Israel

So, I went to Israel! And it was lovely. Last year, while I was doing my nth batch of law school finals, Shim went to Gdansk for a Wikipedia conference. (In his defence, he had said, I don't want to go on a trip when you're revising, will you be okay? And I said, don't be ridiculous darling, go to Gdansk and have a lovely time.)

By the time he got back, though, I was sufficiently flipped to declare then and there if he must needs go to a Wikipedia conference again, then I was damn well coming with him. And then they decided to hold it in Haifa in the north of Israel, and I was sold. Israel is one of those places I have always wanted to go to because of my longstanding quest to travel around looking for non-Western visions of modernity. Y'see, I have a theory that one of the major obstacles standing in the way of development in India is a lack of a clear sense of what modernity is, if not Western. I mean, how can we be Indian and grown-up and modern and developed and still be Indian, and not a kind of Anglo-American? I dunno. But I went to Hong Kong, and saw how they do it, and this was why I wanted to go to Israel.

And thus, we went. It took a taxi, a very long bus journey, five hours on a plane, an intercity train, an underground funicular and a bit of getting lost, and leaving the house at threee in the morning, but we got to Haifa, and I proceeded to fall in love with the whole country instantly and decide I wanted to stay there forever. In Haifa, we were staying on the top of Mount Carmel, in a hotel surrounded by trees and flowers and an army of what would be feral cats if they were not perpetually dazed by the sun, and it was a delight. It was just the right side of warm - thirty degrees; you need suncream and lots of water but it's not unbearable to go out in - and Wikimedia Israel believe in feeding people a lot. I ate a lot of salad and pita and hummus and was very happy.

I'm not going to write much about the conference - it was interesting and I'm glad I went to it, but is not my fandom - but it did finish on a beach party, which was totally marvellous. Shim and I wandered down the beach beforehand, and it was perfectly warm and brilliant in all senses of the word, you know, with an actual blue sky and bright blue water, and the sun set into the sea and there was dancing and an open bar and glowsticks and acrobats and paper garlands and it was just perfect.

( fannish people )

(I learned how to say "shalom" and about four other words while I was in Israel, and that was the limit of my language acquisition. That said, I said shalom to a waitress in Tel Aviv and she brought me a Hebrew menu, which I was charmed by; in Europe, in Swizerland and France, no one who speaks English addresses me in French or German or whatever, because obviously brown people don't speak those languages (I found this infuriating in France, because I am no native speaker but I can order a damn coffee). But in Israel, I was constantly read as Israeli. It was nice. Language is funny, anyhow; English isn't my native language, but it's the only one I'm native fluent in, and I speak enough Hindi and French to feel a resonant familiarity with Indo-European languages - it was very startling to be surrounded by a language I genuinely couldn't understand a word of.)

That evening, we returned to Haifa and I also met nogah and tieleen - hi, guys! - and had a lovely time wandering the boardwalk and peering out over the view of the city and harbour laid out below. It was lovely. I also spent some time making fun of the Mayor of Haifa, who was very excited that there was a conference going on in Haifa, and on the first night of the conference delivered a half-hour preroration on nothing in particular, clearly having had an encounter with the open bar. He also bears a startling resemblance to William Shatner. What a wonderful country.

( Jerusalem )

Afterwards we went back to Haifa and had a very nice dinner somewhere, and headed back to Tel Aviv in the morning, to a brilliant B 'n' B somewhere near the water. It's a rambling out-of-the-way place called Kehilat Aden, run by a lovely couple who are self-confessedly on a quest to run the best gay-run establishment in Tel Aviv, and as far as I'm concerned they've succeeded. Everything is ramshackle but sparkling clean, full of colours and flowers and guarded by a chocolate Lab puppy, who loves everyone with a deep and pure love. Shim and I spent that last evening having a drink with roga and then sleepily on a garden swing, surrounded by flowers and quiet night-time summer noises, using the free wireless, learning there were riots at home. We left the following day, got through security at Ben Gurion with a lot less trouble than expected - the authorities wanted to know why I had been to the UAE so many times, which startled me, because I've never been through immigration there - but we took off on time and arrived on time and survived Heathrow and the three-hour coach home.

It is nice to be back - the flat now looks almost habitable, which is good, as gavagai is coming to visit today - but I had a real glimpse into something different this week, and I didn't really want to come back.