jtoews – Page 28 – ToewsTravels

a day in cairo <3

i had 24 hours in cairo, which was amazing! luck had it that my classmate jenna and her mother were on my air sinai flight from tel aviv, and her mom was a little anxious about visiting cairo, so i was able to attempt to allay her fears. grabbed a cab into the city with these ladies before parting ways. i wandered around the area where we had lived when i studied abroad in cairo – agouza. i went to the now internationally infamous tahrir square, and viewed the poignant revolution-inspired grafitti and burned out bohemoth government building called the muktada where we once squandered an entire day getting our visas extended. wandered the ancient pathways of khan el khalili market, where i made friends with an egyptian law student who got me unto the roof of a large mosque for an unforgettable view of old cairo.

pictures of the new president, al-sisi, are everywhere. unfortunately, egypt seems to be on a pendulum ride between democratically-induced islamism and dictatorship, and now we’re back to the latter. i asked some new acquaintances i met how they like al-sisi – all say that he is a good president, but perhaps the length of the pause before they answer is more revealing than what they actually say.

i found myself near a huge mosque in old cairo during friday night prayers, and suddenly the power went out, pitching the whole area into complete darkness. normally tourists (at least those wearing shorts) are not allowed inside the mosques during prayers, but thanks to the confusion i slipped in and sat on the plush carpet in the dark listening to islamic prayers being sung in arabic, and contemplated the big questions in life. always a good time in cairo:)

my old haunt – the middle east studies program villa seven years later, agouza, cairo

flying on the airline that doesn’t exist!

for the trip from israel to the u.s. this summer, i flew through cairo, egypt. the flight from tel aviv to cairo was on air sinai, an airline which officially does not exist! there is no website, only rumors. it operates one flight a day each direction on the route, using a white, unmarked aircraft. there are no boarding announcements, and the flights do not even appear on the departure and arrival boards in the cairo airport. the reason for all this secrecy is that the egyptians do not want to be known to be operating flights to israel, but thanks to the israeli-egyptian peace treaty, each country is required to operate a certain number of flights to the other. air sinai would appear to be operated by egyptair but officially no one knows. cool right? it is impossible to book the flights directly online – the only options are to go to a nondescript office in tel aviv and pay with cash, or book through a sketchy greek third-party travel website, which is how i did it.

obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry and surgery, beer sheva

finally in about february i started my first clerkship of the year “at home” in beer sheva! i really loved obstetrics and gynecology. long nights of adrenaline. our soroka hospital in beer sheva has more births than any other hospital in israel, about 13 000 /year. the boss of the clerkship is one of the more iconic physicians in beer sheva and an extremely humorous individual -a type of person i’d like to become more like. except jokes like his would never fly from physician in the u.s. or there would be lots of lawsuits. but in israel the doctors have a lot more latitude for levity. after pediatrics ob-gyn was my favorite specialty.

the next clerkship was psychiatry. this was at a mental health center on the outskirts of the beer sheva. i must say the state of israel does phenomenally well when it comes to taking care of the mentally ill. i was fortunate enough to be placed in the inpatient adolescent ward. one day we watched the film “silver lining playbook” with all the kids; they already knew what bipolar disorder is all about. holocaust memorial day also happened to be while we were there and they had a very touching little ceremony, only with some of the interruptions one would expect in a mental hospital. the clerkship was dominated by a teen who was convinced she was demi lovato and could fly (off furniture and stuff). death threats. ethical discussions on forcible confinement. electroconvulsive therapy supervised by a guy with a big, greasy mustache. good times.

the final required clerkship of my third year of medical school was surgery, at soroka hospital in beer sheva. i am not a huge fan. i was also studying very intensively for the clinical knowledge portion of step 2 of the united states licensing medical licensing exam (usmle), which i took at the end of the clerkship, so admittedly that was more of a focus for me than the stuff going on in the operating room. then, all of a sudden, third year was over, and i headed back to the glorious united states for fourth year electives!

azerbaijan

i arrived the baku airport at 3 am, and promptly fell asleep on top of my backpack. the only reason i had left it this long to visit azerbaijan was because the visas are notoriously tough and expensive to get. i’m sure many azeris and turks would disagree, but azerbaijan is culturally basically turkey version east. they do have their own language and customs, but both are very similar to the turks. unfortunately the most striking thing about azerbaijan is the audacity with which its narcissistic dictator ilham aliyev controls every aspect of civil society and people’s lives. most of the billboards contain just his picture, and anyone who voices dissent pretty quickly disappears. there is a huge, ornate new house of parliament in downtown baku that is never used, a complete sham. the father and now son tag-team have been in charge since the dissolution of the ussr. ilham’s father heydar grew up as a peasant in an exclave of azerbaijan called nakhchivan; i would love to visit that corner of the country someday. azerbaijan has tremendous quantities of oil money. because of the enforced hierarchy and cronyism, it thus also has tremendous economic disparity. there are luxurious glass, futuristically shaped malls that have been built for the oligarchs to buy their $10 000 suits, and there are three buildings shaped evocatively shaped like flames that house the state oil company. much of baku lives interspersed among oil wells, burning flares and reeking trailing ponds in the suburbs. the water of the caspian sea off the coast of baku glimmers with a layer of oil.

another major theme of the azeri national narrative is the conflict with armenia. azerbaijan lays claim to a large swath of land that experienced a secessionist movement in the late 80s and early 90s by its ethnically armenian majority, a movement which was supported by the armenian government. The area is now a de facto independent state called nagorno-karabakh, recognized as independent by no one but armenia. azeris see this as an illegal occupation of their land, and much of the international community passively agrees but is unwilling to do much about it, short of denying recognition of nagorno-karabakh. unfortunately this appears to be a complete obsession of the azeri government in the realm of international relations, such that it is basically the only issue that seems to matter to them. case in point – peruse their official websites for prominently featured diatribes of how terrible armenia is. it is impossible to travel directly between the two countries, indeed individuals who have ever been to armenia are prohibited from entering azerbaijan (two passports comes in handy).

in baku I mostly studied. i also visited the palace of the shivarashas, an ancient palace where the rulers of the area lived during antiquity. there were some very old minimalistic mosques there as well. i rode around on the soviet built subway, which has excessively deep stations and costs just ten cents to enter. each station is a masterpiece of soviet era art, all is coated with a layer of black oil grime, and folks stare at the floor in complete silence. i also visited a restored zoroastrian fire temple called ateshgah, out in the oil well-sprinkled suburbs. thousands of years ago azerbaijan was a hotbed of zoroastrianism (an ancient religion involving the worship of fire, still practiced today mostly in iran and parts of india); it is even postulated that this was where the religion originated, perhaps from burning oil seeping out of the ground. these days the azeri population is officially entirely muslim, but they don’t seem to take it very seriously. women in baku don’t cover their heads, and alcohol flows very liberally. azerbaijan became known to the average european as a place that exists when it played host to the eurovision contest (kinda like europe’s version of american idol) in 2012 – this was held in an opulent purpose-built glass stadium called the crystal palace on reclaimed land in the caspian sea. speaking of reclaimed land in the caspian sea, the richest man in azerbaijan, ibrahim ibrahimov, is planning to build an entire city on an island which is being built as we speak, and the centerpiece is planned to be a tower which will be the tallest in the world. yes, the tallest building in the world is being built in baku, azerbaijan. mind blown, eh?

the most atmospheric kfc i’ve ever eaten in, baku

back “home” to israel through istanbul. a fascinating few days indeed!

saunaing!

docking in helinski, finland on ferry from estonia

in helsinki i stayed in the stadium that hosted the 1952 olympics, which has since been turned into a hostel. finland is terribly expensive – like everything is three as much as it should be. as expected, helsinki is a beautiful city. it is the world’s northernmost capital, and also has the northernmost subway system in the world. speaking of subway, i ate every meal there because it was all i could afford. the main reason i wanted to go to finland was to go to saunas, and it was glorious! the first i went to was called yrjonkatu. it has a large indoor swimming hall, the oldest in the city. there are different days for the different genders, and everybody gets naked to swim laps. the main attraction though are the saunas, of which there are a few divided by level of intensity. you are not even allowed to go in unless you are naked. yes, some tourists came in with swimsuits and they were yelled at. old guys who seem like they live there continuously ladle water over hot rocks; the speed at which they do this determines how hot things get.

the next day i met up with my classmate kady and her boyfriend adam, who were also in town to sauna, and we took a bus out into the forest to visit another sauna. this one was a traditional outdoor smoke sauna. it got even hotter, such that we all had painful sunburn-like reactions for days afterward. it was beside a lake, so after one or two minutes sessions in the sauna which was about the maximum we could handle, we jumped into the lake. saunas are probably one of humanity’s best inventions!

lithuania -> estonia

for my spring/passover break i decided to travel to a bunch of countries i hadn’t been to before – namely the baltics (lithuania, latvia and estonia), finland and azerbaijan! I first flew to kyiv, ukraine for a short stop before continuing on to vilnius, lithuania. the three baltic countries of lithuania, latvia and estonia have really made impressive strides. twenty-some years ago they were soviet backwaters; today each of them is a thriving, very westernized, capitalist democracy and member of the european union. and they are still inexpensive!

in vilnius, lithuania i mostly studied, but also wandered around the old city, and across the river into an area known as uzupus, which describes itself as an independent country. this independence movement has satirical component to it – their mascot is a clown playing a trumpet, and they stamp passports with a uzupis stamp on april fools day. but apparently some people take it seriously as well, and they even have their own constitution. lots of big malls in vilnius. i was also going to meet up with a medical student friend oresta in lithuania but she had an exam that day so unfortunately it didn’t work out.

entering the self-declared independent republic of uzupis (vilnius, lithuania)

then i took the bus north. it made a quick stop in riga, latvia to pick up a bunch of drunk study abroad british college students.

the end of the road, tallinn, estonia was really great. it has one of the more impressive ancient walled old cities in europe. saint olaf’s church in the old city was the tallest building in the world for over 100 years during the middle ages. these days estonia is literally the world’s most internet connected country. it is also the home of skype and pioneered things like letting people pay their bills online. estonia is also a showpiece for libertarians – after the soviet era they implemented a flat tax as recommended by milton friedman. during the recent recession they were one of few countries to slash government spending rather than increase it, and they are the least indebted country in europe. there are also some interesting relics of the soviet past in tallinn. the hotel viru still stands downtown – it was the first skyscraper in tallinn, built in the 70s by the soviet government as the only place where visiting tourists were allowed to stay. every single room was bugged! another soviet edifice is the linnahall – a gargantuan, crumbling cement platform on the harbor about the size of two city blocks, which was built for the 1980 moscow olympics – the sailing events were held in tallinn. beneath it is a large auditorium which is locked up and never used. it and its graffiti juxtapose poignantly with the surrounding gleaming glass buildings. all three of the baltic countries have their own unique ethnicity and language, but each also has substantial numbers of ethnic russians in their eastern areas. 25% of estonia, for example, is russian. apparently they’re all a little on edge about russian aggression, vis a vis events in ukraine. from tallinn i hopped on a two hour ferry ride across the gulf of finland to helsinki!

mount tabor

church at mt. tabor, believed to be the site of christ’s transfiguration, galilee

mount tabor is a remarkable place in the galilee, where i went a few times during my family medicine rotation. it is a lone, single standing hill in the middle of the plain, and is believed to be the site from which Christ transfigurated, or ascended to heaven. there is a little monastery, a nice caretaker, and not many tourists. the hill is surrounded by little arab villages. a good place to stop if you find yourself in the gaililee!

the galilee, from mount tabor. the town on the distant hill is nazareth

weekend in egypt!

one weekend last january i decided to take a little vacation down to egypt to get away from it all! (and study for the usmle step 2 on the beach). for $50 i stayed in the five star all-inclusive movenpick resort in taba, just across the border from eilat, israel. unfortunately tourists are staying away from egypt right now due to the political instability. and even more unfortunately just after the time i was there a bus full of korean tourists was blown up right at the border. it was special to be back in “masr” (egypt) after living there for a semester a while ago, although the luxury of the resort life in taba is nothing like real egypt. the buffet food was the best i’ve eaten in years! the movenpick hotel is a five minute walk from the border. and a pleasant surprise was learning that if you stay in taba, foreigners don’t need to pay any visa fees or taxes on either side of the israeli-egyptian border, fees which otherwise are quite prohibitive. wish i would have known about this earlier!

the taba border zone has an interesting history. the sinai peninsula was occupied by israel from 1973 until 1982 when it was returned to egypt following the israeli-egyptian peace treaty. there was a very popular israeli hotel built in the 70s just across the border, now the taba hilton. upon the return of the sinai to egypt both sides wanted the hotel, and the united nations had to arbitrate an agreement. it ended up going to egypt, but it was stipulated that the egyptians may not charge israelis an entry tax to go to the taba hilton. the hotel remained very popular among israelis due to its casino, but in 1994 the hotel was bombed and collapsed in its entirety, killing many, and israelis have generally stayed away since. and it was bombed again in 2004. it has since been rebuilt, but i vote the movenpick as the better place to stay in the border zone.

it was great to get a little sunburn and luxury in egypt in the middle of january! anyone at msih reading this – get yoself down to taba next weekend!

another day in the northern west bank

one day during march a big group of my medical school colleagues took a self-planned day trip in a bus up to the northern west bank cities of qalqilya and nablus. great to see these kids wanting to see life from the other side. we were joined by some medical professionals from the u.s. first stop was qalqilya, a palestinian city which is 95% surrounded by israel’s separation barrier. there is just one road in. major problems from a public health perspective, as the surrounding townsfolk now need to travel hours to get to the clinic or hospital, trips that used to take them 5 minutes. sometimes the one entrance to qalqilya is shut completely by the israelis for hours or even days at a time. we visited the only united nations relief and works agency (unrwa) hospital in the west bank, where the director of the hospital welcomed us with the customary long-winded speech and selection of sweets, and gave us a tour of the facilities. unrwa provides free healthcare to palestinians, provided they can get to the facilities, which often is the insurmountable obstacle. generally speaking, the challenge for healthcare in palestine is that it is disjointedly provided by a slew of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations that do not integrate particularly well with each other. that and the barriers to access created by restriction of movement. qalqilya is host to palestine’s only zoo, a profoundly sad place. during the second intifada in the early 2000s the animals were starving to death despite the best efforts of the committed zookeeper. one day a grenade exploded and startled the zoo’s giraffe, who subsequently hit its head on a metal beam and died. the zookeeper became a taxidermist out of necessity, and today one can see the stuffed animals whichwere alive in better days gone by. vice news did a piece on these stuffed zoo animals.

next we headed east to nablus. unbeknownst to anyone on the bus, our tour guide had lined up another host, a palestinian liberation organization (plo) guy who had spent much of his life in israeli prisons. upon arrival in nablus we picked him up and were taken to the top floor of city hall, where we had a red carpet meeting with the mayor, who is also on the plo’s executive committee. he waxed poetically on the need for equality as well as peace, commenting and answering questions on current peace negotiations, while triple-life sized portraits of arafat and abbas looked down on us and the city of nablus spread below us. after all the unplanned formalities, we finally got the chance to wander around the streets of nablus, sampling its specialty desert kunafa, and peering into its secluded ancient courtyards and hammams.

shabbat in jenin

one saturday while we were living up in the galilee we decided to make a little trip to the city of jenin in the west bank. jenin is at the northern tip of the west bank just across the border from afula, but the only people who ever visit are israeli arabs from the galilee who go to visit family. jenin was a hotbed during the second intifada; half the suicide bombers during that uprising came from jenin. during that time the city was occupied by israel with heavy tanks and artillery and a lot of people died. we wandered the bustling streets for some time, and had a meal of assorted salads on a rooftop restaurant overlooking the city.

one of the more interesting institutions in jenin is the freedom theater. there, an acting troupe seeks to resist the occupation through art rather than violence, and seek to guide the children of the jenin refugee camp through acting as therapy. its founder juliano mer-khamis, who was both jewish and palestinian, was unfortunately assassinated by a masked gunman on the streets of jenin in 2011. much speculation surrounds the motive for his death. too bad that the good guys usually seem to die too soon in this part of the world.

returning to israel from jenin turned out to be an adventure in itself. we took a taxi to the crossing, but palestinian registered cars cannot cross into israel so we got out to walk across. we discovered however, that though we walked into the west bank earlier that day at the same crossing, it was illegal to cross by foot in the other direction. so we had no choice but to catch a ride with someone in their car. over the next two hours as twilight fell, we begged people in cars to let us cross the border with them, to no avail. one of my classmates eventually became so exasperated that he walked toward the crossing, waiving his hands in the air and protesting in hebrew, despite the disapproving yells of the israeli soldiers who had their automatic weapons trained on him. eventually we convinced him to relent. we finally were able to convince an older arab gentleman to let us into his van for the crossing. while we waited he told us that he had been in palestine to get some dental work done: it is much cheaper in the west bank than in israel. our van was pulled aside for a “secondary inspection” – because we were in it. now we realized why no one wanted to give us a ride. apparently the only foreigners who cross this border are activists. we were all interrogated and patted down, and then directed to a holding area, where we sat for another two hours while they closed all the windows on the van and pumped it full of a gas, the identity of which was unknown to us. strange times at the border. we profusely thanked our driver for taking two hours out of his evening to help our sorry selves. just another day in palestine.