Welcome to Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv welcomed me two days ago. I am here working on a project on Nightlife and counterculture in this city. There are some details I hope that will come out in the final product but I’ll leave it at that for now.
If you’re from Israel and reading this, feel free to e-mail me!
Getting here was pretty straight forward. I left Denmark Thursday morning on a train to Prague that dropped me off in Berlin. The few hours I spent in Berlin let me finally able to have cheap takeout (eating at a restaurant in Denmark can normally cost from $15-20). Besides getting my carry on bag searched in a SPEZIAL KONTROL room at Berlin-Tegel airport, Security at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv was easier for me than going to the United States too but I will only truly know for sure when I try to exit the country if the horror stories I’ve heard are true or false.
Leaving Århus.
From the S-Bahn to the U-Bahn at Alexanderplatz to meet my host.
“I åm in yür komputer testing für ze bømbz”
Germans are a lot worse than Danes at English which actually is kind of nice. You learn languages a lot faster when you are forced into it. And with a population of 80 million, it’s easy for Germans to get on fine without English. Denmark only has 5 million so I suppose that it isn’t too surprising that they must appeal to a more common language. It’s pretty wild to consider the population density that we find in so many countries. I had never thought of it this way but my host in Berlin told me that he often felt that Canada was kind of the Australia of the north: a few people in some places and then total emptiness everywhere else.
So far, things in Tel Aviv are very sababa. Shortly after getting in on Friday, I found myself sitting in on a band practice for a group called Got No Shame and later was at a packed party where Metalheadz First Lady of Drum and Bass, DJ Storm, was headlining. It’s also nice that after months of not being able to use my Visa in Denmark, Israel is all about it. I don’t really know why I can’t use it in Denmark but North American cards, even a lot of other EU cards don’t seem to work.
My Tel Avivi room (drapes on the ceiling are meant to catch crumbling cement and plaster)
A street view at 7am with the sound of bass still blasting from neighbouring venues.
A few more photos on Flickr. More to come. This country is amazingly complex. My hope is that by the end of my stay, I understand it a little better and feel confident in sharing this understanding with other North Americans.
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I love the font of Alexanderplatz
Comment by michelle — November 28, 2007 #