Travel report: Israel

Country ranking by area: #150
Country ranking by population: #97

Date of visit: May 2011

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with Israel. On one hand, it is one of my favourite countries in the world and I have already been there three times. On the other hand, it’s also the country, in which I had the highest amount of annoying situations with rude locals. Seriously, I would say that I had only ten unpleasant situations worldwide during my travels. Four out of these ten happened in Israel though, which ranks Israel first in my personal list of countries with unfriendly locals. Egypt would be number two by the way.

The funny thing is that I always discuss that with Israeli travellers, when I meet them abroad. First, they cannot believe that someone says they are rude. But when I tell them why I think they are, they usually laugh and say “actually, you are right. We are indeed rude.” I will come back to that later.

Travelling to Israel

Travelling to Israel has some downsides or more precisely, entering and leaving the country can be a pain in the ass due to the annoying questioning. Plus, if you get the infamous passport stamp of Israel, you won’t be able to enter several Muslim countries due to their difficult relationship with Israel. Things have changed in the past years and you won’t get a stamp anymore. However, when I entered Israel the first time, I was too nervous to ask if they could put the stamp to a different paper, which would have been possible. So, I got my Israeli stamp and I had to get a new passport for my trip to Iran in 2017.

The passport stamp is not the only problem though. Entering and leaving the country also means answering stupid questions to the security staff. Usually, entering the country is not as annoying as leaving it. “How long will you stay in Tel Aviv?” – “Three days.” – “Holidays for only three days?!” The guy looks at you as if that was the most unrealistic thing he had ever heard. As if someone had told him that he would fly to Uranus for the weekend. But this is how it is.

Leaving the country can be the more annoying part, and most of the time it is. They advise you to be at the airport at least three hours before your flight. And it’s not only the constant terminal change, if you fly with easyjet, it’s the interrogations you have several times that sucks. “Oh, you have been to Beirut? Did you talk to anyone? What was his name? What was his profession? Why did you go to Beirut?” After one or two trips to Israel, this cumbersome questioning becomes a routine. I had to go to a small room once and undress my pants. Apparently, they didn’t like my answers to some questions. The good thing was that I could skip all the other security checkpoints afterwards. There are seven or eight in total.

Obviously, Israel takes security very seriously, as the country is surrounded by hostile neighbouring countries. It’s still annoying, even you’re aware of that.

My three trips to Israel

Back in 2011, I went to Tel Aviv for five nights with my college friends Matt and Simon. I don’t remember why we chose Tel Aviv. Perhaps, it was because I spent five days in Beirut three months earlier. Beirut and Tel Aviv were exotic destinations to me back then. I remember that many people asked if I was crazy because Israel would be too dangerous. It already sounded ridiculous seven years ago, but it even sounds more ridiculous today, as I have been to way more exotic and also dangerous countries up to now.

We liked Tel Aviv so much in 2011 that Matt and I decided to come back just one and a half year later. I remember that it was the last weekend in October. We had 30 degrees in Israel, while it was snowing in Switzerland. This second trip was probably the least eventful of all three, as it was more or less a replay of the first trip: partying until the early morning hours and eating hummus.

My last trip to Israel was in 2016 with Tobi. I haven’t travelled with him up to that date, but as our friendship got stronger and we both love travelling, we decided to spend a long weekend together abroad. The reason why we chose Tel Aviv was because we wanted to combine Tel Aviv with a trip to Palestine. We both collect countries and Palestine would have been a new country for both of us.

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv is one of my favourite cities in the world, period. Sometimes, I call it even the Miami of the Middle East. It is in my opinion the perfect city for hanging out without doing a lot of activities. A great city to relax in other words. Of course, everytime I’m in Tel Aviv I walk to old-Jaffa, but aside from that I just enjoy spending my time at the beach… and I’m not even a beach person.

Moreover, Tel Aviv is one of the best nightlife cities in the world. You can go out every night of the week and find an amazing party somewhere. The good thing is that nightlife in Tel Aviv is diverse, and you will find all kind of venues. The parties start relatively late, sometimes the club is still almost empty at 2 AM. Consequently, the party is still going on at 6 AM. The vibe you will feel inside many nightclubs is incredible.

I also say that Tel Aviv is one of the cities with the most beautiful people in the world. Almost all people work out – obviously, they live next to the beach. But still, if I had to name three countries with the best looking women Israel would definitely be one of them. Speaking of the beach, I usually don’t like city beaches. Nice is an example for a city with a very ugly city beach. The beach in Tel Aviv is fantastic though. It’s a wide beach with golden sand, and the sunsets you can see in Tel Aviv are spectacular.

One more thing I like about Tel Aviv – or Israel in general – is the food. It’s more or less the same food you find in Lebanon, and both countries claim that they had invented hummus. But it doesn’t matter. Hummus, falafel, lebneh… I love it all. Especially hummus. In Israel, they put hummus to almost every dish. People who are not into hummus will be annoyed at some point, but I couldn’t get enough of it. Food is relatively cheap in Israel by the way.

Jerusalem

If you go from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, it’s like going to another planet. You barely see orthodox Jews in Tel Aviv, as Tel Aviv is a quite modern and open-minded city. Jerusalem is the complete different. It’s like going back in time.

The ride between the two city takes only 45 minutes. We visited Jerusalem on our first trip to Israel. However, we did a mistake by going there on a Saturday. Saturday is Sabbath and buses don’t drive. As we were three people, we shared a taxi together and it cost 20 Dollars per person for both ways, which is a fair price.

I remember that it was very hot on that day we visited Jerusalem. Unfortunately, it was even the hottest day during the trip. That wouldn’t have been a problem in Tel Aviv but there is a dresscode in Jerusalem. You better dress modestly there, which can be really tough when temperatures are above 35 degrees. However, it is absolutely understandable, as Jerusalem is a holy city for many people. It’s also the only city with great religious importance for Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Jerusalem was surreal somehow. The old city is divided into four quarters: the Jewish Quarter, the Christian Quarter, the Armenian Quarter and the Muslim Quarter. There are Christians, Jews and Muslim peacefully living next to each other in the city. I even saw stands with ‘Free Palestine’-merchandise. I don’t remember in which quarter it was. Probably not in the Jewish. Nevertheless, it surprised me that they sold things like that in Israel.

One of the most important sights is Via Dolorosa of course. It is believed to be the path Jesus Christ walked on the way to his crucifixion. We walked down the street and entered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the place of Jesus’ crucifixion and his empty grave. And just two minutes after I had entered the church, the battery of my (Nikon?) camera dies. What a bummer. Something like that wouldn’t happen to me anymore nowadays. Or do you think that I would enter Machu Picchu and my phone battery dies just a few minutes later? 🙂

What I like about Israel

I like many things about Israel, and I already mentioned some of the good things. One of the things I didn’t mention yet was the weather. Although it can get very hot in summer, Israel can be visited year-round. The best months are from March to June and from September to November though. It’s a country that is a perfect travel destination when temperatures gets colder in Europe.

I also like the fact that many Israeli live as if there was no tomorrow. They drink, they party, they have fun. Perhaps, this is the way to live if your country is surrounded by enemy countries and you never know when the next war is coming.

Israel is also a beautiful country. It’s generally a typical Middle East country, a bit dry, sand coloured architecture, palms and the ocean. Israel might be not as pompous as many think. A few months ago, I heard someone saying that he was disappointed in Tel Aviv, as he had been told the city would be like Dubai. This couldn’t be more wrong though. These two cities have almost nothing in common. Tel Aviv is an old city and infrastructure is far from perfect. You often see the plaster peeling off the facades and the roads are in mediocre condition. It’s comparable to Mediterranean cities in Southern Europe, but not to high-end cities like Dubai.

Nevertheless, the country offers plenty of things to see and do, although it’s a pretty small one. But if you love Tel Aviv like I do, there is the chance that you won’t even leave the city. For me, Tel Aviv is almost a perfect place, and it’s one of the rare cities I could also imagine living there.

What I dislike about Israel

Obviously, Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv is an annoying place because of the procedures when you enter or leave the country. But there is another thing I don’t like about Israel: the behaviour of some locals. Israeli are in my opinion the rudest people on earth. I’m not talking about the Israeli who just finished their military service and travel through Southeast Asia in groups of twelve, never socialising with other people than their fellow countrymen. I’m talking about the people I met in Israel.

Usually, I would never say something like that publicly, but I will explain it. And as I mentioned earlier, the people from Israel usually agree when I explain why encounters with Israeli can be bothering. Moreover, if you meet 200 people on one day and two of them are unfriendly to you, you focus too much on the 1% and say these people, including the other 198, are unfriendly. However, the amount of bad encounters in Israel was unexceptional high and I’m gonna describe the two worst ones.

The first one happened somewhere in the middle of the city. It was during my first trip and I was walking through the streets, when I muscular guy in a tank top approached me. He yelled something to my face in Hebrew and I answered that I don’t speak Hebrew. He then aggressively claimed that I had looked at him, which was ridiculous, as I was wearing sun glasses. I told him that I wasn’t looking at him, but that wasn’t enough for him, and he wanted to start a fight. Something like that can happen anywhere in the world, but it happened on my second day in Israel, which didn’t help me to have a good start there.

Another annoying situation was when I was ordering crepe. I told the vendor that I want it with chocolate, bananas and nuts. When he was preparing it, I realised that he didn’t add the nuts, but I thought he might sprinkle it over the folded crepe. He didn’t do that though so that I told him that he forgot the nuts. “You are standing right next to me, why didn’t you tell me earlier?” he yelled at me in an aggressive tone. I didn’t say anything so that he asked where I was from one minute later. “I realised that you’re not from here,” he said, “because you stayed calm. We Israeli start screaming about little things. I’m sorry for that.” At least, he apologised for it.

There were also situations when people were not answering me when I asked for help. They just looked at me and didn’t say anything, although I heard that they spoke English. All of these things can happen in Switzerland too, and they do! But is it normal that so many annoying situations happen in eight days only (they all happened on my first two trips)? Generally, I have the impression that Israeli aren’t very thrilled about having tourists in their country. And sometimes, they let you feel that. That doesn’t mean that they are threatening you (my incident was just bad luck I guess), but it’s just something I don’t like about the country. By the way, all the bad situations happened with men but never with women. Israeli women are some of the most warm-hearted and loveliest people I have ever met.

Is Israel a worthy travel destination?

From time to time, people I know ask me if I can suggest a destination for a short holiday. My first answer is always Tel Aviv and some of these people follow my suggestion. I have never ever heard someone complain about this recommendation. On the contrary, they enthusiastically tell me how great it was afterwards. Tel Aviv gives you a good mixture of relaxing, beach, good food (at least in my opinion), nightlife and the cultural side trip to Jerusalem.

Israel is not only Tel Aviv and Jerusalem though. Many Israeli told me that I absolutely have to go to Haifa. It’s only a one hour drive from Tel Aviv. Another option would be Eilat in the deep South of the country. It used to be a great party town a few years ago. I don’t know how it is nowadays. Obviously, the Dead See is also worth a trip. There are enough things to do in a small country like Israel. And why not visiting the West Bank when you’re there?

It’s not possible to ignore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when you travel to Israel. Not only that the people back home will give you their opinion about it (whether you ask them or not), you also witness that you’re in a country that is in high alert status. Israeli – men and women – have to perform military service, which lasts three years. After that, many of the ex-soldiers go bananas in Southeast Asia or South America right after the military service, but that’s a different story. Anyway, you will see armed soldiers on the streets, sometimes even beautiful women wearing flip-flops, a nice Louis Vitton bag and a machine gun around their bodies.

Still, Israel is a safe travel destination. Of course, you have a terror attack every few years, but we have that too in Europe. People who don’t go to Israel for safety reasons are definitely gonna miss something. As I said, it is one of my favourite countries, although the people can be a pain in the ass sometimes. But take it with humour and everything will be fine. I can’t wait to my fourth trip to this country.

 

Find the travel reports of the other countries I’ve visited here!