Sherut Shenanigans

Part of the adventure of traveling about Israel is the Sherut vans which are often the cheapest way to get around between cities. Although sheruts are cheap, unfortunately the schedule is not set; the van only goes when it is full, so you may be waiting around for a while. Visit any bus station or other central meeting place in any Israeli city and you will find these white ten seater vans with drivers standing around, smoking cigarettes and yelling out their one or two word vocabulary.
"Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv"
"HAI-fa, HAI-fa"
"Ramallah, Ramallah, Ramallah!""
If you happen to make eye contact, the inflection changes to
"Tel Aviv?" and when you shake your head no, they look away and go back to
"Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv"

This morning at 3:45 am, we got picked up by a special airport sherut that goes door to door. We were the second pick up of the morning, which means we got two of the seats near the front. Which is good because the next half an hour was an adventurous journey, spent going MACH speed though the twisty streets of Jerusalem. All I could do was hold on for dear life, feebly guess what neighborhood we may be in now, and try to keep my hastily scarfed bran-flakes down. You may think I am exaggerating, but one of the passengers lost her cookies this morning and the sheroot had to pull over for her. The driver was kind but it was clear this was not the first time a passenger had gotten car sick. He just waited till she was done, she hopped back in the van with a very green face and we were off again.

We went everywhere picking up the rest of the passengers: crazy back streets through Katamon, more crazy back streets to out past the yummy shawarma place Assi and Amit took me too, through more back streets to the neighborhood with the big red monster statue, more back streets and a curvy dark road to a moshava, which is a gated community that does communal farming- kinda like a kibbutz but without collective ownership. More curvy black roads for a few minutes and the pop! We were out on the highway near the intersection where my boss lives.

But no worries, we got to the airport with plenty of time, paid only 100 shekels (30 bucks) for the both of us rather than near 300 shekels (90 bucks) for a cab. And here I sit, drinking a McCoffee and waiting for the flight to open and using the free wireless internet in the Tel Aviv airport.