flashback to october, 2005
Arie and his exwife named their children according to the same letter of the alphabet - the Hebrew letter aleph - Alma, Erez and Alon. The first one I met was the Alon, the ten year old.
Arie and Alon greeted us near the main gate of the festival area. After a kilometer walk from the family camping area, we found our meeting place and introduced ourselves. Arie and I had met a week or so earlier at a party. I didn't know if he was coming with a girlfriend or by himself, but I was happy to see a familiar face and even happier that my son would have some company among the hippies who seemed to have forgotten that there are no more hippies left. We decided to go the the evening performances together, featuring Israeli artists - not mainstream but not too alternative either. This suited me fine.
Arie had half his house with him. He had even set hooked up some of his appliances to the electric system of the festival employees. The reason he was set up in the staff section is that his 15 year old, Erez, was working in the children's area, helping with ceramics and other activities. Erez was apparently hanging out with his teenage peers, while Arie, Alon and my son hung out together, listening to the likes of Mika Karni and the sons of the late Meir Ariel. A few groups had cancelled because of the impending rain, but we didn't care.
This writer realized that she was actually having fun at this festival despite it being invaded by teenagers.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Post 44: Busride with an adult, some teenagers and the vodka bottles
flashback to October, 2005
I signed a contract with a new hitech company so I had a month off, free of job interviews and going to work. But I still didn't have a car. This wasn't so bad during the week, but Israeli Jewish holidays proved to be a bit challenging. Trains don't run during the Sabbath and religious holidays, and buses are hard to find, except in some of the mixed neighborhoods and cities such as Haifa.
Therefore, being secular and having the high holidays fall smack in the middle of the week can make you feel stranded. Rosh hashana passed. Yom kippur passed. Then it was Succot. There was no way we were going to spend 4 days without a car stuck in our house eating Pasta and watching DVDs of Seinfeld.
There were two new age festivals that were meant for families during the festival of Succot - one was Festival Breshit, at the Sea of Galilee and one was Segol, at the Dor beach. I didn't know one from the other, so I asked my son to choose. He chose fresh water over sea water, and that's how we ended up, one quiet morning during Succot, on a chartered bus - an eleven year old, a forty-two year old, and a bus full of teenagers with minimal shanti style clothing, multiple body-piercing, tattoos and vodka.
This was the bus to the family festival. After about ten minutes on the bus, I was ready to turn around. But I had already paid for the fares and so there was no turning back. There was nowhere to go anyway. Our tent and backpack were already in the baggage compartment of the bus and I was determined to get away from the city life, even though I missed driving the company car and stopping wherever I wanted to, whenever I wanted to.
Eventually we reached our destination on the eastern part of the Sea of Gailee, along with thousands of other teenagers, and thankfully, a few families. The family camping area was uncomfortably close to the noisy chai shop where many of the teenagers partied all night.
But before nightfall, I still had to pitch my tent, and there was someone who had offered to help me with that.
This writer called Arie's cellphone. There was no answer so she asked someone else to help her with the tent. Shortly before the sunset, her phone rang.
I signed a contract with a new hitech company so I had a month off, free of job interviews and going to work. But I still didn't have a car. This wasn't so bad during the week, but Israeli Jewish holidays proved to be a bit challenging. Trains don't run during the Sabbath and religious holidays, and buses are hard to find, except in some of the mixed neighborhoods and cities such as Haifa.
Therefore, being secular and having the high holidays fall smack in the middle of the week can make you feel stranded. Rosh hashana passed. Yom kippur passed. Then it was Succot. There was no way we were going to spend 4 days without a car stuck in our house eating Pasta and watching DVDs of Seinfeld.
There were two new age festivals that were meant for families during the festival of Succot - one was Festival Breshit, at the Sea of Galilee and one was Segol, at the Dor beach. I didn't know one from the other, so I asked my son to choose. He chose fresh water over sea water, and that's how we ended up, one quiet morning during Succot, on a chartered bus - an eleven year old, a forty-two year old, and a bus full of teenagers with minimal shanti style clothing, multiple body-piercing, tattoos and vodka.
This was the bus to the family festival. After about ten minutes on the bus, I was ready to turn around. But I had already paid for the fares and so there was no turning back. There was nowhere to go anyway. Our tent and backpack were already in the baggage compartment of the bus and I was determined to get away from the city life, even though I missed driving the company car and stopping wherever I wanted to, whenever I wanted to.
Eventually we reached our destination on the eastern part of the Sea of Gailee, along with thousands of other teenagers, and thankfully, a few families. The family camping area was uncomfortably close to the noisy chai shop where many of the teenagers partied all night.
But before nightfall, I still had to pitch my tent, and there was someone who had offered to help me with that.
This writer called Arie's cellphone. There was no answer so she asked someone else to help her with the tent. Shortly before the sunset, her phone rang.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
