Joe’s May 2008 Trek Thru Israel, Eastern Europe & The Balkans En Route to Auschwitz Along the Same Rail Transport Lines my Ancestors Rode to the Death Camps

Picked up by taxi at my hotel at 4am.  Flight is on El Al, so you need extra time to make it through security checkpoints (plural).  Do y0u know the translation of “EL AL”?  It means don’t screw with us.  Security is very intense and thoroughwhich is the reason that they have never been hijacked.  When I flew Olympic back to Israel from Athens, the security consisted of an x ray machine and have a good flight.  The only thing El Al has in common is the scanner.  When I arrived at El Al in Ben Gurion Airport, the first stop is the psychological screening.  What are you doing in Israel.  Have you ever been here before.  Who did you visit.  Do you speak hebrew.  Do you have relatives here.  How old were you when you were Bar Mitzva.  On and on.  You can’t really fault them because they are doing their job and do it well.  Then my bags were x rayed in a different checkpoint and they referred me to an inspection station where they had the larger plasma screen forwqarded to them elecronically with the scan of my bags.  Because I had pottery in my bags, they wanted to ask me about the bags and asked me if they could inspect.  I agreed, but instead they only swabbed the zipper of hte bag with bomb swab and asked me where I purchased the pottery.  I answered and they never opened the bags.  Then it was on to the hand baggage screening after passport control.  Actually, the Israeli security is very efficient given the very detailed physical and psychological process.

My first flight was Tel Aviv to Zurich Switzerland.  Beautiful terminal.  Next flight was Zurich to London.

London was the usual.  Cold, grey and rainy at the end of May.  I checked one bag into storage at the airport and then I took the Heathrow Express train to Paddington Station and walked the few blocks to my hotel.  Given that the British Pound is equivalent to 2 U.S. Dollars, things are awfully expensive.  Anyway, I got to my hotel by 4pm and was out walking the city by 5.  I stayed in the Westminster area of London given my 24 hour layover.  I am really amazed at the changes so rapidly to the Westminster area of London.  The amount of Middle Eastern people and the rows and rows of arabic restaraunts is impressive.  I had a great dinner at an Iraqi Restaraunt.  The KaBobs were spectacular.  Every block has so many restaraunts and 5 out of 6 are Arabic, leaving the one British pub on those blocks as the sore thumb sticking out.  It was absolutely amazing to see the number of people sitting outdoors smoking hookahs!  Dozens of hookahs ablaze at every cafe. 

wow.  Anyway, went back to my hotel and was awakened at 1am with the sound of water dripping.  It was raining so hard that the ceiling leaked and caused a huge puddle in my room.  By 3am I ended up moving to another room because of the annoyance.  You can believe I got my 50% discount when I checked out.  At first they said no adjustment and upon my promising them I would spend the day telling people walking in about my experience, the Manager relented and offered the 50% reduction which I gladly accepted.  What a dump.

 I took the Heathrow Express back to the Airport, checked my bags and took a non stop flight back to LA.  Great to finally get back home!  Its been quite an adventure.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 10:45 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.