... from Jerusalem

It's hard to imagine two cities so unlike each other as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: the ancient and the new, the religious and the secular, the chilly and the warm, the hilly and the flat... sometimes it's hard to perceive that these are the two cities of the same country, set only 60 kilometers one from another.

When I first came to Israel, Jerusalem, rather than Tel Aviv, was my first Hebrew city. (I wrote a post about it a while ago.) A bunch of teenagers who arrived to Israel as a part of The Jewish Agency youth immigration initiative, we were in constant awe of the city, its history, its spirit. We spent all of our weekends (and many of our evenings) wandering around the city, by foot of course, discovering Jerusalem neighborhood by neighborhood: the proletarian-bourgeois mix of Katamon, the fancy Rehavia, the beautiful German Colony, the artistic Yemin Moshe, but most of all - the Old City.

Because nothing in Jerusalem could really compare to the Old City. I think that more than anything we just couldn't believe that all of a sudden all this amazing heritage became available to us, our to discover, to touch, to walk on. This was like waking up each morning in a history book, and be able to live between its pages.

After I finished my university studies, I moved to Tel Aviv: finding employment there was so much easier. At first, I thought that after a few years I'll move back to Jerusalem. I couldn't imagine parting from this city. But eventually, Tel Aviv grew on me; now I couldn't think of leaving the coast, the cafes, the bustling street life.

Yesterday our team went to a day trip to Jerusalem. We drove to the city, parked in the recently build open street Mamilla mall, crossed over and entered the Old City at Jaffa Gate. We then climbed the stairs to the rooftop of the "Petra" hostel, situated right by the gate. And wow, what an amazing view can you see from this rooftop: the Dome of the Rock mosque, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and tiled rooftops of the Old City, and on the distant hills the towers of the Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives. And I recalled my first years in Israel, and felt the awe I had then, when I saw these domes, towers and hills for the first time.

In "Jerusalem Hills daily photo", Dina had written about the view from "Petra" hotel here and here - take a look to learn a bit about this place.


Visit Skywatch Friday to see the sky as seen from all around the planet...

... at sunset, when it rains (Tel Aviv port)

In my last post, I wrote about how cool it is to cycle in Tel Aviv, and how for years I yearned to learn riding a bike; and Fragmentage commented:

This is so ironic! When I first came to live in Tel Aviv around 10 years ago cycling was for the weirdos, or at least that's how I felt when I cycled along all on my own trying to avoid getting hit by a car :) 

I never gave it much thought, but Tel Aviv had changed a lot during the past years. Take for example the Tel Aviv port. For decades, since it ceased to function as the actual port, this was such a no man's land, occupied by warehouses and solemn, funky small business places. Then in 2001 the port had been renovated and became what it is today: one of the most popular and lively places to go out in the city (so popular, in fact, that I try to avoid it on weekends and holidays - it's way too crowded to enjoy then!). I love the port the most on quiet early mornings, or during the days of stormy, rainy weather, as today. (Not too stormy, though! Extremely strong winds are known to bring much damage to the port, on rare occasions even tearing up glass doors and windows - best to avoid it then.)

But when it just rains, and the wind is not too strong, there's nothing like an evening stroll in the port. The sunset gleams through scattered rain clouds, the sky is reflected in the wet wavy deck that truly becomes the natural extension of the ocean, and the unusual curvy streetlights and stone benches seem like big, but friendly sea creatures. (Don't these streetlights remind you of images of a Loch Ness monster, poking his head curiously out of the water?)

Take a look at the Sky watch Friday, to see the skies of any weather, any place on the planet...

...on stormy days of real winter

Tel Aviv port on one of stormy winter days

Today is one of those rare stormy days in Israel: it's windy, cold, overcast. Tomorrow it's even supposed to snow on the north of the country and in Jerusalem!

Typical winters in Tel Aviv are very different. They are sunny, dry, outdoorsy. It's so wonderfully weird to look at the pictures from northern countries and see piling snow, ice-covered streams, feeble sun under the frozen land. I really like these images and stories from places where the winter is present, and real, and cannot be ignored or mistaken. I probably like the best those coming from Scandinavia. There's something very magical and severe in Scandinavian winters, and it's beautifully conveyed by photographers, writers, bloggers.

A few months ago I read a novel "The True Deceiver" by Tove Jansson. Tove Jansson is a Finnish-Swedish artist and writer, probably best known by her Moomin series (of which by the way my favorite is "Moominland Midwinter"!), but she had also written wonderful "non-Moomin" prose, such as "The True Deceiver", that only recently had been translated to English. It starts like this:

It was an ordinary dark winter morning, and snow was still falling. No window in the village showed a light. <...> It had been snowing along the coast for a month. As far back as anyone could remember, there hadn’t been this much snow, this steady snow piling up against doors and windows and weighing down roofs and never stopping even for an hour. Paths filled with snow as quickly as they were shovelled out. <...> People woke up late because there was no longer any morning.

As the title suggests, this book is about trust and deceit, and also about art, and craft, and talent. And it's also about seasons, and how they affect and influence us all. I read "The True Deceiver" when it was warm and sunny, and I could really feel the winter in a cut-out Scandinavian village, where "there was no longer any morning".

Take a look at the Sky watch Friday, to see the sky in Scandinavia, and in the Middle East, and everywhere in the world...