25 Horses

We decide to visit Jerusalem the same day Mr. Bush does; we suspect a leak somewhere in our party. Apparently, this is a terrible idea, as the entire city has had its bus lines rearranged, streets closed, buildings moved, and the like. So, we bus in instead of driving. This turns out to not be such a stupid idea, as the city is pretty quiet -- nobody goes out for fear of getting stuck in traffic, and we have no problem getting around. Here is Anya and Nadav on the bus.



Speaking of horses, Nadav throws out a problem from the Microsoft/Google computational interview canon. More interesting than the problem, perhaps, is the ensuing joke: A physicist, lawyer, designer, and mathematician get on a bus to Jerusalem and discuss a math riddle. No rabbis or priests here. Luckily, we're all still friends. We discuss the following problem: You have 25 horses, and each runs at a constant speed, but each horse can have a unique speed. So, these horses never get tired or anything. You can't know the absolute speed of the horses, but you can race up to 5 horses at a time, and learn their relative speeds. So, given 25 of these horses, what's the minimum number of races you need in order to find the 5 fastest horses, ranked in order of speed? Email me if you think you have the answer.

Our cast today is the regulars, Nadav, Anya, Aaron, and Chaim. Later in the program we'll have a cameo appearance by Devora and David, who we've already met, plus Michelle, whom we haven't. Various strangers will wander into and out of our photographs as well, but we can't be expected to know them all by name.

On our way to meet David for a tour of the Western Wall Tunnels, we walk by Ben-Yehuda Street, and find a larger than normal number of soldiers guarding. Some of them are braiding each other's hair (look closely at the below picture). I ask permission to snap a photo, and they agree and smile, commenting that I am chamud (cute). Well, we all are, I guess.



The western wall tunnel tour is really really cool. As with most larger than life phenomena, the model (below) is often cooler than the real thing, which is too big to comprehend. The model is huge and mechanically transforms to reveal various moments in time. It's truly cool.



Before I explain what we're looking at, some background is in order. The twisty roads and traffic of Jerusalem, the fighting, the political stuff -- it's all a surface manifestation of these intersecting stories and impacted architecture that spans the course of thousands of years.



I have this profoundly obvious realization as we exit into the Muslim quarter, and find ourselves in front of an ancient, bone white, church. Of course, someone else's tour stops at this church, and it's a really important point on their journey, but for us, it's just one of a thousand patches on a quilt that compose our Jerusalem's background, and we think nothing of them. They are simply color, texture, and space. These patches, however, are tiny sidelong glimpses into other worlds, and other people's stories.



People have been building on top of, inside of, and between one another here for thousands of years. The tunnel tour takes us underneath the Muslim quarter, and travels an extensive buried length of the Western Wall, letting us see just how huge and expansive the temple mount was. It also comes as close as possible to the ancient Jewish Temple's most holy location on the temple mount, which is, naturally, underneath an important Muslim site. Silly of the Jews to build something so important underneath someone else's really important something.



Next, we go to this wacky interpretive art Jewish history experience thing. The glass sculpture below is part of it. It's a veritable aural womb we enter, very high tech, full of interesting glass art, DMX lighting, and lots of narration by the guy who must do all the movie trailers. By the end, we understand why he just does trailers, and not full length film narration, and have a similar feeling about the entire installation. It's like a really good soup made into a 12 course meal.



We complete our party by meeting Michelle and Devora. We now have a sizable Berkeley-Jerusalem contingent, and we raid several respectable locations, such as a cafe, restaurant, and bar.



The next morning, Nadav, Aaron, and I go to Nadav's favorite Tel-Aviv breakfast place. We meet a crazy man waving a glass of coke from a neighboring restaurant, who demands we bring him ice from the one we're waiting in a queue for. He goes ballistic when we explain that we won't do that. Luckily, I don't understand enough Hebrew to comprehend the depth of his anger and insanity.



I believe that this is some kind of hybrid French-Israeli place, and it totally kills La Note in Berkeley. We can't locate the impressionistic landscapes on the wall anywhere in Israel. Plus it has that certain jen a se qua. The food and place is still totally Israeli. This meal changes our lives a little bit for the better, and we get philosophical.



First, Nadav's theory on Israeli fruits and vegetables. People eat a lot of them here, and they are so fresh and good, it's hard to explain. Nadav thinks that this is due to the size of Israel -- it's so tiny, that all produce is basically local and super fresh. The worst case food transportation scenario is probably the best case in a typical American city. If America had such good tomatoes, cucumbers, and more, people might actually like to eat them.

My entire life my father, who grew up in Israel, called sour cream shamenet. He loves it. The white dollop on our plates is in fact this magical substance, seasoned with Za'atar. It doesn't taste like sour cream, since it's not bitter, but it's the closest approximation one can get in America. Shamenet tastes like true love, and it literally translates to something like "fatty". The cottage cheese available here, also, is just one of many life changing dairy products available for purchase in any holy land corner store. After eating the real shamenet, I feel like I understand my father more.

This brings us to our last food related point. The portions here are insane. If you thought American was bad, corporate America putting piles of corn derived products in front of us to maximize their revenue, owing to minimal marginal costs, Israel will blow your mind. Nadav calls Israeli food portions the post-Holocaust sized meal. Nadav thinks it's this multi-generational neurosis that creates these meals. Throw in some Jewish parents, and you have culinary absurdity. We order two meals for the three of us, and can't finish it. And we were terribly hungry. The time before, we order one meal for the three of us, and it's about right.

Oh yes, careful readers have found numerous factual errors relating to dates, locations, and even, at times, identities. As a consequence, our entire fact checking department has been let go. We apologize for the inconvenience. As for the future, we make no guarantees as to the correctness of any information contained in this blog.

Northwest Passage

Salaam and good evening, morning, or X, where X = time of day at your geographic locale! In our marvel filled world of fast chattering devices, one can never be certain.



This issue of Phases Crossed takes us to northern Israel. Our trip begins in Haifa, where we'll return in a week for more activities. Here is a photograph of the B'hai gardens in Haifa. Nice, no?

A word on pacing. This trip, so far, has been action packed rapid fire never a dull moment for anybody anyhow anywhere. It's not about the email, though. It's about Aaron. This trip is a go-get-em compressed top hits of the past three thousand years Israel tour, and soon that comes to an end, as we leave the comfort of Nadav's parents' Tel-Aviv apartment (Thanks Ora & Yoram! xoxo!), Anya and Nadav return to the states, and Aaron, who has never seen any of Israel, heads back to Belgium to continue his groundbreaking legal research on the Belgian deep frying system, and its effect on North American culinary attitudes, and tort reform.

What I'm trying to say here, but having trouble, is that this trip will soon slow down to a more leisurely, less type A sort of experience soon. Which is good news for the company of writers who are editing, writing, and formulating the text of this publication. They're about to go on strike.



Here we are posing for an Ars Electronique publicity photo for the fall 2008 SEC filing, travel swimsuit edition. This is the Tiberias bus depot, a necessary logistical stop on our tour north. As the guidebooks might say: fans of rustic linens, and students of the algebra of desire look no further -- this city has it all, just bring your own soap and a desire for adventure. Feels like Nevada to me. Devora, our travel buddy and incorrigable tour guide, buses in from Jerusalem and meets Aaron, Nadav, and myself in the city, where we have spent the night in anticipation of a full day of travel into barren contested territories and more.



This is a really interesting graveyard on the shore of the Kinneret, or The Sea of Galilee, where 1/3 of Israel's water comes from. The lake is an important place, and it sits under the Golan heights, which we'll get to later. This area is the site of some of Israel's first Kibbutzes. This graveyard is where many early settlers to Israel from Russia and Eastern Europe are buried. They came early in the 20th century, most of them very young and idealistic.

There were all kinds of problems and wackiness like Malaria we won't get into. Naomi Shemer, who wrote Jerusalem of Gold, is buried here, along with lots of other interesting people and interesting stories. One interesting story Devora told us, is that there was a small splinter group of devil worshippers here that were booted out of the main camp of Zionists, who found them a bit too weird for their taste. Recently, a really unusual buried grave was found, from the early 20th century, and it looks really really devilish and punk rock. Creepy. Apparently, the guy was one of these outcasts, and killed himself (which is not Kosher, but the graveyard technically isn't). One historian thinks he was sacrificed to the devil. You can see and read more here. Creep-tastic.



This is the Kinneret, which has a dangerously low water level right now. Lots of shells abound, but most Jews don't go for that kind of fish.



Next, we drive up into the Golan (below), which Israel captured from Syria in 1967. It's hard to describe how high this high ground is. It just goes straight up from the eastern shore of the Kinneret, and over into Syria. It's cold, and we see very little human stuff, except a few farms, some military installations, and an abandoned Mosque.



We go up to what is probably one of the highest points, to an old military bunker overlooking Syria. There's a delightfully named coffee shop here, and not much else. In Hebrew Annan is cloud, so the name of the shop, on the one hand, is "Cloud Coffee," which is apt. It's also a reference to Kofi Annan, a former secretary general of the UN.



Bunkers are cool, and you can kind of get a sense of how high up we are, and the stuff below is actually quite high as well.



I was the last one to leave, I think, and I had to emphasize that this stuff (military fortifications) is really cool for boys. Click through for more pictures.



Here is our entire expedition team at this point:



No bunker would be complete with a maze of tunnels and rooms below ground. Fa. Above ground trenches are so world war one. Dahling, you wouldn't want to be caught dead in one.



We discuss the history of the 1967 war in a museum inside the bunker, and Devora makes the point that one doesn't really win a war. It's people dying and territory moving around from a country to the next, but to speak of winning and losing is actually a bit weird. Strip away the national aspects, and it's just disaster accounting.

Leaving the Golan Heights, we go to an excellent restaurant called Dag on the Dan, and meet this guy. Fowl of all kind abound.



We go to the old Jewish mystical city Tsfat, and walk around. We find a Cafe Baghdad. There's also one in San Francisco.



Nadav and I bet one another 10 dollars that we will go to Baghdad in our lifetime. I forget who bets which way. So concludes our tour. This was, in fact, one of the longest days of the trip, and we even go to bed after 10pm, incredibly. Night night.