I couldn't really avoid Tel Aviv this time. After all this time, on and off, living in Jerusalem, a friend from the states was actually coming to visit. It's about a one hour project to get down there on public transportation so I could have made it an afternoon project but I decided to make it an excursion.
I looked up things to do in Tel Aviv in a way reminiscent of planning to visit sites in Los Angeles after having rarely been inclined to delve into the place all growing up. Like Los Angeles, I found some sites that could easily keep me entertained for a day or two. I talked to a friend who is also living in Jerusalem and we headed down for an afternoon walking around the old city of Jaffa and most of the next day going to museums in Tel Aviv.
We arrived and found the hostel in Jaffa and were told that there wasn't any room except in a tent on the roof. We probably would have chosen that in any case as it was cheapest and there was no possibility that we would be cold overnight in late May along Israel's coastal plain. We dropped off some stuff and walked around the old city, found a Bulgarian food restaurant to eat at--I found that appealing since I'll soon be passing through Bulgaria on a trip that includes Turkey and Greece. Then it was getting late and there wasn't much else to do. But my friend noticed a theater where something was happening. We crossed the street and found out that it was the Gesher theater--one of the two renouned professional theaters in the Tel Aviv area. We soon found out that the play was by Hanoch Levin--thought by many Israelis as the best playwrite modern Israel has produced. We paid our $20 (in shekels, of course) and went in. As we sat down, I asked our neighbors what the play was about and we discussed the playwrite for the 20 minutes until the play started. The play was professional but unusual. My friend is a science guy and seemed to not appreciate the virtue promoting theme under the crust of the play--a perspective that I find is rewarded in theater both ancient and modern. Nevertheless, he took it as a cultural experience. For me, it was a magic moment. I had heard of Levin and bought a book of a handful of his over 60 published plays but had never arranged to see one produced.
We woke up and after the expected interesting conversations with sojourners in the hostel, we walked along the coast from Jaffa to Tel Aviv. We were soon at the building where the Israeli declaration of independence occurred. It is a solid building that was described by the lecturer we stayed around to overhear as a bomb shelter. The table and chairs are left from the historic day and it was very informative.
The other objective as the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. My friend would soon be off to the Diamond museum as I headed to the airport and he talked as if he had some interest in the art but after I described some different eras and pointed out features of Cezanne, Chagall and Van Gogh's work, he sat on a bench waiting for me to get my fill.
I then asked a worker at the museum how best to get to the train station and was on my way. There are a few other museums in Tel Aviv that I'll try to get to but the couple of days helped me to come to terms with the big city on the coast. Like Los Angeles, there are things there that hold my attention for a day or two hear or there. But for much longer than a couple of museums and an ethnic restaurant, I prefer a smaller pond.
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