official language, though a lot of Arabic is spoken. Most signs are trilingual (Hebrew, Arabic, English) and a lot of people speak English. And if not: there is always someone immediatly starting to translate if you seem to be in need.
When listening carefully you might find an ancient language in Israel: Jiddish. The cuteness of this language might only be obvious to German speaking persons, because it is a very old derivate of our language. But nowadays some Jiddish words have already found their way into everyday English, especially in New York.
Tel Aviv is a very modern, western city. It is much more hedonistic and less religious then the rest of the country – but it also seems to be missing an ancient city center. In fact the name of the town is Tel Aviv-Yafo, its second part refering to the old town Jaffa being the germ cell of the city. Tel Aviv itself was built later on by settlers, dividing the land by plan to create a new town.