The Road To Pilgrimage: February 1, 2009, Part 3

We are dropped, with our luggage, at the Jerusalem bus station and find our way onto the express bus for Haifa. Not seeing two seats open together, I make my way to the back seat, but am not followed by Enayat, who sits with a pleasant lady and has a pleasant journey.

I am seated next to two men cheerfully getting drunk on Vodka which they have in a Coca Cola bottle. At first they are pleasant. One of them keeps asking questions about the Baha'i Faith and I eventually refer him to the Internet. He talks about his messy divorce, his children in Sweden which he has just left. The young, drunken soldier next to him decides to urinate into the Coca Cola bottle. Eventually my seatmate is turning on his laptop and playing a Seinfeld episode dealing with the subject of masturbation, and asking me if I am the "master of my domain." This behavior escalates to intolerable by the time we reach Haifa. The worst of this is my concern that my first view of the terraces and the Shrine of the Bab should occur under these circumstances. Fortunately, this does not happen.

At the Haifa bus station we take a bus on Enayat's initiative which goes up to Carmel Center. I protest; center of what? After a long and confusing ride up the mountain, we get off at Carmel Center and are looking around for signs indicating the Nof Hotel. A young man Enayat asks directions of gives us a lift to the Nof. He says, "most people find Israelis rather brutal," but we say, no, most have been very friendly.

Nof Hotel, at last, 2000.