President's House

In front of the president's house (a two minute walk around and up from here) six or eight youngish black men in diplomatic suits, across the street a uniformed guy with a submachine gun, police cars a block away in either direction, cars passing on the street, number 13 buses in each direction, me walking past in my black, hooded raincoat.

Wonder what dignitary was visiting.

Half an hour later, the motorcatde sirens. What with the president and prime minister, this is a very sireny neighborhood.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Coming and Going

Saturday nights, the Central Bus Station is crowded. Everyone is either coming home or going home. Bus fares are cheap, and the two-car family is still rare. Across the street are multiple bus stops and a light rail stop. Farther on are more bus stops on the street past Binyanei HaOoma. No one seems to push to get on the bus, but there is no line or queue.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Alternate Bus Entries

The Egged-green lozenge shapes on the doors of double-length Egged buses indicate that, if you have a ravkav (prepaid transportation card), there are card readers at every door and you can get on wherever you like -- just like on the light rail. Fortunately bus drivers still take cash and make change.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Turbaned woman with rolled carpet

The rolled up carpet was taller than the woman by about a quarter. She was young, slim, by dress religious, by the evidence of the carpet strong.

She placed the carpet in the baggage compartment under the intercity bus. We got off the bus before she did, so I don't know how she managed the carpet at her destination. Or how she had arrived at Jerusalem's Central Bus Station. Or how she had maneuvered the carpet up the escalator. Perhaps it fit in the elevator?

Copyright 2015 Jane S. Fox

Number 9 bus

Crossing from the Central Bus Station after a day-trip to Beersheva and the Negev, I was surprised to see the number 9 bus. On the front it proclaimed Giv'at Mordehai as its destination. Good. That would take it through Rehavia. To be sure, when the man getting on after me asked whether the bus was going to Rehavia, the driver answered that it would take ong to get there. But I was already settled.

A turn left on Saei Yisrael, and I figured I'd get a tour of Sikhron Moshe on our way to Kiakh St. Instead we made a series of loops: around Romema, then Kiryat Bels, Kiyat Ganz, Ezrat Torah. I'd been to Romema, in jeans on a wet and cold winter day a few years back to retrieve a hat a tourist friend forgot in n apartment in one of the huge, many entried, apartment blocks. The other neighborhoods are similar. Eventually we reached Kerem Avraham through which I'd walked on a tour of Amos Oz's childhood sights.

Women and girls got on the bus and off at their destinations. "Did they sit in the back?" i was asked later. No, and no one hassled me.

Men and women got on, and off a few stops later. All the men were dressed in black, the women in black or dark grey, their mothers' and grandmothers' colors relegated to family photographs for now.

Eventually we turned on Strauss, continued to HaNeviim, and were on Kiakh. One black clad man remained. He got off on Ushishkin. Women and girls and men and boys in jeans got on. They have their own fashions.

The Kharedim ride the bus more than others do -- though their neighborhoods are now also full of parked cars. So each bus stop in their neighborhoods has long lists of buses, and no doubt when the number 9's ridership went down, someone, or a computer said, "We'll get lots of riders north of Derekh Yafo."

Copyright 2014 Jane S. Fox

To The Dead Sea and Back

Egged has started selling advanced tickets on buses to the Dead Sea. Tickets bought ahead for buses to Eilat have, for some time, brought a promise of a seat. If they sell more than a bus-full of tickets, Egged adds a bus. I'm guessing the Dead Sea route will work the same way. Up to now on the Dead Sea route, if the bus filled up, those still in line had to wait for the next scheduled bus, about a hour in the morning.

The 486 bus to the Dead Sea stops at Kumrun (get off along the Kalya access road), Ein Gedi and Massada before it gets to the hotels and spas in Ein Bokek. When you want to return to Jerusalem from Kalya, inside Kibbutz Ein Gedi, or Massada ask the driver to make sure you are taking the bus in the correct direction.

Decide ahead of time which Ein Gedi stop you want -- the field school, hostel and hiking path, the Kibbutz and guest house, or the spa.

Happy travels.

Copyright 2014 Jane S. Fox

Mohawk

The man sitting in front of me on the mumber 13 bus had a mohawk. Haven't seen one of those in a while.

At first, it looked strangely like a wig. I suppose you could stick a mohawk wig on a shaved head with glue or spirit gum. After a while I could see how his own, growing, hair was twisted and combed.

Copyright 2-14 Jane S. Fox

Jerusalem Light Rail hahahahaha

A friend who has not been in Israel for a year asked whether the light rail system was running. Hahahahaha.

There has been progress, or at least change. Tracks are laid. Station shelters are in place with electronic signboards ready to show when the next train will arrive.

Some time in mid April.

Meanwhile Jaffa Road is closed to all vehicular traffic. For three months there will be no transportation, public or private on Jaffa Road. Of the first time in at least 3,000 years.

The light rail project is 13 years old. http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/transportation-mural.html described the warning mural.

Copyright 2011 Jane S. Fox

Bus Map

http://web.me.com/jerubus/English_Site/Jerusalem_Bus_Map.html shows the major Egged routes in Jerusalem. It's very helpful, especially for plotting transfers, once you get used to the projection. Once you know what route you want, go to http://egged.co.il/Eng/ and click Find a Bus Route. You'll need to allow pop ups for this site.

Copyright 2010 Jane S. Fox

Bus Transfers

Your ticket is now your transfer on Egged buses in Jerusalem. For 75 minutes after you get on the first bus, you can use your ticket to board another

This changes trip planning. From Dereckh Azza to rhe Malkha Mall, no need to await a 17 or 17 alef, which make their round about way through Givat Mordekhai -- scenic but not quick. To be sure the 31 no longer goes down Azza and straight on to the mall, and past it to stop near the train station, but you can now take a 32 or 19 to Tsomet Pat and there transfer to 6 or 17 or 17 alef, whichever comes first.

And I know at least one man who takes the bus from Bayit veGan to Mahaneh Yehida, does the weekly produce shopping, and gets on the bus home without having to pay a second fare. If you see a man with a toddler shopping very efficiently, don't distract him. He has a bus to catch.

Copyright 2010 Jane S. Fox

Taxi Tax

• Taxis in Jerusalem are a bargain. (See http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/taxis.html )
• They are wonderful for tourists. Along with buses, hey help make residents comfortable with carlessness.
• Now the mayor proposes a tax on taxi stands.
• Go figure.

COpyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Noticing Jerusalem

• The 174 articles in this blog are a guide to noticing Jerusalem.
• Look up at the stonework around the windows, at the balcony rails, at the roof gardens, and the floors added to older buildings.
• Look down at the tiles in courtyards.
• Look out at the views of the mounded southern hills and the eastern hills that tease your eyes with the chance that you have seen the Dead Sea to the east.
• Notice the little shops still holding on among the chain stores, the odd pieces of sculpture, the trompe l'oeil murals, the seasonal changes of wild flowers in open fields and fruit in the market.
• Visit the little museums. Go to concerts. Don't let the language intimidate you. Ask for help in English, and you'll get it, with a little garbling.

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Bus 99

• Egged's line 99 (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/private-guides.html ) provides a two-hour ride around Jerusalem in a double-decker bus.
• The views are wonderful. In places they are spectacular.
• The commentary is sketchy to nonexistent. Nevertheless, the tour is worth the charge (about 10USD) and the time. It is, for instance, the only way you can now see over the wall the Anglicans recently built around their school (http://www.aisj.co.il/ ).
• Take a map, and use the opportunity to get oriented -- difficult when you are going along twisty streets (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html ), and easier if you can see over low buildings.
• The 99 starts opposite the huge clock on the outside of the blue and white central Bus Station. You can also pick it up at other stops -- for example, at the Sherover Promenade, across the street from the road into the Biblical Zoo, and at Yad VaShem. You can buy a ticket for one circuit, or pay more to get off the bus and get back on two hours later -- if it is not already the last bus.
• http://www.egged.co.il/Eng/main.asp?lngCategoryID=2773 has a little more information.

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Monster

• HaMifletzet in Kiryat Hayovel (http://www.israelfamily.org/photogallery/Israel6-7-8/slides/HaMifletzet-The%20Monster.html ) is a nonarchitectural monster, well enough known to be featured in the small, excellent, and rarely-seen pamphlet published by the Jerusalem Municipality Tourist Division.
• In a shady park (a project of the Jerusalem Foundation.), HaMifletset is a tall, piebald monster, whose three tongues are slides.
• The 18, 20, and 24Alef (from the Israel and Biblelands Museums) bus stop nearby. Ask a fellow-passenger where to get off for hah-meef-let-set. In your question, use as few words as possible. When you get off the 18, go right. It is about a block from the bus stop. You can ask anyone "HaMeeletst?"and get directions.
• If you walk back to the bus stop, continue a block, cross at the T-junction, and turn right, you will see to your left a good, kid-friendly, little restaurant with tables outside and inside. Childrens will notice the dancing cows on the pillar outside. The restaurabt will also package for you you a freshly-cooked take-out meal (the common Hebrew expression sounds very like take out, and the owner and staff speak enough English to explain what's available) for a very reasonable price. You can get shawarma or regular food.
• Farther along the street, next to the supermarket (Hebrew: "soopehr") is a pizzaria.

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Entertaining Children

• Children like the energy-saving lights in Jerusalem stairwells. They push the button to trun on the light, wait on the landing until the light goes out, push the button again. One races ahead to push the button o,n a higher landing. That extends the time the light is on.
• For a child used to the family car riding a bus is an adventure -- a city bus where you give the driver money and get change and the printer prints out your ticket. You can keep the ticket as a souvenir. The bus starts moving before you get to a seat. It winds back and forth through narrow streets, up hill and down. Who needs Disneyland?
• Taxis. Another treat! "Good thing I'm a city kid and I can hail a cab" goes the song. (Googl ehas failed to identify the source.) It's magic for a midwestern kid. I wave my hand and a car stops, ready to take us anywhere.
• The shouk (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/abundance.html )can be almost too exciting. "What are those men shouting?" asks an eight-year old. He stands very close to me. "Bananas two and a half shekels a kilo," I tell him "Clementines three shekels a kilo." He moves a little away from me and listens. "Yes," he says. "I hear 'bananas' and 'kilo.'"
• For kids who don't like strange food, there's pizza. Many pizza parlors squeeze fresh juice (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/juice.html ).

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

4 to the top

• When festivities are not blocking the street ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/course-check.html ), the 4 does continue along YeKhezkel. A pre-car alley caught my attention opposite Avinoam. Then a sign pointing left to the Bukharian Shouk. Its name marks its origins at the end of the nineteenth century.
• It is not until Eretz Khefetz that the bus turns left. It is soon among names related to battles since the founding of the State of Israel.
• The view opens up, and then we are in Ramat Eshkol (http://research.haifa.ac.il/~eshkol/ ). In the seventies, secular and "mdern orthodox" Jews bought apartments here. Now more and more residents ae kharedi, then men dressed in what Poles thought fashionable in the eighteenth (knee britches and stockings) or nineteenth (long black silk coats) centuries. Although many kharedi families are poor by choice and live on welfare, the economic range within these communities is broad. Several subgroups are very wealthy and have been buying real estate.
• The bus continues up the hill, giving you a beautiful view to the north. It passes under khaim Bar Lev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Bar-Lev ) to HaHagana (http://www.zionism-israel.com/Haganah.htm ). If you get off the bus at the Mr. Zol supermarket (the sign is in Hebrew but the large red framed white on black logo is distingtive) cross the street and walk across the plaza, you'll see one of the best outward views in the city.
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/bus-4-names.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/number-4-bus.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/pump.html then http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/4-to-terra-sancta.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/4-on-king-george.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/beautiful-clothes.html and http://jerusalmblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/street-of-prophets.html
• I took the number 28 back to the central bus station( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/bus-station.html ). It passes the Tnuva dairy plant. Fresh dairy products are one of the joys of Jerusalem. (Madison, capital of the Dairy State, cannot match Jerusalem for the quality and variety of dairy products.) The land having been bought by kharedi interests for other purposes, Tnuvah has announced it will closd the plant.
• Emap (http://www3.emap.co.il/eng_index.asp ) uses the same transliteration for khet as I do.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Haas and Goldman Promenades

• The Peace Forest adds oxygen to Jerusalem below Armon HaNatziv (the UN headquarters in the building that once housed the British High Commissioner http://www.jerusalem.muni.il/jer_sys/picture/atarim/site_form_atar_eng.asp?site_id=16&pic_cat=4&icon_cat=6&york_cat=9 ) down to Gai ben Hinnom and the Kidron Valley.
• The Sherover (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/sherover-promenade.html )is the walled walk with a good view.
• Down from it to the left, the Haas continues as a path towards Aub Tor, a walk on my schedule for Sunday.
• The Goldman goes to the east of the Sherover, around Armon HaNatziv. The Goldman family gets my gratitude not only for the beautifully-landscaped promenade but also for pressuring the municipality not to allow develpers to build along the ridge. So far, the view belongs to everyone.
• It would fit the Bible story if it was somewhere along this ridge that Abraham saw the mountain on which he was to set up the sacrifice of Isaac.
• Across the street from Armon HaNatziv, stepped plazas provide an excellent view of Herodion (http://www.abu.nb.ca/courses/NTIntro/images/Herodifortress.htm ). It's the hill that looks like a volcano. The shape is Artificial. Herod wanted it to stand out.
• In the top plaza a modern mosaic depicts the water system built by the Romans. A guided tour took me here, down steps and more steps, and more and more to the locked entrance to a tunnel that is partof the system. I gather that the water came by aqueduct from near Gush Etsion. The drop is 20 meters over 20 kilometers through the Judean hills. Aqueducts meandered to this point, gravity moving the water along a 1:1000 slope.
• Here Roman engineers had their slaves (I assume) tunnel through. A guard saw us in. We walked the 200-meter distance, sometimes sideways, sometimes bent over a bitThe Ottomans did some maintenance on the tunnel and added a supplementary water channel, but eventually the system fell into disuse.
• You can only get in with a licensed guide. Women more than five-months pregnant would have a hard time getting through, and it is not for claustrophobes. An acrophobe on the city wall can find ways down at intervals (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/on-walls.html ), but once in this tunnel, you can go back only if everyone behind you does, and there are no other exits. There are regular signs saying how far to the end. The kids in the group liked it. One of the adults was not happy with another adult's questions about whether anyone had every been left in the tunnel. It'd have to have been the last in the group.
• At the other end, another guard sat in the shade. We climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed, back to the parking lot next to Armon HaNatsiv. The last natsiv left over 60 years ago, but in this part of the world that is a very short period of time indeed.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Course Check

• On Sunday I got on the a number 4 (kahv arbah) bus on Keren HaYesohd to check my memory of its route ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/street-of-prophets.html ). Contrary to what I remembered it turned off Nathan Strauss at Yehezkayl, and I discovered we were skirting Kerem Avraham (see http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/love-and-darkness.html ) where James Finn (a British consul and an antiquarianon on the cusp of collector and archaeologist) set up a farm to employ poor people in the mid 19th century. The Jews he employed were so poor that he had to give them breakfast at the Jaffa Gate in order for them to have strength enough to walk the mile or so to his farm.
• The bus passed Shneller. (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/jerott.html ) named for a German Lutheran missionary, Father Johann Ludwig Schneller, who bought land around 1850 from the village of Lifta for an orphanage and vocational school and orphanage for Christian Arab refugees from Syria. The nearby staff houses stell show the names of German towns over their lintels. The Ottomans (Turks) commandeered the property for and army base during World War I.
• The British took it over after they conquered the country and, with its French ally broke up the Ottoman Enpire into entities still trying to work thebselfes out today.
• The State of Israel in its turn put military administrative units and an armory on the Schneller campus.
• It has now been sold to an Ultra-Orthodox group which promises to preserve the buildings. People who think about it expect the Christian inscriptions to disappear some night, and perhaps the buildings as well. Next week I’ll take the bus again to see whether the unexpected route was a deviation caused bycelebrations of Succot ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/sherover-promenade.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/red-rock.html ).

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Back in Time

• In the Katamonim ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/number-4-bus.html ), the architecture was from the third quarter of the 20th century and most of the people had ancestors who had moved from Spain to North Africa 514 years ago, or lived in Iraq for 2500 years, or in Persia for a little less, or who trace their lineage to the Queen of Sheba. Others came from Yemin after a couple of thousand years there, and a few from Geyorgia after 1600 or so years there.
• They wear skirts or slacks. Married women who cover their hair do so with a scarf tied under the hair at the nape of the neck ot crossed at the nape to tie or lap over the forehead. These women usually wear short sleeves in summer. About a quarter of the younger women wear very short sleeves or tank tops over tight jeans.
• In the Moshava ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/pump.html )some of the architecture is from the nineteenth century, but the people are dressedvery 21st.
• Across King George ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/street-of-prophets.html ) the architecture is late 19th and 20th century, but the people try to reach back to the 18th or early 19th. Men dress to pass in a Polish city under Tsarist rule. Most of the women dress in whatever modern fashions will cover them from wrist to collar bone and to ankle. They wear skirts not slacks.
• Some older women wear skirts to midcalf, and opaque stockings below, but younger women and girls insist on ankle-length skirts.
• Many are fashionably, if not seasonably dressed.
• Married women cover their hair with page-boy wigs or with hats, or with wigs and hats, or with varieties of turbans, which mark the particular group that expects their allegiance.
• Muslim Arab women in traditional dress are even more covered, for they drape their necks as well as their hair. They, however, may wear slacks, while the Jewish women north of Yafo don't.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Street of the Prophets

• At the very bottom of King George (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/4-on-king-george.html ) on the northwest corner of the ancient route to Jaffa (you can cross this street diagonally) opposite the venerable Maayan Shtube (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/retail.html ) clothing store (mentioned in Amos Oz's memoir), a building plaque proudly proclaims its Mandatory (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/palmanda.htm) pedigree. Up the Jaffa Road (Rehov Yafo) is an old Turkish guardpost (the building with two small lionsout front), now the police Lost and Found, and beyond that the Mahane Yehuda market ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/abundance.html ). In the other direction, the street ends at the Jaffa Gate (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/on-walls.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/lights-out.html
• The 4 ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/number-4-bus.html ) crosses Yafo. The large building looming to the weston the next corner is the only hospital left in downtown Jerusalem, Bikur Kholim.
• The next cross street, Neviim (http://www.sustainable-jerusalem.org/jerusaleme/envir35.html and http://www.jerusalem.muni.il/english/sys/tour/vir_tour/show/show_tour.asp?tour_id=100), is worth its own tour. Here Christian groups from Europe competed with each other to build the most impressive institutions in Jerusalem toward the end of the Ottoman rule. The Street of the Prophets runs from the Anglican School, past the Ethiopean church) to the property of the Russian Orthodox Church and beyond to the gates of the Old City.
• But the 4 continues straight ahead. Mind your map. King George has changed to Nathan Strauss, named for an American philanthropist who provided paseurized milk to poor American children and his name to the city of Netanya.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox