I spent my first five full days in Israel getting acclimated in Tel Aviv. I started planning a route through the country. I was determined to use the bus and train system to get where I needed to go even though it is not up to par with European standards. Just like in every other country I visit, I need to get my backpacking tools in order before I leave the hub city: my bus pass and my cell phone SIM card. In Israel, there is a love-hate relationship with all things bureaucratic. Bureaucracy is the butt of many jokes and it causes many people, especially new immigrants, significant amounts of grief. At the same time, there does not seem to be any concerted political effort to curtail the spread of bureaucracy. It’s as if it is part of their culture. It’s also a job creator I suppose.

I stayed on my friends couch for five nights in the center of Tel Aviv. I had the amazing opportunity to stay on Rothschild Boulevard. My friend had a roof terrace too. I feel so awful about what happened there. He did the cooking and I did the cleaning. A lot of cleaning. We had different expectations about living together and things got weird really quickly. I did not know how to communicate that I felt like there was a bit too much for me to clean without offending him. We chatted about it on Whatsapp afterwards but we have not really talked since. Time can heal this wound, I think.

Israel is far behind when it comes to ease of access for public transportation. While bus stops are ubiquitous, the travel payment card known as a Rav Kav is notoriously difficult to obtain. In every other country in the world, you can get your travel pass from a machine. Tickets for Israel Trains come from machines. In Israel, the Rav Kav (good for buses and trains) only come from specific Rav Kav offices around the country. In Tel Aviv, there’s one on King George Street and there’s one in the Central Bus Station. I decided to do some urban adventuring at the infamous Central Bus Station. In case you do not know, this concrete behemoth opened in 1991 but looks like it was designed in the 1960s. It’s mostly empty. Only 1.5 floors serve as a bus terminal. One floor is a flea market. The rest is a feast for the eyes, if you love urban decay. Later on in the week I would take a private walking tour of this place. More on that later.

I started my day by going to the Dizengoff Center Mall where I know they have cell phone stores. On my way to the mall, I walked down the Ben Tzion pedestrian boulevard. This is a famous people-watching spot. Oh my, were the people beautiful. I was watching a beautiful woman and her boyfriend pet their beautiful dog and I just started crying. Tears were pouring down my face thinking about how happy I was to be in Israel. To be in a place where I never have to feel like I have to hide that I’m Jewish and also where being Jewish is not associated with being ugly: it’s the opposite. In Israel, especially Tel Aviv, the people are beautiful. It was overwhelming. I eventually made my way to the mall.

I saw on the Internet that for $25, you can get unlimited Internet, more or less. You get something like 10 GB of data but unlimited social media (Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp). It’s an incredible price considering what we pay in the US for cell phone data. The first two cell phone kiosks I went to unceremoniously told me they do not sell SIM cards. At the second kiosk, where they had advertising pamphlets for SIM cards, they pointed to the cell phone repair shop directly behind me. It was a tight fit inside. I wanted the Pelephone SIM card, because it’s a legitimate brand. They had some other no-name brands that probably lease bandwidth from the big players. They were all the same price and I just wanted Pelephone. I waiting around the store and trying to make eye contact with a worker. Someone cuts in front of me in line and starts talking to the worker without hesitation. I wonder if I should just do the same, even though he is busy repairing someone’s phone. Finally, someone who appears free is available to help me. However, he is totally stoned and does understand what I’m saying. I was asking, in Hebrew, what kinds of SIM cards they have. He had no idea. He asks the guy next to him, who is busy. I told him to wait a second while I go get a pamphlet from the kiosk to show him what I want. In the 5 seconds I stepped away, he was gone when I got back. And a whole new line of people had somehow lined up behind me when I was originally waiting. I decided to take a break and walk around the mall, in a circle, and come back and try again.

Round 2: 15 minutes later, I re-arrive at the cell phone store. This time, I get the attention of the worker who was doing repair. I explain to him what I want. He seems to understand me and pulls some no-name SIM card off the shelf. The place is so hectic and they are assisting so many people at once, I cannot really tell if I am being serviced or if they are getting the hardware for someone else. Finally, the stoner guy comes back and the repair worker instructs the stoner to take my phone and replace the SIM card. So, I had to chime in and say that I I wanted the Pelephone SIM card. The stoner takes the no-name brand and holds it up to my face. I repeat myself, “this is not Pelephone”. The repair guy stops what he’s doing and interrupts us and, with a nasty tone, says “What’s the difference? It’s a SIM card.” So, I realized that I had to channel my inner-Israeli and respond in kind, with tone and with increased volume. And I did. And then I got the SIM card I wanted.

This interaction was so stressful for me after having had so many months of almost no stress at all that I could feel my head spinning. My anxiety was through the roof, relatively speaking. I had not really had an anxiety spike since the car accident in Laos. I needed a break. I felt defeated, even though I actually got the SIM card and for a good price. I thought to myself, “Is this what life is like here? Will I have bouts of crying couple with bouts of unnecessary yelling?” This is barely bureaucratic. Can you imagine what it is like dealing with government bureaucracy? Also, why did these guys talk to me like this? Why did I have to get aggressive to get what I asked for? All of this made me terribly uncomfortable and put a sour taste in my mouth. I wondered if I had spoken English from the start if maybe they would have treated me more like a tourist instead of, what I’m assuming they thought of me, a new immigrant.

A series of photos documenting my journey to finding the Rav Kav office in the Central Bus Station:

Part 2 of my Day 1 activities was to get this bus pass I need to get around the country. I chose to get my Rav Kav at the bus station because navigating my way around the Central Bus Station was part of the fun. I wanted to see just how bad Israeli public transportation is and just how hard it is to find things. I was determined to find the Rav Kav office without any help. I knew from the web site that the office was on the 6th floor. From there, I had to walk around in circles a few times to find the 8.5” x 11” Xerox printout with the arrow pointing to the direction of the office. From there, I found the entry to the office through an open door. Inside was four cubicles. In these cubicles were four Israeli grandpas who did not look too happy. There were no other customers being served. Immediately the fun began (translated to English but spoken in Hebrew):

Me: Hello, I’m here to obtain a Rav Kav. I can speak Hebrew but not totally fluently.

Israeli grandpa: [in a playful but almost bullying tone] Oh? Do you speak any other languages? Do you speak Arabic? [says something in Arabic] German? [says something in German]

Me: [chuckle] I can speak French and English and Yiddish…

Israeli grandpa: [smiling, joyous] Oy! Du kenst redden oyf in Yiddish! Farvus?! (You can speak in Yiddish! Why?)

Me: Meine mameh und tateh und bobbeh und zaydeh hoben geshprocht und ich hobbe gehat eine privatlerner (My mom, dad and grandparents spoke and I had a private teacher)

Israeli grandpa: Sit, sit. Do you have a passport?

Me: Oh shit! I didn’t bring it with me. But I have a photo of my passport.

Israeli grandpa: That’s fine, son. So where do you think you’ll go in Israel? Do you think you’ll move here?

Me: I want to stay in the desert. I have a lot of family to visit all over the country. I’m not sure where I’ll live.

Israeli grandpa: [hands me Rav Kav] Enjoy.

I left the Rav Kav office with a shiny new Rav Kav but also the incredibly unique experience of speaking Hebrew and Yiddish to a complete stranger. I know there is probably no other place in the world where that can happen. Sure, there are New Yorkers who can maybe do that but in my 36 years of living in New York, I’ve never experienced that outside of my parent’s or grandparent’s house. That moment was a real shocker after spending three months in Europe, especially that time in Poland. To top it off, I was experiencing an incredible wave of emotions. First I was crying looking at Zionist dogowners chilling on the lawn, then I was raising my voice at the cell phone in Dizengoff Center, then I was speaking Yiddish at the Rav Kav office in the bus station with grandpas. My head was already spinning from crying and the anger and sadness at the mall and then getting lost at the bus station and at the end of it all, I was alone in this massive concrete shell of public infrastructure. I was by myself. I had all of my backpacking tools. I was free again.

Here are some highlights from the bus station tour. The bus station is home to an unofficial bat sanctuary, an official Yiddish bookstore, a theater, a Filipino shopping district, art galleries and murals. The politicians do not really know what to do with this structure. It’s incredibly underutilized and demolishing it would be an environmental disaster due to the amount of concrete that would have to be disposed. It’s not really in the center of Tel Aviv either. It is symbolic of the country’s bureaucracy, their hope to achieve Americana nirvana and the country’s rugged internationalism.

I ended up visiting the bus station quite a few times during my stay. I bought my $25 winter jacket for my UK backpacking there. I also went to the free medical clinic there during Sukkot only to find out that it is closed. Also confused about the closing were two Latin Americans, a couple, who could not read the sign in Hebrew but I heard them speaking in Spanish trying to guess why the door was locked. I was able to explain to them in Spanish that because of the Jewish holidays, the office was closed all week. It was incredible to me that in Israel I was speaking Yiddish and Spanish. When I went to the hostels in the Golan Heights, I would meet Germans there and, yes, we would speak some German too. In Israel.

After visiting Poland, getting my French fix in France and now arriving in Tel Aviv, I started really feeling like I was taking very good care of myself. Spending weeks in France and Israel (rather than days) did not have to be a dream. I made it my reality.

During my first few days in Tel Aviv, I paid a visit to the Beit Hatfusoth Museum of the Jewish Diaspora. It’s a bit of a tradition for me in Tel Aviv, I really love that museum. Unfortunately, the main exhibition hall was closed for a massive renovation project. A small temporary exhibit was open as well as the library. I figured, I should stop by the library and may talk to a librarian about what I discovered in Poland. The library computers contain searchable family trees and an encyclopedia of last names. I surprisingly discovered my own family tree and then remembered that I was the one who had submitted it probably within the last ten years. Without much else to search there, I figured I’d look up my last name in the encyclopedia. The standard description of the word “Graf” in German was returned along with a new paragraph I had not seen before. There was a story of a Chaim Graf, a soldier who died in 1948 using himself as a shield against a truck bomb. It was noted that he was one of the famous Tehran Children who had been saved from Holocaust Europe through a series of clandestine movements through Iran and Pakistan and eventually to Israel. Apparently, in Israel, he is considered a war hero. The entry also happened to mention that Chaim Graf was from Jozefow, Poland. The same place my grandpa was from. I had inadvertently stumbled upon a whole chapter of history from my extended lineage that I was unaware of. It seemed like my time in Israel would be spent doing more than just hiking and swimming. I had some more genealogical research to take care of.

Here are some of the friends and family I visited in the Tel Aviv region: