It’s funny – one of the reasons I moved to Israel was because I have done very little traveling in my life up to this point, and I wanted to see/live someplace else besides NYC and suburban Philly. I am a man who loves his routines, and so in New York I pretty much did the same things – work, gym, AA, coffee & movies w/ friends, volunteer work. Repeat. Occasionally, I would do something “special” like to go Great Adventure or visit Liebs down the shore in Margate (no, not that shore), and for holidays I would visit the fam in Philly. Do you know I’m the only gay guy who ever lived in NYC (for 17 years) and never once went to Fire Island !?! Go ahead and say it – pathetic. It just never worked out; I didn’t wanna be a day tripper and have to catch the ferry back just as everyone was leaving the beach to go home and change for a night out, so I held out for an invite, and I got only two in all those years and both times the that weekend was bad for me. Also, I’m not a great saver, so I never had enough funds of my own to plunk on a 1/4 share, so I just never went. I told myself, Eh, at least I’m not over it…I’ll go next summer. But I never did.
Anyway, total digressage. Sorry, for that. So, I do this crazy thing and move 8,000 miles to Israel, where there’s the beautiful lush greenery of the Golan and Galeel and cool ancient ruins like in Caesaria…and all I ever do is stay in Tel Aviv. I mean, when I was first here on vaca, I visited Eilat, Masada and Haifa. And I’ve been to Jerusalem a few times. But, I’m tellin’ ya – it’s pretty similar to how I lived in New York. But you know what? So what. I fuckin’ love Tel Aviv. Practically everything about it: the 24/7 aspect to it, the gays and hot men, the beach, the fragrant year-round blossoms, the dog culture; everything except how the fuckin drivers park on the goddamn sidewalks and in front of the curb cuts.
But still, I don’t want a repeat of having lived in one place a long time and never seen X, X, and X. So, I was happy when my friends the Becker-Barkins invited me to join them on a day trip to Daliat El-Carmel, which is a Druze village about an hour north of Tel Aviv. It’s a good place to go on Shabbat, because Druze ain’t Jews, and so shiz is actually open. Unfortch we had crap weather, so all we did really was grab lunch, walk around a few shops and head back. But so what – you still got a feel for the little village, and how its main drag looked quaint and so different from what I’m used to in Tel Aviv.
Everybody loves the Druze, Anna said. They’re like the Switzerland of Israel.
Apparently, the village is known for a multitude of shops with cheesy dogs-playing-poker/ready-made cheap art that Israelis on a budget pick up to decorate their homes.
Anyway, the whole trip was maybe 3 hours, and we tacked on a cafe stop back in TLV. Good times. Petey was crated by himself for 4.5 hours and didn’t have an accident!
Next up: Nazareth on Christmas.
The Becker-Barkins
Gefilte Fish Out of Water 