It’s a Small World

The Tent

The breeze shivers the olive trees and our little fire sends a puff of smoke smack into Garrett’s face. We are sacked out on elderly couches and wobbly plastic chairs smack in the middle of an olive orchard. Beside us is a large insulated tent that “easily” sleeps 10 people. The owner has kindly supplied us with a wild assortment of linens, and in the tent is a stack of blue foam mattresses. The toilet and shower are out back in their own little shelters, and the toilet is sitting at a jaunty angle that surprises us all. String lights wave in the wind and we’re all feeling pretty cheerful…

Even tho the host had showed us where the hose was to “turn off the fire”, we stayed outside till it was burned out. The shower was actually hot and had such high pressure it nearly blew you through the reed wall. I was the last to creep into the tent at night and find my little pile of brilliant orange wool blanket, mink blanket and skinny mattress. I looked over at Lonnie, lying peacefully beneath his floral quilt with it’s pretty pink ruffle spread out around him. Suddenly a garish version of Brahm’s Lullaby came floating up from Garrett’s pillow. You could completely visualize a cute mobile slowly turning over Lonnie, and after that I really never did stop laughing.

The Pod

The Tel Aviv O Pod Hotel was somewhere in the high rise, and after zooming from floor to floor in the elevator we eventually found it. It’s a pretty amazing concept. Instead of rooms, you sleep in what I called fridges and they called pods. You can cram an incredible amount of beds into a small space this way, so that’s a win win for them. Aside from the fact that the receptionist, with his blonde hair and icy blue eyes, was a bit of a stinker, we really kinda enjoyed the place. It had a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean, some living plant walls and decent showers. Heath got all stoked about the ice cream dispenser cause it involved a vacuum cleaner that sucked the ice cream bars out of their respective cubby holes, or something. Whatever it was, he kept offering us ice cream in hopes of being able to use it again. While pods are great, it was rather a pain having to trot between locker, bathroom, shoe storage, pod and luggage room every time you needed something.

In the early morning Heath n I took everyone’s dirty laundry and found ourselves a laundromat nearby. That was a total scream. The lady who ran it kept up a steady stream of chatter and since I was the only customer for the first hour, I had no where to run. Heath was out grocery shopping, so I alone heard the dirty details of her life of torture at the hands of the Arabs and Russians. Oh, and Interpol also has been following her, but she’s going to sue them any day now so it’s all good. Of great interest was the building next door that had been bombed now during the war. The laundromat had been damaged from flying debris, but it was already fixed. The other building wasn’t yet. Looked pretty scary.

The Citadel

Deep in the heart of Old City Jerusalem is a little Hostel called the New Citadel. The passages are winding and low, the toilets are as unprivate as toilets can get while still having walls, and there are lots of little seats to sit on while you drink tea and chat. Charming place, full of history. We immediately wished we could spend more nights there. Did anything exciting happen? No. But it was cozy, peaceful, historic and relaxing. What else could you want?

The Drug Hole aka Capsule Space X

Not very far off the busy pedestrian promenade of Jaffa St there is an ugly gate with a gaudy sign on it announcing that you have reached Capsule Space X. The gate was locked when we arrived, but a phone call gave us the code to get in and instructions that our keys were on the reception desk. Ok. Armed with our keys, we cautiously proceeded through the deserted patio area to the door marked Capsules. The sight behind it was quite a shock to our senses. Strobe lights, hectic rope lights in a variety of colors, shocking dots dancing across the wall. There wasn’t a single flick of normal light in there, but by squinting and uncrossing our eyes we could make out our white coffins. Or plastic capsules, whatever you want to call them. It took us a bit to figure out the numbers on the door, and unfortunately we were noisy enough to cause an occupant to come leaping out of his cage. He was clearly on something. After a small welcome song, “Oh Canada”, sung to the tune of “America The Beautiful”, he proceeded to inform us that he was a “virgin, sort of”. That’s about when we hastened off to find the rest of our nests. Nealda‘s key didn’t work, but Lonnie just gave the door a bit of a push and it opened right up. So much for security. We weren’t a bit sure if our stuff would be safe while we went for supper, but as far as I know no one lost anything.

By the time I had showered, squeegeed the inch of water out of the shower room and made my way back through the weed scented patio, more guests had arrived. Still no sign of any type of management, so if anything happened we were on our own.

We crawled into beds that positively reeked of laundry soap, and settled down, planning to sleep. Planning being the key word here.

First it started to really smell like weed in our capsule. Like a lot.

Then there was a hearty scuffle in the hallway, followed by a blast of swearing and some words about killing. The tirade was punctuated with a final door slam, which is very ineffective when said door is flimsy plastic.

Intermittently throughout the night little disturbances broke out, but it wasn’t until morning that we found out that Lonnie had been visited by an intruder 3 times. It was the same person, but clearly a persistent one. He INSISTED that Lonnie was in his capsule in spite of Lonnie showing him his clearly marked key card. The intruder didn’t need a key to get in, thanks to the same push and shove method that Nealda used. Incidentally Lonnie was in capsule 13.

I decided not to wonder why there was a big fire extinguisher outside Garrett’s capsule.

In the morning we sat around the breakfast table and had a good laugh. We were all feeling pretty jolly about the whole thing, and it attracted the attention of another guest. He stopped at our table and proceeded to give us a long and impassioned speech about Nazi Zionist Israel and killing babies and even managed to throw in a comment or two about Donald Trump and his father, the devil. His heart was burning within him and he had to speak. It sort of wiped the smiles off our faces as it went on and on and on and on. But eventually we broke loose and could leave.

And now we are back in West Bank where we feel safe and well taken care. In fact it’s positively bland in comparison to some things. Nobody is complaining.