Wednesday 12. November 2008 Travel to Jerusalem
By: KlimBim
Occupation of the east cape
In honour of our lovely friend Bebe
Mosk at a salt lake in Cypress
Arrival beer in Jerusalem (jiddisch?)
Volos / Athens ( GR )
The question is, what the hell is to do for three journeymen, stranded on a gas station which is definitely so difficult to realize, that only one car in one hour passes by to take some gas? - That's right, they play Skat and they drink beer, six hours, till the journey goes on. So effectively it was coming true, that we arrived Athens the same day in the evening...
... Exarchia, the Metal music district in Athens bid us a 'zuenftiges' receipt at the Rock-Café. But the very next day we went on to the port of Piraeus, because Athens was way to big for us. With an overnight ferry we had the transit to hit our next destination...
Crete
At dawn we reached the port of Chania, started out direcdtion east, past-over palms and barracks, in the shade of the rising sun, along the sea...
... the first car stopped, as Christian held up his thumb. The driver bent over to the open window above the head of his small son: „Where you wanna go?“ – „Direction Iraklio.“ – „Where exactly you wanna go?“ – „We don’t know, just in that direction...“ – „You always have to know, where you wanna go! I’m a Satanist!“ Well we sent him to the devil...
... " Ohh what a pity, i cannot take a picture of you now." This is what the mother said to her daughter, as they went over a small embankment of stone to the white tiny chapel in the sea, at a sunny morning in their holidays and suddenly three guys were laying there in their sleeping bags, right in the foyer of the small sanctuary. The question remains if the whole story would have been in another way, if we would not had taken out our suit last night...
Cypress
Dry land, with over six months of summer, in which not only one drop of rain is falling. It was the first time for all of us, that we have been into a region almost like a dessert. Seperated country. The greek spoken part the " rich " Euroland and the Turkish " occopied " north Cypress, subject matter of many discussions. Pretty silly we detected, that there are no ferry connections in the south part, not only because it was unfavourable for us. It seems like, there was a very clever politician who has caculated some years ago, that it brings more money for the state to burn kerosene, as to take a ridiculous port tax...
... our first evening we spent in the seperated capital. To find more informations about that, visit: www.fremderfreiheitsschacht.de...
... after hours of hiking through the lonesome carless solitude at the coast line of north Cypress, we found a nice place at the beach under the starlit sky, where we made a campfire, enjoyed our last sip of finest Transylvanian Èšuika and we reminisced about our travels. At the next morning the voice of a keen officer woke us up: „What are you doing here?“ – „Ähh, sleeping.“ – „You have car?“ – „No, we’re walking.“ He eyeballed us a long time, then he laughed and shook his head and we thought that he didn't know where to sort us, before he said goodbye and walked away...
... the jeep stopped spontaneously. Unfortunately the Scot went only 500 meters further, but he invited us to have a coffee. We spent the whole day with him and his wife, with neat conversations and good food. Also unforgetable will be, that the twenty dogs which they had contained always started a howling concert, if the muezzin started to sing from top of the mosk...
... the remains of the Crusaders fortress impressed us with its tremendous size and the wonderful view over the north- and south coast of the north-east headland ...
... past over wild donkeys and the golden beach we drove to the south cape. 40 kilometers northern Turkey, 70 kilometers east of Syria...
... an indescribable wonder of nature we were able to witness the next evening. At three sides around us there was an impressive, heavy thunder storm over the sea, while the starlit sky over us wasn't clouded from one cloudlet...
... a less joyful situation we experienced at our departure, as we bought a flight ticket to Amman. We were scaned stony-faced and the exposure to our clothes was not careful. So we lost dangerous weapons like a nail scissor, a nail and a tuning fork...
Jordan - Amman
We were surprised at our arrival in Jordan, that the temperature was lower than in Cypress about some degrees. Our acceptance at the airport was friendly, also from the security and a little bit later we found our sleep, under meagre bushes on the dusty ground. But already before sun rise we were woke by rain drops. Our way guided us past a control station. After a long stay in a bus station, somebody picked us up and brought us to the German embassy, where they tried to help us finding work. This is why we got to know a very recommendable cabinetmaker's workshop the same day, where they make qualitative premium furnitures in 100 % pure handcraft. Unfortunately the wrong place for two carpenters and a piano technician...
... very impressive was the rain, which we experienced two days in our three days stay in Amman. It never rained a long time, maybe one till two hours, but so strong, that the streets changed into wild rivers and they washed away the dirt from the past half-year. After that sun was shining again and within the next two hours nothing from the rain was visible anymore...
... the three words which faced us until and over the borderline constantly were: „Welkamm!“, „Taxi?“ and "Werfrom?"...
... finally we stepped in one of the several mini-busses and drove to the King-Hussein-Bridge. At the border police station in Jordan two officers were so willing to help us, that we almost missed the next bus to Israel...
Jordan - Israel
... so we went ( in that moment we drove ) over Jordan and we're still alive. The Jordan, where in the world it's no term? Maybe not as big as the Amazon or the Nile, maybe as big as the Danube, or? I mean, at least a whole country was named after him. The bridge, which has the name of the departed king, how big and monumental she will be? The deflating reality disabused us once more. Over the slightly runlet, which waited for us, we could have gone easily...
... at the Israelian border station, which followed immediately, we were not only confrontated with the estimated security checks, but also with the power of a survey state. Albeit that the search of a journeyman always takes more time, because of the 'dangerous' or 'illegal' objects, we had never been into a control, which took us four hours. Indeed they didn't took finger prints or eye scans, but in individual conversations they tried to find out everything, for example which kind of species we are or what we want to do. Wether it happened because of the fact, that we don't wanted to have an Israelian stamp in our passports, because we wanted to be open to go further in the middle east, or because of our suits, we don't know. In the twillight of that day we got on a bus, which brought us directly out of the occupied territories into Jerusalem...