In Israel: Sleeping in Ikea, missing sunsets and doing the tango with jet lag

Part one of this multi-part series is here, if you are interested. Reading it is not a pre-requisite for this post to make sense: rest assured that this is going to make little sense no matter what you read before or after. But I will still plug it simply because I wrote that one too and since you have decided to waste your precious time in this untrampled corner of the internet, you might as well get more quantity of prose for your efforts.

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It is a very pleasant 14 degrees Celsius when the Boeing 777 touches down at Ben Gurion. It had been raining the previous week but the evening sun is golden bright as I walk out of the terminal. The taxi driver, Mrs. M – a lady that speaks near flawless, if accented, English and accepts credit cards – engages in casual chit chat. I enquire about the “situation” in Tel Aviv. My intention here is not to do an Anderson Cooper but only to see if it is safe enough to step out for dinner – because last month a couple of stabbings happened not far from where I usually go out to grab a bite. “The situation these days is calm. But the leaders are not taking any initiatives for peace”, she says in a resigned tone that comes from being a lady, a mother of three and trying to make a living in a troubled place. In parallel, we have been warned at work to not venture out on our own and also to avoid a bunch of “mixed” cities including Jerusalem and Jaffa. In other words, business as usual in Israel. Outside of actual research and meeting people, taxi drivers provide the most insight into everyday life in any country. Some of them are just chatty for the sake of being so, but there are others that can give you a delectable slice of life during a ride into town and Mrs. M is one such.

My stay this time is arranged at a different hotel than the usual one I love. The idea is to avail of better rates negotiated for the bigger training group. This hotel is relatively new and is just up the street from the apartment we were staying in last year. The supposedly “chic” design is, how do I put this…terrible. Imagine sharp edged, white, boxy furniture, grey net-like curtains, a downright cheap looking, white table and a about five-foot tall pink lamp (yes, pink) hanging from the ceiling in one corner just behind a contemporary fabric swing chair. And the hidden shelves? It takes me 5 minutes of searching to locate the hair dryer. And the room is done in a shade of white so bright that I’m half expecting Morgan Freeman in whites from Bruce Almighty to walk out through the walls and start playing God. The answer to the question, “What does it feel like to sleep in an Ikea showroom,” is this: right in this room. There is also a picture hanging by the TV of what certainly looks like two heaps in the Manila garbage dump. Remember, chic design. The room itself is oddly shaped. The wall on the far side makes a sharp angle to allow a view of the sea instead of the opposite building. Which brings us to just about the only redeeming feature in the room: a sea facing balcony. But even that comes with handicaps – the glass walls are grimy perhaps from the rains last week, the plastic furniture dirty, an ashtray in a non-smoking room and you can see into (and be seen from) the adjacent room’s balcony. But, one look at the sunset – a fiery ball reluctantly relenting and allowing the sea to swallow it – and you can easily be transported to a different world. But here is the catch: every evening when this elaborately made cosmic drama is staged, I will be inside some conference room in our office, 27 kms away, with not so much as a window, much less a view worth taking in. I know I’m whining but allow me one more rant: the breakfast spread – the one meal that I rely on most for my daily nourishment – is not as good as the usual hotel either. When I’m on business travel, I rate hotels on three aspects: cleanliness, the quality of the breakfast (read vegetarian options: smoked Norwegian salmon? Baby hippopotamus ribs smeared with caviar? Mean nothing!) and the amount of free water they provide in the room (read: 500ml is not enough). This hotel scores 1 out of 3.

This is beginning to sound like an old man’s medical maladies chronicle but I learn that Melatonin is a prescription-only drug in Israel. The elderly pharmacist at SuperPharm, a local pharmacy chain, helpfully offers an equivalent medicine. But here is the problem: the description on the carton is in Hebrew and the pharmacist speaks but a smattering of English. The only thing I understand on that carton is the bright yellow flower – which I assume means to say that I would wake up like one the morning after. So I opt for a drug-free recovery from jet lag instead. What is a few sleepless nights and droopy days compared to popping in pills of questionable ingredients? But on the flip side, that means playing with my sleeping times and going down on my knees and pleading with my mind and body to bail me out one more time. The first two nights are not too terrible – restless and filled with weird dreams, of course -- but at least I get a few straight hours of shut eye. But very soon I experience both extremes: of falling asleep early and waking up way too early and also falling asleep very late and scrambling to board the bus in the morning. However, no matter what happens the night before, the 3pm wave of sleepiness hits me like a ton of bricks leaving me nodding away during the late evening sessions. Luckily I’m part of a group all of who landed with me so I don’t stick out too much. And as it happens with these one-week trips, I will get adjusted to the Tel Aviv clock just in time for my return flight.

I no longer forage for food. I now know enough places including their regular and Shabbat timings, most of them within a 10 minute walk from the hotel district. Two of the restaurants that I like, actually local street/casual food joints, are the Market and Miznon, both located on King George Street – a busy street lined by shops, cafes and restaurants on both sides. They have enough vegetarian and even vegan options for me to skip the longer walk to Jaffa in pursuit of a falafel sandwich for dinner. Although, I must admit that the walk to Jaffa is much, much nicer, taking one along the winding path by the beach. As they say, you win some and you lose some.

Walking around in Tel Aviv is an interesting experience. Many of the streets strongly remind me of India. They are loud, busy, narrow, lined with a mixture of shops, eateries and showrooms, bus stops filled with waiting people and the stains and stench of human and pet urine punctuating the side walk. The streets passing through residential neighborhoods are lined with the characteristic Bauhaus style apartments of varying vintages. This is definitely a city of apartments - there are hardly any independent homes around. The streets are all part of a massive one-way network and they have cars parked on both sides leaving very little room for cars to pass through. Parking spaces are scarce, forcing people to get creative and conjure up nooks and crannies to shoehorn their ride in. But the pavements are wide enough and not bad for walking. There are also wide, tree lined avenues – some with a central footpath, big open public spaces and much greenery by the Yarkon river running to the north. The beach along the warm Mediterranean is a beautiful presence, framing the coast to the West while city space gives way to desert as one travels to the east and south. The young(ish) people at work that are trying to buy a home don’t consider living outside Tel Aviv as an option. Culturally speaking, the city is divided into the classier North and the working class South – the exact opposite of Chennai’s respective halves. Restaurants of all sorts abound and one can have a sumptuous meal without burning a hole in the wallet or, of course, choose to indulge in expensive meals. The staple street food in Israel is, ironically, the decidedly middle-eastern falafel. With a few minor inconveniences aside, it is a bustling metropolis with something to do for everyone as long as there are no active conflicts that is.

I have never been to Turkey but people that have, always talk about how Asia meets Europe there. But I would like to think Israel must be no different. The European cars (many of them hatchback), al fresco dining, people’s sense of dressing, (conflict-rich) history per square mile, the style of graffiti (the best one I saw was “The revolution has been postponed because of the rain”) – all remind one of Europe. The dirty streets, slightly unruly traffic, drab buildings, storefronts with thick steel shutters, cables of all sorts running overhead, on the other hand, serve up the Asian, particularly Indian, flavor. This perhaps explains the pull of India on Israeli tourists, particularly the young, fresh-out-of-army segment. Tel Avivites also seem to possess a rather strong passion for pet dogs. Every other person on the street is walking one. But there is also a distinct lack of cleaning up after their pets. Remind you of India? Oh and there are the cats too. Of all colors, sizes, shapes and in varying states of health – some fit, some not so fit, some maimed – lurking around everywhere in search of their next meal.