Baptism

In Amman Jordan I go see the ruins from Roman times, when the city was called Philadelphia. It was named Philadelphia for Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Macedonian Pharoah of Egypt who was perhaps the half-nephew of Alexander the Great. The name "Philadelphia" is usually translated as "Brotherly Love", but with that ending it really means "Sibling Love". The name seems appropriate since Philadelphus married his sister. The ancient Macedonians seemed to practice philadelphia frequently.

The Jordanians are doing an impressive job to rebuild the ruins from the pieces that remain.

In the evening I go to a Turkish bath in Amman to help recover from the desert. Fadhel the masseuse is from Bahdad. Fadhel says that Baghdad will be ready for tourism in two years, and that Irdil in northern Iraq is safe now if you go through Jordan.

Can you imagine the tourism potential of Baghdad? Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, the Garden of Eden. Go visit Saddam's palaces and monuments. Visit the underground tomb where they caught saddam, and go see the square where Blackwater went Rambo. It may sound crazy now, but at one time Tokyo, Seoul and Berlin were war zones also. Tokyo and Seoul are great places to visit now. Berlin not so much.

The next morning I go to Bethany in Jordan. Bethany is the baptism site of Jesus, where John the Baptist did his work. They've recovered the original baptism site that was first identified in the 6th century AD. In the 6th century the think they found the actual site, based on the description in the Bible, because there was only one site at that time which fit the description. They built several churches on the site, but those churches have been destroyed through the ages. The river has shifted course by several hundred meters, and the original baptism site is now an archeological dig. The archeological site has the ruins of the foundations of the old churches and a pond of water where the original baptism area was. They won't let you go into that baptism site now, which is probably good since the water is stagnant and murky.

The modern baptism site is the spot where the river Jordan flows now that is the closest point to the original baptism site. It's a few hundred meters away from the old site. I put my feet into the water at the modern baptism site. You can arrange with a priest to be baptized here, but I didn't arrange that ahead of time. I would like to be baptized here, but I may not come back here for a long time. What should I do? What would you do? I decide to do a full body self immersion baptism. The Jordanian and German tourists in my group are amused, but the military guard appears annoyed. He doesn't speak English so he can't really complain to me. I can't take a picture of myself performing the self-baptism in the water, but I take a picture of the guard afterward making sure that no one else does a self-baptism.

While walking out I talk to the tour guide, who had left us while we were at the river. I ask him about arranging for a priest to baptize you in the water. He says "It is possible to arrange it through one of the churches, but why bother? You're an adult, you don't need a priest to baptize you, just baptize yourself." I admit to him that I did just that but the military guard didn't like it, possibly because I was commando. He says "No, the guard just wanted to make sure that you didn't swim too far into the water. A few more meters and you would have crossed the border into Israel, and the guard might get in trouble."

I still recommend that you arrange with a priest when you go.

Petra

I make it through the Israeli security to Eliat, and I cross the border on foot into the city of Aqaba in Jordan. The difference in culture is immediately apparent: The border guard on the Jordanian side leaves his post for a minute to help me find a taxi.

The taxi driver there asks for 100 JD (about $130) to take me to Petra, or double that to take me to Petra and then onto Amman. I would like to negotiate, but there is no other taxi visible, so my negotiating leverage is limited. We agree to $200 US (down from $260) for the full ride to Petra and onto Amman, which will be about 9 hours including waiting time in Petra.

Beautiful red mountains on the ride from Aqaba to Petra.


I get to Petra around 3pm, the time when most tourists are leaving. I could describe Petra in detail, but that would be pointless: Petra is experiential knowledge, it can not be summed up by words. Go there yourself one day, it is worth it.

I walk through the canyon narrows, to where it opens up onto the Treasury.

I walk past the area that used to be the Petra town square some 2000 years ago. It was destroyed by earthquakes, but the Jordanians are working to piece together the fallen rocks to rebuild it.

I hike up the 1000 or so steps that lead from the town square to the Monastery. Few tourists are left, the people that live there are cleaning up and putting things away for the day. A few hundred meters past the Monastery it opens up to a view of the canyon. It reminds me of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, at about 1/4 the scale.

I start hiking back rapidly but right near the top, at the second cafe stand that I pass, some people that work there are relaxing and smoking a hookah. The tourists are gone and they are enjoying the late afternoon colors on the canyon. At first I think I need to get back quickly, but then I feel a stronger need to pause and enjoy the scene. Soon I am sitting at a small cafe at the top of a gorge, drinking fresh squeezed lemonade with mint. An old man plays arabic tunes on old sitar while the Jordanian guy next to me smokes his hookah.

His wife (or girlfriend? I'm not sure) comes back over to enjoy the hookah and we start talking. Manal (May-NAL) speaks near perfect English, better than my ex-wife. Basal (Bay-SAL) does not speak English, but Manal translates for us when needed.

There's something different about their relationship and about them compared to many people in the Middle East: Manal is not subservient to Basal, they have a roughly peer-to-peer way of dealing with each other. Even though I can't understand what they're saying to each other I can tell that Manal and Basal joke around in a playful way, teasing each other. While we're talking Manal and I start joking around too as if we're old friends. Manal is smoking the hookah too, which is unusual for Middle Eastern women. They ask if I'd like to share some of their shisha, and the three of us spend some time smoking the water pipe.

Manal the philosopher says "Why go to Amman? It's a big city. Big cities are the same everywhere. Life is better here. We work when we want to, we relax when we want to." Looking out over one of the most beautiful sites in the world, it's hard to disagree.

Strip-searched in Tel Aviv

I want to clarify one thing before we start: I wasn't technically strip-searched. They allowed me to keep my boxer shorts on.

Trey and I wake up early at 4:15am for the our tour to Petra. (Petra is one of the wonders of the ancient world, outside of Amman Jordan. My highest goal on this trip is to see Petra). Our flight is at 6:30am and we're right by the airport, but we want to allow plenty of time for any unforeseen delays.

We get to the airport in plenty of time, only to realize the first setback, and our most serious one: We're at the wrong airport. It turns out that Tel Aviv has two airports, Ben Gurion airport and Sev Dot airport. The tour company didn't explain this to us, they just said that the flight departed from Tel Aviv airport. We think the other airport is nearby, though, so we rush outside and take a taxi.

We get to Sev Dot airport. We should still be able to make the flight, we think we have enough time. This airport is small, it looks more like a county airport in the US. It only serves domestic flights from Tel Aviv to Eliat, about once every 45 minutes. We encounter a delay of course at the security screening and X-ray scanner to get into the airport, but we get past that and head to the check-in counter. They tell Trey that everyone has to go through second level security screening before checking in. "Don't worry," the check-in person tells us, "you'll still be able to make your flight."

This is the point when things start going very wrong. Something about us makes them think that we're a terrorist threat. I'm do not know the cause, and they would not tell me later. Maybe it is because we are late, and because we tell the security person that we still have time to make the flight. Maybe it is because we are two foreign men traveling without any women. Maybe it is because I haven't shaved in 3 or 4 days and I look like a swarthy terrorist.

The security person tells us "No, you're not going to make your flight." Mind you, she doesn't yet know what flight we're on. She doesn't know what time our flight leaves. She doesn't know if they might hold the flight for us. But she is confident that whatever flights we're on, we're not going to make it.

I say "That's OK, we'll try and see if we make it. If we don't make our flight, maybe they have a later flight that we can get on." I'm not sure why, but she's discouraging us from having her evaluate us for security. She's discouraging us from waiting to see if we can make the flight. She tells me flatly, "You're not going to make this flight, and today is Sunday, a busy day. The other flights are probably fully booked. You're not going to get on any flight today. You should just go home."

I'm a little confused. I've never had a security person tell me before that they don't want to screen me, that I should just turn around and go home. The way she's saying it isn't even a suggestion, as if she were trying to be nice and save me hassle. Her tone of voice is more a command, as if she's afraid of me and just wants me to leave.

It takes me a few minutes to coax her into even giving us the security screening. "I realize it may take a while," I say, "and I realize we may not get on this flight or a later flight today. But I want to try. One way or another I want to try get to Petra."

And so the actual security screening begins. She separates Trey and me, telling Trey to sit far away out of listening range. She doesn't go through my belongings, she just asks me questions. "Where are you from? How long have you been in Israel? Where have you been?" She goes on with hundreds of questions, many of them repeated multiple times. She never actually looks through my bags, but she does make me show her pictures of where we've been in Israel; she wants to know where we stayed in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, who we talked to.

I need to admit at this point that my answers to this level of questions must have seemed suspicious. I answered her questions honestly, since I knew she will be double-checking the answers with Trey, but the honest answers are complicated. I don't have a printout of the itinerary, since it is e-ticket. We were traveling with two other guys, Josh and Jeff, but they aren't with us now because they didn't want to go to Petra. They are still at the hotel in Tel Aviv. Yes, we did meet someone else in Israel, the girl Jenna who went with us on an impromptu tour of Masada and the dead sea. No, Trey and I are not coming back together: He is returning to Tel Aviv later that day, I am going to continue on from Petra to Amman Jordan. No, I don't have an itinerary for that: I am planning to break off from the tour and take a taxi from Petra to Amman. "Why is your return flight from Tel Aviv if you are leaving them and going to Amman?" I will come back from Amman to Tel Aviv in a few days, and catch a flight from Tel Aviv to Athens, and then onto the US. "Where is your flight from Amman back to Tel Aviv?" I don't have a flight; I am planning to go overland and go through one of the border crossings.

The questioning goes on for quite a while, I won't bore you with all the details. Finally she tells me to go sit down and Trey to come up for questioning, so she can ask him the same questions and see if his answers match.

Now begins the second phase of advanced security screening. In the first phase they ask you a barrage of questions: Who you are, where you've been, why you doing this. They purposefully ask you intrusive questions about your life, to see how you respond. In this second phase, though, they do the opposite. They don't ask you anything, and they don't do anything. They have me sit in one place, and Trey sit in another. They don't look through our bags, which are sitting over by the security area. They help other people; They chat with each other; They take care of other things. The purpose of this phase is to see how you react when you're just sitting and waiting. This let this phase take about 15 minutes. We are patient and we don't ask how long it will take, otherwise they might extend it even longer.

Thus begins phase three: The call us back up, then take us and our belongings, walk us outside, and take us to a different building. It's a small, non-descript building. They put two plastic chairs outside for Trey and me. They put our things inside and make us wait for a few minutes. The have a guard stand near us outside. He's not dressed in a uniform, he is one of the private commandos they use at the checkpoints near the airport. The guys in military garb are usually young, around 20, and are there to provide visible security, to deter. These guys, though, are about 30 or 35, and they look like they'd be a fair match for Matt Damon in the Bourne Identity.

The call me and Trey in separately, multiple times each. They have me take everything out of my pockets. They go through my things with me and ask me questions about them. They use a hand wand-type metal detector, then they do a very slow, careful, private pat-down, like a doctor doing an anatomy review. They have me pull my pants down so they can check again. As I said at the top, it wasn't technically a strip-search: They let me keep my boxer shorts on.

Trey got annoyed about having to take his pants down. He refuses at first and they call one of the supervisors back again. Trey says, "I'm done, I'm not pulling my pants down. I'm just going home." Her response is "You can't refuse now, we gave you the chance to go home before. Now you have to do it." Trey starts asking if they get many American terrorists here in Israel.

Despite all this, they are very nice and professional the whole time. When I took everything out of my pockets that includes money and all other personal items, and they already have my passport. In many countries I would have refuse to leave my money there while I went into a separate room, but I know it would be here when I return. And it is still there when I return. They also let Trey use his cell phone at one point to call the tour company and ask about the tour.

After about two hours they decide that we have passed, mostly. It is too late for Trey to make his flight so he goes back to the Tel Aviv hotel. There is one seat on a flight that is leaving very soon, so they suddenly tell me that they need to rush me through to get on that flight. They tell me to put the things back into my suitcase, with a few exceptions: My laptop will go in the backpack, but nothing else in there. My cell phone has to go in my suitcase, I cannot carry it. I cannot carry on the backpack, nor the suitcase which was carry-on size. They will both be checked luggage instead. They put the laptop battery for some reason into a large white padded envelope and then put that envelope in a separate small duffel bag, and the laptop charging cord they put in it's own white padded envelope and into it's own separate small duffel bag. I now had four pieces of checked luggage: My backpack and (formerly) carry-on suitcase, plus two small duffel bags. They take out a few other items, though, like my camera, Kindle, electric razor and charging cords for each of those and hold those items separate. Those items they still need to check further, but I will be going on this flight. Those items will be sent on the next flight, and I would need to wait in Eliat for an extra hour or longer until they got arrive.

And then they rush me back to the main airport building, past security, out onto the tarmac and onto the plane.

Nativity

Slept for 14 hours. We needed it.

We walk down towards the wailing wall again and try to get into the Dome of the Rock. It's Friday and only Muslims are allowed in. I try to convince them that I'm an American Muslim. He looks very annoyed and asks me for my passport. He starts reciting the Muslim call to prayers and tells me to continue. I can recognize that is is the Muslim call to prayers, but I'm unable to continue the cant. I fail the test. Luckily for me he returns my passport.

We walk down the hill to the church of Gethsemane. Gethsemane is the olive garden where Jesus was arrested by the Roman soldiers, where Peter cut off the soldier's ear. They have old olive trees here that supposedly date from 2000 years ago, and the church is nicely done.

We're getting tired of walking, so we decide to take a taxi to the top of the hill, the mount of olives, and then walk and see the churches on the way down. The taxi driver, Adam, has a different suggestion.

We can never stick to a plan. But each time we divert from plan we have a great adventure.

Adam drives us to Bethlehem, which is inside a Palestinian zone. He gives us a tour of Bethlehem, then brings us to a guide named Nida. Nida takes us to lunch: great food, fresh squeezed lemonade with mint. Then he takes us for a walk around the main square in Bethlehem and to the Church of the Nativity. You know, where Jesus was born.

Before 2000 Bethlehem was bustling, Nida tells us: Tourism, hotels, restaurants. At the Church of the Nativity there used to be a 3 hour line to get in. Now there's no line for the church, and even for the sacred grotto underneath there's only a few minutes wait, and that's only because a group of German have stopped inside to sing songs. Right now they're singing "Holy Night", in German of course.

Down in the grotto there is a star where Jesus was born. Candles where Mary wrapped Jesus in clothes, and the area where the three kings gave him gifts, all within 15 feet of each other. The Church of the Nativity is Greek Orthodox, but the grotto underneath is shared. There's an Armenian orthodox church in the same building right along side, and a catholic church on a chapel a little further to the side. Below is St Jerome's cave where they say that St Jerome did the first main translation of the bible into Latin.

Priests have different habits: a tour group of 50 people squeezing into St Jerome's cave, while a priest inside from a different sect is trying to do a mass there. Nida is annoyed at their bad manners.

Nida and I talk as we leave the church. He has anger, honest anger about the situation in Palestine. "I don't care which flag flies above the building. I just want investment, I want freedom. I want a chance for a good life for my kids." Ten years ago, before the first Intifada, life was good for him. He could make $50 for each tour, and groups were lined up for him to guide them through. Now he rarely has work, and when he does he works for tips, usually 50 sheckles each, about $10.

Adam picks us back up and we head back towards Jerusalem. He drives us by one of the walls which separate Palestinian and Jewish west bank. It reminds me of the movie "Escape from New York". In the news and on maps they talk about the wall separating the west bank from Israel proper, but here on the ground the situation seems different. From what I can see the walls just wrap around the Palestinian towns. For the main area of the west bank it looks free for Jewish movement but not Palestinian. The maps from the rental car company seem to reinforce that fact: most areas of the west bank are fine, but some areas such as Bethlehem, Jericho, Nablus and a few others are marked in orange, and you're not allowed to take the rental car there.

On the way back towards Jerusalem we see a few cars that have armored steel mesh protecting the windshield and back window. It reminds me of the movie "Mad Max". Adam says they are cars of some of the settlers, Jewish people that live in the west bank. They do that to protect the cars from Palestinians who throw rocks at the cars.

Traffic isn't too bad because it's Friday, the Palestinian holy day. Adam says, "The Palestinian sabbath is Friday, Jewish is Saturday, and Christian is Sunday. It's a good thing we only have three religions here, otherwise we'd never leave home."

Jerusalem with Hallucinations

The first day I land in Athens I meet Trey and we go with his family to the Acropolis and to a restaurant nearby. Tourism has dropped off because of the economic turmoil Greece, and we see almost no other foreigners. We are the only people in the restaurant, and the waiter takes to feeding Trey's kids and wife by hand.

We have sandles made by "The Poet Sandelmaker of Athens". That evening we meet up with Josh, another guy visiting from the states, and go to an impromptu party at an apartment in Athens. Didn't get much sleep that night because of the jet lag.

Josh and I leave early the next day and rent a car for an adventurous day of driving around Greece, about 6 hours of driving time. Napflio has an ancient fortress on the top of a high hill. We could drive up, but we decide to hike up instead. In Corinth have trouble finding ancient Corinth so we stop in a coffee bar and ask "How do we get to ancient Corinth?" Hmm, the barista says: "Ancient Corinth? Oh, it's not easy." This, mind you, is the biggest tourist attraction in Corinth. "You have to go to the third road, then turn left. But I can't remember the name of the road. Then you should ask again, because you'll have trouble finding it."

We drive to the southern tip of the Attica peninsula to go to the Temple of Poseidon. It's hard to see how there were enough people living here to be able to build such a large temple here, but I guess the importance of the sea to ancient Greeks made them eager to build a temple to appease the mighty Poseidon.

We drive from Poseidon's temple to the Athens airport for a 2am flight to Tel Aviv, Israel. Why is the flight at 2am? What crazy Greek bureaucrat decided to have a flight at 2am? You can't even say it's a red-eye flight, it's less than two hours long. And after it takes off, when you start to doze and think you may get an hour or so sleep, they turn the bright lights on, wake everyone up, and serve breakfast. At 2:45am. The breakfast is better than any meal I've gotten on a US-based airline in a decade, and it's on a two hour flight at 2:40am. Why did they wake me for this?

Ok, the meal was good. And I was hungry. Maybe I'll forgive them for this. Even the bread roll that accompanies the breakfast is better than any roll I've gotten in the US. The Greeks may have a contagiously moribund economy and surrealistic airline flight schedules, but they serve great food. Even on an airplane at 2am.

After the food the girl sitting in front of me taps on the seat to talk, so I climb over the seat in front of me to talk to her. (Forgive me for garishly climbing over the seat: I couldn't walk around because there was a large Greek man sleeping next to me.) Her name is Jenna and she's an Economic Development / Art major with a Spanish minor at THE Ohio State University and is an ENTJ on the Myers-Briggs personality test. You learn weird things about people when you're locked in an airplane together at 3am and neither one of your has slept in 40 hours.

We arrive in Tel Aviv around 4:30am. The hotels for Jenna and separately for Trey, Josh and me are in Jerusalem, so we share a taxi there. The rooms aren't ready at 5:30am, of course, so we drop our bags at Jenna's hotel. A sign in her hotel says "When Jesus said to love your enemies he probably meant don't kill them."

Why aren't the restaurants open at 5:45am? We walk further and accidentally find ourselves at the Western Wailing Wall of the destroyed second Jewish Temple. Jenna isn't allowed to go to the main western wall but I she writes a prayer on a piece of paper and I shove it into a crack in the wall for her, along with a prayer note for myself.

We continue walking around the Temple Mount, past a large number of graveyards, and through many of the sites that Jesus supposedly walked.

Another guy named Jeff meets us in Jerusalem at 9am. Several of us haven't slept in over 40 hours, we're starting to have slurred speech and minor hallucinations. We need sleep but don't desire it, so Trey negotiates with a taxi driver to take us to Masada and the dead sea. It would have been only 400 sheckles to the dead see, but to go to Masada too is 900 sheckles and will take about 5 hours round trip.

Masada isn't as impressive as I thought it would be. Maybe I'm less impressed because of lack of sleep? We do find the rampart that the Romans built 1800 years ago to lay the seige. The movie version didn't seem plausible that anyone could build such a large ramp, even the Romans. It makes much more sense, it's much more believable when you see the real thing.

The dead sea is pretty cool. Maybe I'm just wacky from lack of sleep. You really are floating largely above the water. It's hard to swim because you float so much. We coat ourselves with mud from the bottom, and Josh and Jenna get much massages from the attendant.

Josh's grandfather has a saying: "Everyone is strange except for me and you. And sometimes I worry about you."