in my head there is a list of countries i've visited, classifying them as good-line countries and bad-line countries. the classification is based on how orderly the locals wait on line. israel is a bad line country. in almost every line we have waited in, someone (always, it seems, an older israeli) has blatantly cut in line in front of us. it's always been a little frustrating, but the worst was in the check-in line at the airport. it was 3:30 a.m. when we arrived and we were in line for more than an hour, wondering if we would catch our flight and watching the woman in red sidle up along side our line slowly shoving her way ahead of us. i think everyone around her was ready to kill her when she finally slid her way to the front.
we flew el al for our first leg to brussels. i'd heard that el al had really strict security screening, but it really didn't seem like much more than what we are used to in our post-9/11 world. we didn't even have to take off our shoes.
el al itself was a cultural experience. right after takeoff, a guy went around to all the men wearing kippot, asking them to join him in an impromptu religious service in the aisle. i guess he was looking for a minyan. i'd say he got at least 20 takers. they all, including the guy sitting next to me, got up and pulled their taleysm and tefillin out of the overhead bins. at first, they gathered at the rear of the plane, near the galley. but the flight attendants were trying to serve breakfast, so they asked them to leave. they relocated to the very front and were praying there for at least a half an hour. it was total chaos. imagine twenty people opening the overhead compartments at once, at the same time that the flight attendants are trying to serve a meal and the same time that the secular passengers were trying to watch the movie on the overhead screens (screens that were blocked by the religious types in the aisle). mrs. noz was woken from her nap when one hassid digging around for his tallit dropped a sweater on her head. [update: not exactly. see the comments] as mrs. noz later remarked to me, it's hard to imagine an airline permitting a muslim religious ceremony to happen blocking the aisle for a half hour right in front of the cockpit door.
oh, and it so happened that the inflight movie was the chronicles of narnia: prince caspian. it was a little surreal to watch a thinly veiled metaphor for christian theology in the middle of a jewish religious service.
when we got to brussels our flight to philly was delayed for 3 hours. our el al flight brussels was also one hour late. it seems that the karmic pendulum has swung the other way after our flawless travel at the beginning of the trip. no upgrades to swanky classes this time around!
but we made it. i'm actually posting this one from home. our alarm went off 25 hours ago in tel aviv and i haven't slept since. it's been a long day. it's really nice to have made it back.
