Haifa and Acre (Akko)

I had heard a lot about the charm of Haifa, its diversity, its beauty and in fact my initial plan was to live there and get myself acclimated to Israel. One day I spontaneously decided to take the train up the coast and check it out. Unfortunately, I have lost my Lonely Planet book and was using the Fodors to guide me. The one hour trip was uneventful and as I had observed previously, there are a lot of open spaces in Israel. This continues to bug me, because I’ve been convinced that Israel is packed tight with people and the only way to expand is into the occupied territories, but honestly I just don’t get that feeling riding through the empty distances between the major towns.

Initially, all my reactions to Haifa were generally negative, I feel badly about that and am determined to do another trip with a more positive result. First of all, if I complained about the lack of signs, maps and English directions in Tel Aviv, the situation is infinitely worse in Haifa. I literally walked back and forth in front of what is called the “only subway in Israel” ten times and finally asked a security officer, “where’s the subway” and he pointed 5 feet in front of me where there was an unadorned door which served as the subway entrance. I took the 5-stop ride to the top of the hill which must have been at a 45 degree angle and when I emerged there was a truly spectacular view of the city. I wandered around desperately looking for the bus to Haifa University and when nothing appears for about a half an hour I jumped on the first bus I saw and it promptly went straight back down the hill and deposited me at exactly the point where I had started.

The Haifa City Hall a huge modern building which dwarfs an old Muslim mosque.

Eventually, I wandered around and stumbled across the Bahia Gardens which dominates the city. As you can see from the pictures, the grounds were beautiful and serene; if one can judge a religion by its gardens, the Bahia’s have done a nice job of depicting their philosophy, as opposed to the craziness that characterizes the Old City in Jerusalem.

A view of the Bahia gardens from below and a couple of Bahians doing garden work.

The gardens appeared to be deserted, but the guard at the gate said, there was a 3 day waiting list to get on a free tour, I felt kind of foolish because the place was really empty and he made it seem like they just couldn’t fit one more person in the place before it would become a mad house. Again I thought of the Wailing Wall and its surrounding chaos, but who am I to pick a fight with a Bahian, I’m not sure they even fight, I think that’s the point of the religion.

A panoramic view of Haifa from the top of Mt. Carmel with the Bahia gardens in the foreground and the harbor and in the distance Acre.

Anyway to make the story of a long trip shorter, I waited and waited for a bus, walked the hills up and down searching for a bathroom which I fortunately found in an expensive hotel where I ate a great American-style hamburger. I eventually returned discouraged to the train station which was packed with IDF soldiers all heading North towards the Lebanese border. That always gives me pause, do these kids know something I don’t know about the start of WWIII? But, not to worry, it was just the normal weekend furlough to home. Instead of returning to Tel Avi, however, I decided to continue going north to Akko which turned out to be a smart decision.

One of the disturbing Israeli characteristics is to take the original name of a place, in this case, the famous city of Acre, and rename it Akko. This is a classic strategy of “invading” peoples designed to wipe out the preceding culture and the hebrewization of names is found everywhere in Israel. For the historian, Acre is a gold mine, Alexander the Great built a mint there, the Roman governor Pontius Pilot got his start in Acre, the Crusaders occupied it as the tour book says, “only temporarily for several centuries” and finally Napoleon suffered a major defeat at its shores. I'M SO EMBARRASSED I JUST LEARNED THAT AKKO WAS THE ORIGINAL NAME AND THE CRUSADERS CHANGED TO ACRE AND THEN IT WAS CHANGED BACK. I still think the Israelis do employ this "classic strategy of invading peoples", but not with Akko.

I think this is the most interesting picture I've taken so far, the walls were built in 1180 by the Crusaders, the basketball courts are Israeli circa 1990's.

Unfortunately, my Fodors didn’t have a map from the train station to the Old City but I decided if I pretended I was an invader attacking from the sea, I could just follow the coast line and run into the fortress. This plan didn’t seem to work very well as I got lost once again in a modern, but small Israeli shopping center. I wandered for about an hour with my MP3 player cranked up listening to the Simon and Garfunkel Central Park album and just as I was about ready to give up and I swear at exactly the moment Simon sang the worlds, “and walked off to look for America…” I turned the corner and ran right into the wall of the Crusaders’ battlements.

The Crusaders' Fortress occupied by both Saladin and King Richard the Lion Heart.

From then on the trip was a breathtaking journey through a truly historical site. I don’t say this often, but the place was dripping with history. I took a wrong turn and found myself hopelessly lost in the warrens of clearly an all Arab (Israeli) neighborhood. The alleys were about 4 feet wide and I kept trying to go left/left/left/left which should have exactly retraced me steps back to my starting place, but of course it only got me deeper into the tenements. The signs, the smells, the music all become Arab, it was getting dark, I was getting very hungry and even though I wasn’t scared I was apprehensive. All along the way signs identified the names of a British officer killed fighting the French in 1820, or a Church that some Crusader Commander had slept at in 1200. Suddenly an Arab boy appeared, gave me a cold look and started walking away. On the back of his jersey was the name “Ronaldo” (the star soccer player for Manchester United), I was so relieved. I thought of the book “How Soccer Unites the World” and tried to search my mind for every bit of Ronaldo trivia I could think of in case I was challenged.

Roman-styled arena located in the middle of an Arab-Israeli neighborhood.

Shortly I emerged into a huge Roman styled arena and on the other side was a wonderful Arab market where I found a sweets shop, ate a dinner made up exclusively of different kinds of baklava. I felt so sick, but every time I said I was full the owner gave me another piece of baklava to try, it would have been impolite to refuse. I finally got away, found the train station and headed by to Tel Aviv, totally exhausted.

I saw this photographer and his model wandering farther and farther out to sea to capture the wind in her face and the surf on her gown, it was a weird image.