The Journey Here and some photos from Jerusalem

After a long and tiring journey we finally arrive on the Streets of Jerusalem in the dark. We are in a sheirut. These are minibuses that lead you away from the security fortress of Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, along brightly lit and generously signposted six lane highways, whizzing past McDonalds drive-thrus; we could just as easily be in Europe or America. But we are not, we are in the middle-east, in the white elephant of Israel, the source of 62 years of tension and war...
The sheirut takes us through the winding alleyways of West Jerusalem, dropping off a mixture of English-speaking foreigners, and Hebrew speaking orthodox Jews. "It's just like Green Lanes", Chris says as the driver swiftly careens around countless men in identical black suits and black hats walking in every direction; Ultra-Orthodox Jews. They are on their mobile phones, smoking cigarettes, and buying fruit and vegetables, but they are moving so quickly and with so much purpose and all with such stony-faces. First impressions from the fragmented observations of tired and travelled eyes on a few dark streets in West Jerusalem: these people are serious!
But we are not going to be amongst these people, we are going into the West Bank, to the city of Ramallah where we will be living and studying for the next six weeks.
But before that, our next port of call is a hotel in the Old city of Jerusalem, where we will be staying for just one night, before we continue across into Occupied Palestine, through that infamous wall, with the light of day to guide us.

-Jon Lander

Where else would we find our selves, then on the rooftop of the Austrian Hospice, in Jerusalem, Old City. (This was very much, ambivalent for Zelda coming from Vienna, casually siting with Sissi and Franzl, a cup of Julius Meindl Coffee in the Old City) Aside from this. The view is amazing. And funny, as you might see in the example.

The rooftops of Jerusalem
The streets of Jerusalem
sacrificing political stance for cash flow, the Palestinian shop owners of Jerusalem sell T-shirts for a menagerie of persuasions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - The range bridges from the pro-Palestinian Handala Hoodies (Handala is a cartoon character that became a house-hold name and symbol of the resistance in Palestine. He is always drawn in the same way: with his back turned against the viewer; as if turning his back on the world in protest to the injustices he has seen) to the pro-Israeli "I heart Israel" t-shirts, to the more ambivalent mock IDF tshirts "My job is so secret, even I don't know what I am doing." (the IDF is the Israeli military)
The view from our Hotel in the Old City
Breakfast at the Hotel. Probably the first and only buffet service we will be experiencing during our six weeks!