In April, it's very hot here . I stood on a dusty square in the center of Lod and felt , that the last hair on my head turned into a straw and just about will light a flame . My group drove off to a chartered airbus, and I decided to stay another day . To see my relatives - because if you look carefully, they will be in Israel any . Just now we were in the cool of the Greek about the monastery built over the tomb of St. George the Victorious, and the hospitable monks treated us with tea . But now the iron doors of the old church slammed, and I took refuge in a mosque adjoined next to me, at the most extreme . From there, I saw some uncomfortable man, and in his view I realized that I will not be offered tea there . My relative came about half an hour late: he was stuck in a traffic jam, the usual case was . It turned out that he had never been in these places (although all- then 20 kilometers from his house), and is unlikely ever to come again . " It is the Arab region, then the most gangsters and live - three times removed nephew was lighting a cigarette one cigarette from another . - Arms trade, people are stealing, drugs are all ". In the neighboring blocks reside, as it turned out, the employees aerospace . A little further - the employees of the ultra-modern research center . A at the beach cafe with a radio-Hit waitress looked like a high school student, he spoke in Russian without an accent. Well, almost.

In the morning I went up to the mountain of Temptation, where the Christian monastery was founded 17 centuries ago . It is carved out in the rock, and from the breathtaking height all the ancient Jericho with minarets, and almost the entire valley the Jordan River . Along the channel there are rows of barbed wire, jeeps of Israeli border guards Cove . Right in the hot haze of desert mirage can see a piece of the Dead Sea . From his hotel "Dan" in the center of Jerusalem did I get here a little longer, but that is another state - it is the territory of Palestine . The most bizarre country in the world , islands scattered across the rocky desert . Israel is not the case, because my stories about Hebron and Bethlehem sound for relatives as a report from the "International panorama" 70 . In Nazareth - formally relating to Israel, but is divided into two parts - our group stops wound for the night in the Arab quarter, next to the church of the Annunciation . Late in the evening I went for a walk along the well-lit avenue, I looked into the bar, where a chat with the nice young people tasted Scotch whiskey . It would seem that he was still a feat of desperation . But my Israeli friends, who told me about their adventures, came to real horror . I was not reassured by the fact that I was presented by the neutral Swede to the standard Ver Verry frrom from the bored bartender .

From the roasted Jericho we went dinner s on the other end of the country - in Jaffa, on the debris-strewn and bent reinforcement seashore . In the restaurant "The Old Man and the Sea" in the evening did not get . But during the day it serves the best shrimp on the grill, fresh fish and phenomenal squid . Perhaps in one of the innumerable luxury hotels in neighboring Tel Aviv you will be served the same in a more beautiful setting, but - we are not looking for easy ways? We all the same tourists and are trying to get maximum impressions for a minimum of time? We want to admire exotic landscapes, visit ancient temples and historic ruins, sunbathe on the warm sea, marvel at the contrasts, eat outside the box? All this Israel offers in abundance . In addition, there you can see relatives .