Not such a pleasant ride this time

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A cool reflection of a single street light pole, but a sad story for my Beer Sheva to Meitar bus.

About 10-15 minutes out of Beer Sheva, last Wednesday, a passenger went up to our driver and said a window was broken and that when she had gotten on the bus she saw the glass was damaged but now the glass was starting to fall out.

When the driver got to a stopping place on the busy road, he stopped.  

It was the bus stop just outside of Omer.

He took a look.  He asked if there were any witnesses.  No one had heard anything hit.

So no one knew when or where it had happened. 

You see the tiny hole on the bottom?
Could it be a bullet hole?
Or is that how it looks after someone throws a rock?
I don't know because--miraculously maybe--I have lived in Israel many decades and have been spared first-hand experience with such events.

Our driver telephoned Metropoline and asked whether to continue driving or not. 

No, they would send another bus to collect the many passengers.

People asked what happened, some got on cell phones, everyone looked at their watch, and then we all sat quietly and just waited;  I myself felt a bit like like a sitting duck.

Finally, 20 or 25 minutes later we were let off.
Someone foolishly pressed on the pane and more glass fell out; there goes the evidence.

 

Soon the replacement bus came and within ten minutes our same driver got us to Meitar, my town. 

Good wishes (and how to pronounce them) in the languages most heard here in the Beer Sheva area: Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, and English.
Let's hope so . . .
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(Linking to Weekend Reflections.)

The descent from Jerusalem

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The view from my bus window as we left Jerusalem--highways above and highways below. 

 The cemetery for Jerusalemites covers the whole mountain.

The lane with red paint in the middle is reserved for buses.
But on that late afternoon no one seemed to be ascending to Jerusalem.
The long line of cars on our side was heading west in the direction of Tel Aviv.
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Linking to OurWorld Tuesday.
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In the bus

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The newer Metropoline buses I take from Meitar to Beer Sheva (about a 40 minute ride)  have all the comforts.
Free WiFi, USB sockets, folding tray tables for your laptop, plush seats, individual overhead A/C and lights, a clock, and curtains or shades.
In front, a screen shows and announces the coming stops.
When the driver opens the underneath luggage compartment door, the screen shows who is taking which bag.
There are seat belts, of course, but Israelis consider it not cool to ever use them.
A ticket costs 7.50 shekels ($2.20), but as a senior citizen I pay only half price.

Some passengers get on the bus and immediately connect their gadgets.
Sometimes I start to imagine  these are their infusion lines.
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UPDATE:  Well, I won't be going in to Beer Sheva any time soon.
Yesterday several Grad rockets were aimed at the city; one or two were shot down by Iron Dome.
And now tonight this about Omer, the town between us and Beer Sheva:

News item by Matti Siver

Published:  07.06.14, 23:26 / Israel News

Masked protestors from Tel Sheva, a Bedouin town bordering Beersheba, are throwing Molotov cocktails and hurling stones at cars at the entrance of the southern Jewish community of Omer.
Damage was caused to several vehicles.

Waiting for the bus

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In yesterday's post we saw the multilingual buses.
The big building with the reflecting doors and windows is the new Beer Sheva Central Bus Station. 
Some people prefer to wait for their bus outside.
The air conditioning inside is freezing and sometimes all the seats are taken.
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See also the inside of the terminal with its antiquities under glass!
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(Linking to Weekend Reflections, although you'll have to enlarge the photo to find the reflections here.)
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Learn while you wait

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Something new on the newest Metropoline buses that depart from Beer Sheva Central Bus Station!
A good way to use your mind while standing in line for a ticket?
"Have a nice day."

Nice expressions in Hebrew, English, Russian, and Arabic, the languages most heard in Beer Sheva.
"Have a pleasant ride." 

But look closely!
The original words are transliterated into Hebrew letters and are written phonetically.
It looks quite funny.

Toda! on top is the Hebrew word for thank you.
Then is says, on the right:
thenk yu
spasiba
shukran
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(Linking to Signs, signs  and to Toby's meme, Whimsical windows, delirious doors.)
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A hard week is over

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The bad news: a bomb went off in a Tel Aviv bus today.
The good news: the bus was not crowded, the bomb was small, no one was killed.

The best news: a ceasefire went into effect at 9:00 pm tonight.
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UPDATE:  I should clarify that "no one was killed" does not mean that no one on the bus was injured; more than 20  people were taken to the nearby hospital. 
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Thursday night update: Police is now announcing that the suspects were caught within a few hours of the bombing.
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A red double-decker

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London?!
Na, this is just Jerusalem, on Mount Herzl.

Tis the season for tourists to sit upstairs in the circular tour bus, under a blue (and very hot) sky.
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For SkyWatch Friday.
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Ezeh keta!

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Form [sic] 9:00 to 18:00 only public "transpotraion" is allowed on this congested section of Agrippas Street in central Jerusalem.
Well, at least the Hebrew original is OK, almost.
I wonder how the Arabic translation fared on this big sign.
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Let's send it to the Signs, Signs meme--and maybe back to the printer too.

This is what the street looks like.
Standing or creeping buses as far as the eye can see.
It doesn't look like the private cars noticed the sign prohibiting them.
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Until a few months ago, most of this traffic went along the wider Jaffa Street.
But then came the new tram and most of Jaffa St. was closed to vehicles.
Agrippas is a mess.
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Oops, wrong engine

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Egged's sleek new urban buses are so long that some folks call them train-buses.
You see a few of them on certain routes in Jerusalem.
They are even longer than the regular articulated "accordion" buses.
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"Egged aspires to be a pioneer in the reduction of air pollution by purchasing buses equipped with Euro 3 engines, using ultra-low sulfur fuel," their website says.
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But oi, what's this? While searching for information I happened to find an article in today's Jerusalem Post saying that "The Environmental Protection Ministry submitted an indictment in the Petah Tikva Magistrate's Court against the Egged bus company for air pollution last week . . ."
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Apparently there are big differences between the Euro 3, 4, and 5 emissions standards; and the environment ministry claims that Egged went and bought 168 buses which are not of the most up to date standard.
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Oi.
Oh well, I still think they are pretty.
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The southern wall

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It was 8 o'clock in the morning but already a line of tourist buses was parked along the southern wall of the Old City.
The driver stands and waits for the guide to bring their group out from the nearby Dung Gate.
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Across the street from the same bench is a barbed-wired wall with an old sign of UNRWA.
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But sitting on the bench you would have this view--the old Turkish city wall and on top of what we call the Temple Mount, al Aksa mosque.
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The city is currently building ways to walk inside the Ophel antiquities at the base of the wall.
The sign said "Maslul HaMikvaot--HaOphel," meaning The Mikva Route.
Should be interesting!
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P.S. For those who enjoyed yesterday's post about doner kebab etc. --I added a comedy skit.
Thanks to daughter Naomi for this funny Armstrong & Miller video about the Neanderthal origins of shwarma!
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Remembering with flowers

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Today I saw bunches of flowers stuck into the plaque on the wall of the Generali Building on Jaffa Road.
I looked more closely and found the date 3.3.1996.
So, today is the 15th anniversary of the death of the 19 people named on the plaque.
A terrorist's bomb exploded on their bus.
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There are many such memorial signs all around Jerusalem that list victims' names and the number of the bus route.
Most are from the bad old days of suicide bombers during the first and second intifadas.
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Flags over the houses in Wadi Ara

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We took the bus from Jerusalem up north to Tiberias recently.

These pictures I took from the bus show the long stretches of Arab villages (and one city, Umm al-Fahm) that line both sides of Wadi Ara.

Also known in Hebrew as Nahal Iron, the area is inside the Green Line (the 1949 armistice lines).

Lots of tall mosque minarets.

The houses look big because often several generations of the family will live in one house.

But what I really wanted to show you is that these days many houses are flying the flag of their favorite World Cup team.

Enlarge the photo above and the one below, and see what country's flag you can find.

Yep, Italy seems the most popular!

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Sharing the soccer fever for That's My World Tuesday.

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Under, on, and next to the bridges

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Somewhere in central Israel, somewhere between Jerusalem and Megiddo . . .

folks in the bus must have wondered why I was snapping so many pictures of "boring" bridges.

But this was a bridge with a tiny house being transported beneath it,

and this one with a Magnum ice cream truck on it,

and behind this one, some major construction was starting, in the middle of nowhere.

And one single bridge had actual greenery under it.

Could it really be spanning some water?!

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Bon dimanche to Louis la Vache and all the bloggers at his Sunday Bridges.

Go take a look; there are some REAL bridges there!

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Jerusalem by night

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Our Calatrava bridge is still quite new and I still find it exciting when our bus passes under it, especially at night.

(And especially when I am in search of bridge shots for Louis la Vache's "Sunday Bridges.")
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From the bus you get a nice view of the "strings" of the Bridge of Strings.

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And even the sidewalk has lights inside it.

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The bus to another world

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Our Egged bus driver had lots of mirrors--good for the "Weekend Reflections" meme over at James' blog.
The drive from Jerusalem down to Ein Gedi is just over an hour.
As a senior citizen I pay half-fare for public transportation, so my round trip fare was only 36 shekels.
With my discount the Nature Reserve entrance was NIS 13.
So we had a full day hiking in the desert for only 49 shekels (about $13 or 9 Euros).

Just east of Jerusalem the desert begins, and also the West Bank.
Quite soon you come to a T in the road: left to Ramallah (the seat of the Palestinian Authority government) or right to Qumran, Ein Gedi, Masada, Ein Bokek, and Neve Zohar.
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At the checkpost the back of one van was being searched. Our bus driver was getting worried about the schedule he has to keep, so he started beeping, gesturing, and shouting out the window for the guards to pull the car over to the side of the road and let us through.
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What you see next to the left side of the road is already the Dead Sea.
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While searching (unsuccessfully) for a good modern map to illustrate this, I came across a fine website with a map of FIRST CENTURY Israel! All the place names from the Bible, and Ein Gedi figures prominently. Check it out!
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On the bus

Just for fun, I whipped out my camera and tried to get a picture of friends as their bus pulled away at the Jerusalem Central Bus Station. I was shooting into bright sun.
The result surprised me.
What a jumble of reflections!
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James at Newtown Area Photo has just opened a Reflections meme. Let's all get together at his blog and reflect. :)
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The bus, the bus!

The bus! Here it is, right next to my house (which is down one terrace, on the left).
This might not sound too exciting to you if you have a car or live in Jerusalem. But for me, it is the only way to the city.
From morning to night, there are ten buses (that means one every few hours); only six on Friday; none on Saturday. Over 600 people live in the moshav (village) but the bus is usually quite empty.
The drivers are nice and stop for you or let you off wherever you want. The ride to Jerusalem Central Bus Station, the last stop, takes about 45 minutes.
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St. Patrick's Day green?

I, I, what begins with I? That's our letter of the day at ABC Wednesday. If you thought I'd say Israel, incorrect. It's Irish instead! In honor of St. Patrick's Day. But in Israel just about no one knows of this special day. And Jerusalem has no holy (or otherwise) places connected with Ireland. We have no green beer today, no shamrocks. 

 Down in the Negev desert, however, is a Bedouin village that boasts something really really green.

 

"The wearing of the green" by a house!

 

This is the village where we studied Arabic and enjoyed home hospitality for five days.

We were told that the owner wanted a house the color of the buses he drives. He is a share-holding member of the Egged bus cooperative and he wants everybody to know it. Being a chaver Egged is a status symbol in Israel.

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Clouds, strings, and absurdity

Clouds have found their way back to Israel! We even had thunder and lightning and hail yesterday, for all of three minutes. Counting some rain in the night, Jerusalem got but two millimeters.

With big fanfare the Calatrava bridge was dedicated in June. (Click on the bridge label below to see the party.) It is meant to carry the tram or light rail into downtown Jerusalem, but the train tracks are still not completed.

Can you believe this?!? Nir Barkat, elected mayor just a few days ago, might take the bridge down! Ha'aretz tells it this way:

Barkat lambasted the Jerusalem Light Rail project and the Chords Bridge on which the light train would enter Jerusalem. He said he would reexamine both projects' feasibility and not hesitate to replace them with cheaper, more effective alternatives, if such were found.
"Israel's poorest city should invest the money in education, culture and sanitation, not in bridges," Barkat said. Criticizing the NIS 280 million investment in an ostentatious bridge when so many people want to leave the city, Barkat said: "I don't know anyone who would stay in Jerusalem just for a bridge."

Our roads have been dug up and reduced to a narrow passage for years already as the train tracks and this bridge were (and are and will be) being built. And now the incoming mayor is going to undo everything??

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When the bus breaks down

I finished my eight hours of digging at 2:30, quite ready to start the trip home. To my dismay some 25 people were standing in the sun at my bus stop next to their bus, which had just broken down. It was 32C in the shade, of which there was none.
When the next bus came it was already full, but somehow all the stranded passengers managed to squeeze inside. Except me. I preferred to hang around and watch as the Egged repair bus arrived and the two mechanics started working on the dead bus. They really wondered what this fool was doing taking pictures. I was secretly hoping the red bus would have to tow the green one. That would have been a dramatic photo.