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[Israel] Infrastructure
Mar. 20th, 2007 03:48 pmI hadn't been to Israel in some years (6, maybe?), but I didn't think that was long enough to make so many huge changes.
Ben Gurion airport was completely new, no longer a holdover from an earlier age, so there's more shops, more impressive walkways (looooong walkways), and so forth, as well as more signage (always good). (FJ!!: there was a huge flowerbed advertising your former employer.)
Not only that, but the intercity train system was completely new, too. Yeah, it would've been better had there been a *map* of the system alongside the schedule, but I was able to get a ticket using a machine that worked in numerous languages, and the stations were in decent repair (open-air but covered, which is all that's needed most of the time), with timely announcements about upcoming trains, and so on.
I'd expected Jerusalem to spread, getting new neighborhoods, encompassing areas that used to be suburbs, but I didn't expect a whole system of bypass roads (read: highways through the city) to have been completed, with major work in progress on an above-ground train system as well.
Plus lots of construction in general, across the street from the apartment (better than an alarm clock, right? (who needs naps, anyway? *wry smile*)), all around the new city, even inside the Old City (the Hurva is being rebuilt?!).
Which is why I was so disoriented when I arrived (ok, that plus the sleep dep). It helped me to walk everywhere I could; that makes the city mine again, in a way taking cabs never does, being able to see the details. (I didn't take a bus the whole time, mostly a function of not getting my act together enough to get a map and find out fares.) Still, the area I covered was only an intersection of the places I used to frequent; I didn't have time to get to Kiryat Moshe or Bayit V'gan (Total aside: on most maps, it's spelled "Bayit Vegan," which is just not going to be pronounced right by anyone not familiar with the Hebrew. Transliteration should be a bit more thoughtfully done. {Tangent to the aside: and in the other direction, someone naming a street after a famous president didn't pay attention to silent letters in English, so it's pronounced "Lin-ko-lin"...}).
We went out of the city one night, so I have now not only been through a couple of checkpoints (the night we went through they were more causes of clogged traffic than anything else), I have seen the Wall dividing Jewish and Arab settlements. There were patterns or pictures on it, but otherwise it was unremarkable, and I would've taken it more for the walls lining some of our highways to keep the noise from bothering neighbors had I not been told otherwise.
Some smaller, process stuff has changed. Instead of one huge line at the central post office, I used a touch screen to get a number, and sat on nice padded seats until my number and window number appeared and were announced. It took a while to get to the front of the queue (can I call it a queue when it wasn't a physical one?), but in much more comfort. (You'd think that midmorning of a weekday there wouldn't be a lot of people with business there, but you'd be wrong. Of course, some people were paying bills, so it wasn't all postal business.)
And there's a new-to-me checkpoint at the bottom of the stairs that lead down to the Kotel from the Jewish Quarter. And there's a big, covered wooden walkway on the side of the women's section (I have no idea what for, though). It's a mixed blessing: there's even less room on the women's side (why isn't the mechitza ever shifted when there's a big imbalance?), but there's more shade.
I shouldn't wait another 6 years to return.
And how can we get things built this fast in MA?
Ben Gurion airport was completely new, no longer a holdover from an earlier age, so there's more shops, more impressive walkways (looooong walkways), and so forth, as well as more signage (always good). (FJ!!: there was a huge flowerbed advertising your former employer.)
Not only that, but the intercity train system was completely new, too. Yeah, it would've been better had there been a *map* of the system alongside the schedule, but I was able to get a ticket using a machine that worked in numerous languages, and the stations were in decent repair (open-air but covered, which is all that's needed most of the time), with timely announcements about upcoming trains, and so on.
I'd expected Jerusalem to spread, getting new neighborhoods, encompassing areas that used to be suburbs, but I didn't expect a whole system of bypass roads (read: highways through the city) to have been completed, with major work in progress on an above-ground train system as well.
Plus lots of construction in general, across the street from the apartment (better than an alarm clock, right? (who needs naps, anyway? *wry smile*)), all around the new city, even inside the Old City (the Hurva is being rebuilt?!).
Which is why I was so disoriented when I arrived (ok, that plus the sleep dep). It helped me to walk everywhere I could; that makes the city mine again, in a way taking cabs never does, being able to see the details. (I didn't take a bus the whole time, mostly a function of not getting my act together enough to get a map and find out fares.) Still, the area I covered was only an intersection of the places I used to frequent; I didn't have time to get to Kiryat Moshe or Bayit V'gan (Total aside: on most maps, it's spelled "Bayit Vegan," which is just not going to be pronounced right by anyone not familiar with the Hebrew. Transliteration should be a bit more thoughtfully done. {Tangent to the aside: and in the other direction, someone naming a street after a famous president didn't pay attention to silent letters in English, so it's pronounced "Lin-ko-lin"...}).
We went out of the city one night, so I have now not only been through a couple of checkpoints (the night we went through they were more causes of clogged traffic than anything else), I have seen the Wall dividing Jewish and Arab settlements. There were patterns or pictures on it, but otherwise it was unremarkable, and I would've taken it more for the walls lining some of our highways to keep the noise from bothering neighbors had I not been told otherwise.
Some smaller, process stuff has changed. Instead of one huge line at the central post office, I used a touch screen to get a number, and sat on nice padded seats until my number and window number appeared and were announced. It took a while to get to the front of the queue (can I call it a queue when it wasn't a physical one?), but in much more comfort. (You'd think that midmorning of a weekday there wouldn't be a lot of people with business there, but you'd be wrong. Of course, some people were paying bills, so it wasn't all postal business.)
And there's a new-to-me checkpoint at the bottom of the stairs that lead down to the Kotel from the Jewish Quarter. And there's a big, covered wooden walkway on the side of the women's section (I have no idea what for, though). It's a mixed blessing: there's even less room on the women's side (why isn't the mechitza ever shifted when there's a big imbalance?), but there's more shade.
I shouldn't wait another 6 years to return.
And how can we get things built this fast in MA?