First and foremost let me apologise for being negligent in my blogging – nearly two full months have gone by empty of interesting content. I hope to remedy this with a post about a lovely little boutique winery that I had the pleasure of touring, thanks to friend Dovid Bloom who works with the bottling crew. Here is Mr. Bloom, presently a freshly bottled sample of Aviv 2011 Shiraz:

Dovid Bloom – striking a silly pose

The winery featured today is the Saslove Winery, founded by Barry Saslove (formerly of Canada). The production and bottling is done in Zuriel, just minutes away from Ma’alot – within eyesight even. However, the vineyards are mostly on the other side of Mount Meron, in the Eastern Galilee, where the air is dryer and the climate is more suited for fruits of the vine, all at an average of 800 metres above sea level. Here is a photo of one of the vineyards, at Kerem Ben Zimra:

Saslove Vineyard (credit: saslove.com)

Getting back to the Western Galilee, we drove along the windy highway and arrived at the winery, greeted by Dovid Bloom. He began by taking us inside and showing us the bottling, explaining the steps as the bottles trudged past on the conveyor belt. First, of course, someone has to load the empty bottles into the machine:

Loading the empty bottles into the machine

The bottles are then rinsed and nitrogen is shot into them, then the wine is piped in. In an adjacent building the wine is stored in huge metal vats (it should be noted that the top-of-the-line Saslove wines are aged in wood barrels), here is an unglamourous glimpse:

Huge metal wine vats

After the bottles are filled, a cork is pneumatically forced into the open neck of the vessel. Dovid opened the doors so that photographic efforts would yield a more favourable result. Yes, there is no flash reflections disturbing the shot but I’d still say it is a mess of glass, metal and wine. The bottles in the background are those attached to the wine-spouting nozzle, the bottle headed to the right in the foreground is about to be corked:

The inner workings

After the corking comes the labeling and boxing. The labels are particularly beautiful at this winery although it seems as though every winery and brewery I visit has a great sense of style (Malka Beer and Adir Winery come to mind).  Just look at this label!

Aviv 2011 Shiraz label

And after the bottles are boxed and those boxes are sealed, a pallet of full boxes is brought back into the warehouse containing the wine vats and joins the others, ready for shipping. At 2,000 bottles an hour, if I remember correctly, this was just the start (we visited in the morning):

Waiting to be shipped out

Just after photographing the pallets as seen above, the proprietor and winemaker, Barry Saslove, began talking to us. He went into great depths explaining how the climate and geographical location of the Eastern Galilee made it, in his opinion, one of the best places in the world to grow grapes. Being an expert in the field, knowing that the fertile low mountains would yield great crops, Barry staked his claim and now runs a distinguished boutique winery. A French wine authority named the Saslove Winery one of the top 100 wineries in the Mediterranean, of just three in Israel.

Barry Saslove speaks to us

Eventually, as all impromptu tours go, we broke apart, thanked the correct personages and made it to the car. Due to the fact that we visited the factory, and not the visitor centre which is in another village. we didn’t do any tasting or buying. Maybe one day… But as we leave, one last parting shot:

The ”factory” of the Saslove Winery

Visitor Centre info: http://saslove.com/en/visitors_center.php

Sunday the 20th of May was a big and important day. For all of us in Israel, Sunday marked “Yom Yerushalayim” – a day celebrating our re-conquering of the Jordanian-occupied Jerusalem back in 1967 – and less importantly, it was the day we took a trip to the Galilee Panhandle. The sole purpose of our trip (“our” being my parents and I) was to procure some shoes at the Naot factory store. However, thanks to some advertising cards we found, our trip was expanded to a full-blown day of exploration. First, the factory:

Teva Naot factory

It was a lovely day and the shoe selections were also good. I was not looking for shoes so I browsed and then took my browsing skills outside. I wanted to look inside the factory but only one door was open. The entry was filled with boxes so there wasn’t much to see. I decided to play it sneaky and followed a forklift. He headed for the other entrance, one blocked with those thick plastic flaps, and I attempted to get a picture. My efforts weren’t really paid off so I had to slip my camera between the flaps and take a discreet photograph, “point-and-shoot” at it’s truest form. Not a great shot but here it is:

Sneaky picture of the factory floor

What makes this humble factory so interesting is that Teva Naot is Israel’s biggest exporter. Making over a million pairs of shoes every year, some 3,000 every day, with sales in over 6,000 locations around the world it is a fair chance that you have footwear from this very factory. Teva Naot’s product line includes the iconic Teva sandals, Naot shoes (very similar to Birkenstock) as well as Source sandals – very popular in Israel. Tons of people make their way up north to shop in the factory store, including us. But our adventures didn’t stop at the Teva Naot complex, after we bought the shoes we needed we picked up some advertising cards and saw two interesting sites that were in our return journey’s path. The first one was the low-key Derech HaTavlinim (Spice Trail) store:

The spice store

Apricot and walnut ”schwarma”

The halva beside the “schwarma” was magnificent – all four varieties: chocolate chip, coffee, vanilla and pistachio. One of the workers approached us with little cups of apple cinnamon tea which smelled delicious. Here is the rest of the tea, just look at those little cubes of dried apple:

Tea for the customers

From the hawaij to the Sicilian onions mix to the assorted fruity teas, there was so much to see, so much to smell. The first thing I sampled from the stock was this very unique black sea salt:

Black sea salt

There was also lemon sea salt and smoked sea salt but the black one was the weirdest to eat. As I stood there I imagined I was eating coal and that amused me. After more tea was drunken and more halva was sampled, we gathered up our purchases and headed out. Our next stop was the Meister Vineyards, of Rosh Pina. As we left the highway and maneuvered through the dirt roads that skirted the vineyard, we approached an interesting cluster of building and equipment. This huge dog was standing guard and greeted us peacefully:

Sentinel

We looked around but the only signs of life were of the canine variety. Apparently they closed prior to our arrival so we had no choice but to turn back. But all was not lost, upon crossing the bridge that connects the vastly different Upper Galilee and Galilee Panhandle, we stopped the car and got out for a look. Here it is, the beautiful Kinneret with the mountains and trees surrounding it:

Looking down at the Kinneret

And here is the bridge behind us:

The bridge that spans a change in the land

And of course, a panoramic of the beauty (click to enlarge):

From the golden hills of the Panhandle to the forest near Tzfat

An adventure well done!

Continuing with the adventures of May 3rd, following a few hours spent at the Hamat Gader resort, this post focuses on Israel’s first kibbutz, Degania. Founded in 1910, the kibbutz celebrated its 100 year anniversary just two years ago. That was the year I first visited Degania, on a Yeshiva trip. So I returned to cover it for Tourist Israel and to catch up on my lacking historical knowledge in regards to the early days of Israel’s rebirth. Here is the first house of Kibbutz Degania where everyone lived together in the early 1910s:

The original first house

My adventures first started at the Gordon House museum where I was greeted with locked doors and nobody around (kind of like a “Twilight Zone” episode). I read online that the museum was open until 3 PM but that website was last updated in 2001 so the information was outdated. I was crushed and decided to find someone who could open the museum for me, at least for a few minutes. At last I found living people and I asked them for help. They gave me a phone number to call and after a confusing conversation the woman agreed to come open the museum for me. I explained that I was a journalist and she gave me a tour, and didn’t even charge me admittance.

One of the Gordon House museum buildings

The most interesting of the three separate exhibitions of the Gordon House was the Natural History exhibit. The others were the History of Kibbutz Degania and the Ancient History of the Lower Kinneret Area. In the Natural History exhibit there are tons of stuffed and preserved animals ranging from birds to snakes and to a leopard skin that once belonged to a leopard which was killed nearby after eating one of local’s sheep. Here is a diorama of the wildlife found in the Lower Kinneret area:

Kinneret diorama

We continued on through the exhibitions, going from building to building. There were all sorts of interesting pictures from the early days when they worked the fields and had guards riding around on donkeys or horses to protect the workers and the crops. At first, in the earliest stage, the kibbutz was just a large house where everyone lived in together (some 10 people or so), a series of small building holding sheep, cows, chickens, supplies and a blacksmith workshop all build in a square and enclosed by a wall and then there was the dining room and kitchen in a separate building. The kitchen area is now converted into another small museum which just covers the history of Degania. Here is an old photo of the early settlers building the stables and cowshed:

Building the stables and cowshed back in the early 1910s

Today, the main house is now an office of sorts (all I saw was lots of paperwork) and the other building which once hosted livestock now contain various other offices and even a nice light restaurant. I had a few minutes until I had to find my bus out on the main road so I went in and bought a Coke, in a glass bottle. I sat outside and sipped, batting flies away as I listened to two couples (one local, one tourists from Spain) and their cheery banter. It was a lovely place to sit and relax and I was reluctant to leave. But the bus waits for no man so I gathered up my belongings and bid farewell. On my way out of the kibbutz I took this picture, the old farm equipment which once conquered the land now rests on display, the would-be rusty parts now decorated with paint:

Old farm machinery

I then exited the kibbutz and sat down at the bus stop across the road. It was a hot afternoon and the flies seemed to swarm relentlessly. The cars and trucks whizzed by and a young corporal sat down across from me, her large suitcase gleaming in the sun. I asked her if she too was headed for Teverya (Tiberias) and she was. Her reply was in English and before long I was privy to the facts that she was Canadian, a lone soldier and living here in Kibbutz Degania, not far from the original “plaza.”  Eventually our bus came and we parted ways, I headed for Tzfat and she for her army base down in the Negev. It was a long and quite enjoyable day but I was pleased to finally arrive home.

Today’s adventures landed us in the small, old moshav of Shavei Tzion, just minutes from Nahariya. We were headed for Regba, a shopping centre where we usually find clothes, and decided to visit the Mediterranean Sea briefly. We drove through Shavei Tzion and got out of the car to walk along the beach, pretty sure this was all we were going to do there. But we were wrong, we ended up finding all sorts of interesting things! But first, the beach:

Interesting beach

Tiny shellfish

To find the reported mosaic excavation which we had read about some months back, we had to leave the beach and ask around. After questioning a bunch of people, and getting wildly conflicting answers, we finally were pointed in the right direction. It was to be found along the beach, 100 metres or so from the waterline and just a little further north than where we parked originally. Returning to the beach, we walked along a very nice path, the sandy area blossoming with wildflowers:

Wildflowers at the beach

At last we found the mosaic, a reconstruction of what once was a Byzantine church built some 1,500 years ago. The mosaics were uncovered and reconstructed in 1955 and to this day remain open and unguarded.

Restored mosaic part

Close-up of the restored mosaic

And there were other levels of the old church, apparently built in two stages, which were in a greater state of disrepair. Here is a photo, the weeds fighting for space among the tiny colourful stones:

Mosaic ruins

After we picked through the wildflowers and examined the stone mosaics, we got back into the car and headed out of the moshav. On the way we stopped so that I could take a picture of Shavei Tzion’s first building – a guard tower, which is now used for storing local archives:

The archives building

As I examined the building from the outside I saw an elderly man reading a piece of mail. I approached him and asked if the building was now a museum of sorts. He answered that the building now held the archives of the moshav and if I wanted, he could open it up and show me around. I had no idea what to expect but usually good things come to those inquisitive and patient so I waved the car over and introduced the old man, Uri Gefen, to my family. He opened one of the doors and showed us the old photographs and the old maps of the moshav. He explained to us that Shavei Tzion was founded by a group of Jews who fled from Rexingen, Germany during the turmoils of Europe in those days. The brave group established the collective moshav in 1938, just minutes away from another German settlement, that which is Nahariya. Uri Gefen went on to tell us how he came to Israel back in 1943. He was a child in Poland and when the Russians conquered his area, he and other children fled south to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. They then made it to Tehran, Iran and were therefore known as the “Tehran Children.” Leaving Iran they travelled the Indian Ocean until the made their way up the Red Sea and to the Suez Canal. From there they took a train through Sinai and made it to the Holy Land, safe and sound. In today’s world, such a long and winding journey would be ridiculous – after all, Israel just a flight or two away from everywhere!

Uri Gefen, the local archiver

Uri Gefen told us something fascinating that I must share. As I mentioned earlier, the Jewish settlers of Shavei Tzion were from the German city of Rexingen, they lived there for hundreds of years, among the local Christian population. During one of the Crusades, many of Rexingen’s Christians headed south to the Holy Land to free it from the hands of the Muslims, as everybody knows. Not every Crusader came back, many fell in battle and many left marks wherever they went. Fast-forward to the 20th Century when the Jewish inhabitants of Rexingen headed south to the Holy Land, to settle it, they found themselves in the Galil, an area much influenced by the Crusaders so many years ago. During excavations, the Jews previously of Rexingen found Crusader ruins and remains, and those Crusaders were from none other than Rexingen as well! “The finger of G-d,” said Uri Gefen. I’m inclined to agree.

After much talk we bid the helpful archiver farewell, thanking him over and over for his interesting insights into the history of Shavei Tzion. But before we left, we stopped at the old Bet Knesset (Synagogue) – a building duplicated from the settlers’ counterpart back in Germany. Sadly the door was locked… but redemption came in the words of an Arab cleaning woman. She told us where to find the keys and then reminded us that we needed to return them when we were done. We assured her we would and opened the synagogue. Here is what we saw, definitely of Germanic design:

Bet Knesset (Synagogue)

It was an amazing little trip, from the raw beauty of the beach to the poignant stories from the archiver, but the clock was ticking and we had shopping to do. We got into our car and drove away… but as new people, with new thoughts and perspectives on the incredible miracles that have happened throughout the generations.

This morning my father and I took a trip to the Namer Caves, just a short distance from Keshet Cave (covered twice now in this blog). The Namer Caves and the Namer Stream are named “namer” (Hebrew for “tiger”) due to the numerous stories of tigers roaming the area back in the early 1900s. We parked at the lower parking area for the nearby Keshet Cave and slipped into the wooded hillside on the opposite side of the Namer Caves. The trail down was marked in green and it headed for the dry Namer Stream (also known as Wadi Namer). The walk down was pretty but we were walking in the wrong direction, the trail markings not guiding us the right way.

One of the caves, but not the one we were headed to

At some point walking downhill we noticed a strange white man-made structure off in the distance on the riverbed. I suggested it was a tent but when we finally hit rock-bottom and we walked along the river, still headed the wrong way but following the trail markers, we saw what it was. Scattered over the riverbed were crushed cars, a bunch of them, some in worse shape than others but all were old and abandoned. We didn’t, and still don’t, know why they are there or from whence they came, but here is one of them:

One of the crushed cars

Whilst walking we realised that we were heading further and further from where we wanted to be, so we took a left swing and started up the mountain. For some reason there was a trail marking indicating that we had stumbled into a valid trail but we soon lost the “official” trail and began to do our own trailblazing. The hike uphill wasn’t too bad – except when I grabbed a slim tree trunk and felt unseen thorns entering and exiting my skin. I gave a gasp and examined my hand, sure to find beads of crimson blood, but there was none. Eventually, we reached the ridge of the mountain alongside the one with the caves, opposite of where the car was parked.

Looking East from the mountain ridge

It was beautiful, breezy and fun walking along the ridge, making our way to the caves. My father repeated “Trails are overrated” several times and we just happened to see another, faded, trail marker. I’m not sure if they changed the trail’s route but where we were looked very unmarked. There were rustlings in the bushes and birds of prey, eagles and kestrels, wheeling both above us and below, predatory eyes hunting the riverbed.

Making our way through the rocks

At last we reached a place where we could see the caves, their wide mouths gaping open. We tried to map out a way to the caves, with little luck.

Trying to descend to the caves

We ended up turning back a bit and dropping down on the rocks, working carefully from rock to rock. Thankfully, the rock was of a volcanic nature and thus provided sharp edges but incredibly grippy surfaces. Finally, we reached one of the caves:

The cave with the bats

This cave contained fruit bats, lots of them, but historically it was rumoured to be used by Byzantine monks as a place of seclusion – we only saw bats. When we entered the cave the bats began to fly around and make loud noises (for echolocation and communication purposes, no doubt). Here is a short 14-second video of them flying about and “squeaking” (with some human audio thrown in as well):

Suddenly one of the baby bats plummeted downward and landed near us, his small furry body shivering and squeaking rapidly. We felt pity and assumed he was going to die where he fell… but he didn’t, and he won’t.

Fallen baby fruit bat

I seized the moment and got a plastic bag out of the backpack. I lifted him up, his wings and feet gathering in the bag (and my fingers) and attempted to release him on a rock overhang. It took some work and some encouragement but before long his little feet and wing claws were fastened to the rock and immediately, his future looked brighter. Here are some pictures of the rescue operation:

Putting the baby fruit bat back on a bat-surface

Baby fruit bat awaiting its mother

There was a flurry of wings and his mother, I presume, flew right past him. She was homing in on the baby’s squeaks and made repeated passes until she pinpointed his location. In a valiant swoop she found the baby and grabbed the wall below it. She hustled the baby onto her stomach and, once the baby was secure, took flight and returned to her roost at the cave ceiling. I saved a bat – does that make me Batman?

After more cave exploration and not finding anything else interesting, definitely not the stalagmites and stalactites that were supposed to be in the Namer Caves, we headed back down the mountain/cliff. We reached the river and began our tedious, rocking-hugging ascent to the road. Once we did that, and I finished the last of my water, we began the walk back to the car, having made a huge circle – going up and down mountains most of the time. We reached the car and helped a couple from Beit Shemesh figure their Keshet Cave trip out. But, before this blog post ends, here are two panoramics of the lovely scenery: The first is from the road looking at the bold cliff face that we walked over heading to the caves on the left side of the far mountain. The second was taking from the ridge right above/beside the bat cave, looking at the road and the lovely Western Galilee (click to enlarge).

Panoramic of the cliff face

Panoramic from the cave cliff

Next time I do hope I find the cave with the stalagmites and stalactites!

Continuing with the festivities of Passover (Pesach), here is a brief account of Wednesday – our last trip day:

The morning started pleasantly enough but then the clouds rolled in from the West and the rain began to pitter-patter. Our hopes of making it to the last day of the Ma’alot Stone in the Galilee Symposium were seemingly dashed. The much-anticipated Ehud Banai concert was also hanging in limbo… But then the rain stopped and the sun came back out. The concert was already rescheduled to be held at the Heichal Tarbut of Ma’alot – that same beautiful performance hall that hosted the Lahakat Droz and Dudu Tassa concerts that I wrote about some time back (here). We drove down to the lake and found that the festivities were somewhat closed down and although the sculptures were finished and standing erect for inspection and approval, the long line of boothes that wrapped partway around the lake were mostly closed and abandoned. So we examined the sculptures.

''Cyclic Growth'' by Annabella Claudia Hofman (Italy)

I cannot make up my mind as to which sculpture appealed to me the most – every year I seem to have the same problem. Some of them are downright dastardly, but there are always a few that I like, at least marginally. Here is another sculpture worth mentioning – this one was the topic of social commentary, the Chinese oppression of the Chinese people:

''Captured Stone'' by Liu Yang (China)

There were other nice sculptures which weren’t adequately captured by my camera including a pomegranate/grenade (the same word in Hebrew) and one resembling waterfalls. But there were other areas of the festival beckoning, including the peaceful garden area where picnickers flock:

The peaceful part of Lake Monfort

Of course the paddle-boats and kayaks were in operation, endlessly circling and criss-crossing the placid little lake. But it was in this peaceful section, away from the hum of commercialized vacationing, that we loitered in.

In the gardens area of Lake Monfort

Upon return to the house we ate and got ready for the free concert of Ehud Banai which was to start at 8:00 PM, he-who-comes-first-gets-in-until-capacity-style. We drove down at about 8:15, not thinking that it would be too full – there is the general lackadaisical approach to scheduled times and the fact of the venue-change that might not have been known to all – but we were wrong, very wrong. My sister and I stood outside in the chilly night air, waiting for the front doors to open. But they weren’t, and the clock was ticking. Eventually, after so many people lost heart and returned to their houses, the side door was opened and all who remained outside made their way indoors. It was some time later, after standing fruitlessly at the inside door, hearing the faint music inside, that the purge began. Security guards and officials began to tell everyone to leave, that the concert had already begun and that there was no chance they were getting in. I was standing at the door, wearing the exact clothes as the picture above this paragraph so one of the guards asked if I was guarding/working in the building. I nodded “no,” and then nodded “yes” very excitedly but he already saw me confirming my capacity as a guest/wannabe concert goer. During the purge we simply sat down on one of the many couches strewn about the room and waited it out. By then there were only some thirty-odd people still clinging on to the hope that they would be admitted. Eventually a benovelent guard opened one of the doorways and allowed people to stand in the doorway, barely seeing but indeed hearing the concert within. Here we were, looking like a lame group that couldn’t manage to get in:

Hearing the concert from the outer room

But eventually, some two and a half hours after we arrived at the building, one of the guards hand-selected us for admittance. The system they had was for every person that left, a person would be allowed in. There are only 495 seats in the auditorium and they claimed that nearly 800 people were crammed inside. The guard cleared a tiny path for us and we were semi-literally flung into the dark room. We were glad and made our way to a decent level where we were able to see the concert.

Ehud Banai Concert 1

But after some time, and some of the crowd thought the concert was over, we made our way closer to the stage. Ehud Banai came back out and began the longest encore I’ve ever heard.

Ehud Banai Concert 2

Now, just to give a brief explanation as to who this singer is, Ehud Banai is an Israeli legend. In 2005 Ynet had a poll asking Israelis who they thought were the greatest Israelis ever. Ehud Banai merited to be #28 on the list, beating out old Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Israel’s most decorated soldier (now turned Leftist saboteur) Ehud Barak. Beginning his musical career in the London Underground after his military service, Ehud Banai rose to become a music icon in Israeli society. Had I known his music beforehand I would have had a greater appreciation for his concert but I knew that despite my ignorance, there were millions who would have come in my place, so I’d better enjoy myself. Towards the very end of his show we made our way to the stage itself, and I reached out to touch it, just to say that I touched the stage at an Ehud Banai concert. Here he is, the man of the hour, Ehud Banai, up close and personal:

Ehud Banai

And that concert concluded the festivities of Chol HaMoed, Thursday was a day of cooking and preparation for the end day of Pesach, and the subsequent Shabbat.