You think you're old?

It is amazing how easy it is to forget how old the world is. America is all so new...at least the US, it is just so...inside the box. All the buildings go straight up, and if they are old, it is merely paint peeling, or siding rusting. Here, you walk past buildings and the windows are merely holes carved out, and then lined with curtains. Old mud-brick buildings are crumbling, and some are merely carcases of what they once were.

Even more fascinating to me is how easy it is to step from one world into another. There is a street here that separates to parts of Tel Aviv: one side is Neve Tsedek, and the other side is Rothschild Blvd. It is as if I am stepping from the past into the future, every time I cross that path. One side is all pink and beige sand stone, and roofs of red stone. The other side is high-rise apartments, and Israel's version of Starbucks "EspressoCafe." I guess it is just as easy to find such disparate spaces back at home...I mean, walking down Wilson Blvd is like jumping from 1960 to 2000 in about 2 blocks, but it is so different when even the paving of the streets changes character.

It is just very reassuring to hear and see and feel the way an old world can remain so wholly intact. Even the efforts to update these old buildings maintain a balance of the old with the new, ignoring any expectation to build some up-to-date model of a home. As you walk around tel aviv, you can see the foot print of the past as it has been laid over the years, and beyond that even, the culture holds on to the old world. Despite the fact that Israel itself became a country a mere 60 years ago, the ground on which that country has been built is still ripe with history in all its forms.