Israeli drivers, no survivors!

Kinneret, May 14, 2001.

Shalom, manis-ma?

Er, I mean, "G'day, what's happening?". I'm starting to pick up bits and
pieces of the language (aside from the neat swearwords); of course I'm
leaving in a couple of weeks but hey, I'll be a hit in the bagel bars of
New York.

The Subject: line is a reference to last weekend where Osnat and I hired
a car and went driving around the Golan Heights. We didn't get bombed,
rocketed or shot at by the Syrians and we didn't jump on any land mines,
and although driving on the wrong side of the road was a little freaky
to start off with I managed it ok. More on that later though, first some
hilarious news.

You all of course remember my arsehole landlord from London, one Mr
Steven Farquhar, who attempted to raise my rent by forty quid a week
three weeks before my lease was up, then attempted to evict me when I
told him where to shove it, then went and subtracted his forty quid a
week from my bond before he attempted to give it back? How could you all
forget? Well, you're gonna love this one (I do :-).

In Jerusalem I met an English girl named Sara, who was incidentally one
of the people who convinced me to come to kibbutz Kinerret. In any case,
 we were talking at one point and she said that her Dad was (in her own
words) "a crooked lawyer". I asked her if he knew any heavies, as I had
an ex-landlord who I needed shaken down as he owed me money. She said
"No problem, just email me his name and address, he does this sort of
thing all the time!" and so I did. When she went back to the UK she
spoke to Daddy. And the other day she emailed me and said that the cash
had arrived on Daddy's desk that morning! You beauty!

The funny thing is that apparently they didn't even have to lay a finger
on him. They just showed up and he immediately folded, with the cash
arriving a couple of days later. So thanks very much to Daddy's debt
collection service ("If they don't soil themselves first time, it's
free!") and serendipity. When I actually get hold of the cash myself I
think I'm going to use some of it to give Steve a ring on the phone and
congratulate him for finally seeing the error of his avaristic ways. Or
would that be *too* smug? In any case, a happy ending and a landlord who
may think twice about trying to screw over his tennants again.

So with that happy news in mind last Thursday I went and collected a
Suzuki Baleno from Eldan Rent-a-car in Tiberias and headed off with
Osnat into the wild green landmine-studded yonder of the Golan heights.
I haven't ever driven on the wrong (right?) hand side of the road
before, and I hadn't driven anything anywhere in the last twelve months
(modulo a tractor in first gear) so the first couple of hours were
interesting. It wasn't that bad really; driving on the right hand side
isn't too hard as your orientation to the center of the road is the same
(since the car is left-hand drive). I found roundabouts freaky and still
do, I never had any idea of who I had to give way to and where the
traffic was going to come from but in practise it didn't come up so all
was ok.

Osnat has absolutely *no* sense of direction so her job was to keep
watch and yell out "RIGHT HAND SIDE! RIGHT HAND SIDE!" if I had a
momentary lapse of concentration when pulling out from a deserted
intersection. Fortunately it didn't happen. Too often. Unfortunately
this also meant that as well as drive I had to do most of the
navigating. This is difficult as I can't read Hebrew. Though the road
signs were all bilingual there were a couple of places where the English
transliteration on the sign, in the Lonely Planet *and* the map that
came with the car were all different. This doesn't help. But that was by
no means the greatest cause of us spending much more time going in
circles than I would have preferred...

All the roads here are numbered, and as they use the same symbols for
numbers over here you'd expect that would help, and it would have.
Except for the fact that in many places you had to stop at a T
intersection and *turn a corner* to stay on the same bloody road! How
f*cking stupid is that? So you look at the map and to get to such and
such a place you have to stay on road 89, so you drive straight ahead,
then you start seeing unfamiliar signs or you've driven much farther
than you should have, then you finally do see a sign that tells you
you're now on road 898 and half way to bloody Damascus. So you pull a
"u-ie" and head back a few km to the intersection you ignored because
you thought you had to go straight and you realise you had to turn left
to keep going the same way. Very bloody annoying.

The other cause of going in circles was the fact I didn't have any city
maps. I was driving around Tiberias for three quarters of an hour just
trying to get out onto the road around the lake. That was a bummer and
quite frustrating. But aside from those small problems I really did
enjoy driving for the first time in ages and we both had a good time.

The first afternoon we went around the Sea of Galilee and visited a few
Christian holy sites -- the alleged sites of Mary Magdelene's birth, the
sliced white and tinned tuna trick and St Peter's job interview. Osnat,
being Jewish had of course not heard any of these stories before which
initially seemed quite wierd -- everyone knows about the loaves and
fishes. But no, it's from the second bit of the book that these guys
don't acknowledge. I tried to explain them to her but I think something
got lost in the translation -- Mary Magdelene went from a redeemed
fallen woman who annointed Jesus hands and feet to a whore who gave
Jesus a handjob. And the loaves and fishes story wasn't special, the
locals have picnics on the shores of Lake Kinerret all the time. *sigh*

After night fell we found a town to have dinner in (it just hit me why
all the pizzas over here are vegeterian -- cheese and meat together
aren't kosher, argh!) and then decided to stay at the guest house in a
kibbutz that should have been no more than 10 minutes drive away. Twenty
minutes later we ended up half way to Lebanon and found a completely
different kibbutz guest house to stay in. This was all good though, it
was a very nice place ("Kfar Blum"). When we arrived (at about 9 or
10pm, very tired) just out side reception there were a heap of rather
merry middle-aged people dancing around to a moby-disc type DJ. I
requested a room as far away from them as possible :-). We got one, and
as we got toward it, we heard some very loud house music, which we
presumed was coming from the Kibbutz pub. Osnat wanted to have a bit of
a boogie, so after dumping our stuff we followed our ears.

... to the Kibbutz pool, where they had a DJ, lighting rig and bar set
up outside with a couple of hundred people of all shapes, sizes and
ages. After a while we worked out that it was some sort of family
reunion or something (this explained the three tour buses we'd seen
parked out the front) and Osnat identified them all as Russians. So we
helped ourselves to a beer each and people watched for a while before
going to bed.

The next day we went to the nearby Bet Hillel activities center and
kyaked down the Jordan river. It was about an hour and a half peaceful
float with the current, followed by a rapid (count it, one :-) and a
drenching when Osnat decided I hadn't gotten wet enough. After that we
went further north up to Nimrod Castle, a crusader fort with a
commanding view over the Golan. It was an interesting place; lotsa
rocks, bits of Arabic from when they'd cruised through the place and a
1200 year old toilet.

After there we tried to go up to mount Hermon; Israel's highest point
and Ski resort, but the Israeli Defense Force sign by the side of the
road which said "Don't come in here unless you tell us about it, this is
a strategic area and subject to occasional rocketing by the Syrians" was
a bit of a deterrent. We found another cute little guest house in a
nearby town after finding the kibbutz hotel we intended to go to was
full due to hosting a PCB manufacturer's "company holiday" (!). The
guest house was a winner though, the restaurant was fan-expletive-
tastic: non-kosher! I had chicken in a bacon and cream sauce! You've got
mo idea how you miss stuff like that until you can't have it.

The next day we went to Banias waterfall which was gorgeous. This was
what I'd imagined the Golan Heights to look like -- all green, verdant
and jungle-like down by the water, rather than the flat and shrubby
scenery you get from the road. The water doing the falling had come
straight down from snow melting on the side of Mt Hermon and as such was
crystal-pure and cold. Unfortunately it was also quite turbulent so you
weren't allowed to swim in it. Another feature of this park was the
Syrian tank which had been blown up and fallen down into the valley and
now sits (upside down) at the edge of the water. It looks quite strange
and makes for a good photo.

Finally we went down to Yehudia nature reserve where you *can* swim in
the waterfalls. Due to the turning-at-intersections-to-stay-on-main-road
problem it was a pain in the arse to find but when we did get there it
was worth it. There are several waterfalls at the park, the farthest and
most spectacular reached by a punishing two and a half hour walk and we
met many people on their way back who were trying to tell us "No, no,
turn back! You don't want to do this!" but as we only arrived late in
the afternoon we had only planned to go to the first one, about 45
minutes. It wasn't as clear as Banias nor quite as green and pretty, but
it was pretty enough and very invigorating after we'd both spent a day
driving around and getting lost.

The trip home was uneventful and I finally returned the car on Sunday
after work without a mishap. So I've now proved to myself that a) I can
still drive and b) I can drive on any side of the road I'm required to.
Navigating in foreign countries is still a bit of a challenge but I'll
get there. I'm really looking forward to going and doing a BMW driver
training course when I get to Germany. Especially considering the
difference between doing 80km/h (the limit over here, which I didn't
even exceed much) in a Baleno to doing a couple of hundred in an M5 (on
a skidpan, wearing a helmet, Mum!).

The intervening week has been fairly uneventful. I'm thoroughly sick of
cutting leaves in the bananas, but I got to carry a few days so that was
ok. I got to Vertigo again and the music was indeed the same as I had
been promised. One of the Americans discovering the perils of 8 shekel
vodka on the bus there (quote "I'm not unconscious!") provided amusement
however.

This weekend I have again come down to see Osnat. It was their version
of bonfire night and we went to a huge (and free) party at the Uni of
Tel Aviv which was fun. Salsa is amazingly popular over here for some
reason and I've been taught the first couple of basic steps. Yesterday
we also went and checked out the drum circle on at the beach there in
Tel Aviv that I had seen when I first came, Osnat had heard about it but
hadn't seen it before.

I think that's all the news (except for the incident where the guy who
picked us up hitching on the way back from Tel Aviv to Rehovot stopped
to do a drug deal on the way -- ILS 500 for 12 pills, apparently), so
I'll sign off this email which has been a whole week in the gestation.
As always, love to hear from you all and I'm looking forward to finally
getting to read the 20 or so messages I've got stacked up right now.
More from me next week after we go and see John Digweed at Pacha in Tel
Aviv next Friday. Yup, you heard right.

Cheers, Robert.