Strange things happen

Jerusalem, 7:45 AM

Sometimes the luck in finding a ride leads to unexpected consequences. I'll meet my host after 6 PM. Mmh, that means ten hours roaming in Jerusalem. OK, let's find a place to drop the backpack and then a nice place to have breakfast!

But this is Israel: you cannot drop your luggage anywhere. I mean it. The police will come and blow your backpack just before you realise that it is raining underwear. Your underwear!

After one hour or so, I recognise a desperate glance coming from under a huge backpack: another CouchSurfer is facing the no-drop feature of this place! We decide to have a breakfast in the old city while looking for a solution.

Walking the Holy City. The holiest place on Earth — at least for a handful of different religions.

We feel the holiness raising as we approach the old city, in terms of amount of religious symbols on sale: here you can buy any kind of sacred item, ranging from Coptic Orthodox necklaces to FC Barcelona t-shirts! (I am pretty sure that there were also gondola-lamps somewhere, but to actually find it would be too depressing!)

Climbing the Via Dolorosa carrying a heavy burden makes you think all sort of strange things …

But eventually we sit on a nice café and with great relief for my soul, the morning starts looking kind of familiar :-)

—
Photos of Jerusalem here.

Hitch hiking in the desert

My two days in Tel Aviv are fast and intense. After the first night clubbing I found myself crashed in somebody else's couch with my original host and another friend. The second day I awake in a couch full of sand without any clue. But for some reason everybody I meet seems to remember me from the beach party in the preceding night. I tend to associate this behaviour with the social capabilities of the arak :-)

Anyway, a series of coincidences — typical of the hospitality-exchange world — lead me on the next day to a small kibbutz on the Dead sea (the relevant photos are here).

But the amazing discovery is that you can easily hitch hike to almost every place in Israel! You just wait in a some big junction — even in the middle of the desert! (Check the picture and count the cars on sight :-)

And you will realise soon that all class of people can pick you up: from the young religious to the SUV-family to the hippie couple in a dark green Punto (by the way, a big thank you goes to the Indian girl who translated the hindi inscriptions on my yellow bag).

So I grab my casetta and I start flashing the drivers approaching my spot with big smiles, and in virtually no-time I found myself in front of the walls of Jerusalem!

Welcome to the Holy Land

Bump!

I wake up when the plane hit the land — I mean the Holy Land :-) — and I start looking around me: I'm alone in the last row, the only goy in a plane full of happy and noisy Israeli families coming back from their Turkish holidays — the Shekel is kinda high, these days ….

My thought goes to the preceding hours — and I feel the nightmare slowly fading away. I arrived from Olimpos to Antalya very late the night before, I woke up early and I went to the airport. Turkey did not want to let me go: after discovering that I cannot go to Israel via Cyprus (because you cannot pass the border from North to South, and from Turkey you can only go to the Northern part) I somehow managed to sneak in an Israeli return charter. But, alas! the girl at the travel agency forgot to add my name to the flight list. After a couple of hours of frantic phone calls eventually I passed the check-in. Three minutes before it closed.

So, this is how Israel looks: … nice!

After discovering that I can pay the train ticket (2.50 €) with my credit card The Big Smile shows up on my face! And it gets wider when, first on the train and then on the bus, I realise that almost everyone — including the elder and the young — speaks English.

I happily settle down on my couch in Yafo while I let the hot air, the smells and the sounds of Middle-East slowly soak my body. In a few hours I realise that it will be hard to leave this place.

—
As usual, more photos of Tel Aviv here.

Blue is my favourite colour …

… as in sky and sea!

The mighty SummerCamp in beautiful Naxos (Paros, Sexos) ended, and I moved my casetta to Syros, but it was only for having a real sleep — after a week between no-sleeping and sleeping-on-the-floor — and for doing the laundry.

After that was Samos! Due to the lack of CSers there, I opted for an hotel, made sure it had an internet connection, rented a small motorbike and went for the wild-and-deserted-beaches tour.

The results are posted here below :-)

For some reason the blue in Greece seems bluer than elsewhere, thus I'm planning a little come-back on the next week.

More photos of Samos here.

Stay tuned for more blue!

Μέγας Αλέξανδρος

I have a list of things to do in Thessaloniki:

1. go to the Ano Poli


2. watch the sunset from the church with the peafowls


3. watch the sunset from the Λεωφόρος Νίκης


4. have a giros at Snoopy's

So far, I did #1 and #3, and I'm afraid that #4 will remain unchecked, because good ol' Snoopy seems to have moved from the waterfront :-(



I'm now in a bar on Leoforos Nikis, waiting to join a CSers mini-meeting, sipping the obligatory omnipresent frappé (technically, mine is a frappé skéto megála).

Treviso, close to Venice

After the first two nights in Budapest I had to change host. After a while that I was moving my casetta all around Budapest, I decided to just stop, have a beer, and — with a bit of luck — connect to some wireless connection waiting for my host to come home.

So, once arrived in my new host area, I chose a nice-looking bar. I asked the bartender about a wireless connection and she pointed me to the bar on the other side of the street. But, having been the bartender so nice to me, I just moved on the seat that were closer to that other bar, opened my laptop and checked the signal: it was fairly good.


After a while the other bartender noticed my computer, and smiled telling me that he has one too. We started the usual chat — where are you from, this is your first time in Budapest, how long you'll stay here, and so on — but when I was going with my good old « Treviso … — three seconds pause, just in case — … close to Venice » he smiled and said: « Ah, Treviso, I've been there! »

I almost fell off the chair, and asked more about it. It sorted out that fifteen years ago he and his wife used to go to Treviso to buy leather jackets, that in Hungary were too expensive!

When you travel alone you get more chances of knowing interesting people. The chances of getting bored to deeath are also high, but let's look at the silver lining :-)

Just a starting point

I'm writing these lines in the plane to Madrid, going to attend the CS/HC First Madrid International Camp '08. Today is—for so to speak—the first day in this new phase of my life: yesterday I notified my boss about my decision to just quit and go somewhere else. And it was a relief. Really.

I'm now entering

— Step one —

the list

If you're planning a year-long trip around the world, it is probably a good idea to sit for moment and try figuring out what you need for your trip—and what you don't. I'm going to fill two lists: one for the stuff that I'll need during the trip, and one for writing down stuff that I'll be tempted to bring over, but probably can avoid.

— Step one —

the list

the lists

O.K. I need a third list: the to-do list, for things like passport and such. I'll call this one the Count-Down List.

This is what I have in it so far:

1. Sandals


2. Bank


3. Insurance
   
   
   
   • Car (stop)
   
   
   • Health (start)
   
   


4. Passport
   
   
   
   • Foto (with and without beard)
   
   
   • Visas
   
   


5. Backpack


6. Laptop (?)


7. Blood exams


8. Vaccinations


9. Travel plan (at least a rough one)


10. …

Phew! I feel like this is only the tip of the iceberg, but I'll try to fill this one, first.

Any idea about stuff I should definitely do before leaving will be very appreciated.