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Jerusalem Dome
Image by Premasagar

It takes a long time to get to Jerusalem from Seattle, especially if you’re planning your trip around the lowest ticket price. There are direct flights to Tel Aviv from New York, but I had a free one-way ticket to Brussels (also via New York), so I went there first. From Brussels, I bought a $300 ticket to Tel Aviv on an airline that I wasn’t sure was in existence, because according to Wikipedia, it goes back and forth between operating and bankruptcy every couple of years.

If you think that sounds a lot like the U.S. airlines, it is–except when the non-U.S. carriers go under, they don’t usually keep flying like the U.S. airlines do. Thankfully, when I went they were doing fine and everything worked out very well.

I traveled to Athens from Brussels, and had my first brief visit to Greece. My flight arrived in the afternoon, and the connection to Tel Aviv didn’t leave until 1:20 a.m. I went into the city by bus and walked around for a few hours.

The day before I was there, the police had clashed with some students in Syntagma Square. Unfortunately, when I arrived all the fun had ended and the square was quiet. After eating a quick dinner from a street vendor and wandering around, I went back to the airport and tried to sleep on a row of airport chairs for a few hours until boarding at 12:50 a.m. It was my second overnight flight in a row, but I stayed awake and read a book for most of it. I have never been good at sleeping on planes.

Jerusalem

I arrived at Tel Aviv airport after 3:30 a.m. local time. I checked my email using the airport’s free wi-fi since I wasn’t sure when I’d have internet access next, and then took a sherut (shared passenger van) for the 45-minute drive to Jerusalem.

I was dropped off at the Damascus Gate to the Old City a little before 5:00 a.m. My guesthouse was a 10-minute walk away, but because they didn’t open until 7:00, I had to wait. I managed to walk around much of the city with my bags just as everyone was waking up for prayers.

My first day in Jerusalem was on Shabbat, where everything closes down. I was worried that the place would be deserted, but I found the opposite: Jews in traditional dress were out and about beginning at sunrise, with many of them going to the Western Wall for prayers. I went too, but had to watch from a distance since I was carrying my bags and I didn’t have the required head covering.

After finally dropping off my bags and having breakfast, I walked around for five more hours since I couldn’t officially check in until lunchtime. When I finally did get my room after traveling for two days, I took a shower and laid down on the bed for a short nap. Seven hours later, I woke up and everything was dark outside. Whoops—so much for the proper method of jet leg recovery.


Image by excauboi

The Death of the Palestinian Taxi Driver

Before I left Jerusalem, I spent a couple days seeing the Old City and getting over the jet lag I had acquired from changing ten time zones and taking back-to-back overnight flights to get there. I saw a lot of sights, did a lot of walking, and so on, but the event I remember most is my conversation with a Palestinian taxi driver.

Most taxi drivers, like many service employees in Jerusalem, are Palestinian. In addition to Arabic, they generally speak enough Hebrew and English to converse. While we were riding along, my driver told me that yesterday another taxi driver had been killed by the Israeli police.

He said the taxi driver was stopped at a police check-point and beaten with sticks. Apparently a number of witnesses saw the event and claimed that the man was unarmed and non-violent. He died a few hours later at the hospital, and naturally the close-knit service community was distraught. I expressed my condolences.

That evening I read the Israeli version of the story in an English newspaper. It was predictable enough: the taxi driver was transporting a Syrian woman who was in the country illegally. The driver resisted arrest, and was beaten. There was no mention of why he was beaten so severely that he died later, and no claim of him being armed.

The article was short, and included a brief sentence that the Palestinian community was “concerned.” My sense was that they were more than just concerned; they were outraged, but their response was not covered in any more detail than the one sentence about being concerned.

Hearing the taxi driver tell me about this, and reading the Israeli write-up later, served as an appropriate, although certainly not pleasant, introduction to the region. It also made me wish for the chance to venture away from “occupied Palestine” as the Arabs call Israel. I had hoped to visit Gaza or the West Bank before leaving Israel, but the territories were unsafe during my visit.

Instead, I went to Jordan.

From Jerusalem to Amman - A Long 44 Kilometers

The direct route from Jerusalem to Amman, Jordan is only 44 kilometers, but it took me more than 8 hours to make the crossing. It had been a while since I had been at overland border crossings, except in Europe, where you hardly notice you’ve changed countries. In Africa, and certainly in the Middle East, you notice. You also usually wait a long time on each side of the border.

Israel is one of the least popular countries in the world, politically speaking, and that reputation makes travel in the region more difficult than it would otherwise be. Because most other Mid-East countries do not have diplomatic relations with Israel, travelers going onwards from the country need to avoid getting any evidence of visits to Israel in their passports. Otherwise, you will be refused entry upon arrival almost anywhere you want to go to next.

It’s a long story, but to avoid having any Israeli or Jordanian border stamps in my passport, I had to travel in the opposite direction from the easiest and quickest crossing into Jordan. Instead of heading across the direct route, I took a bus with twenty chain-smoking Israeli soldiers about 100 kilometers north. I was then dropped off in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, but turned out to be only 5 miles from a border crossing that I could take without getting any stamps.

After waiting at least half an hour, a taxi showed up to take me to the border. The proceedings on both sides of the border (leaving Israel and entering Jordan) took another two hours, most of it spent waiting around for the right immigration people to show up. When they did show up, no one seemed interested in what I had been doing in Israel or why I was going to Jordan. Apparently, they don’t get a lot of business up that way.

Welcome to Jordan - northern border crossing

Border Crossing in Northern Jordan

When I finally cleared immigration and entered Jordan, I was two hours north of Amman due to the roundabout entry point. A service taxi took me and another solo traveler through the countryside and down to the capital city. After changing taxis at the bus station, I finally made it to my guesthouse just before sunset.

I spent three days each in three cities in Jordan (Amman, Madaba, and Wadi Musa), walking around and talking with people. I saw the usual sights, with the ancient city of Petra being the most inspiring, but I traveled without plans before returning to Amman the morning of my departure. From Amman, I went on to Dubai for an adventure driving through the United Arab Emirates before flying back to Europe and then the U.S.

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