That’s the number of kilometres I’d already flown in 2012 when I received an invite to visit Israel. Having spent so much of the year reclining at 40,000 feet, I had previously been contemplating avoiding anything but train travel for the rest of the year. But the opportunity to take in a country and a culture that I had never been immersed in before was an opportunity too good to pass up.
Tel Aviv’s lights had reflected upon the Mediterranean Sea for mere minutes before the jet touched down upon the tarmac of the country’s only international airport. In the sub-ten minutes that it took to pass through passport control, collect my bags and relax in the back of a car far comfier than any plane, I encountered what would become the key face of the country: the welcoming one. That ought to surprise you – as contradictory as it is, airports are seldom welcoming places. Fly into the likes of New York’s JFK airport without a local passport and you’ll receive a welcome as hospitable as a riding a broomstick into a Spanish Inquisition trial, black cat in tow. But from passport control, to security, to my driver, smiles abounded.
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