Israel day 3

Some advice from Laura to hopefully help anyone who is trying but failing to be able to post a comment: "I click on one of the blog archive daily entries on the right hand side (eg Jordan day 4 - Petra) and then at the bottom of that blog I am able to write text in the comments box and then post it as 'anonymous'"

The mob all headed off early for a series of lectures about child and adolescent psychology.  But Julie and Mal are not used to being in an overseas city without exploring on foot, and as child psychology is not Mal’s specialty we decided to have a sleep in, skyped Laura and the grandchildren, then had a leisurely breakfast talking to one of the non-psychologists on the tour who is good fun. 

Then we legged it down to the old city via a windmill, with no particular plan of what to do. 

We came in through one of the main gates, then a few shops in Julie suddenly spotted one of the psychologist ladies on the tour who had also wagged.  She was having a cup of coffee with a money exchanger which seemed interesting, and it turned out she had dropped in there to ask about something and ended up getting a personalised tour of the Via Dolorosa. 

She was wondering politely how to get away, as the person doing the tour had also gotten one hour’s free counselling out of her, discussing his affair with another lady.  He had gotten so much out of the free session that he was trying to persuade his new lady to come down and meet the therapist as well.  So us turning up out of the blue was a Godsend for her, and for us as she then took us on the Via Dolorosa, tracing the path Jesus took with the cross.  We made many false turns as the route is incredibly badly signposted, but there are a number of small chapels with statues associated with

some of the stations, eg:

but between her vague recollections, lots of asking strangers and Julie’s map reading skills we got to the end finally and saw the place inside a catholic church where Jesus is reputed to have been crucified and entombed. Ironically just next to this place was a mosque blaring out the loud call to prayers.

                                                Crucifixion site

We had a hurried lunch and then charged back up to our hotel to grab a taxi to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial to rejoin the tour group at 2.15pm.  The tour was very sombre and moving and very slow paced as the guide talked and talked and talked, leaving no space for quiet reflection on all the confronting images we were seeing.  Julie and I don’t do well on slow moving like this and competition for the few seats dotted around was fierce with other members of the group.  The tour finished around 5.10pm then into the hall of remembrance where our tour leader laid a wreath on behalf of the Australian Psychological Society, then into a class room for a talk by a man in charge of library research. 

Just as a few members of the party where starting to envisage their first scotch back at the hotel there was an announcement of a surprise!  We are going on a 45 minute trip to a settlement area to visit a rabbi to help us debrief our experience with the holocaust memorial.  This announcement was met with a tepid response, but hey you go with the flow in Israel so off we went. We listened to the rabbi, he was asked the difficult questions eg why does God allow evil to flourish? which the rabbi addressed in many words but didn’t answer the question because how can this be answered?
Then off to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere with fog billowing around, then back into the bus where Mal and Julie got a lecture about Wiccan practices with our eyes glazed over until we pulled into the hotel  at 10.50pm  Then typing this up.

On bus tomorrow at 8am for a trip to the Dead Sea, floating and covering ourselves in mud.