Buses

There is a wrong reason and a right reason not to ride the buses in Jerusalem. The most compelling reason, which is also the wrong one, is fear of suicide bombers. Many tourists, understandably, avoid the bus system because they are afraid of being blown up. This is understandable but also irrational. The idea of anonymous, explosive death is scary, but even at the height of the intifada it was not a huge risk. There are so many buses in Jerusalem that even when they were blown up weekly, one's odds of being killed were still relatively low. Now, with the relative peace and security brought by the wall, those odds are effectively nil. There hasn't been a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in months, if not longer. You should not, I repeat should not, avoid the bus system for fear of suicide bombers.

No, if you avoid it, do so for fear of the bus drivers.

On the one hand, the Jerusalem bus driver is one of the most skilled professionals I have ever seen. He has no choice. Jerusalem, to the extent that it is designed at all, is not a well designed city. Its neighborhoods perch on the tops of the high Judean Hills, linked together by a network of narrow mountain roads. This would work, I suppose, in a smaller city. But a million people live in the greater Jerusalem area, and a sizable percentage must commute into the city. This all combines to produce terrible, terrible traffic. If you know Austin, imagine rush-hour on FM 2222. Then imagine that 2222 was the main city road, onto which all other roads fed. And that all of those other roads were two lanes, and packed with irate Israeli drivers. That's more or less what Jerusalem traffic it's like. At rush-hour, which takes up most of the day, it all combines to a recipe for going nowhere.

But the bus driver is a man with a calling. He knows that the citizenry of Jerusalem depends on him to make its livelihood. He knows that their lives call for prompt, efficient service. And so he looks down on the traffic with a sneer, hurling his iron steed into any opening that presents itself. He maneuvers a multi-ton bus with the deft touch of a Formula One racer, dodging pedestrians, backing cars, and stray cats in their headlong rush toward the next stop. When he gets there, he stops for seconds. People push frantically to get on. And then, almost before the bus has finished braking, he takes off again.

Riding a public bus as it surges through traffic on a Friday afternoon, looking out over oddly low railings at disturbingly deep ravines, is an experience much akin to terror. You hold on to the railing, wedged tight into your seat if you are lucky, standing if you are not, as you are thrown from side by the violent swerving of the bus.
Like a sailor on a ship rounding Cape Horn, you sit tight and pray. It is all you can do.

And when you reach your destination, if you are, like me, a Jerusalem bus virgin, you begin to stand. You think to yourself, 'I am in a residential neighborhood. Around the corner is my stop. He will slow down.'

You are wrong. As you rise, the driver sees you. He appreciates that, even now, nearing home, you need the seconds of extra time his speed can buy you. He smiles, his eyes meeting yours in the mirror, and he takes the turn at forty miles an hour. If you are holding onto the support, as I was in this instance, your body becomes the outer edge of a large centrifuge, and you spin around in a beautiful circle into the next seat. If you are not, you hit the opposite side, and whatever unfortunate is sitting there. Then the bus slams to a halt, and you have ten seconds to get off. The driver knows that you appreciate his promptness and dedication.

I have heard that Egged, the national bus company, requires new drivers to spend two years driving in Jerusalem before they go anywhere else. The idea being that, if they survive Jerusalem traffic, they can drive anywhere. I don't know if that's true, but I can believe it. There is a story told in Jerusalem about a bus driver who dies and goes to heaven at the same time as a great rabbi. The rabbi finds himself stuck in a long line outside the gates, while the bus driver is admitted immediately.

When he reaches the front, the rabbi asks the Angel Gabriel angrily, “Why was that bus driver let in before me?”

Gabe says: “Because when you prayed, everybody slept. But when he drove, everybody
prayed.”

From Jerusalem, this is Saul Elbein.

Thoughts from Crack Square

Some things that came to me, sitting in the Coffee Bean coffee shop in downtown Jerusalem, looking out at Kikar Tziyon, or Zion Square.



• Israeli coffee, she is good. Very good.
  

• Israeli coffee in the greater Kikar Tziyon area is crazy expensive. Like worse than Starbucks prices. I paid like 2 dollars for a falafel that was so big I couldn't finish it. Then I paid 4 for a 16 ounce iced cappuccino. Gah.
  

• Israeli radio DJs have bizarre taste. Listening to "Take it Easy" while looking out at Yafo Street is incongruous to say the least. Although it serves as a nicely ironic counterpoint to the omnipresent Orthodox.
  
  

• Writing that "I'm sitting in a coffee shop of Yafo Street, looking out over Kikar Tziyon" sounds far, far more romantic than the actual reality of sitting in a coffee shop, looking out over Kikar Tziyon. Kikar Tziyon is dirty, covered in graffiti, and smells like piss--young Israelis call it Kikar Crack, Crack Square. The Coffee Bean is nice, but it has all the character of your average Starbucks. And they play a lot of Eagles, which, as I mentioned, is weird.
  
  

• There are three Americanized coffee shops--Coffee Bean, Cafe Hillel, and Aroma Espresso Bar--selling overpriced coffee within less than a hundred meters of each other. I don't get how they all stay open. You'd think that, this being a Jewish city, someone would have won a price war and forced the other two out of business. My bet would be on Coffee Bean, which has free WiFi, which Cafe Hillel does not. On the other hand, Hillel is literally fifteen feet from CB, so their patrons can just steal its WiFi. This is convenient, because Hillel gets all the benefits of providing its patrons with free internet without having to, you know, actually provide it. Which is kinda brilliant, actually. It's ideas like that make me proud to be Jewish.

  
  But maybe they're all still here because it doesn't work that way. Maybe they all complement each other, creating a sort of coffee oasis that anyone craving coffee, or air conditioning, or internet, will come to. After all, there's effectively no difference between the three stores, so it's just a roll of the dice which you wind up at. Maybe there's just enough traffic that all can stay open.
  
  Okay, okay. They're probably government subsidized. Like everything else in this country.
  
  

• It's sometimes hard to tell whether all of the English and apparent Americanization of this area is just a touristy facade, or whether its indicative of something deeper in Israeli popular culture. On the one hand, this cafe is like a transplanted Starbucks--on the other, a lot of the people in here are Israeli. There are a lot of soldiers, a lot of people speaking Hebrew. Across the street, in Kikar Crack, you see Hebrew ultra-rightist graffiti scrawled next to '2pac lives' or 'Stop Snitchin.' Which, by the way, you also find in public parks in Haifa, which is not an especially touristy city. On the one hand, English is everywhere here--on the other, English is everywhere everywhere in Israel, even places that lack English speakers. Maybe it's part of a larger trend, an obsession with things American, the same trend that makes Israelis freak out over their versions of crappy but popular shows like 'The Biggest Loser' or 'American Idol.' And maybe the English signs in places like Haifa or Be'ersheva is there not to send a message to Anglos but to Israelis, something like, 'Yeah, this club is hip.' Perhaps there's English everywhere for the same reason that there is American fast food everywhere, eaten mostly by Israelis. It has a certain foreign cachet.

  Or there are just too many Americans.
  
  
  

• I'm writing this at the tail end of Shavuot, which is one of the Big Three Jewish holidays, supposedly the anniversary of our receiving the Torah, which some in these parts consider a big deal. Anyhow, tradition is you stay up all night learning Torah, then say morning prayers at the Western Wall and pass out. So I overdosed on coffee and spent 11 pm to 4 am learning at a variety of different yeshivas in the Old city. Then I walked with some friends outside the walls to watch literally thousands of Jews pouring in from every corner of Jerusalem. It was an immensely powerful experience, an unbroken stream of
  religious Jews walking through the Arab markets, just before dawn, heading for the Western Wall. We said morning prayers there, surrounded by ten thousand Jews, just as the sun broke over the wall. It was incredible. Shortly afterward, we were nearly torn limb from limb by angry Orthodox Jewish women...but that's another story.
  
  
  

• It strikes me that there are two Israels intermixed together. I would call them, not terribly originally, Third World and First World Israel. On the one hand, as I said before, I'm sitting in an overpriced
  coffee shop sipping $4 dollar coffee. On the other, I just bought lunch from a falafel store for $2. Where I'm sitting is an oasis of cleanliness and, ah, culture--across the street, graffiti and the smell of piss. Half a mile away, the Old City, which, especially but not exclusively in the Arab neighborhoods, is filthy and, well, medieval, with fruit vendors and crappy souvenir shops and cheap falafel stands. The hotel I'm staying at is nice and modern, but it's two blocks in one direction from the Salah al-Din shopping area--which is the beginning of Arab East Jerusalem and looks like Amman--and two in the other from Mea Sharim, the ultra-Orthodox ghetto. For that matter, our hotel is only seven years old, and half of it is really nice, and half of it is disgusting. The lobby is beautiful--the weight room...well, despite the age of the hotel, the weight room has to have been there since the War of Independence. And beaten regularly by the staff. And never cleaned.
  
  Maybe all countries are like that, on some level. Half-civilized, which I mean in the least pejorative sense possible. It makes you wonder, though, which is the real Israel.
  
  Which reminds me of a story I heard, before I sign out. Some background: Israel has a holiday in April, Yom HaAtzmaut, Independence Day, which commemorates the day that Israel declared its independence from Britain in 1948.
  
  A friend was telling me that a friend of hers (so this is already two degrees of separation) heard that falafel sellers don't change their oil all that often. Falafel is deep-fried, so this worried him greatly. So the next timehe went to get falafel, he asked the vendor, 'When was the last time you changed your oil?'
  
  'Yom HaAztmaut.'
  
  'Oh, so just a couple weeks ago.'
  
  'No, no. Yom HaAtzmaut.'
  
  Live from Crack Square, this is Saul Elbein.