Pension Grillparzer

An interesting turn of events at the Old Jaffa Hostel; I met my political doppelgänger from the opposite side of the spectrum. I emerged from debate/conversation some three-and-a-half hours later both floored and renewed.

Hassan is Iraqi and grew up in a secular home in the U.K. He passes as Anglo-Saxon because of his mother, but speaks fluents Arabic and works here as a journalist. He intelligently pontificates (representing a Western Arab Muslim viewpoint) about why he thinks Iran should have the nuke, why Israel (while a prosperous country with Western values) is founded on the basis of human rights violation, and how the war in Iraq...well...yeah.

In the midst of this marathon, we're interrupted by participants including, but not limited to, an anti-German German who thinks every German citizen should have been bombed in the 40s, a blonde Finnish born-again Evangelical Christian who regales us with admonishments regarding pre-marital sex while standing scantily-clad in a string bikini, and an economist from Argentina, who believes that South America should band together like the E.U. and then destroy America.

For anyone familiar with John Irving and The World According to Garp, I am essentially living in the Middle Eastern version of the Pension Grillparzer. Beyond these kinds of random guests and conversations, there are stray cats from the neighborhood that roam through the halls, and wedding pictures of couples (at least six) that met at the hostel while traveling and eventually got married.

Earlier this week, there was a robbery in the hostel by local Jaffa thieves who subsequently burned a car outside the front of the hostel on the same night;

almost five days later, the car is still there at the entrance and has yet to be touched by the Jaffa municipality.

Hassan and I were both planning to go to Jerusalem today, so we're going to travel together, staying in East Jerusalem by night and visiting West Jerusalem, the Old City, the Kotel, and the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa mosque (maaaybe) by day. If we're around on Friday night I am bringing him to Shabbat dinner at my adopted family's home in Jerusalem from when I lived there.

Ostensibly, it's you show me your Jerusalem, I'll show you mine. Then we're off to Jordan on Sunday.

I'll try my best to update often, but in the interim, please keep checking in.

I've written my final will and testament as a scheduled posting for next Tuesday, so if you haven't heard from me by then, check in to see what I left you.