Holland - Israel - Holland

Being back in Holland to take care of my mumma, I quickly noticed how impossible it was. Yes, I could definitely be there for her and help her out with some things, which should have been enough, but I wanted to do more. I wanted to hold her in my arms and get rid of all her pain. So I made her pain my pain and destroyed myself for a bit there. She told me everything I did was already amazing and I could not have done more for her. But that still did not feel true to me; come on, I had taken a flight all the way from Australia to take care of her, I should do everything possible! And so I tried doing more and more, as much as possible and, again, more. I felt my energy going down though, dropped a glass – I never drop glasses – and a lot of things got lost. Obviously this was not working out. Mum told me we had to think of some solution as she needed me to stay upright and not tumble down, in order to take care of her. I had to remember that her pain was nót my pain and I needed a break. I found myself an apartment in my favourite Dutch city, Utrecht and hang out with my friends, while at the same time still being there for mum and helping her out as much as possible.

But being there meant I did not have anything to do any more than relaxing with my friends. But they had stuff to do, like work and study. Plus, after a few weeks mum told me I could not do much more for her, as I had already done so much. So when Ofir, this cool guy I met in Australia invited me to his home in Israel, mum and I agreed it was a good idea. Mum told me to go and even pack for a possibility to going to Australia afterwards, and so I did. First off, it seemed as if I just picked up the traveling again and escaped my Netherlands, but soon it became clear there was something else waiting for me. Surprise, surprise: I fell in love with Ofir; who picked me up from the airport Ben Gurion and showed me around Israel. We spend most time in and around Tel Aviv, where his friends and family live. Tel Aviv is a pretty cool, modern and touristic city on a sweet beach. It’s also pretty secular, especially compared to Jerusalem, which is very religious and therefore full of orthodox Jews in their interesting outfits.

Being in and around Tel Aviv I barely noticed the stress and horrible fight over the country between Jews and Muslims. Whereas even already on our way to Jerusalem, I did get to feel it, as Ofir missed a turnoff to Jerusalem and therefore drove into an Arabic countryside. I felt very uncomfortable as the both of us tightened and we immediately decided to turn around. We got into Jerusalem, which was really cool. It does not feel as historic or holy to me as I imagined, as it’s more modern than I expected. I even at one point felt as if I was in Berlin, which obviously is very modern. Though, Berlin obviously has its own history as well. Anyways, it probably also has a lot to do with all the stress I felt. As we were walking around some market, all of a sudden I got this horrible feeling in my stomach as if something terrible was gonna happen. I asked Ofir what was going on and he answered with ‘I don’t see any Israeli’s’. I can imagine this might not make sense to everyone, as we were in the middle of Israel, but he meant the Jewish Israeli’s, as these are basically only considered as Israeli’s for them. We had gotten to an Arabic part without notice and even though I myself love Arabs in general, this was definitely no good. Again, we decided to turn around and felt relieved as we got back to Jewish quarters. We walked around some more, saw King David’s place, the place of Jesus’ last supper, his last walk and the Western wall. All pretty and impressive, though the most impressive for sure had already happened.
On one side I can barely imagine it to be that bad to be in an Arabic part of the country, but on the other side I did get to see there is quite some misunderstanding and propaganda going on in the country between the Israeli’s and Arabs. As there has always been a lot of misunderstandings and disrespect between different religions, this has gotten completely out of hand and the worst thing is everybody has an opinion about it. I’d already heard a lot of opinions beforehand about Israeli’s “stealing” land and “not wanting to share”, so I learned a lot from speaking to many different people mainly on Jewish side. An argument on the Israeli side therefore, is that if they would stop to fight, there would be no Israel left. Plus, they only have one country and they need at least one. This at first did not make any sense to me, but as western civilisation is mainly built on Christianity and so if there would ever be a fight against Christians they would have many places to go to. Whereas being a Jew, there is only one country that will really be open for them all and protect them. Learning things like that though, did not make it very clear what the world should do about it or anything. No, if anything it showed me the complexity of the whole situation and how we will not be able to get out of it easily.

Anyways, after a month of enjoying my time in Israel big time, my mum decided she really needed me again… And so, after quite some dubbing, I decided to help her out again and after two weeks Ofir came here as well. Being a tourist in my own country while showing Ofir everything is, even though the weather is not as good all the time, really, really nice. So far, so good.