Valencia, plus or minus

My wife and I recently visited Spain, more specifically Valencia, for the first time, spending a total of a week in that city. The purpose was to attend a conference (see previous post) but we also played tourist. Seven days does not make you a connoisseur of a city but still creates clear impressions, however errant they may be.  So, I apologize in advance for any rushed judgments.

As the name of the city suggests, the oranges and orange juice were plentiful and good.  For that matter so were the coffee and beer, which I thoroughly enjoyed (but did not abuse). As for the Sangria, I am allergic to grapes and chose to avoid it but not because of its taste.  In terms of meat, there was lots of jamon (ham) and its cousins.  Of these porcine delicacies, I acquired a tasted for certain sausages (whose name escapes me but they are small and red) but found the bacon rather limp. We spent the whole time in the old city and ran into two phenomena, churches and smiles.  Our walking guide said that there were 24 churches in only the old city only, albeit with only a few actually regularly active. They do provide interest, both architecturally and historically, but that is a matter of taste. Actually, the most interesting site to visit in the old city is the covered market. It is clean, large and filled with tempting food, especially oysters, one of my favorite foods.  The oysters I sampled, twice, were among the largest I had ever eaten. In terms of atmosphere, the smile and good humor of the residents is contagious.  The Spanish way of rolling through life is a nice contrast after the tension of Israel.

Less is not always worse but sometimes detracts. For example, the level of knowledge of English outside the hotel was close to absolute zero.  For example, I had to ask a question at a bank and entered a branch of a major European bank.  There were at least 10 bankers, assumingly with college degrees, but only one could speak French while none could speak English.  I was rather surprised to see this level of monolinguism in a city of 1 million people.  Likewise, the desserts and pastries in particular were far from tempting and not worth taking seconds. I find this surprising given the high-quality raw materials that we saw at the central market. A bit spoiled by my French heritage, I also found local use of spices in food to be a bit minimal and unbalanced, aside from saffron, of course. Furthermore, the lack of light in the sky until 8:00 in the morning was almost uncomfortable but the Valencians are not to blame for that. On the other hand, I was impressed by train system in Spain.  We took the express train from Madrid to Valencia and sat in the quiet wagon.  The trip was indeed fast and quiet.  Speeds reached some 300 kph with almost complete silence in the cabin.  We took advantage of it on the way back to Madrid and enjoyed our siesta.

On the bright side, we didn’t see much of the three things and were quite happy to make do without them: sugar, salt and litter. Those sweets we did eat lacked the overbearing sugar content typical of American and many Israeli desserts. Likewise, people with high blood pressure can relax in Spain, apparently, as cooks don’t overdo the salt, at least where we ate. Finally, the Valencia I saw is a clean city, almost without the plastic bags, cigarette buds and sunflower seeds that are typical of many Mediterranean cities. You can  call it addition by subtraction.

All in all, we had a wonderful time, discovering an unknown world and fueling a desire to explore other regions in Spain. Writing this post, I thought of Alexander Dumas, who funded his writing by writing travel guides, including to Spain and Russia, funded by hosting governments of course. I paid my own way but enjoyed the never-ending process of unfolding the world and discovering alternative realities.  Hasta la vista, Spain.

The innocents aboard

This Rosh Hashana, the train arrived. I mean that the line between my home town, Karmiel, finally opened after many years of work, including a 2.3 kilometer tunnel, two new fancy stations with plenty of parking and bus lines from neighboring Arab villages to feed the stations. The Galilee is now connected directly by train to almost all of Israel, as far south as Beer Sheva. Given the ever worsening traffic jams in the once pristine North, it is a blessing for thousands of commuters.

Since it opened during the High Holidays and is free for three months to local residents, many people, including families with many children, have been taking advantage of the opportunity to travel for free.  It is interesting to see the excitement of many travelers, both young and old, when taking it for the first time. Although carriage and track transportation dates from 1825, the joy of countless faces was no less than that of playing with a new iPhone, a much more modern innovation. The exclamation “the train has arrived. I can’t believe it” is heard everywhere both on and off the train. The magic of the train lives on.

Unfortunately, in my eyes, Israelis behave in trains as they behave in home.  First, as a matter of comparison, I clearly remember a five hour train trip from Paris to Brittany. In addition to the quietness, possibly due to the fact that the cellular phone was not yet invented, I was shocked that I didn’t even notice that there were children in the carriage until some four hours in the trip.  Everybody sat quiet and passed the time in an unobtrusive manner. The Mediterranean being the Mediterranean, that self-control is not to be expected on an Israeli train. Aside from loud phone conversations and playing video games at full volume, parents let their children run up and down the corridor and play musical chairs. The blind, originally intended to block the sun, became a way of entertaining the smaller ones. The parents are not much better, albeit preferring to sit the whole trip.   Cutting the trip to Haifa to 30 minutes is nice but it is not that much more relaxing at this stage.

Still, I am optimistic that some of the excitement and annoying noise will decrease as people get used to taking a train. For all those working in Haifa and Tel Aviv or going to and from Ben Gurion Airport, the train is definitely a blessing. In the meantime, I may have to become modern and attach an earphone to my telephone and enjoy some music……

Israeli Training

I have chosen to live in the quiet north of Israel, affectionately called the "periphery" by official sources, for many reasons. One of them is the fact that the roads here are generally (still) open most of the day, rendering driving and breathing much healthier. Yet, I am occasionally obliged to descend to the center of the country for a day. To avoid the pleasure and fatigue of crawling in traffic jams, I take the train, which shall become even more convenient in a year when the train line to Karmiel is completed.

As any baseball statistician can tell you, nothing is perfect.  Even taking the train has its negative sides. Common with many systems, parking is often in shortage at the stations while the trains are often late. In other words, you know you are not in Northern Europe. An even more striking difference is the behavior of the passengers. As a measure of comparison, I remember taking a TGV from Paris to Quimper (Brittany), a trip of some four hours. The carriage was comfortable and quiet. In fact, I only noticed that there were quite a few children near me after almost three hours when I looked around. I recall thinking that the parents must have slipped their children some tranquilizer to get them to sit so quietly and for so long. Of course, the children's behavior followed societal expectations, which require even adults to avoid loud conversations and disturbing their fellow travelers.

Back to the Acco-Tel Aviv line, we have quite a different story. To be direct, children would be more tranquil than your average Israeli adult. Not that it is all negative. Upon a returning from a long flight abroad on a train from the airport, our train was stuck in the train station for almost an hour due to a suicide on the tracks (for which the train management was not responsible, clearly). The reaction of our fellow travelers was quite genial. Everybody took out some snacks and shared travel stories. If we could have lit a campfire, we would have done that. It was a rather happy delay.

Unfortunately, this openness is frequently not so positive. It is hard to identify which behavior is the most annoying. The candidates are long personal conversations about breakups or surgery conducted in the "privacy" of the carriage; personal attacks on train representatives with the poor luck of being in the carriage during a train delay; soldiers and students that create obstacle courses in the aisle by placing their cumbersome bags in strategic locations; parents that don't care if their children play noisy games on telephones or portable computers as long as they leave them in peace; and groups of youth that profit from the lack of parental supervision to sow their oats.

Don't get me wrong. With the correct attitude, any of the above actions can be entertaining and help the time go wrong. Also, many trips are quite unremarkable. To be fair, this behavior is not unique to Israel. Still, for me, the best solution is to limit my trips to Tel Aviv to the minimum and enjoy my quiet life in the north.