48 hours of Tel Aviv

One of my best friends from college, Mia, came to stay with me for a week in Jerusalem. Mia was in Barcelona for 7 weeks and made a pit stop in lovely Rechaviyah (the neighborhood in Jerusalem where I live) before heading back to Massachusetts. Granted I was only in Israel for a week and a half when Mia got here, I was determined to give Mia the best week of her life. You'll have to ask her if it was or not. Because I am in class Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Mia toured Jerusalem during the day and at night I did homework, we went out a little, and the next morning we would go out for breakfast before repeating. Our initial plan was to go to Tel Aviv on Wednesday night and have a real Tel Aviv nightlife experience and tour on Thursday but alas we couldn't find anyone to host us for the night so we decided to experience the Jerusalem nightlife on Wednesday...not exactly sure what we were expecting but here is what we got.

**This post seems long but is just a ridiculous slew of events that is a very easy read. Also, there is no point other than to retell some of our adventures and relive some good times so don't expect any more. Also, Mia and I assure all readers, especially parents and grandparents, that we are very responsible girls who know our limits and are staying safe.**

To understand the next 48 hours, allow myself to introduce you to some of the characters:
Me- Living in Jerusalem, Hebrew is pretty good, generally translate for friends
Mia- Visiting me, can understand very basic Hebrew, attracts boys everywhere she goes
Ari and Keren- friends from school (see post Live from Jerusalem)
Adam and Nati- Our waiters at a bar in Jerusalem who don't speak English
Doran and friends- Guys who sat next to us at a bar in Jerusalem. Doran speaks minimal English, his friends speak none.
Natan, Ariel, and someone whose name I forgot- Israelis with North American parents
Julia- Friend from Jerusalem who goes to school in the states, minimal Hebrew (see post Manifest Destiny?)

Mia and I go to meet up with Keren and Ari in the center of Jerusalem at New Deli, a delicious kosher meat sandwich place where we see a bunch a friends from Columbia and Barnard. We are dressed up significantly nicer than everyone there and we explain that we were supposed to be in Tel Aviv that night and wanted to bring the Tel Aviv life to Jerusalem. Ari and Keren suggest that we go to a bar called Tel Aviv to help us get the full experience and so the four of us go with our friend Leelee who is leaving Israel that night. After a nice amount of catching up, Ari, Keren, and Leelee leave and Mia and I head over to the first bar which has seats open called Nadin. This is where Mia and I meet Nati, our very nice and cute waiter. Nati takes our orders but Adam, another waiter, comes over and begins to talk to us. Adam and I speak in Hebrew a little and assures us that he will be back to sit with us. About 10 minutes later, Adam asks us how we're doing and he's really trying to lay the moves on me. He speaks to us as if Mia doesn't exist and this is something I'm not used to when being with Mia so we're just eating it up. Adam asks us if we want shots and we politely decline but after assuring us they are free (b'emet, free!) we accept and get shots of really bad vodka. But we're in a good place and are enjoying each other's company and continue talking about all things school, family, and life. Adam asks me (not us, just me) if we enjoyed our shots, we lied and said we did, and then these two guys sitting next to us asked us if we were on brithright. No, we answered the 20-something-American men, but they continued conversing with us and the conversation was so exhilarating that I can't even remember their names and when they tried to get our numbers to hang out with us later after trying to convince us to go to Tsfat with them and their Aish-type trip, we politely declined and said that maybe we would see them around Jerusalem. We were happy to see Adam who asked if maybe I would dance with him, and I said maybe later because we were still enjoying each others company.

Me and Mia outside of Tel Aviv in Jerusalem

At this point a group of 20-something Israelis come to sit next to us and two of them turned to chat up me and Mia. We meet Doran who mostly speaks to me in Hebrew but is clearly trying to get Mia's attention. Doran has a friend whose name I also don't remember but he barely said anything... we know that some of them are in the army and other have finished so we figure that they're fun. Typical American girl response. Doran makes a toast which I translate for Mia, "To life, to drugs, to sex!" and we decide that maybe they're fun but they're not really our cup of tea. Not the typical nerdy boys I'm into, at least. After lots of translating between Mia and Doran and laughing at them thinking that I can't understand what they're saying, it's 2am and Mia and I decide we're going to call it a night. Doran looks at me as says in Hebrew, "tell her that I think she's --" So I translate and say, "Doran thinks you're, wait, what was the word? I didn't understand." "Tell her I thinks shes HOT" "Ohhhh okay... check please!"

Mia and I pay for our drinks (but not our free shots! Woohoo!) say goodbye to Adam who is sad we didn't dance with him, and head on home. But wait! We never took a picture of us at the bar and we're determined to photo-document our time together so it seemed perfect when we are approached by a red-head guy who looks at us and in Hebrew goes, "Hebrew or English?" I answer in Hebrew, "Shneihem (both)" he switches to English, "how can it be both?!" to which we proceed to make fun of him for asking us the question when he clearly speaks both. This gingy, Natan, is a riot and we enjoy meeting his friends who are "mad cool" and "super cool." After trying to get us to sit at the bar we had just left, we settle on a bench in the area we are and for about 30 minutes Natan amidst his severe ADD tries to flirt with Mia and I spend the time talking and joking with Mad Cool (whose name I forgot) and Super Cool otherwise known as Ariel. The three of us are having a great time cracking jokes and just chilling when at some point Natan puts his number into Mia's phone and we say we're going to walk home, after all, we are going to real Tel Aviv tomorrow! Natan, who is driving Ariel back to his home outside of Jerusalem (that seems to be the only reason Ariel was there- his mom is catching a flight to America in the morning and he needs to give her something... he swears that it's not a curfew despite our insisting that as a 21-year old he has a curfew). Natan offers us a ride to which I reply, "Yeah, okay, and when you show up at my apartment tomorrow looking for Mia we're going to have ba'ayot (problems)" and just to make sure he gets the point I add, "And my shutaf (roommate) is really big." (He's not). So no ride, but we'll see each other tomorrow and Mia and Natan have exchanged numbers. After parting ways we call them back to make them take a picture of us because as we explained that's why we were talking to them in the first place. Successful night complete with pictures and it's time to put this story on hold for a little....

Me and Mia on our way home from TA in Jtown

Mia and I head out to Tel Aviv with three things in mind- we want to go to the Palmach Museum (my favorite), we want to go to Shuk Hakarmel, and we want to go to the beach. We plan nothing and bring no map. And remember how good I am at getting lost? Looking back on it, I have no idea what we were thinking. After getting into Tel Aviv we somehow manage to go in the right direction and then finally find the right bus (with help from cousin Michal who we called after realizing that we just didn't know what stop to get off at) and when we got to the museum we were told because we didn't have a reservation they would "try to fit us in, but we could wait in the cafeteria for an hour or so." Oooookay. Let's clarify, the cafeteria was more like a shack outside and its safe to say that we didn't buy any food. Finally we got on a tour and as expected it was incredible. There's nothing to reinforce your Zionism like learning about the people who fought for the very existence of the State of Israel while being attacked from the inside and the out after having come to the land from the Holocaust. Not to mention all things that have to do with fighting affect me differently now that Jonah is a soldier in the IDF. But I digress, this is supposed to be a post about our 48 hours spent in real and imagined Tel Aviv. When we left the museum we asked someone at the front desk for directions (how smart and unlike us) to Shuk Hakarmel and low and behold I recognized the woman sitting there! She was a counselor in my age group at camp 7 years ago, or as she so adequately put it, "oh, you were one of those effing brats." Again, oooookay. Campers, if you read my blog or made it this far in my post, let it be known that I love you dearly and when you are 20 if we're still in touch (we will be) I will never describe you that way cause I even love when you're bratty. So we make it successfully back to Jerusalem (while exploring the Tel Aviv buses) and after meeting up with Julia head out to town again at about ten to 12.

Me at the Palmach Museum.  Talia- check out my dress!  I'm listening to your advice!

Thursday night in Jerusalem is much more hoppin than Wednesday night but we finally found a place to sit- 21 up but the waiter didn't seem to care "just this time." Julia, Mia, and I chatted for over an hour and then we (Mia) decided to check in to see where Natan was. As expected, he was in the same part of town that we were last night (no, definitely not waiting for us and definitely not because we said we'd be back) and we headed over. He and Mia headed inside to get drinks and I heard someone call "Sara!" and saw our friend from last night, Adam! I was SO excited to see our friendly flirtatious waiter when he asked me what I was doing here I responded jokingly in Hebrew, "we wanted to visit you! More free shots, right?!" He didn't think it was so funny but he told me to sit down and I said I would once I got a drink. I told Mia and we were so excited to sit with him until she comes out asking me where he is, I point to him, and she goes, "no Sara! That's Doran!" Woops. My bad. We definitely did not want to sit with him. And that explains why he didn't think my joke was so funny..... After sitting down with Natan and meeting some of his friends, Julia got to talking to one of them and Ariel met up with us and we started talking as well. Julia and the guy she was talking to were having difficulty with the language barrier, and every 5 sentences or so Ariel or myself were helping with the translations at which point I hear someone else call "Sara!" This time it WAS Adam and Mia and I, once again, were very excited to see him. So we talked for about 5 minutes until he went back to his friends, Mia and Natan went to "look for some food" which is definitely not a euphemism for take a walk and make out, and the four of us remained chatting at the table waiting for the check. At the same time we realized it was 4am, we also realized that they were charging us extra for "security" which is definitely a euphemism for just sitting at an outside table. Julia picks that exact instant to remember that she has to wake up at 9am and starts getting real mad at the amount she has to pay but we resolve the situation and head out trying to find Mia and Natan. Natan and Ariel are of course very hungry and so we stop for food, dance in the streets a little, and finally after a few more detours make it home to the sounds of the birds chirping at 5am.

Julia, Myself, Natan, Mia, and Ariel after they stopped for food

Me dancing in the streets late at night

A post wouldn't be a post without some politics thrown in so allow me to add (if you've made it this far then you deserve it anyway) a part of the story that I originally left out. The second night when we saw Adam (this time for real) and he came to say hi, as he left one of the boys we were with said in Hebrew, "oh, of course the American girls like the Arab guys." I am very confused and ask Ariel and Natan about their comment. They explain to me that guys like Adam hang out in this area to try to pick up American tourists because they know that Israeli girls won't date them and that they have friends who have been taken advantage of by "guys like these." I challenge them, saying that despite Adam's flirting he was just our waiter the other night, we had no intention of going home with him (or allowing him to go home with us, after all, did we not just tell Ariel and Natan the other night that they couldn't drive us home), and that if they were in some country and they saw their waiter from the night before, wouldn't they be excited to see him/her? We agreed to disagree and Adam came back for a few minutes to speak to me and Mia and the guys we were with didn't go out of their way to be friendly. Adam then recognized Natan and, in hebrew, told me "I think I got into a bar fight with that guy once." Oh. That could definitely shed some light on these guys' attitudes. But they laughed about it, shook hands, at least pretended to make up.

So there it is, folks. Mia and I had quite a fun time in the Jerusalem nightlife (and a little Tel Aviv), participated in some shtuyot (nonsense), and found that no matter how much you preface a blog post by insisting that there is no point other than to retell and remember good times, you always end up with a lesson. Ours was that the conflict is all around us. Who knows if Adam, if that even is his real name or just his Jerusalem-bartending-name, has spent a single second thinking about that night, but when I woke up the next morning (to babysit on 3 hours of sleep, it was lovely) I couldn't get the exchange out of my head. Ariel and Natan live in a reality that's just different than mine. My waiter was nothing more than friendly and flirtatious, to them he was deceptive (did he tell us where he lives? Did we even bother to ask? Does it even matter?) and creepy. Of course I believe that they have friends who have been taken advantage of by Arab waiters. But I bet that they have friends who have been taken advantage of by Jewish waiters too. And I certainly have friends who have been taken advantage of by frat guys in NYC. There are people like that everywhere, so why are we generalizing, stereotyping, and preventing ourselves from having a good time?

We're safe and we laughed all night long- ultimately that's all that matters. For now. Later, we'll have to delve in to the realities that people are faced with here, and maybe even try to throw out some suggestions on how to make things better. Until then, I'm down for more fun nights in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and beyond.

If you made it this far, I'll send you a postcard.