Train to Kiryat Motzkin

February 22, 2005 - 3:47 PM by

I took the fast train from Tel Aviv to Kiryat Motzkin in Haifa Bay this morning. I’ve never taken the train to Kiryat Motzkin before. Come to think of it, my only other train trip in Israel in the last twenty years was a fun trip with the girls to Netanya last summer. It was a very short trip and I was so worried about missing the station that we actually got off early at a little place just before Netanya.

When I decided to go up to Kiryat Bialik near Kiryat Motzkin today to see my cousins who are sitting Shiva (the seven days of mourning following the death of a family member), Our Sis said I must take the train. I wouldn’t have thought of it otherwise. I’ve still got the old Israeli trains in mind.

When I was young, train travel in Israel was not something you got yourself into if you had any choice. Trains were used by soldiers because they didn’t have to pay. That was about it. I suppose people with very weak bladders took the train as well, if they knew they wouldn’t be able to last out on the bus.

Trains were old wrecks that looked like they’d been around since the British Mandate. They were noisy, dirty, uncomfortable, unreliable, hot in summer and cold in winter, and painfully slow. The cigarette smoke in most cars didn’t help either.

I remember one time when I was in the army (free train travel, remember?), my boyfriend and I decided to take the train from Haifa to Jerusalem, because the route was reputedly very beautiful. Well, it was fun. The view was, as promised, wonderful, but we were completely on our own in the train, and with good reason. The journey took about four hours. On the bus it would have taken just two. There was something decidedly eerie about being alone on that rickety old choochoo. It was like a ghost train. We only did it that once. If I am not mistaken, they cancelled the line not long after.

There is no possible way to compare the experience of taking the train in Israel back in those dark days to what it is today. Just going into the station in Tel Aviv this morning gave me this excited little feeling of being in Europe. Train travel is now quite pleasant. I know a lot of people who commute to work in Tel Aviv every day by train from places like Hadera and Pardess Hanna in the North, Ashdod in the South.

I used to love trains when I was a youngster visiting Europe, and when I took Eldest to Holland for her Bat Mitzva last year we were hopping on and off trains all the time. Somehow that never connected in my mind to life in Israel.

Well, that’s all changed now. Europe, I said? The trains in Holland weren’t nearly as nice as the trains to and from Kiryat Motzkin this morning. They were clean, comfortable, and came right on time. Even the toilets were spotless (and they had toilet paper and liquid soap ;-)). A pleasure.

My next adventure should be taking the train to the sparkling new train station at Ben Gurion airport’s sparkling new terminal!

I love spotting these little signs of how Israel has become so much more user friendly since when I was a child in the nineteen seventies. There are plenty of them all round. The trick is to notice them, remember how things used to be, and enjoy.

Tags: • Category: Travel 

Comments

Leave a Comment





© 2012 ISRAELITY | Site by illuminea | Sitemap