On tour with the Swedes

Thursday morning I met up with Katina and Ishak again to go in to Tel Aviv, or Holon to be more precise. We were going to the Children's Museum (מוזאון הילדים) to visit the exhibition "Dialogue in the Dark". You get to experience what it is like to be blind, by making a 75 minute tour in complete darkness. You are guided by a sight impaired guide and you pass different environments. You walk through a forest, with grass, gravel and trees, with a water fall and animal sounds. Then you take a boat trip, walk busy city streets and visit a market selling vegetables. You end up in a bar with a blind bartender and you get to order and buy drinks and snacks in the dark. Then you get to sit down and eat your stuff while talking to your guide, asking her questions about being blind. We were grouped with some other people and we were amazed how stupid the questions they had was. They had no idea that blind people enjoy just about the same things as seeing people, like travelling to new places, doing sports and so on. I almost felt ashamed on their behalf. However, other than those embarrassing people, the experience was very fascinating. The girl that guided us had a remarkable ability to orientate herself in the different rooms, without any blind stick (which we all had). She also had complete control over where every single person out of her group of ten were located in the room. She remembered all our names and put our hand on the wall or the rail if we were lost, and this ability to use her other senses to see was very impressive. I highly recommend a visit to this place if you want to get a deeper insight in the life of a sight impaired.

When Yoram came home on Thursday around lunch he took Goshen for a run in the field, unaware that Tivon had had one of the heaviest rain falls in all of Israel. Already down below the house he realised the level of muddiness, but then it was already too late and he proceeded. Goshen went bananas and ran like mad in puddles and mud, chasing crows and played, and when they came home she was muddy from top to toe. Some of it had already dried and Yoram had a good half hours work to get her fur clean. When I came home he said that her time is over, meaning no more off-road rides for this season. I guess that merely means that I will be the one with patience enough to let her run freely and clean her afterwards, but it sure will not happen every day. On the other hand, it will be dry periods during the winter too.

Already during the Thursday it had started to rain moderately, but the night to Friday was when the sky completely opened and the lightning struck again and again accompanied by heavy thunder. Katina wondered whether the Golan Heights can be roamed in rain and the answer was yes. They arrived here Friday morning and Friday we used to go to Daliyat al-Karmel for some shopping and Zikhron Ya'akov for some Tishbi wine. In the evening Yoram surprised us with delicious home-made burekas to the Shabbat dinner. So much better than the ones from the supermarket.

Yoram's home-made burekas

Saturday it was time for Golan Heights, or Ramat HaGolan. First we passed Tiberias and headed South. We stopped by kibbutz Kinneret. Katina volunteered there in 1979 and she had a very good friend there who she has not seen in 30 years. One of Yoram's best attributes is his social skills and although he does not know anyone in this kibbutz (normally he knows someone in every kibbutz and that is not a joke), he localised the guy within 10 minutes. The guy was probably as shocked as Katina was and we witnessed a happy meeting between the two. That was the mitzvah of the day for Yoram.

We climed up on the Ramat HaGolan from the South, passing Hamat Gader. I bathed in those pools in January, but this time there was no time for that. Instead we moved up on the plateau and showed them the view over Lake Kinneret from kibbutz Kfar Haruv. It was quite foggy, but the view from there is still amazing. We continued and stopped at Tel A Saki memorial site, so that Ishak could see some bunkers, trenches and old vehicles from the Yom Kippur war in 1973. A must when you roam Ramat HaGolan is a lunch at restaurant Nedal in Mas'ade. Here you get the best labaneh around, no doubt. After lunch topped with some kanafeh from the baklava bakery next to Nedal, we climbed Mount Hermon all the way up to the ski resort. There were of course no snow and not a human soul except a few lonely IDF soldiers, but it was nice to see the place anyhow. Yoram tried to get us further up on the road by bribing the soldiers with the left-over kanafeh, but although they were laughing about it, they still kept their duty.

Kanafeh (aka knafe) from Mas'ada

On the way home we passed Katzrin, the capital of Ramat HaGolan. The purpose was to drink some beer at the Golan Brewery. The brewery and the shop had closed for the day, but the pub was open, so we got our beer. Yoram started by asking for Carlsberg and the poor boy behind the bar was caught completely off guard before he understood that it was a joke. We got to taste the four different ones before we decided. It was one light pils, one wheat beer, one darker draught and one dark and strong Belgian-type. All were very tasty!

We came home late in the evening, exhausted. The temperature on Ramat HaGolan was about 14 degrees and on Mount Hermon it went down to 9 degrees. However, as we came back to Tivon, we were well over 20, and today it is about 25 again. The rains did not succeed to kill the warmth this time either...