Typical day

I'll be brief. I have to travel to Jerusalem to make a change on a phone because nobody seems to be able to do it here. So I walk to the bus stop, wait with the unfriendly people, and twenty minutes later a bus comes. Then there's the 35 minute trip. So it's an hour since I left my apartment and I'm in Jerusalem.  Then I go to the light rail, wait, a packed train stops. I wait for the next one. 20 minutes after my arrival in Jerusalem, I'm at the store. But the guy who I worked with, the one who speaks good English, doesn't work there anymore. It's a tiny place so I assumed the store was his, but no. Can they fix my phone? No, the guy who can do it isn't there today. I have to come back on Sunday.

So it's back to the light rail where the schedule sign is broken. A train finally comes. By this time -- and excuse the personal nature of the subject matter -- I need to use the bathroom. I can hold it in until we get to the Central Bus Station. But we get to the CBS and there's a bomb scare. The whole area has been taped off. So the light rail continues to the next stop after the Chords Bridge. I get out hoping to find a bathroom and start walking around. All I see are apartment buildings, you know, those ugly beige four story things that all look the same. In the other direction is the lovely skyline of ugly beige buildings.

It's raining out and cold. I keep walking. More apartments. No stores, no restaurants, no bars or anything like that. I see the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva. Locked. I keep walking in the rain all the while needing to pee. I find a shul finally. Locked. I walk another twenty minutes in the rain needing to pee. More apartments. Not a single place to relieve myself, and no empty fields if I were to chance that. I see another shul. Locked.

An hour has passed. I see a shul that appears to be open. I go in but there's no bathroom!

So I walk and walk and decide I'll just muscle it back to the bus station. I'm on a big street, Herzl I think, and the traffic light is broken, so I can't get across because the cars won't stop. After a while, like some guy in India scrambling across traffic, I find my way across. But there's no sidewalk. There's all this construction and no side walk and cars racing by. But I brave through it, walk for another 10 minutes and get to the bus station.

I pass the stares of security, go in and head to the third floor for the bathrooms. I pass all kinds of people who are unwilling to move. I find my way to the bathroom but guess what? The gate requires that I deposit a shekel coin. I don't carry coins because the pants that I buy here are made so shoddily that the pockets rip. I got so tired of coins dropping down my legs that I stopped carrying them. Sometimes I stick a coin in my shirt so I have something for the endless schnorers that are here, but I didn't happen to do that today. But I need a coin.

So I walk a few minutes to a kind of 7-11 type thing and try to figure out what I can buy that's going to cost an odd amount of shekels, ie not 10 or 5, so that I'll get 1 shekel change. Baruch Hashem I made a good choice and get back 8 shekels in change. I get passed the bathroom gate and enter the filthy bathroom, go into a stall. But there's no hook to hang my coat. 

This is a problem all over Israel. There are no coat rooms or hooks. So what do I do now. I have a coat because it's freezing and wet outside, and I have a bag, and I have nowhere to put them.

And a broken toilet with no seat.

I'll spare you the details but I managed to relieve myself. Then it's back outside to wait to cross the light rail area to head for the bus. There are soldiers everywhere. Females in pants, carrying guns, a whole generation wasting the best years of their youth saluting and shooting. 

I'm in front of Binyanei Hauma now, Israel's very own convention center. I can't help but think how ugly it is. It's an old building which opened in 1956! I think of the guy who told me "You won't recognize Jerusalem." I have heard this line about Tel Aviv too. You know frum people, their speech is laden with parroting. So they all say, you won't recognize such and such to give the impression that there have been so many changes because the geulah has come and the country is expanding so much.

But little has changed. Tel Aviv is pretty much the same. A few minor buildings were constructed. You wouldn't even notice them in San Antonio, Texas.  So the Convention Center was here not only when I went to yeshiva in Israel 35 years ago, but before I was born. Same dumpy place. 

A few years ago the Times of Israel ran an article which incredibly was titled "Iconic Jerusalem building saved from redevelopment plans." Iconic? The article goes on to call it an "historic building." It is no redeeming artistic or architectural qualities. No, it represents the "return of the Jewish nation to its homeland after millennia spent wandering in foreign lands." I don't know how it represents that. Is it because architecturally it's soulless and bland like Israeli society from a religious perspective?

Just know, if you are thinking about making aliyah and you read the Israel press, you'll be able to supplement the propaganda that you are hearing at shul with the propaganda of the anti-religious people who run this place.

Finally, the bus comes after 20 minutes of my staring at this ugly building and the soldiers. It is now three hours since I left my apartment to get my phone adjusted. 

I get on the bus after enduring all the line cutting, and 45 minutes later I collapse into my apartment, wet, cold, my mind half insane from the boredom and frustration of spending half a day trying to get my phone adjusted. 

Typical Israeli experience. Broken technology, waiting for buses, lack of infrastructure, locked doors, unfriendly people, staff turnover, ugly city. At least nobody yelled at me.