Travel report: Israel - Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv

In the first weeks of May I visited Israel to take part at the SYSTOR 2009 systems conference. The conference, which was hosted by the IBM Research Labs in Haifs, concerned about different systems aspects, but had also a deduplication track consisting of three talks. It was a nice trip and this post covers the "business" -- meaning the conference -- as well as thoughts about my private travel trough the country after the conference.


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Day 1 - 4: Haifa

The first day was hard. I arrived at 3 o'clock in the morning at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. I had read that bus transportation is the major inter-city way to travel. So I expected a larger bus station (as I later saw in Jerusalem and especially Tel Aviv), I found that station. I waited there for around 4 hours. Then a journey through the country. I sometimes had no idea were I was, but I am pretty sure that it was not the direct way to Haifa. It was the first time in a country that is not using latin letters. The hebrew letters seemed like random noise to me. I was never good in learning languages. The start in Israel was therefore a bit rough.

The SYSTOR conference on the other hand started in the nice and friendly location of IBM Haifa Labs, near the University of Haifa. The conference is pretty small. 24 accepted papers, around 50 visitors. But some talks were really interesting, others were disappointing. I liked e.g. Ethan Millers talk about deduplication of virtual disk images. He presented no really unexpected results, but to have the information what is important and what is not is nice to have written down. I was disappointed by some of the industry talks. Some were much too marketing driven and not deep enough in the technology I was really interested in. An example for this was the talk of Mellanox.

At the second day I presented the results of the first half of my master thesis. Presenting at a conference, was totally new to me. I think that my presentation was pretty good. I think -- at that is important -- the audience understood my major points. The paper version of the talk I gave is online in the ACM Digital Library.

But presenting a topic you know and were you had the opportunity to train, is one thing. Smalltalk and networking is also important and at such a small conference it is much easier. I e.g. meet a researcher whose blog I read even before SYSTOR. Surprisingly many people ask me about the blog and twitter. I really liked the "social event" that took place in the old city of Caesarea, the city from that the romans governed the ancient Palestine and a crusader fortress. Extremely cool view at sunset. Unfortunately I have no photo of it.

One funny story: The title of the conference was "SYSTOR - The Israeli experimental systems conference". The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) obviously misunderstood the focus on computer systems research and send an IDF soldier who is also a biology researcher to visit the conference. She probably understood pretty nothing as I would understand nothing on a biology conference.

IBM is not the only cool company in Haifa. Nearly every top company has a engineering facility there: NetApp, Google, Yahoo, LSI, and many others. SAP has an office in another town near Haifa. So I am pretty envy to the students of the Haifa university or the technical university of Israel, Technion. They have more CS-related top companies in their city than we have in complete Germany.

Day 5 - 7: Jerusalem and Dead Sea

After the conference, I stayed another week in Israel. From Haifa, I went to Jerusalem - A pretty extreme city. Everything is about religion there. As a mainly secular liberal (in an european sense), it was pretty strange and I want never ever live in that city.

On Saturday (Sabbat) my impression was that the city is practically shutdown. Every restaurant is closed, the streets are pretty empty (only Sherut taxis are driving). As tourist you better buy water on Friday, or you have a problem. This is totally different from Tel Aviv, were the life is much more relaxed and the people go to the beach on Sabbath. To read articles about problems between the "Jersusalem Life Style" and the "Tel Aviv Life Style" in the newspaper is no surprise after seeing both cities, e.g. here at spiegel.de.

I know the amount of history located in the old city, but I didn't liked visiting it. Too much persistent souvenir traders and shady tourist guides. I really don't like that. Especially in the Christian and the muslim charters. I haven't seen them in the jewish charter. May be only because it was Sabbath and than even dubious souvenir trades have their free day. Please: If you consider something your "Holy Place" show some dignity.

After noticing that every direction sign towards the Western Wall (what we call "Klagemauer" in German) is intentionally misleading, I oriented myself only by my "Lonely Planet". Eventually, I found the western wall plaza -- the only place in the old city that has been left its dignity. Mainly because the rules stated on large signs allow the prayers not to be distributed too much be people like me (no photographs on Sabbath for example). I was impressed how near all these locations are in reality. The Western Wall, the Temple Mount, the Al-Aksa-Mosque. Wow.

On my second day to Jerusalem, I had a day trip to the Dead Sea. The "Lonely Planet" says that the "Ein Gedi Beach" is an "undeserved popular beach". The book is right. Dear reader, I you visit the Dead Sea, please, drive one Egged-Station further. The "Ein Gedi Spa" is probably what you want visit. However, swimming in the Dead Sea was awesome. Totally strange feeling to be pined on the surface. I knew photos of people reading newspaper in the Dead Sea, but I never really took it for real. I always thought that it maybe is a bit easier to by on the surface, but can really can read while swimming. We should try playing Water Polo in the Dead Sea.

Days 8 - 11: Tel Aviv

After a dose of "culture" in Jerusalem, I went to Tel Aviv. And Tel Aviv is really a nice city. While I had problems in Haifa and Jerusalem to find restaurants to trust and to find a super market, both was easy in Tel Aviv. The shopping streets were fun - at least after you accept that it is normal that crowds of cute girls in uniform, jump up and down, shiekingly, before Bikini shops.

The beach was great. The 6-km promenade to the old city of Jaffa (the oldest documented habour of the world) was great. I visited the university of Tel Aviv. Palms on the university ground. Much of green. Have I said that I was sometimes pretty envy to the students there?

At the time I visited Tel Aviv, you can stay at the beach and swim, but the beaches were pretty empty. So I visited two museums in Tel Aviv. The Diaspora Museum at the university (Diaspora is the time called when the Jewish people had been in exile) and the Hagana Museum at the Rothschild Boulevard near the Independence Hall. Even considering that the Hagana Museam is pretty biased, it help to filled some holes I had in the understanding of the history of the country. The history of Jewism/Palastine/Israel is not a topic in German schools between the time between the year 70 and 1933 and also not after 1945. I suppose most people in Germany think that 1933ff was the first time that Jewish people returned to their country. However, I don't want to blame the schools for that. Class time is limited. Even the history of Germany after 1945 is not a topic in German schools.

I stayed at the Prima hotel. Nice, perfect location directly at the beach, but in contrast to what is said in the "Lonely Planet" there is no free internet. Only terribly expensive WLAN.

I really liked Tel Aviv and would it be so expensive I would revisit it, for sure. Some kind of local travel guide would be nice next time.

More random notes

My return to Germany from Ben Gurion Airport has been more eventful than expected. Some presents I bought at Tel Aviv, attracted the suspect of the security staff and I got into a extensive security check using some high-tech explosive detection devices. I had to show that my MBP and my photo camera really works. I had to remove the battery, etc. They even checked by "dirty clothes bag" for explosives. Fortunately the atmosphere was pretty nice e.g. the security staff found my "english-hebrew" book interesting and apparently found some of the translations pretty funny. Totally cute was that one of the security girls carefully re-packed the gifts, which they checked in detail, back into a box. The wrapping was nicer afterwards than before.

One thing I found very strange at the beginning: There are soldiers with armed weapons everywhere. Not because of checkpoints (I have only seen one checkpoint near the Dead Sea), but because it is normal to wear uniform in the spare time and often to wear the personal weapon. I have done mandatory military service as mechanized infantryman in 2000/2001. In the Germany army, soldiers are very strict when it comes to weapons. Wearing an assault rifle in the sparse time is completely unthinkable in Germany. For example, recent newspaper reports state that soldiers that have forgotten to leave the personal pocket knife(!) at the barracks and get controlled by the police have to pay up to 10.000 Euro (14.000 USD) due to very strict German weapon laws. From a military point of view, it also clear why the IDF soldiers carry their weapons to their home. Similar to Switzerland, the country is simply to small to have time of a lengthy mobilization in case on an attack. But, it wired. Even wearing the uniform in the sparse time is only allowed under very strict rules. A soldier is only allowed to wear the uniform on the direct way from home to the barrack. I have seen a couple walking through the city park of Jerusalem, holding hands on Sabbath, and the man had a rifle on this back. Nothing unusual there.

Other thing about the IDF soldiers I found strange, is -- I would call it -- lack of discipline. They hang around at bus stations, making themselves up with a lipstick, chewing gums, wearing non-uniform clothers like Flip-Flop shoes or (as described above) do shopping in groups. Some female soldiers had opened their shirt by the top three or four pates. All nothing that would be considered appropriate here. While I was pretty fast used to see uniforms everywhere, the lack of discipline kept surprising me.

Eating: I love english breakfast, so an Israeli breakfast is probably some kind of counterpart. Due to religious rules, they do not eat meat, eggs, ... for breakfast. The fresh salads, fruits, and cakes were really nice (at least in good hotels), but I still missed my favorite topping (ham). I am not really a fan of marmalade. The rest of the eating I would consider "arabic" (Probably Israeli people will scream when reading this): Hummus (delicious!), Kuskus, and these extremely sweat cakes. Falafels seem to be some kind of national disk.

I have not fully get what "Kosher" really means, but nearly every restaurant I found had "Kosher" certificate. It is still really important there. But at least in Tel Aviv, there are also non-kosher restaurant, e.g. -- if I understand if correctly an italian restaurant is by definition non-kosher. In practice, e.g. at the cantina of IBM, I haven't found the Kosher thing anything limiting except for the breakfast.