Old City and Downtown

Before last week I hadn’t yet ventured into the Old City of Jerusalem. But, the university offered a tour in English, so I hopped on the bus and joined a group of students on a trip to the Old City last Tuesday. We started at the Jaffa gate, and went through the Christian and Jewish quarters (the old city is divided into four sections, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Armenian). As part of the tour we went through the Church of the Holy Sepluchre (where tradition has it the sites of the crucifixion and tomb of Christ are held). It’s a really fascinating structure—each denomination has control of a different chamber in the church, with the Armenians and Greek Orthodox holding the most important points. There was a lot of fighting and debacle concerning who would have control of what part and in the mid 19^th century they even made a treaty of sorts that lays out lots of specifics about the status quo of the church. For example, it’s an Arab Muslim who holds the keys to the church and opens it every morning, just so that no one denomination has that kind of power. Very interesting.

We also went on the roof of the church where the smaller, protestant denominations have their section. There’s an Ethiopian village ontop of the church. It was insane, there’s so much going on in Jerusalem, even on the roofs! We also walked down the Via Dolorosa, which is the route the 14 stations of the cross took place on. We did it backwards, from the church of the sepluchre to the beginning, and only got to number 4, but it was still cool to see this site that so many people flock to.

We saw some other sites from all different time periods—Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Crusader, British Mandate, modern, etc. It’s really neat how one building can have stones that were placed in all of those time periods with a modern falafel stand right next to it. That’s one of the things I love about Jerusalem. The mix of old and new, overlap of people from all over the world, combination of faiths, holy sites, historical sites—everything you could possibly want, all in one place. I’m so thrilled I get to call this place my home for 4 more months.

I went back to the Old City yesterday to explore some more the places we skipped over during our official tour. We were trying to find this certain rooftop that had an incredible view of the Temple Mount but couldn’t find it, and instead stopped by the Western Wall. Since it was evening there were a whole bunch of military guys doing some kind of ceremony that none of us could figure out but it was VERY cool. First they stood in a big circle and recited what looked like some kind of oath, then they got in lines and began running into a tunnel where they were super bunched up, jumping up and down and chanting and singing. At one point they were singing a White Strips song, an Israeli folk song, some other generic tunes we didn’t recognize, and then just the same word over and over again that we assumed was the name of their unit/whatever sized group they were. Abba, I will be certainly asking you the meaning of all of these things next time I talk to you. Anyway, it was really awesome. By the time we left the soldiers and their rally it was pretty dark and Cody REALLY wanted baklava so we wandered trying to find some and ended up unexpectedly in some super sketchy dark deserted alleyway in what I can only assume was in the Muslim quarter, based on the writing on the signs around us.There were raw skinned carcasses hanging from shop windows, empty crates strewn around the street, flickering lights, dripping water….basically all the signs of a place you do NOT want to be if you don’t belong. We could sense the shop owners giggling to themselves at us, because we were so obviously out of place. We made it out though (I really don’t think we were in any kind of danger at all) and Cody got his baklava. And we decided to come back to the Muslim quarter when it's light out. (Fun fact I learned on the tour: all around the Muslim quarter you can see writing on walls and house fronts which looks like mega graffiti. It's not! Apparently, after Muslims go on the hajj it is their duty to tell everyone back home that they went on the journey and the way they do that is by painting the front of their house. So what looks like graffiti is actually just profession of the hajj!).

Despite getting turned around a few times in the incredibly confusing maze that the old city is, we found our way out and headed to Ben Yehuda street/downtown area for the evening. Ben Yehuda is a big pedestrian zone with tons of shops, restaurants, bars, both touristy and local. We had been told about a really good Humus place so we tried it and it was delightfully delicious (again, EVERYTHING in Israel is tasty). Afterwards we wandered a bit more and went to a bar to meet up with some other people for the rest of the evening. For my firstish night “on the town”, it was a wonderful success. I’m obsessed with Jerusalem. I may never leave.

Also, I posted pictures on Facebook for those of you who are interested. This is just a smattering here. And my camera batteries enjoy dying at inopportune times so i don't have as many pictures as I'd like. But that will change. And to all you haters out there who have shown an outpouring of animosity towards my love of Bamba, I have nothing to say to you other than taking your hating somewhere else. I don't want to hear it.