Not All Who Wander

“Not all who wander are lost”  - JR Tolkien

This is one of my favorite quotes, and is fairly appropriate to my preferred method of travel.  Now, I’m not one to just wander around with all of my stuff on my back, no sure destination, and no place to spend the night.  I'm not that adventurous; I like knowing where I’m going to sleep and knowing that I can find food, and how I’m getting home again.  But there is something wonderful about wandering around and seeing what you find.

            Today I had a lovely wander through Jerusalem.  I’ve been visiting Jerusalem with my friend and fellow volunteer Adri, but this morning we split up so we could each see different things (neither of which actually got seen).  I wanted to go to the Rockefeller Museum, but it’s closed on Fridays (I don’t know why, because it's open on saturday, which is Shabbat and the day when everything else is closed).  I decided to walk towards the old city and see what I could find.  I stopped in several stores along the way, and then headed towards a church that I saw down a side street.  It was a Russian Orthodox church that was built fairly recently (probably in the past 100 or 150 years).  The inside was beautiful, but I didn’t stay long.  I followed signs towards another museum, apparently about underground prisoners, which was also closed on Fridays.  (Hopefully I’ll go back, because it looked interesting)

I walked through a municipal complex back towards the main street, passing the trial court and some other government buildings.  I ended up in a courtyard with a modern art installation.  I generally don’t like modern art, but this one was unique, interactive, and playful.  It was a group of brightly painted bicycles, raised off of the ground, with their gears connected to various things on poles above the bikes.  

There were phonographs that played music when you peddled, and lights that came on, drums that beat, and fans that spun.  

I was there by myself at first, and I’m sure I made a strange picture.  I happened to have on a long sleeved shirt and a long skirt, which coupled with my long curly brown ponytail makes me fit in well with the orthodox and ultraorthodox Jewish neighborhood.  So most people passing by probably saw an orthodox girl happily riding a bicycle to play an Edith Piaf tune out of a phonograph. After a few minutes, a man came and rode one of the bicycles with a drum, and we smiled and waved at each other.  (to all of my matchmaking friends, no, stop, not THAT kind of man) It felt like I was in a Pixar movie.

My path then snaked through the old city.  I went in through the Jaffa Gate, but didn’t follow the crowd of tourists through the market.  I strolled through the Armenian Quarter, and found a place to get hot chocolate.  There isn’t a whole lot to see in the Armenian Quarter, because most of their churches and houses are huddled behind walls and heavy gates. 

Then I walked through the Jewish Quarter, though I startled a man in the market on my way there.  He sneezed and said something in Arabic as he passed me, so I said “Bless you” in Arabic.  He looked really confused, but gave the reply (everything you say in Arabic has a proper reply) and said thanks.  And I got a what-on-earth glance from the kippa-wearing man in front of me who witnessed this exchange. 

The Jewish Quarter has some really neat ruins that have been preserved for viewing underneath the more modern buildings. Most of them are on the Cardo, a reconstructed street from Roman times.  There are also actual ruins nearby, including a section of wall that contains parts from the first temple period (ie a really long time ago, and a really long time ago here is about 800 BC).  

I think the part in the bottom right corner is the oldest part.

As I headed back towards the Jaffa gate to meet up with Adri, I found a museum that was actually open.  It’s a museum of what life was like in the Jewish Quarter during the 19^th century.  There are lots of objects from daily life.  Some look very Arab (and were probably used by Sephardic Jews from the Middle East, not Ashkenazi Jews from Europe), others look more European and even modern, and a couple looked like they were artifacts discovered in an ancient city (there was a grain mill like the one in Nazareth Village and the ones found at Masada).  There were wedding dresses and cooking pots, and even a collapsible canopy bed, which was apparently rented out to new mothers for their 40-day recovery period after giving birth.

Adri and I ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the shadow of the city wall, then went to find the place of the last supper.  On the way there, we stopped at a garden along the city wall that had plaques explaining the history of the wall that surrounds the old city.  The current wall was actually built in the last 500 or so years, but it contains older parts of the wall as well.  Then we stopped to take silly pictures in those boards with pictures and places cut out for faces.  

We found the ‘church’, but it mostly seems to be on top of a Yeshiva, so it was hard to find what we were looking for.  I don’t know if we found the supposed room or not, but we did get a nice view of the outskirts of Jerusalem from the top.  There was also a closed Holocaust memorial.  On our way back, we wandered through a beautiful neighborhood that felt completely empty, but had lots of pretty flowers, and saw a park and another outside art exhibit, and some dancing soldiers outside the city wall.

In terms of seeing-all-the-sites, wandering around may not be the best way to travel.  You may miss things because you didn’t know when they were open, and you may waste some time being lost-ish, especially if you don’t have a good sense of direction and it’s a big place.  It might annoy your traveling companions and make you tired from walking around in circles.  But for me, there’s nothing quite like wandering around and seeing what you find.  The funny little roads and gates, the hidden museums and shops, and seeing where normal people actually live.  Here in Israel, it’s especially important, because what life looks like from the tourist sights is nothing like daily life.  And you don’t need to be half way around the world, or even in a city.  Just go out side, go for a wander, and see what you find.