OK so I didn't write about the people I met traveling much, except for those in Cairo. But I met quite a lot. They were mostly men, but I don't think they were hitting on me or anything, or maybe they were and I'm just naive.
WHen I got to the Israel border, there were no other tourists around that I could see, except for a bus of Chinese people unloading. The whole group was standing there clustered and looking confused. I was on my own, and didn't even know where I was or where Egypt ended and Israel began. Taba consisted of a flat, ugly white building and a series of security x ray machines that they have at airports. I had to ask where to go, and where is Eilat. The Egyptian guard told me he knew nothing about Israel. I didn't know I was there. I was all the way on the other side of the earth and alone in a volatile region, what was supposed to be. I had passed what had been Taba and what was now a bunch of abandoned hotels.
So finally I got to the "right" place, after one Egyptian guard took my passport and X'ed off my Egypt stamp. I didn't know that meant I now couldn't enter Egypt. By walking three feet one way, I had cut myself off from the entire country. THen I went the direction I was pointed. There stood a lone young woman, who was fairly pretty, in a soldier's outfit. "What is your purpose of coming to Israel?" she asked. I had my backpack which had been stabbing my soldiers and still hadn't eaten all day. "Uh," what was my purpose? "Tourism?" That was what people said, or what I had thought I heard others say. I went there cause I wanted to see it, that was all. So she stood there with my passport, and I realized I was being held there. She yelled out something in Hebrew. After putting my bag on the x ray machine and being asked a few more questions, she let me go. That was only the beginning, as I had to go to some more guards and face more questions. Then, I'll write more on this elsewhere, these other two female soldiers began to interview me. I wasn't prepared for this at all. Because I was leaving so soon, as I had mistakenly booked my return ticket too early and spent more time in Egypt than I had planned, they couldn't understand why I wanted to leave out of Israel and not Egypt. I explained my situation but it wasn't enough for them. It had been my faux pas, but it was too late to change it. So they kept me there for at least half and hour and asked me who my Egyptian friends were,what were there names, they looked at my Chase bank card, and on and on. The soldier asked me, "Are you nervous?" Yeah, I said, I don't understand what is wrong. I had never been through anything like this entering a country. Finally, after I thought I would never get out of there, the woman stamped my passport (after searching through a computer, for what I don't know) and I got my bags and someone said "welcome to Israel" I think.
I walked some more, alone, through this desert not knowing where I was or what I was going to do; only that I needed to get to Tel Aviv. Everything was somehow brighter in Israel, but I was kind of dizzy by then and couldn't get used to hearing Hebrew instead of Arabic. There were more billboards here, and I could see the Red Sea behind me (really it's blue).
There was a cab nearby, and as I had no clue where I was I approached it. This is where I met a guy from Norway. He was maybe around thirty, and very tall, spoke perfect English. BOth of us had the same destination, so we ended up spending some time together. We shared a cab to town, in which he was the one talking to the cab driver who spoke perfect English. My Norwegian friend said, "In Cairo you have to fight with the driver over the amount of money. There is no set price." This driver said for 20 shekels he would take us, and I didn't even know the exchange rate. So when we got to this bus station (fortunately my friend knew far more than me) I took some money out of their ATM, and cash was short. I didn't know the exchange rate, so I guessed and took about 100 sheckels. My friend had been on the bus that I had missed (really irritating, totally my fault, as I ended up having to cab it all the way from Dahab, not good).
So the Norwegian began to tell me his story. They had held him at the border for a long time wanting to know "What on earth I was doing in Sudan," since that is one of Israel's main rivals. What was he doing there? He had been backpacking around the world for eight years and was actually now toward the end. He had lived in Israel before and lived on a kibbutz. Sudanese people are very friendly, he said. He lived in a village there where he was taken in by someone. How do you afford this? I asked him. He said he gets asked that all the time. He said he worked and saved for years, but I still didn't quite get it. But it was because of him I was able to get on a bus to Jerusalem, cause I was freaking lost before.
After sitting in a bus station for at least an hour, it finally came. I had gotten food, finally, a cheese sandwich from a pretty friendly guy in the station. I ate a ton of chocolate which is my stress therapy food. I was looking forward to sitting on a bus and relaxing, maybe sleeping, but there was too much to see.