ni hao, it's nika on tour: 2016-05-29

After my 10 days road trip with my mom, (which you can reread just below this post on the same page) I had a gread rest of the month, met lots of fantastic new people and saw beatiful new places. These impressions make me love the country and its citizens more with every day! The time flies very fast and I dont want it to end. I especially learned to love Tel Aviv. After a few days spending time there in a raw, one start to wonder if there is such thing as a weekend. The city seems to be on permanent holiday and at any time of day or night one can saunter down a main street and find crowded cafes, joggers, beach bums and dog walkers. So many dogs here make the positive energy, I just love seing it! Business is casual and no-one owns a suit. While Jerusalimites flock to the holy sites, Tel Avivans hit the clubs. Kippas are swapped for sun visors, gefilte fish for sushi and quarried stone for poured concrete. The city combines its liberal, laissez faire attitude with low-level development and interconnected neighbourhoods. A short walk leads one from the glamorous beachside hotels to the exotic Yemenite Quarter to fashionable Rothschild Blvd.
To sum up the end of the moth, regardless of the fact that I worked pretty much to cover the holidays I took for travelling with my mom and to safe some of my holidays for the time my sister is coming, I managed to go out a lot and even travel to places like the West Bank (Palestinian theretory) as I was interested to experience how the people live there and see the nature of the desert around Jericho. I hiked in Wadi Qelt which is pure desert and scarifying calm when you are just two girls, but we let things float and made relations with beduines who took us up the rocks on their dunkies. That was a funny experience. We hiked all the way down to the beautiful monastery that is just inside one of the rocks. Being sweaty, tired and dirty of the dust, I was speechless having that view. After a water and view break we decided to walk to Jericho by feet, as there was no sound or sign of any bus stop to there and a hitchhike by donki was a seductive offer of a beduine but a little bit scaryfying too. After around 40 minutes of walk arriving in the city, we were warmly welcomed by some arab boys throwing stones at us and asking for money...not. It was a bad first experience of the city life in the West Bank, but thats the reality over there I guess. The children have no future prospects and are raised corrispondingly. We ran away from them until the long road to the city centre was empty again. The oldest continously inhabited city on the earth is also the lowest, at 260m elow sea level. The West Bank's largest and, in ways, most contentious Jewish settlement, Ma'ale Adumim, sprawls atop the hills outside of Jerusalem. We reached the center to buy some cold drinks and a huge bag of 15 pieces freshly baked Pita bread for unbelieveble 1 dollar, before taking the Sherut bus to Rammalah, where we took the bus back to Jerusalem again. Rammalah, a mere 15km north of Jerusalem, the city is free from dense politics and religious fervour. It was settled by Christians in the 1500s. Al-Bireh's history is traced to the Canaanites. But many of today's Ramallahns are refugees from 1948 who developed lives and livelihoods in exile. We bought some veggies and dips like humus and cheese at the amazing Ben Yehuda Shuk in the center and arrived extremely tired at the flat of other volonteers of our organization, who prepared a place to crash at for us. We took a shower, enjoyed our tasty food, played some cards games with the guys in the flat and fell in our bed completely dead. Having enough sleep and a relaxed breakfast we head to the next place in the West Bank we were interested in: Nablus. Situated in and around a lush spring valley between Mt Gerizim and rockz Mt Ebal, Nablus became a significant exporter of olive oil, cotton, soap and carob. The northern West Bank is still referred to by some Old Testament purists as Samaria, from which term "Samaritan" is derived. The way there and back took us longer than the stay there as the city is quite small and not that intersting. The cheap falafel in one of the uncountable restaurants and the cheap Shuk were the highlights. The An-Nasir Mosque is one of 30 mosques and provides one of the 30 minarets that point skyward from Nablus; its also a landmark at the corner of An-Nasir and Jamaa al-Kebir Sts. Arriving to Jerusalem pretty early and not too tired we decided to check out the light festival in the city which was about a few light shows close to the Damaskus Gate and a nice atmosphere. We walked around the Manilla Street listening to some street musicians playing the guitar and singing beautiful songs. Closer too the night I found out that a friend of mine from Tel Aviv is playing at a blues concert that I usually go to in Tel Aviv at the Bootleg club on the King George Street, called Blues and Booz. Spontaneously I decided to go there alone, as my friend was too tired and went to the flat of the other volonteers which is 40 min driving from the centre. I had a lot of fun this night, met cool new people and crashed at a new friends place as I missed the last bus to the flat. That was an amazing end of the short trip!