When you go to a restaurant in Israel, your experience will be quite different than the one you are used to if you are from the United States. You may or may not be approached to be seated. Often, you will be allowed to choose your table and only once you have sat down will you be spoken to by a waiter. They will gladly bring you the menu and take the order, but you must remember to ask for water as it will not be automatically given to you (there is a water shortage here, dontchaknow?). When you have placed your order, the necessary utensils will then be given to you. Your food will be brought quickly and, regardless of whether you are eating at a fancy restaurant or a cafe, the food will usually be presented very professionally. You will be asked how your food is and then you will be left alone. The waiters will come to pick up your plates if they see you have finished, but they will not then proceed to place the bill on the table. You can sit, talk, drink a coffee, stare off into space for however long you would like and they will never once hurry you in any way. No dirty looks will be given to you if you linger for hours without ordering anything else, you are free to enjoy your stay in the restaurant for as long as you desire. The bill will only be given to you when you ask for it.
As someone from the States (meaning: very shy when it comes to talking about money in any shape or form and someone used to being sped out of restaurants so that they can have as many customers as possible in order to make the maximum amount of money), this was very difficult for me to get used to.
But if there is anything I have learned during my time in Israel, it is that it really is all about the experience. What is, you may ask. Everything. Everything is about the experience.
You do not go to a restaurant just for the food, you go to spend time in an environment you like with people you enjoy. One must never hurry the experience. It is where the best stories come from, where the fullest immersion in the moment happens. As all good cooks know, one cannot really learn to cook from reading a recipe book. One must smell, taste, see, hear and touch the food one is interacting with in order to determine the perfect balance of elements.
I am going home in two days. I have been reflecting on the time I have spent in Israel and trying to distill from all that I have done the lessons that I have learned, the things I want to take home with me and ponder more.
This is one of the most important of my realizations.
It was not the quick bouncing around from touristy place to touristy place that I valued, but the moments when a friend would share a random discovery with us and we would end up looking out over the Old City from the top of someone's roof. It wasn't the actual holy sites that I remember as clearly as I do the conversations that they spurred about belief, practice, faith and religion. It wasn't the trips to far away cities that were important, but the hilarious actions we would do while crossing the streets there. Of course, it was the constant sense of adventure that inspired me to see so many wonderful places in Israel, but my time here was marked most by the people that I shared it with and the stories that we cultivated.
As I sit here trying to finish a huge bag of olives (one of my goals was to buy olives at the Shuk. For some reason, this was very intimidating. Maybe it is because you actually have to say a measurement and to indicate what olives you want (even though almost everyone here speaks a bit of Hebrew, I always hate assuming, thus simply avoid doing what I can't manage in Hebrew (or with a friend who speaks Hebrew)). I decided to just go for it a few days ago. "20 shekels worth of olives!" I said. I thought this was clever, as the olives looked like they were expensive. I figured I would end up with a small container of them. Instead the man handed me at least 2 kilos of olives. I have been feeding them to everyone, trying to get rid of them! Like I said, it's all about the experience, hee hee), I am able to proudly look out over the city of Jerusalem and to say that I feel as though I have truly seen and done enough. But, when I look at each place, it is friends faces that spring to mind and hilarious occurrences. Those are what have shaped me. It's all about the experience.
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