Ticking off Life Dreams

This might sound awfully presumptuous, but one of my romantic notions before coming to the Holy Land (TM) was to get to know the leftist/ peace movement to the extent that I could visit one of these beautiful people in their homes for dinner. This wasn't a concrete goal so much as a day-dream, and, like 95% of my Israel-related day-dreams, it came fantastically true.

My lovely supervisor was leaving Israel, hilariously on the same day as me, and this was her going away dinner. A big deal, given she had spent four years living there. This event was held at Jeff Halper's house - founding member of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. I felt pretty spesh indeed. I asked Jeff if it was okay if I photograph his house, he laughed and said yes, and I warned "you'll have to forgive me, because I'm really going to go paparazzi crazy here."

Sitting around drinking (far too much) wine and listening to the conversation was quite wonderful. It was switching between Hebrew and English, but (contrary to popular misconception) I found people were very accommodating to the English speakers present.

Jeff's home was truly welcoming, the food was delicious and the atmosphere was entirely relaxed. I will really miss the people involved in the Israeli peace movement; they might be a minority, but they are a particularly charming, engaging and persistent bunch.

HaCassetta has a Birthday

As I've mentioned before, Jerusalem is not a city known for it's nightlife - nearby Tel Aviv well and truly takes that prize. In saying that, perhaps coming from such a small town my bar is quite low, but I found the nightlife that did exist particularly charming and warm. It isn't hard to feel like everyone knows your name here.

One block in particular has the uber-trendy Uganda, named after the alternative state option for Israel and sister bars HaTaklit (the record) and HaCassetta (the cassette). There are rumours that HaIpod is on the way! This block was conveniently a 5 minute drunken stumble from my apartment and my flatmates would joke that HaTaklit is essentially "the lounge", as we didn't have one. This was particularly true one wonderful evening when they were put in charge of the music; they called the night "Wednesday I'm in Love" and played everything from 80s hits to Dolly Parton to Dizzie Rascal. Swoon!

While Hataklit is a large-ish, sports bar-ish area with photographs of famous visitors on the wall, including one of Rufus Wainwright which I regularly swoon at, HaCassetta is more like a little underground cave, as you can try to see above in my terrible photograph. All of these photos will be terrible, as I was rawther intoxicated. To see the famous doors covered in cassettes taken by someone who knew how to focus a camera, click here.

In any case, it's a wonderful place; everyone always talks to each other, the bar staff will happily play an entire Modern Lovers album on the stereo and the beer is cheap. And it was turning two!

Pictures of people I harassed below: Ishai (bar tender/ music chooser), Max (German student who hooked me up with contacts in Munich who will apparently feed me!), lovely art student (didn't catch his name) and the last photo is of long-suffering Inon (bartender/ music chooser) trying to do his job while I drunkenly pester him. Shame face.

Kadosh with Miri and Kristin

My number one favourite activity to do with friends is to wile away hours in cafes, ordering all kinds of trivial luxuries and gossiping, usually about romance. In Jerusalem, the perfect place for such a pursuit is Kadosh, a 41 year old cafe which serves everything from meals to the best cakes in Jerusalem.

Beautiful Kristin and Miri. Choosing time!

I win at ordering (I don't mean this in a competitive fashion, I just mean I order fantastic things habitually). This time: delightful cheesecake with cream and strawberries, and "apple cider" which in Jerusalem doesn't mean the alcoholic drink, but rather a hot spiced apple juice - at Kadosh they serve it with tiny bits of apple and a whole cinnamon stick. Swoon !

Having Money in Jerusalem

After well over a month of being broke in Jerusalem, it sure was a glorious day when I woke up to a bank account full of money. For weeks I had been surviving off pita bread, flatmates' generosity and the generosity of my family and of some particularly adorable friends. So, the first thing I wanted to do was pay one of these darlings back.

I strolled out into a sunny spring-like day only to stumble across these cuties blowing giant bubbles in Zion square, the site of a pro-Israel rally of some variety a few days earlier. I watched for ages and stuffed some of my new-found cash in their hat.

First priority: meet with beautiful Miri and give her a handful of owed cash. Not that Miri is the kind of person to care, but I sure did. Miri is from Germany but speaks English with a decidedly Southern American accent, after living in Texas for some time. She is a performance artist on exchange in Israel and tells the most detailed and surreal stories. True ones. Her company is absolutely never anything short of charmed.

We met in the cafe/ bookstore Tmol Shilshom. My lovely friend Bart had given me the 'mission' of going there and talking to a stranger. Instead, I forgot and spent the whole time talking to Miri. I did talk to a stranger at the next cafe though.

Almost overwhelmed with excitement, I ordered Shakshouka with goats cheese and eggplant, with bread and dips, and a coconut coffee. Am I over the top? Definitely yes.

I absolutely loved it all. The bread tasted just baked, the pesto was fresh and strong and the Shakshouka was perfect; full of cheese and giant. Thanks for the advice cute Bart.

After this we strolled to the Mahane Yehuda (market) where we sat in our favourite cafe and I drank mint tea. We started chatting to a charming older man, who turned out to be the owner and who gave us amazing coffee tequila shots, for free, at three in the afternoon. Then my friend, or rather - a local bartender, turned up and turned out to be the old man's son. Jerusalem really is that small.

On a different day, today actually, I strolled down to Damascus gate with my neighbour Matan who studies classical music and plays Bach on his piano so loudly I can hear it from my kitchen. He speaks beautiful German and says everything with such a straight face it's impossible to gauge how serious he is, or not. In any case, he is fantastic company and took me to this amazing - and cheap - diner where we got everything you see here for less than 60 shekelim ($20nz).

Vegetarians, look away.

Everyone else, just look at that chicken! Delicious!

Now: lying in bed trying to rest-up for HaCassetta's (one of my favourite bars) birthday party tonight, listening to piano sounds from downstairs and waiting for a Mad Men episode to load.

Gogol Bordello in Tel Aviv

Before coming to Israel, without knowing that one of the members of Gogol Bordello is Israeli, I sat in my kitchen in Dunedin, New Zealand and had a vivid day-dream about going to see Gogol Bordello play live in Tel Aviv.

For years, whenever people asked "which band would you most like to see live?" my answer has been Gogol Bordello. Not only was it obvious that their stage presence would blow all my previous experiences out of the water, but I've also got a massive heart entanglement with the music and with my solo travelling life. Sometimes, when I'm alone in a foreign place, I will fall prey to piercing loneliness or anxiety about my life direction. At times like that, a sure fix is to put on one of my life philosophy songs (like 'Ultimate') and stroll around my new city.

So, you can imagine my reaction when, within weeks of arriving in Jerusalem, Noa runs out of her bedroom screaming, I ask WHAT?, and she says "GOGOL BORDELLO are COMING to TEL AVIV!"

I bought a ticket immediately and patiently waited eight weeks. On top of four years, it wasn't much.

The venue was Barbi in Tel Aviv. Above, the queue outside and then inside the bar. Beautiful bellydancer below.

The opening band were some Israeli ska band. Needless to say, I didn't love them, as I really don't get into ska. They were also kind of 'jazzy' in a Sunday morning cafe way, which I truly don't get into. However, this being Israel, they were good looking - so all wasn't lost.

The gap between opening band and Gogol Bordello coming on stage was painfully long and I whined almost the whole time. I paused while this beautiful girl above was doing burlesque acrobatics.

Below: FINALLY. I nearly passed out upon seeing Eugene Hutz in real life; I find him unbearably beautiful. I put my camera away for the vast majority of the gig, as it involved a lot of extremely raucous jumping around, and besides, I didn't want to be one of those kids (pictured below) who live behind their cameras, or worse - phones. So, the pictured moments are the quieter moments in the gig, like when Eugene came back onto the stage part-way through a fantastically long encore and played an acoustic, tragic version of 'Alcohol.' Needless to say, I was swooning.

What really makes Gogol Bordello for me is the diverse and equally involved band members. The guitarist below is actually from Tel Aviv, so he got a beautiful home town welcome. Other members come from Ecuador, Hong Kong, Ethiopia, Russia and Ukraine and at one point every member sang the opening line of the Beatles 'Girl' in their mother tongue; a song which Eugene saw as being heavily influenced by gypsy lament songs.

Another potent moment for me was when they burst into an extremely energetic version of 'Immigraniada (We Comin' Rougher)' and the crowd went absolutely insane. I like to hope it was in reaction to the despicable anti-immigration rallys in Tel Aviv recently.

Going to see GB in this particularly place, at this time, was more fascinating, joyful and faith-restoring than anything I could have conceived of in my mansion kitchen all those months ago. I've been floating ever since.

ex-oh-ex-oh

Dream date: flatmates, nature & cheese

Oh hi outside!

I'm sure many people around the world like to wax lyrical about their flatmates, "I have the best flat mates ever" lalala et cetera, because it's so shit when you have bad flatmates that it's really exciting when your flatmates are awesome. The thing is, those people are lying. Not to you per se, but to themselves. Because I truly have the best flatmates.

Cut to Saturday morning: I'm sitting around drinking coffee, when my flatmate offers me a Bacon Butty. Just casually, as if such an offer isn't the best news I've heard all week. Then, while I'm eating said butty with Dave and Yael, they ask if I would like to come on a walk with them and Izzi, you know, outside. I give my laptop a parting glance and say yes.

We drive for a while (which is, honestly, almost my favourite part because I LOVE sitting in cars) and arrive at the American Independence Park, near Jerusalem, where we begin our stroll. Within ten minutes we accidentally stumble across a goat farm, where they make fresh cheese so good it 'almost' made me cry.

'Stumbling across cheese shops' in the middle of nowhere is the kind of thing I thought only occurred in Conde Nast travel magazine articles about upper-middle class writers tripping around rural France.

Women wearing headscarves like that while cutting us fresh cheese ?! What kind of fantasy land have I stumbled into.

We packed up the cheese and 'stumbled' on, more literally, along narrow paths through pretty thick scrub and trees.

Roughly an hour on, we reach this clearing and scoff the cheese, preparing for the hike up the hill and the drive home - where I fell into bed and had a well deserved (for once) sleep.