Yesterday was definitely the most random day I've had so far in Israel. It started off normal enough: wake up (to work the morning shift), finish work, take a nap, wake myself up with a shower, and then head to Sacher Park with Andrew (one the other Abraham Hostel volunteers) to get in a workout at the outdoor fitness centre.
As we started walking down the steps from Shilo street to Bezalel Street, we noticed that the street was lined with barricades. After about a minute of walking down Bezalel we noticed a police car drive through the street, and that it seemed like they had just closed the road further up the hill. Upon getting to the bottom of the hill we quickly saw why the street was closed: it was the annual Jerusalem Parade!
I knew that the city was teeming with tourists because of Sukkot, but I hadn't realized that as part of the holiday festivities there was a carnival in Sacher Park, followed by a parade through central Jerusalem with participants from around the world.
Curious, Andrew and I wandered around the park, and then went off to the side where the exercise machines were and got in our workout. Normally there are a couple dozen people in the park when I go there. If it's the weekend or late in the afternoon it may be a few dozen, but rarely more than a hundred people (it's a big park). However, yesterday there were thousands of people in and around the park, not to mention the growing crowds along the route of the parade.
After our workout ended, we started making our way back to the hostel. Unfortunately, our path was block from crossing the street by the parade. A police officer said it would be fifteen minutes before we could cross. Since he had a gun and was a serious dude, we waited. However, after a few minutes and observing several groups of people slipping past the barricade, we followed suit and joined the groups of people lining the street. People passed from a number of countries, such as Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, India, and more. The German and Hungarian groups were pretty big. What quickly became apparent was that the parade participants were all foreign visitors expressing their love of Israel, and the people lining the street were mostly Israeli's expressing their appreciation to the foreign visitors. I got the impression that the fact it was Sukkot was more incidental, since even though Sukkot is one of the Jewish holidays where the Israelites made a pilgrimage to the Temple in ancient times, it seemed to me like most people marching in the parade were Christian.
Anyway, back to Andrew and I. When the Chinese group went past professing their love of Israel, I thought it would be fun to shout out "Hello Middle Kingdom" in Mandarin Chinese. Sadly no one reacted to my call of "Ni Hao Mei Zhong!". I guess I got the tones wrong.
Of all the groups that passed us by, the Thai group was the most decorative. All the women were wearing wedding dresses, including a women with gray hair who was probably in her 70's.
The most energetic group was probably the group from India. While the group only comprised a handful of men, they were singing and dancing and having more fun than just about anyone else I came across.
After a few countries went by, Andrew and I decided that the best way to get down the street would be to join the next group and then split off of from the parade when we reached the traffic light where we would normally go left. And with that, after Hungary went by, we joined the Norway. I should note that Andrew had a blue Hungarian balloon handed to him by someone from the group. Apparently the parade has a custom where people bring dozens of small flags and mementos from their country and then hand them out to young Israeli children in the crowd watching the parade.
Back to the parade: once we got to the traffic light we decided to ride it out and see where the parade took us. Our Norwegian brethren didn't seem to mind our presence, and the group was just big enough that it was possible people would think they simply hadn't met us yet. I decided to get in the festive mood, and began high-fiving all the children along the route that had their hands up. I am proud to say the dozens of high-fives I doled out, only one person left me hanging the entire time. A much better result than when I tried high-fiving random strangers while jogging through the streets of Beijing last year.
The parade continued on for over an hour as we wound our way through the streets of Central Jerusalem. We walked down Bezalel, then Hillel, then King David (aka David Hamelech), and then I'm not exactly sure where we ended up, although looking at a map right now I think it was Ha Pa'amon Garden. A couple random things that happened along the way I think are worth writing about:
Right near where we joined the parade and started high-fiving people, the father of someone I high-fived asked "where are you from." I think he was just trying to be nice, but I quickly stopped myself from answering, not wanting to give away my Canadian-ness, but not wanting to lie about not being from Norway like the rest of the group.
Two thirds of the way through the parade I noticed that a group of Israeli girls had also joined the Norweigan group. Since we were going to workout neither of us had brought our phone/camera. Fortunately these girls took some pictures for us as proof of our shenanigans and sent them to us! Unfortunately you can't really tell how crazy the whole thing was from our pictures, but I will look for better pictures online and post them as an update.
There was a Norweigan guy in our group that REALLY LOVED Israel. He was one of the happiest people I've ever seen, constantly shouting out "Shalom Israel" to the crowds of Israelis lining the street.
Being with the Norwegian group was funny for me, because recently it's been in the news that Israel is not exactly a beloved country in Norway. Whatever the views of the general population in Norway, there was no doubting about the feelings of this group of 40 some odd Norwegians.
The smallest group I saw was from Sierra Leone. It was two people. They made up for their lack of numbers with enthusiasm though.
Brazil had a huge group of hundreds of people.
At the end of the parade the Peruvian group was taking pictures together. Of course I offered to take a picture for the entire group, although it unfortunately was not my best work.
All together, it was quite a random day, and I'm glad Andrew and I decided to take a chance and join the parade. I even got to see parts of the city I had never explored on foot before!
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