MT. ZION HOTEL, JERUSALEM, ISRAEL -- Finally, a free hour. Myself and two roommates, in a dome-roofed room in this hotel facing Mt. Zion, are getting our first rest of the day after a very interesting tour of the Old City of Jerusalem. We walked the path Jesus Christ himself was said to walk when he arrived in Jerusalem, and then we walked the path he walked to his death with a cross attached to his back.
Visiting Japan in recent years, I've been amazed by the age of many of the things you can see. America's just a baby nation. As we began our day, we looked at the wall hosting Damascus Gate, and our Israeli guide Ofer pointed out dryly that it is "only 450 years old." Right. I'm only 23 years old. Christianity itself is only somewhere around 2,000 years old. The things we're seeing here go back even further.
We took in so much information today, so many dates and names I might have learned in church -- had I been paying attention -- that frankly I'm overloaded and struggling to digest it all. The feeling began from the moment the bus left the airport in Tel Aviv after our 3 a.m. arrival from Poland. Looking out the window at the night, I thought to myself ... "I'm really in Israel?"
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As soon as the El Al Airlines checkin counter prepared to open for bussiness at Warsaw's airport yesterday, Polish police officers with large guns began roaming around. One to the left. Another to the right. One more on the balcony overlooking the checkin area. El Al takes security incredibly seriously.
And why not. Some people in the world would die to blow up an El Al flight. So they make sure it doesn't happen. Once they let you in to the fenced off security area, an agent starts asking all kinds of questions. "How did you get into the editor's group?" "Do you know anyone in Israel?" "Do you know anyone from Arab countries? -- Did any of them know you were coming to Israel?" Then, because we told them that we hadn't watched our bags for every moment of the day before checkin, we had to look through them in front of an agent to make sure nobody put a bomb in there.
Then, once the hard part was over, the agent said my new Komodo sandals are very, very popular in Israel. This morning, walking down the hallway of the hotel, we saw two people with matching sandals.
...
Like I said, we arrived in Israel at 3 a.m. Monday. Three hours later, a U.N. authored cease-fire took effect. There's no telling if it will last, and there's already been violence in the region. This morning, our first speaker was Gill Hoffman of The Jerusalem Post, an English language daily with an audience made up mostly of people outside of Israel, more Christians than Jews. He said that the cease-fire also will signal an end to unitity among Israeli politicians and the people, who so far have expressed strong support for the government's course of action in the current conflict. In the Israeli parliament, he said, it's a rare occurence when the prime minister doesn't get heckled. Now that the IDF has stopped its campaign, the fireworks in the halls of government are ready to begin.
And a quick note on the war and its effects -- while we havn't left Jerusalem, we're far enough away from the war zone that things are running pretty much as normal as they can in Israel. There are no air-raid sirens, no bomb-shelter briefings, not even an armed guard somebody told me there would be (either they were joking about that, the guard comes along for only certain parts of the trip, or they no longer have a guard). We're safe, but of course, we're always in a group and we can't leave the hotel. So this isn't exaclty a standard vacation.
And a quick note on the war and its effects -- while we havn't left Jerusalem, we're far enough away from the war zone that things are running pretty much as normal as they can in Israel. There are no air-raid sirens, no bomb-shelter briefings, not even an armed guard somebody told me there would be (either they were joking about that, the guard comes along for only certain parts of the trip, or they no longer have a guard). We're safe, but of course, we're always in a group and we can't leave the hotel. So this isn't exaclty a standard vacation.
...
At the end of our walk through the Old City of Jerusalem, we had a few moments to do some shopping in an Arab shopping district. We walked through a crowded space between buildings, with shop after shop on both sides, salesmen begging you to come into their store, handing you things to look at, pushing for you to buy, buy, buy.
Our guides warned us that you absolutely must try to bargain in this kind of market. They say something is 20 Shekels (about $4), you might counter with an offer of 15 Shekels. Maybe you settle somewhere in the middle. This is not a skill I have in the arsenel. I'm used to shopping in places where the price is the price and there's no deal to be made. At McDonald's, I don't try to haggle them down to 49 cents for a cheeseburger, though I think we could agree, that's a reasonable price.
I probably got hosed to today. As I looked at an item I wanted to buy as a gift, I asked the salesman for its price. He stalled. He didn't tell me. He wanted to know about how much money I had. I didn't outright tell him, but I pulled out my cash to look myself. I broke a rule. I should have known how much I have, how much I'm willing to spend, and how much I'm going to pretend I have. Eventually, after he'd probably had a nice look at my wad of cash, he told me the item is $35. Yeah. Right. I had about $15 left in a combination of currency (almost anywhere here accepts U.S. Dollars) and he accepted it and wrapped up the item. Did I get hosed? I'll never know. But I learned a few thigns about the Arab street. (Yes, this is Israel, but about 20 percnet of the population here are Israeli Arabs.)
Our guides warned us that you absolutely must try to bargain in this kind of market. They say something is 20 Shekels (about $4), you might counter with an offer of 15 Shekels. Maybe you settle somewhere in the middle. This is not a skill I have in the arsenel. I'm used to shopping in places where the price is the price and there's no deal to be made. At McDonald's, I don't try to haggle them down to 49 cents for a cheeseburger, though I think we could agree, that's a reasonable price.
I probably got hosed to today. As I looked at an item I wanted to buy as a gift, I asked the salesman for its price. He stalled. He didn't tell me. He wanted to know about how much money I had. I didn't outright tell him, but I pulled out my cash to look myself. I broke a rule. I should have known how much I have, how much I'm willing to spend, and how much I'm going to pretend I have. Eventually, after he'd probably had a nice look at my wad of cash, he told me the item is $35. Yeah. Right. I had about $15 left in a combination of currency (almost anywhere here accepts U.S. Dollars) and he accepted it and wrapped up the item. Did I get hosed? I'll never know. But I learned a few thigns about the Arab street. (Yes, this is Israel, but about 20 percnet of the population here are Israeli Arabs.)
posted by Dan @ 7:48 AM
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