Wisdom and Kindness

A few days into my Hostel Abraham experience, I had the kind of rock bottom moment you often need before you realise you're barking up a wrong tree: I went to see a promising-sounding apartment in a cool, central area of town. It was only £1,000 per month which, for Tel Aviv, is very much on the reasonable side.

Things started to feel wrong when the estate agent who'd contacted me (he contacted me? Should've rung alarm bells) didn't turn up and stopped answering his phone. He also got the address wrong, and then the floor number wrong too. He clearly hadn't visited this outstanding opportunity. After twenty minutes of glum waiting around I finally got the message that the owner himself would show me around. To cut a long and dismal story short, it turned out that my £1,000-per-calendar-month dream home was in fact a room in the owner's grotty flat, with it's own bathroom. The "kitchen" was a sink in the corner of the room, next to which they'd put a bedside table to act like a kitchen work surface. The "bed" was part of a sofa, other parts of which were distributed around the room and balcony. When I said "I can't sleep here, I'm leaving" the owner angrily insisted that the sofa "was very expensive! It Georgio Armani sofa!" I squeezed past him in the corridor and beat a hasty retreat.

Returning to Abraham Hostel, with its large, Zen-level lounge with cool relaxing music playing, and it's extremely ample breakfasts and constant stream of friendly not-too-young people made me think "What the hell am I doing?" Why on earth would I look for some grim apartment in which to be alone, rather than living in this extrovert's dream pad at what works out as the same price as the Georgio Armani sofa in a corner of an old man's flat? All I needed to do was swallow my "I'm too old for this" misplaced pride and embrace communal living and ever-changing room mates and I could be happy as Larry the Downing Street cat, slowly becoming a fixture familiar to the staff and to some of the other long-termers who hang around the kitchen and lounge areas.

That same day, in the queue for reception to extend my stay, I got talking to a Mexican girl with pink hair and we agreed to have a coffee later. Over that coffee, she showed excellent wisdom: why stick around in one place pretending to establish a life when you're only going to be here for three months anyway? Isn't the smart thing to do to use the basis in Hebrew I've now got to start going around the country, staying in Kibbutzim and volunteering on farms and all the good stuff that comes with accepting that you're going to be itinerant, that you're not going to buy a bike or rent a flat, and you're not going to book a second month at the language school.

This is an extremely relieving and liberating realisation. When I get back to London, due to the recent landmine I put under my old life, I'll anyway have to do plenty of finding stability and unpacking and settling in, finding flatmates and joining choirs etc. etc. and I think I'd subconsciously brought all that work forward unnecessarily.

So it's official, I'm going to stay at Abraham Hostel for the remaining two weeks of my language course, after which time, I'll be able to just about get around in Hebrew. I'll sing Mozart's Requiem with my geriatric choir-mates in Jerusalem on Saturday, and I'll entertain/occupy my last hyperactive Arabic child under the thin veil of teaching them English. Then I'll head off into the rest of country, hopefully to volunteer at a few different Kibbutzim and/or wwoofing opportunities, and use my Hebrew out in the real world.

The one really sad part of this decision is the idea of not going to the Ulpan every day (my language school.) It really is an amazing place, full of energetic and thoughtful teaching, and mostly very willing learning. The people are really friendly and cool, from the founder himself, right down to the reception staff and the people running the cafe. I'm really going to miss this place when I leave, but a month is a really good chunk of time and, short of getting a job here and abandoning the old world altogether, all these good things must come to an end when I leave anyway.

As for the kindness mentioned in the title of this blog? I've been ill these last couple of days. Being ill in a dorm (albeit a very luxurious four-bed one) is a strange experience, but not at all unpleasant. I've been drifting in and out of sleep while various people come and go, asking me if I'm feeling better. An Austrian guy has even been feeding me from his seemingly infinite stash of paracetemol, and a friend of the family who lives in Jerusalem ordered me a delivery schnitzel today, right to the hostel.

People are great really, aren't they?

Kindness in the form of delivery schnitzel

A huge queue for freshly baked goodies at the Levinsky market

 

These bloody West-facing coastlines, eh?

Fortune favours the willing-to-go-along-with-it

This post was written a few days ago before the big decisions which will be the subject of the post I'm about to write

***

I went to Tel Aviv Folk Club a few days ago, and the possibly uncool vibes were heavily trailed by some top-drawer Facebook comms:

But I still had high hopes. A folk club? It's bound to feature some of the stuff I love: harmonies, well played acoustic guitars, whatever.

The place was a long way out, and the long bus  journey was made more pleasurable by a very friendly young Russian woman who had just arrived in Tel Aviv having left her Moscow home permanently because of the increasingly difficult political and economic position. It was mind boggling to hear about all these international-news-level things like sanctions, closed borders and state repression directly from someone who's Russian debit cards had been frozen and who had had to spend all night at the airport in a bid to leave. We're still in touch so maybe you'll hear more about this kind of stuff in future posts.

But for now, my arrival at the Folk Club was deeply inauspicious, with full fluorescent lighting and the kind of shambling, bickering and general disorder that seemingly only a group of Jewish OAPs is truly capable of. I sat meekly down, while all around me triggered squeals of feedback and argued about guitar cables. The first couple of acts did truly not disappoint in terms of implausibly toe-curling terribleness. I actually had to leave the room at one point, just to give myself the strength to sit through more.

But when a couple next to me revealed that the singer was their daughter and the old man got misty eyed with delight, clapped along and even got up to shufflingly dance in the aisle, I thought oh maybe I'll stay. The man in front of me gazing at his wife and rubbing her back affectionately every time they did a romantic number also melted my tough London gig-goers heart. So I stayed and was richly rewarded. A young American man had come to town with his Indian wife and little two-year-old son and he played amazing originals and moving cover versions while his son toddled good-naturedly around. The 20 OAPs and I were agog. They were followed by a folk duo from England who had the vocal harmonies and skillfully strummed guitars I'd been dreaming of. I took the long bus ride home a happy man, glad that I'd taken a punt on something and persisted when any sane person would have turned tail and fled.

A spell in the bosom of the hostel

 People who have been travelling with me will have suffered my constant instance that we come up with a "philosophy of the holiday". This is just a grand way of saying that we should be clear about what we're looking/hoping for when we travel. If have a clear picture of what sort of activities, experiences, sensations and budget would constitute a philosophically ideal version of the holiday, then this will help us make a decision between, say, going on a whale-spotting trip or going to look at some ruins.

The idea of a "philosophical ideal" started for me with a conversation with German flatmate of mine about what the point of political philosophy was. He was explaining to me the philosophical idea of democracy being not that we vote for representatives once every five years then leave them to it, but rather that every decision that is made by society is arrived at by genuine consensus. After much debate, everyone is won round to the best way of doing something, and that is then the course that is followed. This, I replied, was absurd. How could you ever run a country like that? Aha, came the reply, that's a problem of implementation, not a problem of philosophy. That's what political scientists are for. The job of the philosopher is to come up with an ideal which, although it will never be achieved, can be used to assess whether a given real-world change moves us closer or further away from the ideal.

So it is with travelling. How can we decide between staying in a five-star hotel or slumming it in a hostel? They both seem attractive in very different ways. It's impossible to decide between two things which both have upsides if you don't have an idea of what you're aiming for from the holiday. This is a familiar idea for most people, but only as far as budget is concerned. We've got £1,000 to spend and let's just "have the most fun we can have for the money." But it also extends to every other aspect of the experience: do we want to be relaxed and live in comfort? Do we want to meet a thousand Eurobrat under-25s? Do we want to see as much of the country as possible, or do we want to get to know a place like a local knows it? Without this guiding philosophical ideal, even if it's unattainable, you're really just tossing a coin.

This is all a long and not-very-interesting way of introducing the fact that, after a couple of weeks of staying in various on-my-own accommodations, I've spent the last three days at Hostel Abraham, a veritable Piccadilly Circus of international young confused people looking to have a good time. I've been staying in a six-bed dorm and I must say it's been pretty fun. I met a Greek man with whom I instantly hit it off, and we did that thing where we attached ourselves to one another for two days then said goodbye forever. This is actually one of the big upsides of travelling, and it's something you definitely dont get if you live on your own in palatial but pale luxury.

I've also been thinking about what my philosophical ideal for this three month trip is. And it's clear: I want to learn as much Hebrew as I can, while spending no more than 50 per cent of the money in my bank account. This second constraint was described to me by French classmate this morning over a very generous free hostel breakfast: "You 'ave to understand 'ow money works. I was in Australia wiz 50 cents in my account, and I survived." Yeah, this was actually kind of inspiring. How did he do this? He agreed to get the hostel to give him free bed and board in exchange for two days a week of work. This was great for his English skills and great for his bank balance.

So As for my own philosophical travelling ideal, the two things I can do to really speed my language learning along are to be in choirs and to work for either free or for very cheap. As I've mentioned, I'm in a choir already: in fact I'm singing in Mozart's Requiem in East Jerusalem in two weeks' time (I have even been assigned a short solo!) But the choir is not the most accomplished musical outfit ever assembled, so maybe I should shop around? And maybe once my Hebrew course is finished, I should take my French classmate's advice and trade some labour for some accommation. And maybe, since Tel Aviv is both the most expensive and the most Eurobrat English-speaking place in Israel, maybe I should shop around location-wise too.

So I've decided: I'm going to start with a choir and work backwards. Where is the most fun-looking choir in the country? Does that place have a youth hostel? If so, I'll go there, join the choir and try and get work at the hostel in exchange for bed and (maybe) board. I don't know whether this is actually possible, but it's a fun idea and it beats endlessly searching for sublets in Tel Aviv, and part-time contracting jobs in London to pay for the expensive Tel Aviv sublets.

Until then, our Hebrew course continues apace, albeit slowed by the inevitable progress gradient that's opening up between the students. Some people are mad keen, doing flashcards, doing extra homework, reading ahead in the book, and listening to every Israeli they can get within earshot of, and some people either are not, or are not benefitting from these activities to the same extent. I think this is actually fine, and nowhere near as severe as it could be. And maybe it forces those of us who want to race ahead to really bed in the knowledge we encounter, rather than hoovering up the next thing and not really internalising anything. Maybe.

On a more practical note, I've got four nights in another hostel across town (this one has curtains across each bed. Luxury!) and then six nights in an incredibly central studio apartment with a giant part-covered terrace. Should be luxurious.

I've also done my first English-teaching volunteering session, which really needs a post of its own but for now let's just say that the kids are nine, a mix of Arab and Jewish (as far as I can tell) and extremely, let's say, energetic. There is a great deal of giggling and speaking in Hebrew. The fact that I can't understand this is, I think, a genuine advantage. The other volunteers are non-native speakers, all with seemingly some level of Hebrew. This means I'm a kind of "reason" to really speak English which otherwise would be a bit artificial. Ah well, I'm happy to play any role I'm given!