9 May: Arrival, Haifa and Druze settlement

Arrival
Despite all the rumours about difficult border controls when arriving in Israel, things went relatively smoothly. This was however probably due to the fact that i had asked for another passport before leaving as I had stamps/visas from several muslim countries, inter alia Libya, in the other one.. Since I had a visa for Jordan in it (where I will go on the same trip and at the border post that I will use they do not give the visa), they nevertheless gave me a card with an "O" on it, whereas all the other received a card which looked differently.. When I wanted to walk out to get my luggage, I was stopped and questioned by a young woman dressed in civilian, but from the military it seems, while all the others just walked out... she asked me why I came to Israel, why I had a visa for Jordan, why I wanted to go there, why I had this strange passport.. (and here was the moment I had to lie... . but I think I did it quite well, she believed me...) As she wanted to know where I was going, I showed her my itinerary (printed out with all the infos on it) and she was quite surprised. I made a joke daying "I am German after all!" and she laughed (!!) She also asked me where I worked, wanted to see my business card, asked specifically what I was dealing with at the Commission and in the end asked me how it was possible that I could just take three and a half weeks off... (!!) I told her that I deserved it after months of hard work and she laughed again.. - I do however not know what was so funny about that.. it was just the TRUTH !! ;-) she was done with her "interview" after 5 minutes .. EASY !! ;-) I then went to the car rental to get my car.. an automatic car.. I hate them (actually never ever drove any... and had to ask - ahat a shame !!! (do not laugh!!) how to deal with D+ / D - / D / N / P ... He told me that I should forget about the + and - and just put D to Drive, P to Parc .. really, what a shame: so EASY ! .. even worse when I started .. the first hundreds of meters were awful.. I braked all the time.. confusing that there are only two pedals.. and then I wanted to change gears all the time on the motorway and went into N (neutral) .. AWFUL !!!!!!
After some time it went ok though and after a day of driving, I am now a professional .. ;-)

HAIFA
From the airport, at 4 in the morning I drove directly -according to my schedule - up North to Haifa (70km) .. just 15 km from there, in Atlit, I drove to the beach and stopped to sleep a little bit as I was really tired and the hotel in Haifa only openened at 8 in the morning. After a nice little walk on the beach and putting my toes in the water, I had three nice hours of sleep in the car.. Finding the hotel in Haifa was easy and the girl at the reception was Belgian and grew up in Brussels.. She now lives in Haifa with her parents, who opened the guesthouse...
I visited the beautiful Baha'i gardens first. Haifa is the world's religious centre of the Baha'i religion, a religion born only in the 19th century.. there are an estimated 6 million Baha'i all over the world in 75 countries. In addition to the two prophets who are considered the founders of this religion, they integrate other prophets such as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Buddha and Krishna.

The gardens are a central part of their sanctuary (in addition to the shrine with the prophet in the middle of it) and each Baha'i should during his life climb up at least once the 1400 stairs of the Baha'i garden... I climbed at least some of them... ;-)
Another interesting place in Haifa is the German colony, which was founded by people of my region (Württemberg) who came here in 1868 to create an exemplary christian community... the houses have recently been renovated and the area is now the trendiest place in town with nice restaurants and bars.. unfortunately most of them were closed as it was Shabbat..
That is why also the rest town was quite empty and so I decided to take my car and to drive to a Druze village 15km from Haifa.

Daliyat-al-Karmel
This is the largest Druze settlement in Israel. The Druze are a distinct social and religious group, speaking arabic and practicing a secret religion, which is an offspring of Islam. While believing in Allah, they believe at the same time in reincarnation. There were no particular sights there, but it was nevertheless a very dynamic town, with men all dressed in black and with white turbans, women in black with white scarves... Most Druzes live in Syria and in Lebanon. In Israel they have even a separate division in the Israeli army...!! I first tried a local pancake with fresh goat cheese, herbs and olive oil and then sat down in a bakery and had a mint tea with local sweets. That was sooo good !!