Sockhopper
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As a Londoner, I visited Jerusalem for a month in 1980 and stayed in an hotel in its Old City (an ex-convent with Gothic windows) offered by an ordinary British travel agent. While there, I took advantage of an evening offered to tourists who signed up to spend an evening one-to-one with a local in his/her home. This really interested me! The local assigned to me was a librarian who lived in the New City. Good start. But I was subjected to that woman making racist comments about Arabs. She was appalled that a white English-speaking visitor would stay in the Old City. She told me I must never eat in its restos because their food was all dirty and that I'd get very sick because they try to poison the water. (I told her I'd been eating 'falafel' for 2 weeks already and felt fine as a vegetarian who needed a non-animal source of protein!) I felt used for a political agenda. She'd just assumed that whomever she got as a guest would support and advance her prejudices! I tried to redirect the conversation to what I'd seen, been doing and liked and what she liked but to no avail. So I shut up, listened politely and left after an hour of being indoctrinated apparently for my own good.
Another day, I visited a famous Jewish piazza in the new town that's mentioned in travel guides to see. The piazza was empty-nowhere to sit over a drink, no bench, just some nice old apartment buildings (no landscaping, plants or statuary, blank) around its edges so I took 2 photos and left. As I entered a street exiting it, an old, long-robed bearded man started railing at me in Hebrew and nearly spitting at me while gesticulating with one arm straight up in the air. I was the only person in sight. I didn't know why he was doing this or what I must have done wrongly. I think he was standing next to a synagogue and was a rabbi. I guessed he was telling me off for not wearing long sleeves in 'his' area. There were no warning signs of such a thing. I was dressed in long pants and a short-sleeved crew-necked tee. The only skin showing was my arms, hands and face.
I walked back heading towards the New Town's centre looking for a place to have a cold drink on the way. The cafes all had only men in Hasidic dress sitting on tall bar stools at counters (nary a woman in any of them). They wouldn't serve me. There was nowhere for me until I got back to the main market area. All I found for a vegetarian meal was an all-American pizzeria, the latest 'hot' thing to eat in Jerusalem. .
Another night, I went to a cinema in the New City just because it had a film playing in English. It happened to be about a Palestinian boy aged about 12 trying to provide for his siblings. He was determined to succeed. When he answered a question about the difficulties he encountered, the whole audience of adults went 'Ahhhhhhhhhh' all together at once in that "I'm supposed to feel sorry for you, oh how AWFUL life is for you, dear!" That shocked me. I just didn't think they'd respond that way were the kid an European gypsy or orphan.
In the Old City, nobody raised politics or pressured me in the least to be on one side or other of THE problem. Nobody there criticized my travel choices. There, I was just a curious, affable traveler in my early '30's. One man in the Old City repaired my travel iron for me. Another, a photographer, saved my camera film's pics I'd been taking from being completely destroyed. What he did was very difficult and iffy. I could eat anywhere I wanted there. I rode in a shared taxi to Jericho with people who aren't of my religion or culture and who got out of the cab at camps in the bare desert. They'd been grocery-shopping in Jerusalem. Never did they expect me to be more than a respectful traveler.
I grew up having many Jewish friends in Canada. We had so much fun and shared jokes. So did all our parents. My first date was with a Jewish classmate whose dad drove us to a grown-up restaurant and later home. My husband (much later!) had grown up in Australia in the same social climate and experiencing what I had in this regard.
I've stayed in some bad-looking places, in bad hotels with no more than a light bulb in the ceiling and I've also had a staffed 40-room chateau in the Alps to myself for a month. I've lived in an African town with a child. I've used a toilet once not fit for humans or animals. I've spent a week in the old USSR with almost nothing to eat other than the 2 chocolate bars I'd brought from home and sips of vodka from a bottle in stairwells as a 'guest' of young people my age. But as rich with history and as interesting as Jerusalem is, it is the only city that I will never return to. I hope no 'plane I take anywhere doesn't have to land there on account of some technical problem.
Another day, I visited a famous Jewish piazza in the new town that's mentioned in travel guides to see. The piazza was empty-nowhere to sit over a drink, no bench, just some nice old apartment buildings (no landscaping, plants or statuary, blank) around its edges so I took 2 photos and left. As I entered a street exiting it, an old, long-robed bearded man started railing at me in Hebrew and nearly spitting at me while gesticulating with one arm straight up in the air. I was the only person in sight. I didn't know why he was doing this or what I must have done wrongly. I think he was standing next to a synagogue and was a rabbi. I guessed he was telling me off for not wearing long sleeves in 'his' area. There were no warning signs of such a thing. I was dressed in long pants and a short-sleeved crew-necked tee. The only skin showing was my arms, hands and face.
I walked back heading towards the New Town's centre looking for a place to have a cold drink on the way. The cafes all had only men in Hasidic dress sitting on tall bar stools at counters (nary a woman in any of them). They wouldn't serve me. There was nowhere for me until I got back to the main market area. All I found for a vegetarian meal was an all-American pizzeria, the latest 'hot' thing to eat in Jerusalem. .
Another night, I went to a cinema in the New City just because it had a film playing in English. It happened to be about a Palestinian boy aged about 12 trying to provide for his siblings. He was determined to succeed. When he answered a question about the difficulties he encountered, the whole audience of adults went 'Ahhhhhhhhhh' all together at once in that "I'm supposed to feel sorry for you, oh how AWFUL life is for you, dear!" That shocked me. I just didn't think they'd respond that way were the kid an European gypsy or orphan.
In the Old City, nobody raised politics or pressured me in the least to be on one side or other of THE problem. Nobody there criticized my travel choices. There, I was just a curious, affable traveler in my early '30's. One man in the Old City repaired my travel iron for me. Another, a photographer, saved my camera film's pics I'd been taking from being completely destroyed. What he did was very difficult and iffy. I could eat anywhere I wanted there. I rode in a shared taxi to Jericho with people who aren't of my religion or culture and who got out of the cab at camps in the bare desert. They'd been grocery-shopping in Jerusalem. Never did they expect me to be more than a respectful traveler.
I grew up having many Jewish friends in Canada. We had so much fun and shared jokes. So did all our parents. My first date was with a Jewish classmate whose dad drove us to a grown-up restaurant and later home. My husband (much later!) had grown up in Australia in the same social climate and experiencing what I had in this regard.
I've stayed in some bad-looking places, in bad hotels with no more than a light bulb in the ceiling and I've also had a staffed 40-room chateau in the Alps to myself for a month. I've lived in an African town with a child. I've used a toilet once not fit for humans or animals. I've spent a week in the old USSR with almost nothing to eat other than the 2 chocolate bars I'd brought from home and sips of vodka from a bottle in stairwells as a 'guest' of young people my age. But as rich with history and as interesting as Jerusalem is, it is the only city that I will never return to. I hope no 'plane I take anywhere doesn't have to land there on account of some technical problem.
