12 May: Galilean See

My bed and breakfast is really nice, especially the breakfast was very rich and good. Sarah and Israel , the owners, are very friendly and helpful.... However, breakfast was at 8 already.. (argh!!) so I took a little nap after breakfast and before leaving at around 10h30 (well, no surprise there, you know me... ;-) ) to discover the Galilean Sea, where Jesus gathered his followers and performed many of his miracles... therefore, there are many sites, where Christian pilgrims go to.. I went there rather because of a general / historic interest than for religious reasons. There were however buses full of pilgrims from all kind of countries. Mostly Italians though, but I have seen also buses with Spaniards, Germans, French and Brazilians (!!), who participate in a tour organised by the catholic church in order to have some people around clapping when Pope Benedictus shows up ( I assume this is at least one of the motives..) ... They were all over, singing and praying, and even "invaded" an archeological site of the former jewish village Korazim, which is famous for having one of the oldest synagogues still preserved. After their "invasion", they held their religious services there because the place is mentioned in the bible (St Matthew states that Jesus deplored their lack of faith..). I found that a bit weird.. The lady at the ticket counter as well, I think, but the two priests and the acompanying person got in the end even a free entrance.. This rather small archeological site probably did not have that many visitors since years... ;-)
The more well known places I visited are:

• the place where Jesus held the sermon on the mount (in German: Bergpredigt), which includes the Lord's prayer and the famous beatitudes. The Franciscans bought the whole mountain and built a church and a monastery on it.
• the place where Jesus fed the 5000 by multiplying 5 loaves of bred and 2 fishes (I have read however somewhere that the place with the current church, on the west side of the lake, is not the original site, which was on the east side. As the Eastern shore became dangerous for pilrims in the 4th and 5th centuries, the scene of the story was just moved to the opposite side of the lake (a bit stange if you see all the pilgrims admiring the stone on which Jesus stood while distributing the bread, no ?? Or did they rip out the stone and brought it to the other shore of the lake ??);
• Just next to this, the place where Jesus appeared, after his death, in order to confer to St Peter the leadership of the and told him to "feed my lambs";
• Capharnaum / Kapernaum, the town where Jesus lived for many years and where St Peter's house, the first Christian church so to say, is still visible... however, they built a horrible church on top of it, probably in the 70ies, which looks like a UFO....: it is suspended above the ruins of the house and from within, you can see the remains of the house through a glass floor (which is actually quite a smart idea, but the building is just so inappropriate on an archeological site and ugly.. but here again, the site was bought by the Franciscans and is thus owned by the Church which probably gives them some flexibility in applying local law on the protection of archeological heritage...

I then tried to visit a winery in the south of the Golan hights, in a small Moshav, but one was somewhere else - 50km away (mistake in the Lonely Planet Guide....tsss!!) and the other one was closed.. I so much wanted to do the wine tasting and buy some bottles.. Tough luck !! So I will have to buy my Israeli wine in the supermarket.

I also went for a quick swim in the Galilean See.. The beaches are nicely situated, but incredibly dirty: there was rubbish everywhere and people I saw there just left all their water bottles and other stuff. In many places around the lake, you are not allowed to swim, others are illegal private beaches, which charge you around 10 Euro to get on the beach (without providing any infrastructure such as showers etc..) which is a lot if you just want to go in for a bit... but in the end, the good Swabian that I am, I found a good spot - for free.. ;-)

On my way back, I stopped at a "baptismal site", where a Kibbutz (!!) organises baptisms in the river Jordan, as they advertise: "close to where Jesus was baptised by St. John the Baptist", as it is still not established where exactly that was... the site is quite idyllic, but I arrived too late and could not see any baptisms (the ones where you get the whole body in the water) anymore, but I could stil go in and put my feet into the river Jordan.. The Kibbutz also sells "the holy water" in little bottles of not even 100ml for 3 $ !!! As if you could not take it yourself.. well, I did not in any case.. ;-) Have a look at their website if you are interested.. http://www.yardenit.com/ ;-)

At the end of the day, I crossed the river Jordan for the second time (once when it enters the Galilean Sea and once its exits..)... but not in the German meaning "über den Jordan gehen", which actually means "to die" well, this was just to play with words... ;-) sorry if you think it was inappropriate...

I also thought it would be interesting to visit the first Kibbutz ever, Degania Aleph, but there was really nothing to see...

Today's photos at

http://picasaweb.google.de/muellju/Israel3?authkey=Gv1sRgCMaboeT08u2V2gE&feat=directlink