Purple Travel
[February 13 2015]
A trip to Tel Aviv
Last July, my brother’s best men and I were planning a bachelor weekend in Tel Aviv. Inconveniently unrests and a couple of rockets were causing death and trauma, hence a conflict with our holiday plans. Thus the flights were cancelled and we didn’t go. Finally I paid a visit to Tel Aviv in December. Meanwhile my brother had already gotten married, so this time I went there with my girlfriend instead. I realized that, despite the various diverging and emotionalized information I had been confronted with due to the never-ending flow of news reports, I had no picture whatsoever of how the place actually looks and feels like. Tel Aviv’s grotesque double-role as a summer party hub and venue for the near-east conflict is abstract and rather disturbing.
Nevertheless, despite these obvious contradictions, I learned that the city and it’s suburbs are the home a of whole variety of miscellaneous, strange contrasts that I didn’t expect: Run-down real estates that are selling for millions, Jaffo-based Muslims neither attacking Jews nor being attacked by them, Jewish antique traders selling German army lamps from the second world war at the “Shuk a pishpishim,” stunningly attractive soldiers with machine guns at the border control causing respect and arousal, gay Yiddish-speaking waiters with an American altitude serving burgers before kneffe (Arabic dessert), hardcore religious ex-convicts driving around in big SUVs playing Jewish slogans, leveraged by techno beats; Bauhaus-style buildings on Boulevard Rothshild close to a skyline of gigantic hotels on Frishman beach. I was told summer is a whole different thing, so I shall be returning.
Photo Philipp Draxler
