A Perfect Day

It was the first rain of the season. A light rain in the morning, the kind that makes you want to roll over in bed and pull the covers tight to lock in the warmth. I was awoken by a friend to go get a coffee and some ‘Borekas Ima’. As we sat on the sidewalk drinking our freshly brewed shots of energy and pastries filled with all sorts of delicacies except not halva because my friend is allergic, we pondered what we should do with the rest of the day…..It was a day for an adventure….

We decided to head off to Tel Aviv to check out the Art exhibition at the Redding Power Station. We investigated the advert in the paper and as there were no instructions on how to get there in the add, so we called the number they listed. I spoke in my best Hebrew to the person on the other end; this didn’t help. She was still unable to tell me what number bus to take from the central bus station in Tel-Aviv to get there, all she could tell me was that it was an Egged (Jeruslaem based) bus as opposed to a Dan (Tel-Aviv) bus and it would drop us in the car park and then there would be another bus to take us to the actual exhibition. In addition it actually only opens at 5pm, because even though the whole country is on holiday during Succot they can’t be open during the day???

Withheld information aside we decided to go earlier and hang around Neve Tzedek in Tel Aviv. When we arrived at the Tel-Aviv central bus station we asked at the Egged information: (Imagine this in Hebrew)
“What bus goes to Redding?”
“Not Egged, you have to go to Dan”
“We went there and they told us to go to Egged”
“It’s the number 89”
“Could I have a timetable?”
(Woman humphs because she has to get of her chair – I mean it’s not like this is her job)

We then proceed to catch the No.4 Dan bus to get to Neve Tzedek….we walk a little from a stop on Allenby to get there. It is an outlet of colour in a rather dreary cosmopolitan jungle. Suddenly I felt like I was in the Mediterranean with splashes of flowers hanging from windows, wooden shutters and boutique shops. We lazily walked around exploring side streets and the Nachum Guttman Museum. We sat in a coffee shop and people gazed. It is the equivalent of Paddington (Sydney) in Israel.

After we had looked at every street and all the different houses, we decided to head back to the Central Bus Station. Once there we tried to find the 89 bus stop and couldn’t, we walked in the general direction of where other 80’s buses were driving and eventually found a stop. We arrived at the Parking lot of Redding. When we looked around to try and find the bus that was meant to take us to the event we found a bus stop for the No.4 bus which apparently goes to Redding as well – a potentially useful piece of information had we known it 3 hours previously. With no signs saying this way or arrows, we asked the parking lot attendant where the bus to the exhibition was and he said there was no bus and we should walk there. So we started to walk there and then we found a bus.

The exhibition was sponsored by Ha’aretz and entitled ‘Strength’. Most pieces were in some way associated with the army. From a chandelier made of M-16’s and bullets, to photographs a kid dressed in police uniform to video media of the army. This for me reflected how much the army permeates into Israeli culture. It is a focal point for young Israeli artists as they have probably beginning their artistic careers after the arm. For me – there is something disturbing about ‘strength’ in the form of ‘army’ being an inspiration for artistic expression. I can’t pinpoint it, but it is almost sad that is the association. Sigalit Landau seems to always pop up as a young contemporary Israeli artist and probably someone to keep an eye on – her installation was a video of an eye blinking and every now and again the eye ball would change to be one of those metal music things that when you wind it plays a tune, and as it turned in the socket a tune was heard…Trying not to analyse that in my head too much.

We caught the No4 back to the central bus station and eventually we were back in Jerusalem, smelling the dampness of the first rain again.