Crossing the Border

View of one of the churches from a side street
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Our trip into Jerusalem began with getting across the two mile border between Jordan and the West Bank. This part of the trip took us about five hours! Most of our trouble was on the Israeli side because Emily, Julie’s sister had been to Syria and the passport control did not like that much. After hours of waiting in the passport control we were given her passport back and waived through to the next checkpoint. We took a small bus through the West Bank and into Jerusalem. The West Bank was an eye-opening experience; huge areas were fenced in with barbed wire and had warning signs about land-mines which still littered the area. Whole hilltops were occupied with beautiful homes and communities built by “Settlers,” those who believe that Israel belongs to Christianity and have violently taken the land from the local Bedouin and Palestinians. Once we got through the boarder we found our Hostel, the Austrian Hospice, which turned out to be the nicest hostel any of us had ever seen!  We only had three days in Israel so we really had to cram all the sites in; needless to say we were very busy. We had originally planned to visit Bethlehem but scratched that after the trouble with Emily’s passport (One has to pass through checkpoints between cities in Israel). We had really bazaar weather, on the second day, when we were in the Garden Tomb, (one of the supposed sites of Jesus’ tomb) it began to snow! Huge flakes of wet snow fell all around the city causing traffic to stop and snowballs to fly! We only had time to see some of the sights around Jerusalem; we did not realize that there are hundreds of historic places that come from several periods: the time of David, the time of Christ, the time of the crusaders and the time of the Muslim rule. Our hostel was within the Old City, so everything was in the walking distance from us. We did not see any sites outside of the walls. The Dome of the Rock was a beautiful sight up close, but I’m afraid up close is all we got to see because they did not allow us inside. Even with Paul asking in Arabic, they did not budge. They were fearful of an attack. We peeked through the windows and saw the rock where Mohammed was supposedly taken up to heaven. Other than that the inside looked rather ordinary. The outside, however, is covered with beautifully hand painted tiles and the building is topped with a gold-plaited dome, funded by Saudi Arabia. One site that we ended up seeing twice was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This is the church that the Eastern and Catholic traditions of Christianity claim to be the authentic spot where Jesus was crucified. The first time we entered was in late afternoon and the place was filled with hundreds of people. It was all a bit overwhelming. People were kissing stones and paintings and crying. Incense was burning and the place was lit with hundreds of candles people lit as prayers. Amidst the chaos of tourists people were praying to and buying icons, sold buy people throughout the church. The church is a combination of about eleven different chapels; it is a very large church.  Everything is interconnected with huge domes covering smaller chapels. The church was covered with beautiful painting and mosaic art. Scattered through out the church are shrines that hold: the slab of the rock that Jesus was laid down on after the crucifixion, the tomb of Jesus and the place in which the bottom of the cross was placed. Being in Jerusalem was an incredible experience; it was so fascinating being in the places where so much Bible history took place. Rather than getting caught up in the arguments over which areas were authentic and which were false we simply enjoyed getting a feel for what the scenery and setting could have been like in Jesus’ time. We were also able to go to the garden of Gethsemane, but because it was closed we had to tip the keeper and we were let in for a private tour. We saw a beautiful church built where Jesus supposedly went to pray and commune with God.  There were Olive trees that dated back to the time of Jesus and were still being maintained by the gardeners.  We were privileged to see the Western Wall, or Wailing Wall. It is the only remaining part of Solomon’s temple and Jewish people travel thousands of miles to touch it and pray. There were little pieces of paper with prayers written on them stuffed in every little nook and cranny. It was interesting to see young men my age with machine guns hanging on their back touching the wall and praying fervently. Women were not allowed to pray with the men and were only allowed to touch the wall in a designated spot. Close to the wall were viewing windows which looked all the way down to where the old street used to be, some 20 meters down! We walked everywhere because cars are rarely allowed within the Old City and even though it was only several miles long our travels took us back and forth across the city many times. By the end of our time our feet hurt like you wouldn’t believe, but we all agreed that the trip was well worth it!

Huge flakes of wet snow fell all around the city causing traffic to stop and snowballs to fly!