I sit beside Devin. I keep trying to write ‘Ari’ because he looks a lot like Ari. He was really tall and pretty much needed both seats for his legs. Felt bad to make the guy crunch in his seat, but it was whatever.
We chat and eventually reach the next destination. It was a British Colonial detention camp from post World War I Palestine. Too many Jews were trying to emigrate from ruined Europe to Israel, and the British had severely restricted the level of Jewish immigration to Israel.
We got this cool interactive tour of the ship used to smuggle Jews across the Mediterranean Sea to The Promised Land.
The tour was unique. You watched a video on a screen, and suddenly the screen starts raising up into the ceiling, revealing an engine room, and a 50” flatscreen comes down for the next segment.
It’s a scene of Jews in an engine room. The movie follows a saga of Jews walking across Europe aided by The Underground to abandoned ports in Italy, where these repurposed refugee ships picked up up the Jews. The acting was terrible. The tour continues with several movements through the ship to other settings, eventually ending on the bow of the ship.
We leave this odd site and then begin a long ass drive to “Big Gesher” one of the original Kibbutz on the border of Jordan.
We were all starving, and in a typical fashion of being Jewish, we complained a lot about it. So we stop in Haifa at some obscure mall. We were given about an hour to grab some food and then meet back up at the entrance to the food court. We did our ‘count-off’ and then they turned us loose.
There was some weird schwarma place with a cow and a chicken cartoon. Some overweight woman served me up this mediocre meal. I remember Jeremy was telling us a nursing story about getting some HIV+ blood on him and needing to drink ‘The Cocktail’ to make sure he didn’t get infected. I decided it was time for walk.
Omer, Galya, and I got a hot cup of joe at ‘Aroma’ which is like Israeli Starbucks. After that we went to some divey supermaket on the ground floor and bought some bagged chocolate milk. The stuff is very hyped up by Israelis–they grew up on it. It was very sugary and delicious.
It’s almost time to meet up with the group again, so we leave the store. On our way back up to the food court, we run into Devin and he joins us. “This is our only opportunity to buy alcohol for today, we gotta go back!” exclaims Omer. We agree, it’s worth being a few minute late to secure the party materials for tonight. So we all go back to the market to buy booze. We got a few bottles of Stoli, but we end up five minutes late to the meetup. Our trip Counsellor Kelci chewed both me and Devin out infront of the whole group.
Looks like we were back on the shit list.
The bus loads up, and after a count-off confirms no one is missing, we’re off towards “Big Gesher”. We finally make it there, and it’s 105 degrees fahrenheit outside. After a little speech we are ushered into a sweltering classroom with a hi-tech projector. They played us a video that was projected onto all 3 walls in front of us in the classroom, a pretty neat effect. I have no idea what the video was about because the whole class was bored to tears and passing out in the heat. A girl to my left has the side of her head on the desk, exhausted. I join her in this.
After this spectacle, we walk into some cave with running water–some sort of subterranean recreation of an old power-station. Behold, a giant model of an Israeli hydro-electric power plant named Naharayim situated on the River Jordan. Built in 1933 by founding Zionist Pinhas Rutenberg, the ruins are visible down the River Jordan, right outside of this cave.
Another projector show! This time there was the enlarged face of the Pinhas projected on the cave wall. Different parts of the recreation were showcased with spotlights and his eyes followed the showcased part. It was kind of cute and funny, but mainly spooky. Queue another educational film, this time about the hydro station. It stood proudly on the River Jordan until being destroyed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
We were supposed to go on a hike but Mickey changed our itinerary and brought us to this less exciting detention camp and hydro-station. People complained in depth about this. We were whining in such a typical fashion. But you gotta be yourself sometimes.
We finally got to the Kibbutz and had rooms assigned. I was rooming with Omri and Andrew, both hailing from Texas.
We rounded up about 80% of the group and just had low-key drinks throughout the night and went to bed to prepare for day 2.
It’s only day one, and it’s been one hell of a full day.
