It wasn't until I was standing near the security gate at Dulles with my parents that I truly felt the weight of my departure. I was devastated. I watched others tearfully say farewell to their loved ones but I didn't want to be cheesy and cry. So I said goodbye, hugged and kissed my parents several times and waved as I watched them from the escalator.
I struggled to keep my composure at the gate and it took all the emotional strength I had not to cry into the salad I had bought at Potbelly's. And I didn't. Instead I sat at Potbelly's and texted people as I charged my phone and became slowly surrounded by Germans.
When it was time to board, Lufthansa boarded families with babies first. The number of kids that were on the this flight was worrisome. There were also several children clearly under the age of 12 travelling alone. And then I also watched a guy wearing a utilikilt board before me.
To my complete horror, I was seated behind four screaming children. They couldn't have been older than four. The screaming was deafening. They wanted to play with their parents' phones but the phones needed to be shut off for take off.
Before we took off, the man sitting in the window seat of my row called a stewardess over and started speaking excitedly in German. The stewardess' eyes grew wide. Their conversation lasted about a minute before she ran to the front of the plane. The guy sitting next to me in the middle seat looked just as confused as me. We asked what happened but the German man did not reply. Suddenly, the stewardess ran back and told me and the gentleman in the middle to stand up and get out of our seats immediately. Speaking in German, she practically sat in his lap while he pointed to something outside. She then sighed, leaned back and got up. We sat back down and asked the man again what was happening.
"There's an object on the wing," he said.
The voice of the stewardess began speaking in German over the intercom. In English, she stated "Ladies and gentleman, we have identified an object on the wing. Fortunately, it is only a piece of paper and will probably be blown away during take off."
None of this did anything to deflect the children from their eardrum piercing shrieks. They screamed all through take off and for the next hour. At that point, I had given up taking a nap and decided to watch Oblivion. Dinner was being served and I was not surprised that they had not included my kosher meal request. I could barely stomach the pasta that they served, the only other option besides chicken, and barely ate. I drank three cups of red wine to calm my nerves and force myself to sleep.
No such luck. The children in front of me had stopped screaming but the other les petites douchebags on the plane wanted to join in as well. Several children cried loudly in unison. One began to scream even louder. I did not feel like reading and after Oblivion there was nothing else to watch besides the awful Tina Fey movie, Admission. I could only finish 30 minutes before the wine kicked in and I passed out for approximately half an hour. During this time, the children in front of me threw a phone at me twice. TWICE. I woke up the first time, but managed to go back to sleep. The second time woke me up for good.
"Oh sorry," the father said bashfully each time.
"Your children were mistakes!" I wanted to yell. Perhaps I should have taken pity on him and his wife. Perhaps I should have been sympathetic to a couple traveling with their misbehaving devil spawn. But I didn't. I just really really wanted to pelt them with condoms and vasectomy brochures.
By hour 8, with half an hour of sleep and a bad Tina Fey movie under my wing, I was seething. I was contemplating sterilization. I hated children. I reveled in a Children of Men scenario. I was tired, hungry and thirsty and looked forward to the landing.
All the children on the plane screamed and cried during the landing. There was even some older kid on the cusp of puberty who decided that he wanted to get in on the crying action and complained loudly as well.
After landing, I walked through the Frankfurt airport to my gate. Of course, it was all the way on the other side of the airport. It took me almost 45 minutes to get to the gate. Once there, I went through another search and this time had a hand up my dress, sweeping to check that I had nothing hidden underneath.
The gate for the Israeli departure was separated from the rest of the airport. There was one kiosk and one bathroom for each gender. Thankfully, most of my layover consisted of simply walking to the gate so it was only another 45 minute wait until we boarded.
On the plane, the German messages were twice as long as the English ones but this may simply be because German has longer words. Also, on the plane, the little bit of pasta that I had eaten on the previous flight had made me horrifically sick. I sat shaking and sweating and at some point, fell asleep for another half hour.
The flight was only four hours and once we landed in Tel Aviv at 4 pm, I took a cart, grabbed my luggage and went to find the phone store at the airport. After obtaining my SIM card, I called my mom and Andy and texted my sister using Viber to tell them I had arrived safely.
Afterwards, I went to find a sherut, a sort of shared taxi where you ride with several other people and get dropped off according to your location. I asked for a sherut to Jerusalem. This was more difficult than I thought. All the drivers and the manager began screaming at each other. A crowd of confused tourists and irritated Israelis started to form. Finally, after 30 minutes of Being In The Way, I was told to get onto one of the buses.
I pushed my luggage cart forward and started to try to remove my bags from the cart but the manager stopped me.
"Just get on the bus," he said. "The driver will do that for you."
I didn't argue since my bags were heavy and the driver was loading other people's luggage into the back. I sat down and after the bus filled up with people, we left. The driving was insane. Not only was he weaving through traffic but often times he would simply merge into a lane without signaling, causing the poor driver next to him to swerve, slam on their breaks and honk furiously, screaming what can only be assumed to be colorful obscenities. Often times, he took up both lanes as he drove and yelled at anyone who honked at him.
He also yelled at everyone on the bus ride every time they asked him a question. We drove into Jerusalem and it seemed very familiar. I felt relieved that I was almost at my apartment. I couldn't wait to shower, drink water, eat shwarma, urinate. I was going to be the last one dropped off since my neighborhood, Talpiot, is the furthest.
.JPG) |
| Picture I texted to Andy while on the sherut. |
And as I peeked in the back, I noticed it wasn't there. The back was empty except for one bag and it wasn't mine.
It slowly dawned on me that I was not going to get to the apartment anytime soon.
And after nearly 20 hours of almost no sleep, little water and food, and missing everyone back home terribly, this broke me.
I started to cry.
"What?!" the driver yelled, seeing that I was just standing there, staring at the back.
"My bags," I said calmly, trying to keep my voice from shaking. "My bags aren't there."
He then started to yell at me in Hebrew which made me really burst into tears. I only understood two words out of everything he was saying. One of them was 'bag' and the other was 'man.' Bag man! Man bag? Not helpful. The other passenger who was being dropped off next was a middle aged German man. Both him and the driver stared at me in horror as I buried my face in my hands and cried.
I was so embarrassed but the tears wouldn't stop. I conceded to myself that this was happening. I was crying on a minibus in Jerusalem in front of two men who seemed so bewildered by the situation before them. The situation being me crying. A lot.
"No cry! No cry!" the driver yelled and then his voice softened. "No cry. Please? No cry. " He told me, in so many words, that he would get someone to take me back to the airport free of charge.
In the meantime, the German introduced himself as Johannes and began to try to calm me down.
"Where are you from?"
"Washington DC," I said, sniffling and wiping tears away.
"Oh," he grimaced and that made me smile a little.
"Well, I've been to DC," he said," and people here aren't like people there. No one took your bags. People here wouldn't do that. The worst they would do is blow them up because they looked suspicious. They're still at the airport. Trust me. I've been here many, many times."
Johannes departed at his stop and wished me luck.
"Russki?" the driver asked in a friendly tone.
"כן," I replied weakly. Yes.
He laughed and started telling me all of the Russian words and phrases he knew, which weren't many.
"Idi syuda. Net. Xorosho."
"Ha...." I really wasn't in the mood.
The driver dropped me off and another driver friend of his heading back to Ben Gurion picked me up seconds later. I was instructed not to give him any money.
As I got on the bus, the passengers, two men, one older and one younger, gaped at me.
I looked awful, tear streaked face with mascara smudges. An overall mess.
"Are you okay?" one of them asked in an Australian accent.
I burst into tears again.
"No!" I cried. "I'm not okay." And then told them what happened.
"That's rough luck," the more talkative one said. "And that's why you always, always check that the luggage is in the back. You can't trust them to put it back for you."
"Lesson learned," I said curtly. That advice wasn't helpful in the least at that moment.
"I'm sure your luggage is fine," he said and introduced himself as Adam from Melbourne. "It'll be okay. The worst that can happen is that they blew it up and then everyone would see your underwear. Or pieces of it."
I called Martine, my landlord, to tell her the situation and explain that I would be late.
"Where are you?" she asked.
"?איפה אנחנו" I asked the driver. Where are we?
I can't recall what he said but it was all the way on the other side of the city away from Talpiot, where I should have been an hour ago.
I called Andy and cried to him, and he said all he could to comfort me while being 6000 miles away and suggested calling the airport. I had thought of that too but really didn't think anyone would answer anyway. Adam overheard and also suggested that I call the airport as well.
And just as I suspected, the call proved to be useless.
"Please call me back on Friday at 11 in the morning. Then, I will know where your luggage is, but right now it is not in our system. It takes two days to get the luggage to the lost and found," the woman who answered the phone said.
I told Adam what she had said, but he refused to believe it.
"Let me talk to her," he redialed the number and spoke in Hebrew to the woman. When he hung up, he reiterated what I had said and shook his head.
"I'm sure it's there at the airport. It'll be alright."
Later, we picked up an older couple, who I also cried in front of. During that time, I was crying on and off, fluctuating from being numb to feeling despair. I should have checked the luggage in the back. I shouldn't have trusted the driver to put the bags in for me. It was all of my fault. And I just wanted to pee. So much.
"You can just rewash your clothes and wear them again tomorrow," Andy had suggested. "And then the next day you can go shopping."
It was the least desirable scenario ever. But I did feel better at the fact that I had all of my valuables and my passport with me. My camera and laptop were in the bag that I was carrying with me.
At this point, it was 6:30 pm and we still were picking up more people in Jerusalem.
I kept thinking how at this time, if I had checked the luggage myself, I could have showered and eaten shwarma. I could have been unpacking. I could have been drinking water. And emptying my bladder.
In the meantime, I had stopped crying and the other passengers were talking to me and distracting me from the situation, even making me laugh. Driving through Jerusalem offered its own entertainment. I saw our driver almost hit two cars. I also saw two blocks of traffic blocked due to a man in a wheelchair in the road taking a picture of a parked car's license plate with his phone and laughing to himself as drivers yelled and honked.
The elderly couple turned out to be from Silver Spring, Maryland, around my neck of the woods and we knew some of the same people. They were very nice and I was so grateful at the kindness of strangers during that time. They really did make me feel better.
I was pretty calm when we got to the airport. I felt much better about the whole thing, especially after a quick stop to the restroom.
But as I walked to the sherut stop, I felt myself start to tear up. What if they didn't have them? What if this trip back to the airport was a complete waste of time and I should have just waited till Friday?
I saw the manager from earlier and went to talk to him.
"It's okay," he said. "Don't worry. I know where your luggage is. Come with me."
"Have my bags been blown up?!"
"No, no. Come with me."
So I followed him to Security, who sent him to the Information desk. The woman at the Information desk, after hearing the manager explain what happened, took one look at me and said "It's going to be okay. Don't cry. We have your bags."
I followed the manager back to the Security guard who asked for my passport and the description of the bag. I did so enthusiastically and gave him so much detail about each bag that he had to interrupt me and ask me to stop describing the bags.
"I believe you."
Then he walked me up a dark pathway to an area with a storage unit in the ground. Opening up the door to the unit, I saw my bags at the very top.
I started to cry from happiness. This was getting ridiculous. I was starting to lose it.
The Security guard laughed and said he was happy to see when passengers were reunited with their luggage because it didn't always happen.
"I'm so happy!" I cried. "I'm so so so happy."
And this time, I stood outside and watched as another driver put my bags into a sherut heading back to Jerusalem.
We had to wait for one more person to fill up the sherut and only then would it leave. After what felt like forever, a man climbed in with a big bag. An elderly French gentleman with an open seat next to him refused to move and the man, who was not a small man, had to shove himself into the seat next to him, cursing in British-accented English as he did so.
At 7:30 pm, we departed with a full van of people crammed together. The first stop was not in Jerusalem. We drove into another town on the way. For no reason, apparently.
"Yo, where are you taking me?" the young man next to me with a giant guitar bag yelled as we lurched to a stop. "This isn't where I told you to go! You just fucked me, man! You just fucked me!"
The driver yelled something back to him in Hebrew and we were off again. There was awful traffic in the direction to Jerusalem and by the time we got there it was already 8:20 pm. The driver also drove past several stops and the other passengers started to yell at him in French and Hebrew. A passenger who was being dropped off at Ein Kerem yelled as we passed by his stop twice. The driver took us through crazy back roads. At one point, we were in a forest of some sort and then drove through what smelled like a sewer. Eventually, people just started getting off in areas close enough to their stops.
At that point, my phone had died and my portable phone charger was also dead. I used another passenger's phone and texted Martine about the situation and struck up a conversation with him. It was the man who had come on the sherut last.
He was originally from New Zealand but had been living in London for 30 years.
"I love Israel," he told me. "But it's a little too right wing for me right now. And expensive. When I was here during the 80's, I could come here with 500 pounds for two weeks and leave with 400 still in my pocket."
This led into a conversation about politics. "Your President is useless."'
Which led to a conversation about DC. "DC is filthy. Not the streets. The city itself is very clean, but those people in Congress. Utter filth."
And other random things. "I've always wanted to visit Savannah, Georgia. I went to North Carolina once. That was weird."
Which led to a conversation about religion.
"Are you religious?" he asked me.
"I'm spiritual," I replied. He laughed.
"What?" I shrugged. "You can't go wrong with telling people that. Who can argue with being spiritual? If you say you're religious, you're automatically an asshole. When you're spiritual, people can't say shit. It's safe. It's so general that it doesn't mean anything."
"That's true," he said and then asked if I had a boyfriend.
"Yes."
"Is he Jewish?"
"Nope. Catholic. Or lapsed Catholic really."
"Non-Jewish boyfriend. How does that work?"
"I'm spiritual."
"Jews and Catholics go well together," he mused. "It's the guilt thing. You're both always feeling guilty about something."
"Yep."
"Yea?" he suddenly exploded. "Well get over it! I don't get the whole abstinence thing with you people. Just go out there and have sex! Abstinence is utter shite! You're just repressing yourselves!"
I stared straight ahead, not really knowing why my "Yep" angered him or how the topic of abstinence even came up. Thinking back on it now, it was probably some weird way to get me to tell him something personal. Either way, despite my exhaustion, I was lucid enough not to engage him any further.
We rode in silence. It was incredibly awkward and it was taking forever. Thirty minutes had passed since his outburst. At that point, we were the only two passengers left.
"You're going to have an amazing time here," he said as we rounded the corner to his stop. "I come back here every year on holiday and stay with friends. I have many friends here."
"That's wonderful," I said.
He wished me luck and I wished him the same.
"I'm sorry for your bags," the driver said after the man left, referring to my luggage fiasco.
I was so exhausted at this point and just didn't care. "Whatever."
We finally got to my building in Talpiot at 10 pm, approximately six hours after I had initially arrived in Ben Gurion. I thanked him and dragged my luggage up past the gate and up to the building. I pressed on the button which indicated the apartment number and felt comforted when I heard Martine answer.
She came and helped me with my luggage and showed me to my room. It was a blur. We sat and talked about my journey as I drank cup after cup of water. I apologized for making her wait. She was supposed to have gone out at 8pm to a concert but had to stay and wait for me instead. I felt awful.
Being there in the apartment was surreal. I pinched myself because I couldn't believe the past 24 hours had just happened to me but that I had finally made it.
Martine gave me a quick tour and then I took the best. shower. EVER. Changed into pajamas. And passed out.
Lessons learned:
Always check your luggage is in the back.
Bring ear plugs on planes.
Don't tell your mother anything is wrong until after it is resolved.
If an Israeli is yelling at you, just start crying.
The driver dropped me off and another driver friend of his heading back to Ben Gurion picked me up seconds later. I was instructed not to give him any money.
As I got on the bus, the passengers, two men, one older and one younger, gaped at me.
I looked awful, tear streaked face with mascara smudges. An overall mess.
"Are you okay?" one of them asked in an Australian accent.
I burst into tears again.
"No!" I cried. "I'm not okay." And then told them what happened.
"That's rough luck," the more talkative one said. "And that's why you always, always check that the luggage is in the back. You can't trust them to put it back for you."
"Lesson learned," I said curtly. That advice wasn't helpful in the least at that moment.
"I'm sure your luggage is fine," he said and introduced himself as Adam from Melbourne. "It'll be okay. The worst that can happen is that they blew it up and then everyone would see your underwear. Or pieces of it."
I called Martine, my landlord, to tell her the situation and explain that I would be late.
"Where are you?" she asked.
"?איפה אנחנו" I asked the driver. Where are we?
I can't recall what he said but it was all the way on the other side of the city away from Talpiot, where I should have been an hour ago.
I called Andy and cried to him, and he said all he could to comfort me while being 6000 miles away and suggested calling the airport. I had thought of that too but really didn't think anyone would answer anyway. Adam overheard and also suggested that I call the airport as well.
And just as I suspected, the call proved to be useless.
"Please call me back on Friday at 11 in the morning. Then, I will know where your luggage is, but right now it is not in our system. It takes two days to get the luggage to the lost and found," the woman who answered the phone said.
I told Adam what she had said, but he refused to believe it.
"Let me talk to her," he redialed the number and spoke in Hebrew to the woman. When he hung up, he reiterated what I had said and shook his head.
"I'm sure it's there at the airport. It'll be alright."
Later, we picked up an older couple, who I also cried in front of. During that time, I was crying on and off, fluctuating from being numb to feeling despair. I should have checked the luggage in the back. I shouldn't have trusted the driver to put the bags in for me. It was all of my fault. And I just wanted to pee. So much.
"You can just rewash your clothes and wear them again tomorrow," Andy had suggested. "And then the next day you can go shopping."
It was the least desirable scenario ever. But I did feel better at the fact that I had all of my valuables and my passport with me. My camera and laptop were in the bag that I was carrying with me.
At this point, it was 6:30 pm and we still were picking up more people in Jerusalem.
I kept thinking how at this time, if I had checked the luggage myself, I could have showered and eaten shwarma. I could have been unpacking. I could have been drinking water. And emptying my bladder.
In the meantime, I had stopped crying and the other passengers were talking to me and distracting me from the situation, even making me laugh. Driving through Jerusalem offered its own entertainment. I saw our driver almost hit two cars. I also saw two blocks of traffic blocked due to a man in a wheelchair in the road taking a picture of a parked car's license plate with his phone and laughing to himself as drivers yelled and honked.
The elderly couple turned out to be from Silver Spring, Maryland, around my neck of the woods and we knew some of the same people. They were very nice and I was so grateful at the kindness of strangers during that time. They really did make me feel better.
I was pretty calm when we got to the airport. I felt much better about the whole thing, especially after a quick stop to the restroom.
But as I walked to the sherut stop, I felt myself start to tear up. What if they didn't have them? What if this trip back to the airport was a complete waste of time and I should have just waited till Friday?
I saw the manager from earlier and went to talk to him.
"It's okay," he said. "Don't worry. I know where your luggage is. Come with me."
"Have my bags been blown up?!"
"No, no. Come with me."
So I followed him to Security, who sent him to the Information desk. The woman at the Information desk, after hearing the manager explain what happened, took one look at me and said "It's going to be okay. Don't cry. We have your bags."
I followed the manager back to the Security guard who asked for my passport and the description of the bag. I did so enthusiastically and gave him so much detail about each bag that he had to interrupt me and ask me to stop describing the bags.
"I believe you."
Then he walked me up a dark pathway to an area with a storage unit in the ground. Opening up the door to the unit, I saw my bags at the very top.
I started to cry from happiness. This was getting ridiculous. I was starting to lose it.
The Security guard laughed and said he was happy to see when passengers were reunited with their luggage because it didn't always happen.
"I'm so happy!" I cried. "I'm so so so happy."
And this time, I stood outside and watched as another driver put my bags into a sherut heading back to Jerusalem.
We had to wait for one more person to fill up the sherut and only then would it leave. After what felt like forever, a man climbed in with a big bag. An elderly French gentleman with an open seat next to him refused to move and the man, who was not a small man, had to shove himself into the seat next to him, cursing in British-accented English as he did so.
At 7:30 pm, we departed with a full van of people crammed together. The first stop was not in Jerusalem. We drove into another town on the way. For no reason, apparently.
"Yo, where are you taking me?" the young man next to me with a giant guitar bag yelled as we lurched to a stop. "This isn't where I told you to go! You just fucked me, man! You just fucked me!"
The driver yelled something back to him in Hebrew and we were off again. There was awful traffic in the direction to Jerusalem and by the time we got there it was already 8:20 pm. The driver also drove past several stops and the other passengers started to yell at him in French and Hebrew. A passenger who was being dropped off at Ein Kerem yelled as we passed by his stop twice. The driver took us through crazy back roads. At one point, we were in a forest of some sort and then drove through what smelled like a sewer. Eventually, people just started getting off in areas close enough to their stops.
At that point, my phone had died and my portable phone charger was also dead. I used another passenger's phone and texted Martine about the situation and struck up a conversation with him. It was the man who had come on the sherut last.
He was originally from New Zealand but had been living in London for 30 years.
"I love Israel," he told me. "But it's a little too right wing for me right now. And expensive. When I was here during the 80's, I could come here with 500 pounds for two weeks and leave with 400 still in my pocket."
This led into a conversation about politics. "Your President is useless."'
Which led to a conversation about DC. "DC is filthy. Not the streets. The city itself is very clean, but those people in Congress. Utter filth."
And other random things. "I've always wanted to visit Savannah, Georgia. I went to North Carolina once. That was weird."
Which led to a conversation about religion.
"Are you religious?" he asked me.
"I'm spiritual," I replied. He laughed.
"What?" I shrugged. "You can't go wrong with telling people that. Who can argue with being spiritual? If you say you're religious, you're automatically an asshole. When you're spiritual, people can't say shit. It's safe. It's so general that it doesn't mean anything."
"That's true," he said and then asked if I had a boyfriend.
"Yes."
"Is he Jewish?"
"Nope. Catholic. Or lapsed Catholic really."
"Non-Jewish boyfriend. How does that work?"
"I'm spiritual."
"Jews and Catholics go well together," he mused. "It's the guilt thing. You're both always feeling guilty about something."
"Yep."
"Yea?" he suddenly exploded. "Well get over it! I don't get the whole abstinence thing with you people. Just go out there and have sex! Abstinence is utter shite! You're just repressing yourselves!"
I stared straight ahead, not really knowing why my "Yep" angered him or how the topic of abstinence even came up. Thinking back on it now, it was probably some weird way to get me to tell him something personal. Either way, despite my exhaustion, I was lucid enough not to engage him any further.
We rode in silence. It was incredibly awkward and it was taking forever. Thirty minutes had passed since his outburst. At that point, we were the only two passengers left.
"You're going to have an amazing time here," he said as we rounded the corner to his stop. "I come back here every year on holiday and stay with friends. I have many friends here."
"That's wonderful," I said.
He wished me luck and I wished him the same.
"I'm sorry for your bags," the driver said after the man left, referring to my luggage fiasco.
I was so exhausted at this point and just didn't care. "Whatever."
We finally got to my building in Talpiot at 10 pm, approximately six hours after I had initially arrived in Ben Gurion. I thanked him and dragged my luggage up past the gate and up to the building. I pressed on the button which indicated the apartment number and felt comforted when I heard Martine answer.
She came and helped me with my luggage and showed me to my room. It was a blur. We sat and talked about my journey as I drank cup after cup of water. I apologized for making her wait. She was supposed to have gone out at 8pm to a concert but had to stay and wait for me instead. I felt awful.
Being there in the apartment was surreal. I pinched myself because I couldn't believe the past 24 hours had just happened to me but that I had finally made it.
Martine gave me a quick tour and then I took the best. shower. EVER. Changed into pajamas. And passed out.
Lessons learned:
Always check your luggage is in the back.
Bring ear plugs on planes.
Don't tell your mother anything is wrong until after it is resolved.
If an Israeli is yelling at you, just start crying.
