Tel Aviv - Israel

I must make an apology to my lovely friends in Tel Aviv for seeming to forget about them entirely. Indeed that's not what happened at all, in fact, Tel Aviv was absolutely one of my favourite places and experience on my trip and maybe because it was such a big deal, I bypassed it in my blog. So here goes...

I'd been in Israel for about 1 or two weeks when I got to Tel Aviv. So far I'd loved the experience and found it really interesting. But it wasn't until Tel Aviv that I felt like I was in and amongst it. My beautiful friends Katie and Omer had me at their house near the lovely Masaryk Square for about 2 weeks. I wont tell you about the city, or its buildings, the streets or the beaches, to me, those things were a give. Those things are the material and they exist everywhere, but I will tell you how this beautiful city challenged me and the things I thought I knew.

I really had some time to consider the situation between Lebanon and Israel while I was there - how I felt about it, what it meant, whether there was any sort of hope and I began to question what was happening more and more. The longer I stayed, the more I felt at home. That was a strange thing in itself and sometimes brought up issues for me around feeling patriotic towards Lebanon and my family although beginning to understand a different side of what was going on. It always comes back to the same thing for me. People are people and for the most part in this world, we appear to follow our governments and their ideals. This is in fact so untrue - particularly of Tel Aviv. I'm not sure if it was a risk I was taking, but I told most people that I met what my background was. This generally brought on interesting conversation and I began to find, particularly in the younger generation, that no-one agreed with what was going on, and that killing people in a fight for land was not something that they wanted. This is the same for the younger generation on 'the other side' in Lebanon.

I think what people need to understand about the conflict and the way people are dealing with it - from the conversations I have had.

When there is conflict that threatens you or your family, you will try anything to be safe. Sometimes, that may mean supporting the people that in essence are creating that conflict but are also your only protection against it. What a way to live. For most of us, particularly those who live in Australia, we have no idea, i repeat, no idea what that feels like. We live a safe and sheltered life and don't have reason to think that a rocket may come plummeting into our house at any time. So while people may not agree with the politics, they are still protective. There are also many more factors than the news lets on - we are spoon fed information and it is only the information that the governments want us to know, so they can go and do their dirty work behind our backs. I think this is true for Israel and Lebanon. There is much more to understand but what I got from the experience was that these people look just like me! I was mistaken for an Israeli on several occasions. There are mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, children, grandchildren, weddings, birthdays, deaths, and births the same in both countries. The only difference is that the people living in these two countries don't know each other and are closed off from the ability to connect - this is politics way of forwarding its agenda to get what it wants. As long as people think that the other side are the enemy, they will continue to think that way. I got to see it from a different perspective - I am one of the lucky people - I now know more than I ever did and want to do what I can to bring these two sides to more of an understanding by sharing what I know.

I stayed at Kibbutz Nir Oz, with my friend Katie. This was possibly one of the most important experiences of my time there. This particular Kibbutz is situated right next to Gaza, and by right next to, I mean, there is a field that separates the two. You could hear machine gun fire off in the distance and I was told stories of how people had been shot when working out in the fields. Fair enough, those things i'd assume are a given. They were in the process of building bomb shelters on the back of each Kibbutz dwelling - but they did so with a fair amount of indifference. You see, for the people that live there, those risks and dangers are a part of their life. From the people that I spoke to, you never got the sense that they lived in fear or were waiting for something horrible to happen at any moment. This is their life. This is how they live, and they live each day as it comes, because when you live in a place like that, there is no other way to live. I will treasure my experience there and the people I met who shared their time and stories with me.

My friend Zev asked me one day if there was any hope (for Israel and Lebanon)... I told him that as long as we are trying to conquer the divide, as long as we continue to be the beginning of the future even simply through our friendship and conversations, of course there is hope. There is always hope.

Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman

LONDON!

I had one day in London in transit on my way to New York. At least that's what I thought. So - I tried to pack in as many things into a day as I could.

First I decided to be a super tourist, something I haven't really done so far on my travels. I got the double decker bus that does a hop on - hop off service throughout London, either with a tour guide or an audio tour. Really it's quite cool. Not as cheap as getting a rail pass for the whole day, but well worth it because you get to see all the main things in the city. I'm usually rather bored by monuments and buildings and such, but I didn't mind it so much in London. All I kept thinking was, 'this place is huge, and really really old'. On one of my bus trips an Irishman sat next to me and we got to chatting. We got told off by a sour faced woman who said she wanted to hear the tour guide. I quite nearly told her to get a hearing aid but thought better of it. So, with a new companion for the day, I saw it all. Big Ben (which is actually not called Big Ben, that's the name for the bell inside that only chimes on the hour) River Thames, on which we took a free cruise and were thoroughly entertained by one of the boat operators who wasn't really a tour guide, but did a better job than most I had for that day. He made several jokes about the English keeper who dropped the ball in the US vs ENGLAND game last week - not bad at all. Buckingham Palace I have to say - was a bloody disappointment. Nothing really to see... a big building that was nothing special, and I missed the changing of the guard which was probably the best thing going for it.

There's a really great vibe about London. There's so much going on and so many people everywhere with different faces, skin colours, accents, attitudes, clothing, and personalities. There's something I find really endearing about London and I'd definitely love to come back and really get to know it properly. Seems like my kind of place.

In other news - I must have left my brains at home because since I left i've been doing all sorts of stupid things. I booked a return ticket to Heathrow Airport only to realise later that I'm not flying out of there, hence I didn't need to get a return. *waste of money #1

I also went to the Airport this morning - all excited and ready to go to New York, and when I went to check my booking, I noticed the date said the 17/6 and obviously today is the 16/6 - so I had a lovely morning trip with all my baggage for nothing, not to mention the train ticket I bought. *waste of money #2

and lets not forget that I booked accommodation in New York for the 16th - *waste of money #3

I think that's a job well done, don't you?

Barcelona: When your bag seems smaller and the soles of your shoes thinner...

Travelling can be tough sometimes. The hardest times are when you meet someone who you can share your mind with, someone who won't just ask you where you are from, someone who may not even ask your name until 2 hours into a conversation and then they leave just as soon as they have come. Those are the days that I feel the most lost. Just when I feel that I have found my feet and the city is mine to do with what I will, I fall over only to find that I have no idea where I am.

A few of those moments combined made me realise that traveling isn't really about seeing cities or monuments or churches or streets, its about meeting people and finding parts of yourself in them and in the places that you may visit. At first I couldn't work out why going to see the big tourist things wasn't making me happy or giving me any satisfaction. I can stare at a castle that was built thousands of years ago until my eyes dry up but it is never going to understand me or want to know why I came all these miles across the sea to explore people.

Cities are just cities. You can make of them what you will but the biggest of them all are just churning money in and out. The charm has been lost in cities like Barcelona where people mostly go to drink and take as many drugs as they can find from the Pakistani men selling out on La Rambla. Tourists bleed all the sweetness from the culture with their English and lack of understanding for anything of meaning. You could come here for 6 months and not have to speak a word of Spanish or Catalan. Maybe I don't understand the city but I think the problem is that this city doesn't understand me.

I have no real reason to be here. I'm not learning anything of culture and the struggle to meet like minded people here is sometimes too much. Made harder by missing the people that do make a difference. Travelling is brilliant when you are doing things you would never do at home, when you are seeing things you would never see at home, even when you get to be a person you would never be at home.

What travelling teaches you most is that your friends, the good ones, are very special people indeed. Special to your life and special each in their own way. Those friends that really listen, the ones that will let you put your heart on the table and watch it pulse without squirming. There aren't many people like that around.

At least I always have my guitar.

The Horse Farm - Tobarra

I couldn't post this because I didn't have wi-fi at the time - so it's really a post from about a week ago. enjoy! xx

I’ve been in Tobarra for a week and a half now – and what a whirlwind it has been. I arrived thinking that this horse-riding ranch would have a lot of life in it and there would be a few people working there. All I really knew was that I got to do some work with horses and some gardening, and that I would be living in an apartment in the local town which was about 1.5km from the farm.

When I arrived, there was a Swedish girl Martina and an Italian guy Simone who were living in the apartment, and on the first night, I met Juan who is a family friend of the farm owners who has taken to coming to the apartment to cook for the wwoofers. This was and is one of the best parts about being here. I have eaten several meals of traditional Spanish food cooked by Juan and in the time I have been here, learned more Spanish than I thought possible. It was great the, because both Martine and Simone both spoke Spanish, so they could translate for me. Juan speaks no English whatsoever.

The first day was really great. I was so excited to see all the animals, especially the horses. There are 40+ horses, chickens, roosters, 2 geese that we have named Harold and Bert, 1 Goat called Carmen, 4 dogs – 2 of which are half wolf and of course the people who run the farm. They are an English couple by the name of Sue and Richard.

After a couple of days, I started to notice that there was something that just wasn’t sitting right about the way things were run – and that I was pretty much going to be cleaning horse shit every day that I was working for at least 2 or so hours. This was not what I had in mind at all! Everyday we spent an indeterminate period of time searching for Sue or Richard to tell us what to do next. There were many an instance where they would say one thing and then do another, or just promise things that never came true. We found out from Juan that no-one had been in their house in 6 years, although he had invited them to his home several times, he had never received an invitation back. Before I found this out and on my first day, after milking Carmen, I knocked on the door of the house and after no answer, went inside to put the milk on the kitchen bench. They never saw me, or said anything, but I got the distinct feeling that, that day I had gotten away with a one time steal into the house.

Simone left after a couple of days and it was just me and Martina. We got along like a house on fire, and to be honest, the fact that we had each other was the only thing keeping us sane. We would work as fast as possible to get out of there and go home to eat lunch, drink a beer, and sun ourselves on the terrace. We even went out on the town on Saturday night to see what it was all about. The answer was, not much! No-one in Spain really goes out until 1-2am so there wasn’t a lot happening, and even then, had we waited til that hour, I don’t think much would have changed. Then it was time for Martina to go back to Sweden, a really sad moment, considering I wasn’t really too pleased with being at the farm, let alone without her company. There was supposed to be another wwoofer coming that day, so I thought I would at least wait it out and see what she was like while still deciding how to tell Sue and Richard that I wouldn’t be staying a month and that I would be leaving.

I worked two days on my own, cleaning out 15 cages of shit, which is usually done by two people. Sue left me on my own to do this, said she was coming back and never did. Once I finished, she drove me back to the apartment, and not once did she mention having left me to do all the work on my own. These people are crazy and not to mention rude. After living here for 6 years, they speak horrible Spanish. Worse Spanish than what I have learned in the last week, and they consistently complain about the Spanish, saying that they are selfish people and the like. I don’t understand what they are doing here if they hate it so much, but I hope they get their own and I don’t come across more people like them.

After doing the same thing the next day, I had had more than enough. By this stage I had worked 8 days straight, when I was supposed to work 5 out of 7 days a week and I was up to my ears in shit – almost literally. I told her that afternoon that I wouldn’t be staying a month and it wasn’t working out for me. So I have had a couple of days off, and go back to work tomorrow. I didn’t want to leave them high and dry, it’s not really right. Even though they are weird and I shouldn’t really care. I’ll be here until the next wwoofer gets here and has a couple of days working and on the 8^th of April, I’ll be out of here.

What I haven’t mentioned is that at present it is Easter in Spain – and everyone goes crazy around this time. In the town that I am living in, they are enjoying a 104 hour festival of NON STOP DRUMMING! You have never heard anything so insane in your life. If you go outside and stand in one stop and listen, you can hear people playing contradicting drum beats whilst walking right past each other. It goes on, all day and all night. No stopping. Lots of drinking. LOTS AND LOTS of drinking! And although it is hard to get to sleep at night, I think I might be going mad, and I don’t quite understand the significance, it’s a new experience. But I mean really…what happened to Easter Eggs? If you are reading this, you need to send me a Cadbury Cream Egg…that would make me most happy. I know I don’t have an address, but that can be arranged…

So I have 5 days left here and now that I can see there is an end in sight, I’m going to try and make the most of my time and enjoy the horses and the animals.

Spain - Sevilla and Granada

I’d spent two extra days in Morocco, mostly because I couldn’t get a flight out and you could say that I was more than ready to get out of there and onto Spain. Although it is one of the not so prosperous EU countries, Spain was still going to be fairly different from the Middle East. Well sort of.

I was leaving Marrakech for Sevilla rather early in the morning, and sadly enough I had to say goodbye to the kitten that was sleeping in a basket under my bed. Hold on, let’s backtrack for a second.

The night before I was due to leave Marrakech, I was heading out to get some food with a group of Germans from the Hostel, when whilst walking through the closed markets, we saw a tiny kitten. Now, in most of the Middle East, Morocco especially included there are a lot of stray animals, mostly cats. Anyway, being a girl, I am a sucker for small animals, and I picked her up at which point she climbed up my jumper to my shoulder and refused to get off. I realised then that her eyes weren’t even open yet, she must have been born in the last day or two. Not having the heart to leave her in the freezing cold, I carried her around for the rest of the night in my jumper, and we eventually managed to get her some milk, which we fed to her in a water bottle cap. According to the Germans, they had been in a shop just around the corner from where we found her earlier that day, and had seen a cat that had kittens. We decided that the next morning they would cunningly try and put her back with her mother. So, we snuck her into our hostel and she slept in a basket on a combination of my scarves under my bed. Like a worried mother, I woke up several times in the night to check that she was okay, which she of course was. I attempted to come up with several plans to smuggle her into the airport and take her to Spain with me, but it just wasn’t going to happen. I left her in the care of the Germans and took off to catch my plane.

At the airport in the line for customs, I met some Americans (I really love that I can just rudely classify people into groups of their nationality) who I spent my time waiting with. Turns out they were also going to Sevilla and one of them spoke fluent Spanish. This was rather helpful in general being that Spain would be the first country that I was visiting where I couldn’t speak any of the language. Once we arrived, we met a Canadian/New Zealand couple, who happened to be going to the hostel I was staying at - funny how even when you’re travelling the world can be so small – so we went on together. It was absolutely freezing in Sevilla. Apparently about 10c lower than what it should have been for that time of year. Not great! But the city? Stunning.

It was the first time travelling so far that I arrived in a city and really thought it was beautiful, craning my neck to get a better look at the architecture, which was centuries old. In comparison to Australia where we only have natural sights that are that old, it was really something new for me. Unfortunately for me, I got really sick while I was there and aside from walking around the city, I didn’t get to go into the Cathedral – but looks like I will be doing that later on. We were walking along the river one day and saw that there were dozens of padlocks on the bridge with couple’s names written or engraved on them. I have no idea of the significance but hopefully I get to find out at some point – but it was a very interesting sight.

After 5 or so days, it was time to leave the home of Flamenco (which I also didn’t get to see) and head to Granada, the place that I had been told by many people to go and see. It took me about 5½ hours to get there by bus and then a lovely hike around the city, getting absolutely lost trying to find my hostel. I’d been recommended to stay at the Rambutan hostel – which was apparently hard to find but worth it. I can now attest to the degree of difficulty in finding the place and I would suggest that if you have 30kg of baggage then, perhaps get better directions than I did. However, when I did arrive, it was indeed worth it. It is in the upper older parts of Granada with a beautiful view of the Alhambra and the city. There is the stunning St Nicholas lookout which at most times of the day is filled with artisans selling their wares or just full of people in general playing music or hanging out.

After a couple of days I caught up with the Americans that I had met at the airport. Turns out they were doing Granada over the weekend. So I tagged along with them and some friends of theirs and we went to a Spanish Short Film Festival, which was really great. The first film had subtitles, but for the rest of the time, I barely understood a thing, but thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was nice to be out with a big group walking around the city. A very different feeling from walking around on your own, wondering if you would look like a loser going to eat Tapas on your own. It was mostly nice to feel like I was a part of the goings on of a city, not just as a tourist, but feeling like an insider.

Granada was a slow place for me, in the best way. I didn’t make myself do a lot and spent a lot of time hanging out with various people from the hostel, including a new group of Germans who were a band on holidays together. We shared some songs and beers etc, and they invited me to come to Berlin to stay with them, and said that they would book a gig for me as long as they had enough notice before I came. Extremely exciting stuff. There are a lot of places that I want to see in Europe, but when you meet people from a country and they invite you, you really know it will be different than trying to make your way around as a tourist. I’d also just noticed that one of my favourite Australian artists Sia was doing a tour of Europe and playing in Berlin. So the two things coincide and looks like in May, I will be in Germany!

After 9 days in Granada, it was time to head to the small town of Tobarra, 7 hours north of Granada, in which I would be living in for approximately a month whilst working on a Horse-Riding ranch as part of the WWOOF program.

Marrakech and Essaouira

Apart from the first couple of days that were a bit stressful, the rest of my time in Marrakech was great. The stallholders do get on your nerves, but it you try to get on with it as much as you can it helps.

I visited the Tannery with some friends I'd met at the hostel, and it was well worth the half an hour it took us just to find it. It smelt absolutely horrible!! They don't use any chemicals on the leather, instead they use pigeon faeces to clean the hides and then they treat them later on. There wasn't a lot of colour as I was expecting, they hadn't dyed anything yet, but we still got to see the whole process plus a few interesting characters along the way. In the end, I bought a bag made from camel leather - which I later sent home because I couldn't have more than 2 bags on my Ryanair flight.

The Old Madersa (School) was fascinating and I spent much of the time there taking photos and marvelling at the architecture. Compared to some of the other things I have seen it was rather small, but was well made up for in other ways!

The Museum was also really beautiful and mostly so because of it's architecture like the Madersa, and had a photo exhibition that must have been really old, but was well worth a view.

I met a really lovely couple at my hostel who were hiring a car and taking a road trip to a beachside town called Essaouira. We drove for about 3 hours to get there, and what a beautiful town to see! Compared to the bustle of Marrakech, this fishing town was so much more peaceful. We ate fresh fish for lunch for not very much money. They sell it all by the kilo. I bargained hard for a big warm white jumper and managed to get it for 10EUR, rock bottom price, gotta be happy with that! Eventually we headed back to Marrakech, only to be stopped by the police for "speeding" but they had no way to prove it and were basically trying to extort us for money. After them threatening to send one of us to Jail for speeding we gave them the equivalent of 20EUR which was half of what they wanted, said we had no more and eventually, they let us go... Phew! Close call! On we continued until we reached Marrakech and whilst making a turn - apparently the wrong way, when there were no signs saying so, another police officer stopped us and attempted once again to extort money out of us, at which point we told him that we'd already been stiffed of all the money we had! So, once again, by the skin of our noses, we got away with it and somehow felt glad to be back in crazy Marrakech.

Before Morocco, I was so excited about the food and how good it was going to be. Turned out that most places I ate were really very average, nothing special to speak of, except for the last place that was recommended to me. I ate there the day before I left and was so glad I did, because otherwise my idea of the food in Morocco would have been that it was terrible, which is not true at all.

The restaurant is called Terrace Des Epices and is nestled right in the middle of the markets in Marrakech. It will take you on a few twists and turns to get there, but walking up the stairs you are met with an open terrace with modern Moroccan furniture and friendly staff. The price for a Tagine is almost double what you would pay for your entire dinner at the market night stalls, but it is worth every dollar, coming in at around 11EUR. I had a Lamb Tagine with currents. The meat was falling of the bone, the currents were juicy and it was perfectly spiced. I can now understand why people go on and on about Moroccan food. If you were eating like this everyday, I think you're entire experience of the country would be very different.

So the next morning I said goodbye to Morocco and Marrakech and made my way to Sevilla in Spain.

J-Town

Jerusalem has a really crazy energy about it. Really, how is it possible for it not to? As one of the holiest cities in the world, it is rather full of tourists and for me that wasn't so holy. At times it might as well have been America for all I knew. You could literally walk down the street and hear nothing but their accents for ages. That being said, so many different people from Christian, Muslim and Jewish faith from countries all over the world make pilgrimage there. There are some amazing architectural structures, and in the cobbled streets of the Old City there is still an old Souk which has shopkeepers trying to convince people to come in and buy something.

Once we had arrived there, we dumped our things at a friends work and made our way down to the Old City. Doing the traditional Jewish thing, we ate bagels and then, doing the traditional 'jess eats lots of food thing' we followed that with a burger, without cheese...did I mention there was no cheese? Who eats burgers without cheese? Moving on...

We spent a while looking around and finally we get to an open outdoor area and a few hundred metres away from us is the Western Wall. It is sometimes referred to as the Wailing Wall or the Kotel and in Judaism, the Western Wall is venerated as the sole remnant of the Holy Temple. It has become a place of pilgrimage for Jews, as it is the closest permitted accessible site to the holiest spot in Judaism, namely the Even ha-shetiya or Foundation Stone, which lies on the Temple Mount. At the site of the wall, we found it was separated into two sections, one for the men, and one for the women. (the women's section was smaller of course, about a 1/4 of the size of the mens.) In the stone of the wall there are tiny crevices which are filled with tiny balls of paper that carry written prayers. You can't even begin to imagine how many of these there are. The wall is magnificently huge and nearly every space has been filled with these prayers.

Fun Fact: The Israeli Telephone Company has established a fax service to the Western Wall where petitioners can send notes to be placed in the Wall. Hilarious!

So after all that excitement we went out for a beer down near Jaffa St - which is one of the main ones that runs through the city. Really it was quite cheap - something like 10NIS for a beer which is about half the usual price. Plus free popcorn. More bars should do free popcorn. I got my nose re-pierced, as I'd lost my nose ring in the Bedouin Tents earlier in our trip. By lost I mean, I think the women saw the shiny pretty thing and took it...nothing against Bedouins at all. What you have to know is that they don't have much - so for them, anything that I had in my bags was really something special. They even wanted some of my panty liners. Go figure!

I did start to get sick after a couple of days and so didn't really feel much like going out to see things. We did however go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre just before I left for Tel Aviv. It's a rather ominous place, and we managed to arrive just as there was a service/prayer. It was an interesting thing to be a part of and the singing always sounds so beautiful in such big churches with great acoustics. There was also some amazing carvings in the wall of crosses - there were hundreds of them - which can be seen in one of the pictures above. There were lots of people in the church and you know what it's not really the kind of place that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy but it is amazing and the paintings and artwork in there are amazing. We really didn't stay long but it is the kind of place I'd like to go to again and look around properly.

In other news I ate some really sensational Ice Cream, Milk Duds and went to the Dead Sea, but that's a story for another time...