Category me

Apr 26 2011

Nazareth – 2. Staying in the old city

There are three main Youth Hostels in Nazareth, and they are all very close to each other in Nazareth’s old city.

I stayed here for 1st night, this is the ground floor of a local chap’s house, who happens to be the local policeman, and jolly nice gent he is.   The local station is also quite close by too.

Here I only spotted one other traveler, an Italian called Michael who was very friendly and shared with me half his plate of bread, cheese and olives, and spoke little English.   This place provided free tea and coffee and a shared kitchen, and I have started to become quite fond of Arabic style coffee.

When I was about to leave I spotted some interesting pets crawling around the front yard!  Good job I didn’t head out to the loo too early on the morning as I might of trod on them!

The second and third night I stayed in the Al Atabeh guest house.   This had a quite good sized open court yard, with plenty of outside seating.   This was slightly cheaper, with a large dorm room with bunks for about 10 people.   There is a bar where some food can be ordered but no shared kitchen.

As the other picture shows there was a decent bit of rain here, and in this lounge the roof started to leak with water running down the walls, above the coloured drapes the ceiling is only a flimsy corrugated plastic job.   Leaking roofs are quite a bit problem in Israel, as a lot of them are flat and in not so good condition, so this wasn’t too much of a surprise.

I didn’t like that the showers are awful even by middle east standards, water just goes out under the door into the yard, there was nowhere to hang up your clothes whilst inside to keep them dry and clean, and the lights mysteriously turned off halfway through, this meant I had to wrap a towel around me and get it out and press the light switch, but it wasn’t someone playing pranks, it was just broken, probably wet had got inside the electrics.    I also didn’t like overly political stickers inside the bathrooms.

 

The last hostel above and left is the Fauzi Azar is by far the best, unfortunately I could not get a bed here as it was full.   I did however take advantage of breakfast and two hour tour of the city for 35 Shekels which was terrific!   This grand old house is beautiful and well kept.  It has been voted the best youth hostel in Israel, and its not hard to see why.

Check out:-

www.abusaeedhostel.com

www.alatabeh.com

www.fauziazarinn.com

 

1. Arrival at the city – 2. Staying in the old city – 3. The modern day Nazarene carpenter – 4. Where Jesus first preached – 5. Religious vehicles in Nazareth – 6. Mary’s Well and the Bath house – 7. The precipice – 8. On top of the Precipice hill – 9. More old city streets and market – 10. The spice shop – 11. Churches from A to Z or Alpha to Omega – 12. The Basilica church – 13. Easter service at the Basilica

Apr 25 2011

Nazareth – 1. Arrival at the city

I have always hoped Michael Palin could do journals around the holy land one day, until this happens I try and blog on the places of the life of Jesus myself.  I am tired by the attitudes of the media and fellow Brits who try to slander Israel and accuse it of being a ‘Apartheid’ state amongst other things.  I set out to the central Galilee city of Nazareth, to see what it was like for Jesus to have grown up there, glimpses of places from the bible, how the Arab people there live in the centre of the Galilee and how different it is from Jerusalem.

Just before getting off the bus which took me from Jerusalem, I asked some people next to me if this was the right place to get off, and there didn’t seem to be a proper bus station, just a stop by the main road.   This Arab couple were really friendly and were happy oblige to walk with me from the street through some narrow streets uphill through the old city towards my hostel.

Jesus frequently went to and fro from here or the greater part of Galilee to Jerusalem and Bethlehem.  When you live some distance from your family this must be a lot of effort to travel often.

This provocative message to Christians stands out a junction heading north towards the Synagogue where Jesus first preached.  Behind is the tall turret of the famous huge and grand looking Bisilica Church.   It says “and whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the hereafter he will be one of the losers. – Holy Quran”

I have a better message though: Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14 : 6

I have seen this on some guides before, and all the research I did suggested Nazareth is a safe city to visit, and it is too.  I had a number of worries though to do with the busy time of year.  I booked this trip at rather the last minute as its in between Pesach and Easter, and with two different holidays, the buses are not running for some of those days, Easter making it more busy for Christian visitors, and I had hoped to visit Tiberias but both youth hostels were fully booked, so was one of the main hostels in Nazareth, and I got myself one night booked but not for the other days, this needed a lot of prayer of exactly how to figure out where to stay….

Soon!  Different Youth Hostels, the Spice Mill, Thousands of Arab Israelis Christians in the streets at Easter, the church at Cana for weddings, today’s modern Nazarene carpenters and residents finding hidden wells in the back yards by accident!

1. Arrival at the city – 2. Staying in the old city – 3. The modern day Nazarene carpenter – 4. Where Jesus first preached – 5. Religious vehicles in Nazareth – 6. Mary’s Well and the Bath house – 7. The precipice – 8. On top of the Precipice hill – 9. More old city streets and market – 10. The spice shop – 11. Churches from A to Z or Alpha to Omega – 12. The Basilica church – 13. Easter service at the Basilica

Apr 24 2011

Easter Sunday – Resurrection day at the tomb

My phone woke me up at 4.45am today on Easter Sunday morning, a silly time indeed, but I needed to leave just after 5 to get to the other end of the city for a special event with people churches all over the city starting at 06.00.

Lots of people are queuing outside….

Looks like people lining up for the sales (sunday is a regular work day in Israel) or going to a concert of some kind….

Aha, its starting to become clear now….

This was a special place to celebration of Jesus’ resurrection at the very place mostly likely to have been buried, but most definitely risen!

Really good service from a speaker I have not heard from before, and some great worship music from my (King of Kings) congregation.

It did mean that that leader speaking, the worship band and the tomb itself were hidden from view as there were bushes and trees in front of where I was sitting thought!   I would have a guess that there was about 2000 people crammed into the garden.  About half of the people I would guess are Christian tourists on a short holiday,with the remainder being Israeli believers and foreign Christians like me volunteering in the land.

Finally a quick glimpse of the tomb itself as people are leaving.

This was a memorable day to spend Easter Sunday.  I missed this service last year as I didn’t wake up in time!!

Funnily enough, two years ago I was working for an Israeli software company in Southampton UK, there we were given a chocolate egg by our bosses as an Easter present!  Also Pesach was mentioned as well as the Jewish holiday is the week before Easter.

Next: My journey to Nazareth and Cana to see Jesus’ childhood

Apr 17 2011

Back to Ramon Crater, camping in the Desert

Camping! I went and spent a weekend with some friends, two from the Netherlands, one South African and one Hispanic Jew who has been Israel for some years now.

Its funny in an age where we try to make our lives more complicated with technology and creature comforts we still want to escape to basics of living under a piece of canvas with just the bare minimum to enjoy being out in the open air.

The Dutch seem to be the most hardcore campers in Europe, and where as I have had a fair bit of experience in camping up in Yorkshire and the New Forest as a child, my friends from this part of Europe seem to be very savvy as using gas cookers and putting up tents.   In addition to that my friend from South Africa was brought in a farm so is very adept at outdoors living also.

I have been to this site before back in about August 2009.    This is inside the Ramon Crater in the middle of the Negev Desert.

Some people opt for a more sophisticated camping experience, needing proper showers.   We opted for a site just rocks and bushes to use the bog.

This site we passed on the way home, just being a bit cheeky using the toilets that were by the road.

Here you can park your tent on the ground or inside the bedouin style huts, which look nicely made.   There is a kids playground in the middle which stands out as a bit odd!

This picture I took out of the window of the car is not that great, but it was a small clip of a large shanty town style village, these are Druze, traveling Arab people who live Bedouin style today often by the side of busy roads.  They may have cars or camels or donkeys and often grow their own groups in their communities.

Apr 7 2011

Meet Teddy from Yerubilee

This week I got to meet up with my friend Teddy Chadwick.

He is a great musician who does Reggae worship songs often a Davidic harp.  I got to meet up with him at a cafe in the Mamila Mall, a district which uses bits of recycled on buildings to create a shopping place mixing old and new parts of Jerusalem together full of cafes, restaurants and clothing retailers.

Teddy goes to my church, and has his own blog on Israel and his music, he gets to travel an awful lot and has been to Singapore and Nigeria in recent times.

Check out his site at: www.yerubilee.com for his band, and also www.jtod.org for his Aramaic bibles he sells.

Also check out his great music (I just bought a signed CD) you can listen to some samples on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWIaJFYHoNc

Apr 7 2011

Seperation barrier and threats to peace

One thing the critics of Israel like to point out is the concrete separation barrier in between the main part of Israel and the West Bank.

A tour leader I spoke to told us that the concrete wall only accounts for less than 5% of the fence in between.

Not so easy to see in this picture perhaps but there is just a chain link fence in between the Jewish orchards and Palestinian towns in the background, the silver things is some rows of fruit trees with plastic sheeting over them.

Here we are passing in a quite narrow strip of land in Israel parallel with Tel Aviv.

I have done some more experimenting with Google Maps.

Note – please press the [ – ] button to zoom out on each of these maps to get a better understanding of where you are looking at.

This line drawn across is only 8.8 miles this show how narrow this section of Israel would be in parallel to a possible Palestinian state, further down a bit is Tel Aviv Ben Gurion airport, this especially needs to be carefully guarded with the flights arriving and departing each day.

This map here shows the Israeli cities of Ashdod and Beer Sheva, both of these cities have been hit in recent months by GRAD missiles, these have a radius of 25 miles /40 kilometres. The diagrams show these cities are just in proximity of attacks from Gaza, now I don’t know where these are launched from in the Gaza strip exactly, so this is approximate but you should be able to get the idea, these cities are just about reachable by GRADs, and there is fear that other weapons could reach further in.

For those of you who think the middle east crisis can be fixed with a two state solution, I would advise you to check out this site, it shows how Israel’s borders are defended, and how a new Palestinian state is impractical as well as wrong I believe from a Christian biblical point of view.

http://shomroncentral.blogspot.com/

I personally want to see safety and security of all people here, but I think its important know exactly the threats and practicalities involved here.

Apr 5 2011

Jerusalem bus stop two weeks on:

I rode along the north part of Jaffa Street up to the bus station and saw my friend Dave along the way, actually its very easy to accidentally see anyone you might know in this city.

I think when Jesus returns here, it won’t be too hard to find him, even without a cellphone. 🙂

I visited the place where the bomb happened a few weeks ago:

Everything seems strangely normal, the man is still running the kiosk selling cigarettes, newspapers and ice cream, people are waiting for the bus, and some chap was using the phone box as well.

In fact nothing really looked any different apart from two wreaths left for the Christian woman who died, one from Israel and one from the UK.

Today, I was working home towards the bus (it was raining and I don’t like to ride my bicycle in the wet)   a short distance from work I saw a large crowd of people and some Magon David paramedics dealing with someone on the floor, they were doing resuscitation on this woman, there was a drip rigged up, and I could see a set of electric pads as well.  I prayed for this woman here that she would live, and after a while I noticed she was coughing, although the ambulance staff were still having to push her chest hard, I didn’t stick around too much longer, but will check the local news tomorrow.

You can see how fragile life can be from things happening on your street in any place, I must stress that I do feel very safe here, there isn’t a problem with alcoholism I see in Portsmouth, and there are occasional terrorist threats in the UK like the ones that happened on 7/7 on the London tube network in 2005.  Police and military are often around here in Jerusalem so security issues are spotted in almost all cases very quickly.

Apr 3 2011

Blogging with Google Maps

In the last few months, some of the more memorable places I have been to I have put on my Google Maps profile. I have added this on the “Blogs by location” link on the right hand side.

Please click the – and + buttons to see a full view, there isn’t an easy way of adjusting the way the zoom before pasting it into my blog.

This is a great way for traveling bloggers to list your favourite places. I will consider writing a how to, if anyone else needs it.

Just one problem I have found, the new Firefox 4.0 seems to have a bug in which I can’t edit and place pins on my maps. Firefox 3.6.15, Chrome and IE8/9 don’t have this problem, and the Firefox 4 issue happens on two different PCs with Windows XP and 7.

Also you can’t create or edit a Google Maps profile under a business Gmail account, I guess Google understands the businesses don’t want their employees to carelessly list their locations of the buildings and staff live on the internet which is sensible.

Apr 2 2011

Quick return to Akko…

On Wednesday after a tricky two days with me and my colleague having to work extra hard to fix IT equipment breaking down in several places, all the staff at Bridges for Peace got to get on a retreat away up north to a Kibbutz converted into a hotel for a relaxing mid week break.

On the way we got to stop off at Akko, an ancient city that I visited only a couple of months ago, there was no obvious toilet block in the main road next to the sea, so it was a case of take a frantic wander round the old walls of city for the loo.

I saw a few new interesting discoveries, last time the sea was fierce and was lashing onto the road.  The time the tide is out, and there is this wonderful mix of ancient ruins and green seaweed or moss out in the harbour.

This adventuorous chap is doing abseiling down the sea walls, and someone else is fishing on the ruins.   I hope they know the tide times!

This may be distressing to animal lovers, but not sure who leaves a box of very new looking tiny kittens on the side of a street?

I found an English speaking young Arab girl, who said they were there just waiting for their mother, but looks to me like they were left for someone to take maybe?  Anyway she put them somewhere a bit more sheltered away from the cold wind coming from the sea.

Next, I get to learn to be a shepherd and see biblical farming techniques!