I spent 5 weeks in Israel for my 8th trip there. My brother has lived there since 1986. I would like to report that Israelis are understandably in a "siege mentality." Their farmers' livestock are being stolen by the Arabs and Bedouins, and Israeli law does not allow them to defend themselves against the theft. Israelis cant wear Jewish symbols or head coverings WITHIN Israel in certain areas without Harassment or physical attack in their own country, by Arabs. If Israel atte... read more

Lots of jokes about camels and their arab owners and the camels peckers. One joke starts like this.......... ...........an arab is riding his camel and the camel stops. The arab says "why won't you walk?" The camel says........"Not until you give me a blow job. So the arab blows him and the camel walks. 10 minutes later the camel stops. The arab asks why he wont walk The camel demands another blow job. The arab complies. Then the listener to the joke says........"s... read more

Today I ran out of Anti-diarrhoea pills.............now I am up shit's creek without a paddle. When we were in the desert with Moses for 40 years, diarrhoea was so easy to deal with.....you just squatted and "shitted". Nobody gave a shit really. And peaking of shit..........this Israeli dude smoked a bong in the same room with my suitcase.......... ..............now I am worried that my suitcase will cause the drug sniffing dogs to go ballistic........... In Israel.......it may be... read more

Friday morning with Charlie in the old city of Jerusalem. Charlie and I drove from his town, Kfar Adumim, to the old city this morning, Friday. Walked in the Jaffa gate to the Jewish quarter. I found the "rivka" jewellery store with the same nice Jewish gentleman with Kipah. He's several generations in Jerusalem. Bought things for family and friends. Walked to the western wall. Went inside where about 200 men were praying. Photos were allowed although a chassid complained... read more

Joys and sorrows of Israel. Israel spends about 20% of its GNP on defence. USA spends about 3 to 5%. No choice. At the Canadian-Israeli Sport Center in Metula, north Israel, I went downstairs to the bowling area. It was a riot to watch these religious Israeli kids, somewith long earlocks...payesses...trying to bowl. They were totally untaught. Holding the ball wrong....bowling it wrong etc. Sometimes 3 of them would be at the line goofing off together. At times, I offered... read more

At least that's what they say. And they are right. If you do ask, the answer can be either yes or no. If you do not ask, the answer by default is no. Ask even if the potential for failure is 99%...if you ask, you still have a better chance of getting the answer "yes" than without asking. And if they say no, it's normal. I asked for a wireless password of this bar, Akathor, from my waitress, he said probably not, but I can ask the boss who's currently in the bar. I went to the bar about 15 mi... read more

So there I was, with great intentions to stay the night in Saint-maximine, sunbath a bit and enjoy myself in any other way possible, but it disn't really work out like that. The first small disapointment was the tourism office or actually their gift to me. I went there, asked for a map with hotels on it, and boy, did I get one. It was more of a small book. Lots of information about the hotels and so on, but the disapointing part came when I checked the prices....well, at first I thought it l... read more

From the Land of Milk and Honey.......and acid reflux. So I see this arab guy, about 20, selling kites near my brother's neighbourhood in Kfar Adumim. I stop and say "Salam Aleikem." He asks me if I speak Arabic or Hebrew. I say Hebrew. I ask him how much the kites are. He says 80 shekels (20 bucks for the big one and 15 for the little one. We haggle. He tries to sell me both for a hundred. I end up offering $20 American cash for both. He accepts but wants 5 more sh... read more

I walked around Milan the whole day, had couple of beers, couldn't really decide where to go or what to do next. The whole day I tried to check the train ticket machines but oh boy where there ques. Just terrible. And I thought I'd be polite enough not to spend half an hour searching for tickets, checking for prices, while others are waiting. And the lines in the trenitalia offices were even longer. And as a finally saw, I can't buy a ticket from Milan to Nice from the machine...so I did the nex... read more

I have finally achieved the status of an accepted guy in Israel. I was called a "son of a bitch" yesterday. Now I can relax and feel at home here. I am proud of myself. I was driving around with my best buddy Avi Babyiof, with his work putting in closets in peoples homes and he delivered some materials to an industrial area.....someone he knew. These guys are all tough dudes...working class Israelis....macho fearless tough guys. So Avi got into an argument with the guys over a ... read more

Sitting with a bunch of Israelis, drinking coffee, beer and smoking cigarettes .... never been with so many people who smoke........shmucks. Just tonight I sat listening to a 90 minute conversation about the price of underwear. Some guy had some new undies in his car and people at the table were picking out undies and paying the guy 12 shekels (3 bucks) per undie. Only in Israel could you have a 90 minute discussion of the price of undies. All with chain smokers. In the backgrou... read more

The water level in Israel is extremely low. Most water comes from the sea of Galilea and it is below the "red line" now. They drew a new red line below it...which is crazy. Israelis are allowed to water their plants/outdoor irrigation/hose system 3 times per week from about 2am to 2:30 am. If the situation gets worse they may have to bring in water in barges from Turkey. Ironic that a Muslim country would help Israel through such a crisis.... read more

I am staying in a beautiful neighbourhood outside Jerusalem in the west bank. It is on the edge of a canyon like grand canyon, except smaller. To the north east is Jericho, which I can't go to because with Israeli license plates, I would be dragged out and killed. The desert air is pleasant. It is very hot during the day and the night breeze is cool. Stars appear so close that you can touch them.... read more

Traveling is fun. Or interesting. Or a survival trip. By the end of the day, the way I see it, independent of what it is, as long as the destination and the trip isn’t boring, it’s always worthwhile. Each of us is different – our personalities are different, our interests, our way of living, expectations. I hate people saying you should do that or you shouldn’t do that. Usually, the only thing someone can say about most of the issues is how they feel about it or how it turned out for THEM. T... read more

We bought the tickets to Essaouira and waited for our bus. Well, about one and a half hours later the bus still wasn’t there and I went to talk to the guy who sold us the tickets. Would have been nice if he mentioned it before, but now he said there was no room in the bus and the next one goes in about 8 hours. So much of that plan. Fortunately we managed to sell our tickets back and as we didn’t have much time before our plane from Marrakech back to Düsseldorf-Weeze anyhow, we decided to go ... read more

We left Laayoune at about 1900, the time which happened to be the exact time in the bus schedule as well. That was surprising, considering so far none of our transportation in Morocco had been on-time. Quite refreshing, isn’t it? This time, it wasn’t just the locals and the two of us in the bus. The third tourist in Laayoune, the English teacher was heading back to Agadir as well. Like on our way from Agadir to Laayoune, we again saw something like ten or more police stops. And we were as... read more

Western Sahara was annexed with Morocco in 1976 and about half of the native population fled to Algeria where most of them still reside in five specially created refugee camps. No countries have officially recognized the country. „A guerrilla war with the Polisario Front contesting Rabat's sovereignty ended in a 1991 UN-brokered cease-fire; a UN-organized referendum on final status has been repeatedly postponed. In April 2007, Morocco presented an autonomy plan for the territory to the UN, which... read more

Getting to the bus station is usually easy, you just look for signs to "Gare routiere". But in Morocco, in many cities, there seem to be at least two different bus stations. One for stupid people and one for just a bit smarter ones. Or okay, I could say that one is for poor people and the other is for rich people, but that would be a plain lie. The main difference there is – the busses in one station are old, ugly and if it catches fire, I guess it’s a normal thing. And in the same bus station, ... read more

Planes, trains, buses, taxis – after more than 70 hours of travelling using all of these modes of transportation, I’m back. Big as hell, twice as ugly, as they say. November 23rd 2008 – for the first time this year we experience snowstorms in Estonia. Just to get to the bus station after a birthday party of my Morocco travel buddy turned out to be a survival trip. I had no ears and my head was turning into a ball of ice – that’s what it felt like anyhow and considering I didn’t need a joint ... read more

Just to get this blog started, here's one article about my trip couple of years ago. Traveling from Estonia to Spain and back, covering about 8000km altogether, passing through Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Germany and France, is not the easiest trip to take, is it? Might be, but try doing it by hitch-hiking all the way and by never staying the night in some hotel, but rather using alternative ways. What is hitch-hiking anyway? In many countries it is recognized as an alternative way of trav... read more