5,778 kilometers to Jerusalem – by bike
Filed under: Environment, General, Life, Sports, Travel
Here’s a post from Viva – our newest member of the ISRAEL21c crew.
Up in Nazareth to do a story on eco-tourism and volunteer tourism, I turned to the GoEco
organization for help. GoEco matches international volunteers with its ecological and humanitarian programs in Israel.
I was excited to do this story for a number of reasons. For one, I am a traveler at heart. Before my three children arrived, I was known to be abroad at any chance I got. I have visited three dozen countries on almost all continents. And, I too, took time to volunteer in a foreign country.
Now that volunteer tourism – or voluntourism, as it is known – is all the rage on the travel circuit, I wanted to hear what brought today’s international backpackers to Israel to volunteer.
Upon arriving at the beautiful Fauzi Azar Inn
in Nazareth’s Old City, I was introduced to five travelers – one Brazilian, one Belgian, and three Americans.
And though the Americans were far more outgoing, it was the Belgian, David Verlinden, who had the most attention-grabbing story . The 31-year-old Verlinden cycled from his home town Voeren to Jerusalem. That’s 5,778 kilometers.
While Verlinden happily told me of his adventure, he was very unpretentious about the great feat he had achieved.
Verlinden and his Dutch friend Iris Baijens rode from Belgium, through Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, before crossing into Israel.
The Krav Maga enthusiast says he decided to visit Israel because he wanted to see the place that developed the defense fighting technique he so loves. And rather than “waste” fuel and pollute the environment, Verlinden got on his bike and pedaled to Jerusalem.
It took him three months. Or, as Verlinden put it: “I pedaled 5,778 km. in 343 hours, 40 minutes and 26 seconds. With 71 days of cycling, that’s an average of about 82.5 km. and 04:54:34 a day.”
If that’s not mind-boggling enough, GoEco’s Volunteer co-ordinator Carly Siegel told me that she was even more surprised when Verlinden turned down the organization’s bus fare to Nazareth and chose to log another 102 kilometers on his bike instead. And really, why not.
Nostalgia Sunday – Welcome to Eggs-rael
Filed under: Food, General, health, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Travel
Pinch me, I must be dreaming. For the first time in all my years here, I’ve found a place with egg white omelet on the menu. Not that you aren’t able to order an omelet made of egg whites in Israel. But this generally this involves making long explanations to young wait-persons who generally respond with everything from a blank stare of utter confusion to a just-as-confused-but-trying-to-be-helpful, “Are you sure you only want the whites? I’m going to have to charge you for a regular omelet anyway, you know.” So, having it on the menu is a big deal.
It got me thinking about eggs, which are a very important part of the daily diet for most Israelis – and not just during Passover when it’s all eggs, all the time. According to a 2007 report by International Egg and Poultry Review, hen egg consumption in Israel was 30.98, putting Israel 36th in world per capita consumption. In 2004, Globes reported that the average Israeli consumed 239 eggs per year.
One of the reasons consumption is so high is because eggs aren’t just for breakfast in Israel. I still remember this revelation at the age of 7 or 8 when I was invited to dinner at the home of a little girl in my Grandmother’s Jerusalem neighborhood. Her mother served us fried eggs, sunny side up. Wow! Breakfast food for dinner! This must be a pretty good country to live in if you can have that.
Of course, actually coming here to live meant dealing with some of the peculiarities of egg procurement. For example, during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, eggs were taken away from consumers and delivered straight to our soldiers. The only eggs available were tiny little substandard ones — and then only through the black market.
Meanwhile, Israel’s soldiers were being stuffed silly with four, five and six eggs a day. Eventually, this artificially created shortage ended, eggs came back to the grocery shelves and those soldiers — now in their 50s and 60s — treat their high cholesterol levels with statin drugs. (Israel’s Hadassah Hospital, you should know, was a pioneer in the use of statins for controlling high blood pressure).
Another weird thing was that there were no egg cartons, just trays of eggs. If you just wanted to buy a few eggs, say 6 or 8, the grocery store proprietor would place them very carefully in a little brown paper bag and hand it to you to carry gingerly back home. And if you were lucky, most of them would arrive whole. This led to the development of the portable plastic egg carrying case.
Even before the State was founded, most of Israel’s eggs were marketed by evil monolith (I am not kidding) Tnuva which at one point in the 1980s marketed 66% of all of the country’s eggs. To its credit, Tnuva did standardize levels of production and was the first Israeli company to qualify for ISO 9002 international standardization. Nonetheless, times have changed and today Tnuva has to make do with controlling a mere 35% of the egg market in Israel.
I’m too young to have experienced the austerity regime of Israel’s early statehood but the excellent Nostal site (in Hebrew but with lots of pictures) has a nice entry about powdered eggs, which seem to have characterized the era for many.
But I am old enough to have seen one of the last egg stores in Tel Aviv, which was located on Shenkin Street right next to Cafe Tamar. It was not a boutique. It was a dumpy little store that sold one thing and one thing alone: that perfect oval symbol of rebirth.
Today, we have egg cartons by the dozen, restaurants like Tel Aviv’s Benedict that serve eggs all day and all night, and shakshouka, a North African dish consisting of eggs poached in tomato sauce, is a staple on every menu. (The Israel Poultry Council has a nice recipe here).
As for the aforementioned egg white omelet, it was served to me at the Si Espresso cafe. Located at the Latrun junction, the cafe is a popular hangout for mountain bikers from all over Israel (hence the healthy Lite Breakfast)*. Definitely recommended, even if you aren’t wearing biking shorts.
*This past Friday morning was no exception; the bikers hadn’t yet received the news that one of their own, triathlete Shneor Cheshin, had been killed while riding by a hit-and-run driver. You can read more about it in Yossi Melman’s impassioned editorial, Drivers to Blame, in Haaretz.
Foto Friday – Biking to the Extreme
Filed under: A New Reality, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Sports
Israel is a natural location for extreme sports. Some would even venture that just living in Israel is an extreme sport, given our highway conditions and of course that pesky security situation.
Even the Israel Postal Company has gotten into the act, with a series of stamps celebrating windsurfing, and — of course — the ever-popular all-terrain biking.
Yes, there are bikers all over Israel’s terrain, particularly on the weekends. when they come out in droves. It makes sense. The sport combines the positive effects of outdoor exercise with the even more popular crazy Israeli driver syndrome. There are extreme bikers in the Jerusalem Hills…
In Tel Aviv…
Very extreme biking in Haifa…
The popularity of ultra-sports is constantly growing (for proof, check out ISRAEL21c’s video about Parkour in Tel Aviv) and there are events scheduled for every weekend in the coming months. Shvoong is central repository for all sports-related information but unfortunately, the site is only in Hebrew, as is ProSport, which runs some of the country’s most fun and creative events. For English, try the Israel Cycling Federation, Cyclenix – MTB Israel, Ayalot, the Israeli Club for Runners and Triathletes or Sarma, the Israel Extreme Sports and Rescue Association.
And consider signing up for a charity hike or bike trip: Tsad Kadima’s Hike for Hope, Hazon’s Jerusalem To Eilat Ride 2010; ALYN Hospital’s 11th International Charity Bike Ride. All worthy causes and good fun.
Low-riding bike race
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment, General, Sports, Travel
Awareness over the plight of the rapidly receding Dead Sea has thankfully been growing, and Israeli culture’s dedication towards cycling has too. Put the two trends together, and the time is ripe for the Tour de Dead Sea, a day-long bike event taking place this Saturday at the lowest pace on earth. The many versions of the race on offer through the event include road trails of 55 and 124 kilometers in length and off-road trails of 5, 16 and 42 kilometers in length.
Thanks to the event’s association with the International Cycling Union’s Golden Bike organization (which, among other roles, points the word’s most hardcore cyclists towards what they call the “best races in the world”), the Tour de Dead Sea is expected to attract over 1000 participants from many nations, including Jordan – Israel’s neighbor with which she shares the Dead Sea’s shores. Proceeds will go to efforts to save the Dead Sea.
Mid-winter is a slightly odd time to have chosen for such an event, but not just from a comfort perspective. When the winter rains come to Israel, much of the water that falls in the center of the country rolls downhill through a system of wadis (rivers that are dry for most of the year) towards the Dead Sea, making for flash floods and road closures. Tour de Dead Sea planners have, however, kept these conditions in mind, stating that even though it’s a rain-or-shine event, if the forecast calls for danger, they’ll postpone.
While ecologists will certainly be rooting for precipitation, the event’s participants and their loved ones may not, what with the array of activities on offer all day long. These include seminars on saving nature, musical instrument invention workshops, a bazaar selling fashion and cycling accessories, concerts, a group mud smear, back and muscle pain treatments (sponsored by organizations like No Pain and Way of the Back), and camping out on Kalia Beach – all free to participating cyclists and their families.
The tourist cycles
The Israeli government’s recent aggressive courting of various niche tourist markets has targeted the Chinese and the gay, and now officials seem bent on attracting the cycling crowd.
Members of a subculture that espouses environmentalist as well as fitness values, bicyclists have been gaining momentum in Israel as of late, through expanded local and national cycle-friendly development endeavors as well as cycling community activities. There was even a highly publicized event that combined the ever-growing wine tourism niche with the cycling niche – and a Jewish holiday (not sure how that one turned out).
Back in the heady days of August, local environmentalism blog Green Prophet quoted Tourism Minister Ruhama Avraham-Balili on Israel’s bicycle tourism development plans:
“The Tourism Ministry leads the development of the cycling tourism industry as part of its policy to position Israel as a unique and quality tourist destination at an international level. This is in light of the worldwide trend in the tourism industry that places cycling tourism as a significant and developing market segment. Developing the industry will improve Israel’s image around the world and increase tourist traffic, while preserving the environment.”
Last week, the blog followed up with the latest details on the budget and where it’s going. Some NIS 20 million in “short-term” (through 2013) spending is said to cover the planning and creation of cycling paths all over the country, including a north-to-south Israel-spanning cycling route and regional loop trails that circle the perimeters of population clusters and bodies of water.
Image courtesy TLVshac from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
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