In the Biblioteca Alexandrina

My time at the computer in the New Library of Alexandria will time out in thirteen minutes so this blog will be very rushed.
I went across the whole western coast of Egypt and it was pretty awesome. From Alex, I went to Marsa Matruh, which, as the guidebooks say, is a lackluster town, but it has a grade-A waterfront. In fact, I think it's the most beautiful waterfront I've ever seen. (And I unfortunately can't upload pictures yet.) A white railing follows kilometers of white sand and light blue, sometimes clear water. The beach is not especially clean - and let's be honest, hardly any beaches really are - but it looks so pure and clean, it's easy to overlook the trash. And come to think of it, the trash was still minimal compared to Sinai.
I decided to go swimming. I saw a little, abandoned brick house on top of a hill and went inside it. I felt really cool, like I'd found my little hermit's house. I had to pee really badly, so I peed inside it. I felt bad for soiling it. Then I discovered that there were three piles of shit inside the same house. Some people had also discovered this tiny house, but they went much further than myself in making it their own. I changed behind a rock instead. Then, I realized it was too cold outside to go swimming.
This beach is named Rommel's Beach, after the German general. There's a Rommel Museum inside a cave. Apparently he devised some great plans to defeat the Allies in the cave. An Egyptian approached me and said, "This man, he was from your county. He was a great man." "I'm not German, I'm American" I said. He looked disappointed. "But yes, Rommel was very smart. Patton was smarter, though." He seemed puzzled. "Patton defeated Rommel," I said. I thought of George C. Scott and felt a little bit proud to be American. This Egyptian (his name, like many Egyptians, was either Ali or Ahmed) introduced me to some of his cold friends who were swimming and offered me a ride back to town. I said, "I'm going to walk, but thanks."
After Matrouh, I went to Siwa. I have two minutes left, so I won't say much now. It was a nice, isolated place, although it still managed to be loud and it had lots of flies.

The German of Zichron Yaakov

Today, I saw one of the most surprising things I've seen in this whole trip.

Last night, I stayed in Zichron Yaakov/ זכרון יעקוב with a guy named Iftah who I met on couchsurfing. Zichron Yaakov is the kind of town that, if it were in America, I'd call a "tourist town." Israel is, in some ways, a tourist country, so it's hard to call one town a "tourist town," but Zichron Yaakov has that key combination of quaintness, smallness, and a sense that people there are very happy with their town and it's small size. And it has cafes, a pedestrian mall, antique stores, a winery, and one or two museums, all within about 500 feet of each other.

It also has an obscure kibbutz called Beth El. From Iftah, I learned that the founders of the kibbutz are messianic German Christians who build bomb shelters.

I learned more than that today, however. A second couchsurfer named Luke joined us. Luke is an American who moved to Germany to study in a university that is home to a particular scholar of Judaic studies who interested him. He wanted to find out the story behind these mysterious Germans. Iftah pulled the car up to the entrance to the kibbutz and Luke spoke to one of the Germans in German. Next thing I knew, we were on a tour of the kibbutz, conducted in Hebrew by a nice old German man.

He took us up into an office and gave us coffee and cakes. He talked about the ancient debate on whether the kingdom of heaven exists on earth or in our hearts. Apparently many Christians believed that Armageddon and the messiah would come in 1836, but that didn't happen, and so many of them abandoned the idea. But some still believe in the kingdom of heaven. The Germans on the kibbutz are followers of Albert Schweitzer, who apparently believed that the way to the kingdom of heaven was to help the Jews in earthly ways.

So, in 1973, these Germans started Kibbutz Beth El in northern Israel and the Israeli government asked them to manufacture bomb shelters, since that was something they needed and which there wasn't enough of. They became very good at these shelters, and demand for them exploded during the Gulf War. After the Gulf War, however, demand decreased, but instead of slowing down production and letting workers go, the manufacturers decided to expand their market. They built air filters for tanks and bomb shelters. They built isolation chambers for contaminated persons. We saw all of these things in various states of construction in the factory.

The filters were particularly impressive. They consist of a cyclone that collects the dust and a filter made of some sort of fiber that absorbs it. Apparently, it's far more efficient than just having a fiber filter to collect and absorb the dust. And apparently, it makes the air inside tanks and inside bunkers far more breathable.

We also got a preview of a machine that may be installed in future airports. It's an isolation chamber that looks tiny but expands to hold about 30 people. It's made to protect people if bomb experts have to examine luggage in the airport.

I don't remember the guide's name and I don't even recall if he told me his name. He was a good guide. He kept my attention 99% of the time, even though my mind was working overtime as I tried to visualize the physical science he described as well as rack my mind for Hebrew words I didn't recognize. Not surprisingly, it turned out that I actually didn't know most of the words, and I had to ask Iftah for translations a lot.

The more I think about it, it's truly amazing that this guy managed to hold my attention despite the language barrier. I think it was something about the enthusiastic and - by American and Israeli standards - awkward way he expressed himself. He moved his long, thin arms almost as much as your stereotypically hysterical Italian or Jew (except he had those giant Germanic/Scandinavian arms), his vocal mannerisms were a bit reminiscent of Max von Sydow, and he had a high-pitched laugh that seemed to be beyond his control.

Since writing that last sentence, I spent a good amount of minutes trying to figure out why I like people like him.

For some reason, I tend to like Northern Europeans. I think it's because they're funny.

Shots

Tonight, I'm staying with my friend Ido. He's a soldier who joined the Birthright group for several days of the tour. He's going for a run and I'm using his computer. My ancestors were Jewish shoemakers in the Ukraine and his ancestors were Jewish shoemakers in Morroco.

A few minutes before I started writing, I heard a sound that resembled a gun shot outside. Where I come from, that means somebody's playing with firecrackers or that there's a gang fight. In the Middle East, it can mean those things, but it can also be a bit more threatening. Yesterday, several students got shot in Jerusalem. Every day, somebody tells me there is going to be a war with Gaza and Hezbollah soon. The place doesn't feel any more dangerous than it did when I first arrived, and it didn't feel dangerous then.

My time ran out at the internet cafe in Haifa yesterday. I do like the abrupt way the last post ended, but I would like to continue what I was writing about. I was going to say that when I touched the Western Wall, I got why there was a war over Jerusalem, and how traumatic it was for Jews to be denied access to this site. I didn't understand it: "understand" is a much too definitive word. I didn't understand it- I just got it.

In the last post, I mentioned that I didn't feel any more at home here than in any other country in the world. The only reason that was worth mentioning is because I've been comparing myself to people I've met who get an overwhelming, enthusiastic sense that something is right when they get here. As a place, Israel is quite allright. If I were to look at it without the sense that I'm in someone else's living dream, I wouldn't even find it necessary to mention my lack of overwhelming attachment to it. I could see myself living here just as I could see myself living in many other places.

I stayed in Akko (Acre) three days ago with a British Jewish guy named Joe and a German girl named Maja. Joe, like me, is half Irish and half Ashkenazic Jew. Akko is a city that looks like it hasn't changed much since the Ottoman empire, except that now the people wear American sports Jerseys instead of robes and drive cars blaring Arabic pop music down the alleys instead of riding horses and camels. I felt like Lawrence of Arabia in Aqaba, except, unlike Lawrence/Peter O'Toole, I didn't have Omar Sharif with me, and I didn't have a sadomasochistic, homoerotic encounter with Turkish soldiers.
I did, however, find myself in a very cinematic moment that night as we entered the busy section of the old city. As the call to prayer blared from the mosque, a man stepped out of his shop to welcome us. "Welcome," he said. "Can I help you find anything?" "No, but thank you," I said. "Welcome to Phalestina," he said in a mellow tone of voice as we walked by.
Maja and I played foosball against some Arabs who spoke no English. One of them saw my Brazil soccer Jersey (bought for me buy my slightly lecherous "host mom") and smiled and said "Braziiiil!" I smiled back and said, "Yeah, football!" He kept smiling. I was glad that I packed the shirt- the same shirt that had helped make me a mugging target in Brazil.
The Arabs won the foosball game by many points. We, the Irish Jew and the German, shook their hands and said, "good game."