Israel: Leaving

We checked-out of our hotel a little after midnight and waited by the entrance to be picked-up by a driver I had hired from Bein Harim Tour Company months ago. They were the same ones we had problems with when we arrived at Ben Gurion Airport and the driver even tried to leave us at some random place instead of our hotel. Because of this bad treatment I was waiting for something awful to happen. I was not disappointed. Bein Harim never showed up!!!!!!!!!!!! I had confirmed everything back in September and was given written confirmation on the dates and times so I know it wasn’t something I had done. It was Bein Harim and their disorganization. I got the feeling of being scammed when going from the airport to the hotel and we got scammed again by them when trying to go from our hotel to the airport. I would NEVER recommend anyone use Bein Harim Tours to transfer from Ben Gurion Airport to your hotel or vice versa. Just take a regular taxi. Since I had heard that Ben Gurion Airport was very tight with their security when flying out of Israel I had planned for extra time. Since Bein Harim never picked us up we had the receptionist at the hotel call a taxi which came a few minutes later. Even though I had already prepaid for Bein Harim I now had to pay the taxi around $100 for the trip. The taxi driver smelled of bad body odor and his taxi smelled of bad incense, but he got us to the airport pretty quickly. When we got to the entrance of the airport the taxi guy turned all the inside lights on and stopped for half a second at the check-point then dropped us off at the terminal.

I was hoping for a better experience leaving Israel than we had when arriving – but that wasn’t to be. Everything seemed disorganized. We waited for the luggage area to be opened. A woman security guard asked us a few brief questions and then left with our passports. When she came back she put a yellow sticker on the back of the passports and let us go to the airline check-in. We were again flying Swiss Airlines.. There were two lines for Swiss Economy (we were really in their Premium Economy Class) and of course I picked the wrong lane. The Swiss employees – all Israelis – were very slow and lazy. They took a long time to even come to the counters and then even longer talking/joking with each other and texting on their cell phones. When they finally started checking people in the lane I had chosen still had no employee. I asked a very surly employee in the other lane if ours was open and he just said “Yes.” After about 10 minutes of waiting a man who had been sitting at another desk flirting with his co-worker walked over to our counter and after getting things ready there finally opened. He didn’t say one word to us. He didn’t us for our passports, he didn’t ask where we were going and he didn’t ask where our final destination was so our bags could be checked right through. I finally had to ask him if our bags were going through to Boston and got a very curt “Yes.”

After checking-in we went to Israeli Exit Immigration. There was a guy standing right in front of the lane for “Foreign Passports” and I went up to him and tried to give him my passport. He was more concerned that I had interrupted his texting and pointed to some self-scan Immigration kiosks. We went over to them and I tried several times (my sister even tried scanning my passport once) and nothing happened. My sister had no problems with her passport and got the same postage stamp-sized Exit Border Card like we got when we arrived. I walked back to the guy and handed him my passport and told him the kiosk told me to see an Immigration officer. He said something in Hebrew, scanned my passport, and basically threw my passport and Exit Card at me and told me to leave him alone. I called him a “prick” and walked away. After Exit Passport Control (with the same dumb self-checkout machines that never work as you see in the markets) we went through Israeli Security. It was not the strict security I was expecting and whereas at Logan we had to take off our shoes and belts and go through a full body scanner in Israel we kept all that on and just walked through a metal detector that looked like it had been in some public school in New York City for decades. After security there was a large waiting area with lots of Duty Free stores and a few places to eat. There was a Pizza Hut open and so we ordered a pizza – even though it was so early in the morning – the cashier barely spoke English – almost no one at the Airport seemed to speak English and it’s really the only airport in the whole country and you would expect them to know English. We then dealt with a woman at a closed coffee shop who also didn’t speak English and then went to another coffee shop and then sat down. When our pizza was ready I went to get it and asked him for two plates. The guy had no idea what “plates” were and I pointed to the plates right next to him and showed two fingers. It wasn’t until an Israeli passenger behind me said it in Hebrew that he finally gave them to me. So much drama for something so simple.

After eating we headed to our gate. We boarded on-time and had the same seats as before. When we took off I was actually very glad to finally be out of Israel. While I had a good time there overall there were way too many problems and issues.

The flight to Zurich was uneventful. When we got to Zurich (the same terminal as before) we had to walk a long way in a semi-circle right after getting off the plane and found ourselves at Swiss Security. That was surprising since we didn’t go through Swiss Security when we had arrived from Boston and were going to Tel Aviv. There were no major issues going through, but afterwards we had to wait several hours for the monitor to tell us which gate to go to. Of course, like before, it was the furthest from where we were. The Zurich Airport at the same one machine to get a WiFi password valid for 2 hours and the men had to walk up 3 flights of stairs to the bathroom. When we were waiting for our gate to be announced we saw several gates get blocked off with barriers. Apparently, it was the airline doing Passport checks and secondary screening. They did the same thing at our gate but we only had to do the Passport check and not the extra screening. I am surprised that they did all of this extra stuff to go to the US and yet did absolutely nothing extra for when we were going to Tel Aviv.

The flight to Boston was long and tiring, but nothing major happened. When we landed at Logan I was prepared for problems and issues since I have had them at Logan before. We deplaned and went to US Immigration/Customs. Logan just completed a new Immigration Arrivals section this year and yet it was pretty confusing. The signs didn’t add up with the lanes and several foreigners went to the US Citizens only lane. We had to first go to the stupid kiosks where you scan your passport, answer the same Customs questions you already answered on the printed form on the plane and then waited for one of two Immigration officers to go through everything again. I don’t see how this is supposed to save time when you are just doing the same thing that the Immigration officer is going to re-do. We did have a little wait, but it wasn’t that long (nothing like the wait or the chaos in Israel.) There was a funny thing that happened when we were waiting in line to see the officer. Besides the fire alarm going off (I wasn’t going to evacuate until I got my bag even if they told me to) a guy with a very thick Spanish accent kept going on the announcements and only saying one or two words before cutting off. Each time he finally added another word to his sentence before cutting off and for every new word we cheered. By the time we got to the Immigration officer the guy was finally able to say his whole, very short, sentence. It was like the Little Engine that could. The Immigration officer took our slips and passports asked us where we were coming from (to which we said “Israel”) handed our passports back to us and said “Welcome Home.” It was sweet and simple. Sadly, I didn’t get a single Immigration stamp in my passport this whole trip.

After Immigration we picked-up our bags with no issues and headed out of the terminal. It was by far the quickest and stress-free Immigration/Customs arrival I have ever had at Logan. We got the shuttle to the off-site airport parking lot we have used many times before, paid and then headed right into rush-hour Boston traffic. We got lost once because we listened to our GPS rather than follow the street signs, but eventually made it out of Boston. We stopped for dinner at Friendly’s (because that’s what you do at the very end of traveling for 22 hours straight.) We made it back home, saw the house was fine, started unpacking, I downloaded some pictures to Facebook and tried to relax as best we could. The next day I picked up my dog from the kennel  - she had just been groomed – and then came home to start writing these entries. Even during my trip I was hounded by several people on Facebook to add pictures and write about the trip even before the events and tours had happened. 

All-in-all I have to say that the trip to Israel was a good one. It was not the best trip I have ever taken and it was not the worst trip I have ever taken. I spent around 8 months researching, planning and even had everything pre-paid for the trip (including coming with Swiss Francs for Zurich and Israeli New Shekels for Israel) and now it seems that I didn’t get as much of an experience as I thought or hoped I would. I do believe the Israelis have to work on their organizational skills. They seem to have everything organized for military matters, but not for: airports, schedules, signage, driving, tours, basic living, etc.) There also doesn’t seem to be a Hebrew word for “Customer Service” and telling someone “Is Ok” doesn’t mean it really is okay or that you solved anything. We kept hearing, throughout Israel and the West Bank, how few tourists come visit and that they were so glad we had come and to tell our friends to also come. Maybe if they fixed the issues I wrote above more people would come. Also, there’s no need to be scared about security check-points (there were none at any stores, hotels, markets, restaurants or the majority of religious sites as I had been told and had read about) throughout Israel. They are few and far between and when they were there it was more of the kind of security people used decades ago – both the practices and equipment used. I encountered tighter security going to the musical “Chicago” in Moscow a few months after the Chechen terrorists took over a theater and many hostages were killed by both the Chechens and the poison gas the Russians used to free them – then I did anyplace in Israel (including David Ben Gurion Airport.) I know some people will ask if I would recommend going to Israel. I DO NOT recommend using Bein Harim Tourism Company for airport/hotel pick-ups/drop-offs, but DO recommend going to Israel (as long as you realize they go by  Mediterranean time and not Israeli time and that everything will be a lot more expensive.) With that said you will get to see lots of important and historical places (both from Biblical times as well as more modern times.)