I headed back with some time to spare, though less than I had planned. Thank goodness I was tired and didn't try to bite off more than I could chew. Both the intercity bus and the local one in Tel Aviv got stuck in evening traffic, so it took me almost four hours to get home, and I still had to pick up and pack my bike!
The sun was dipping towards sunset, and the trip was coming to its logical end. My phone battery was dying fast, figuring out public transport stops in an unfamiliar country wasn't that easy, and a week's worth of fatigue was hitting me harder than ever. Hopping from bus to bus like a ballerina leaping between barrels of tar, I finally made it to Nathan's place by eight o'clock. Hastily throwing my stuff into the trunk, I chucked the bike into a box and prudently wrapped it in special postal tape.
We got to the roosting grounds of the slumbering steel condors quickly enough, but the question arose — which terminal? The omnipresent internet provided the answer here too: for some reason, Wizz Air's departure terminal is the third one, even though they later toss you into the back of a truck like a sack of potatoes to haul you over to the first.
The peel-off tape turned out to be quite handy: I had never encountered such a vicious security screening in all my travels before. Many, many passengers were literally forced to open their suitcases and let the border guard sniff all their dirty undies together and each pair individually. Furthermore, they even demanded the opening of perfume bottles being brought as gifts.
I didn't have to show off my cycling shorts with their honestly earned sweat, but my trusty two-wheeler itself was dragged off by the meticulous security guys for a wash, polish, and wax an extra X-ray. Of course, the bike had to be taken out of the box, of course, I kept losing screws in my haste, of course, it didn't fit through the scanner frame, and of course, they found on me 2 bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, 5 sheets of acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole multitude of tranquilizers of all sorts and colors, as well as tequila, rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and amyl nitrite.
But since Israel is the mecca of psytrance and people here love to party, they were understanding, confiscated everything except the bicycle, and let me go in the only possible direction — leading to the bus to the next terminal. While I was sitting there empty-handed, I exchanged a few words with some Ukrainians who, having no experience dealing with Israeli customs, had arrived a bit late and were twitching like wind-up toys over the confusing numbers on their ticket — had their plane already flown off, or was it just check-in for the flight at that time?
The boarding passes of the esteemed public on the waiting bench were in three different languages, but that didn't make anything clearer. As best I could, I reassured my Slavic brothers with the hope that I was 100% sure this was the check-in time, not the departure time, and that they still had a chance. Fortunately, that turned out to be the case — though while I still had a twenty-minute buffer to return my rented SIM card, they snapped right into the boarding line like a Lego piece.
A few hours — and here I am in the dank grayness of the Baltics. The rain and slush, and the lack of sleep did their dirty work, but I was still glad to see my native land and my dad, who has been putting up with my voyages for many years now and patiently driving me back and forth.
So what is the outcome of my wanderings, of my vain attempts to understand at least something, to feel how the world works, what people live for, where progress is heading, and what is good, and what is evil?
My worldview hasn't shifted, and it's unlikely to ever undergo radical changes anymore, its foundation in the form of a scientific outlook on the world is too stable. I still consider religion to be an evil, maybe not the greatest one, but a significant one. Both Shabbat and kashrut, and fundamentalists on welfare — all these abominations and aberrations shouldn't exist in a rationally organized society, despite the cultural richness that might be spawned by strict boundaries. But this is impossible to achieve as long as idiotic mythological behavior remains an effective reproduction strategy (aka "Look how Muslims are multiplying").
As a country, Israel is beautiful, and the people there are good, trying to throw off their throats the hand of an ancient zombie that grips them from its grave with its bony palm. Would the Arabs have built a better country in this spot? I doubt it, considering the state of the Bedouin settlements. In the modern world, countries exist de facto, and de jure comes later, on its own.
Whose fault is it that people need vivid imagery, unattainable ideals, idols and icons, an "us versus them" confrontation in order to act? Nobody's, evolution made us this way. But the only way to bridge the chasm is neither a sweet-voiced New Age chant in the style of "down with the illusion of separateness," nor shouting matches about who has the right to the land historically or from the point of view of their native religion. The only way is to finally admit the truth, to stop turning a blind eye to the fact that man is just an ape that managed to rise above its past, but so far only by denying it. It's like in Vipassana — you can't chase away bad thoughts by force, you can only accept that you are experiencing them, and gently guide yourself further. Likewise, people must admit that our ruler is the ancient animal brain, the limbic system, an automatic shooting mode, which is normally efficient and convenient, but heavily prone to error when analyzing this complex civilization that has grown up, albeit spontaneously, but still through the use of a rational element, namely consciousness. Until we acknowledge our quirks and flaws, we won't be able to overcome them by accepting them as part of ourselves, but gently steering our emotions in the right direction.
People often ask me in real life: how could you just go like that all alone, wasn't it scary, wasn't it hard? On my own, it would have been both scary and hard, yeah. Luckily, I wasn't alone at all, I had all the people who helped me by my side. These include couchsurfers, and the absolute legend of a man Mike from Warm Showers, and just random strangers I met along the way who don't recognize borders or nations, are ready to help someone they don't know, and who strive to stretch a thin thread of mutual understanding across the abysses of ancient tribal thinking.
They aren't perfect, but they are my family, unlike the poor in spirit who associate themselves with the prosperity of this or that country at the expense of others, with realpolitik, with a Mighty Russia or a Free America, who slap on labels like Gayropa, Maydauns or Putinoid-scumbags (which I myself am prone to doing, why hide it).
Did I like it in Israel? Very much.
What did I like most? The kibbutz and Mike.
Will I return there? I'd like to, but the world is big. Once again, the spirit of wandering calls my restless mind to hit the road, once again I crave adventures, marvels, and unusual encounters. They say there are no blank spots left on the map of the world, but there are plenty in my mind, and there's no activity more fascinating than continuing to fill in this coloring book.
