The old town of Jerusalem looks like a “hidden object” game from the top of the Church of the Redeemer. The entry ticket to get up there costs 15 NIS per person (CHF 3.75) and is quite a good investment. Especially for me, for I finally get an overview from a distance of this densely populated area with its narrow, crooked streets. It’s easy to loose orientation, it all seems a bit confusing. Speaking of confusion: I am standing on top of a christian church, listening to the muezzin (islamistic call for prayer) that shout over the roofs and I am still fascinated by the jews in their holy day costumes with their fur hats that we crossed just before entering the church.

Jerusalem has a lot of history to tell, being a fact that it is one of the oldest cities in the world. We took different walking tours and visited popular places like the Mount of Olives, the Western Wall, the Garden of Gethsemane, several churches like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Church of the Pater Noster, the Chapel of the Ascension and the Tomb of the Virgin Mary. All of which are within walking distance (for us, anyways…).

We arrived in Jerusalem one day before Rosh Hashanah, the jewish new year. That meant two days of holidays, followed by Shabbat: shops, museums and restaurants were almost all closed for three days. Not to forget the public transport: There were no buses, either. Shortly before everything closed up, we went to the Machne Yehuda Market to get some food and drinks. We sat down in a little coffeeshop inside the market, and enjoyed observing the probably most heterogenic crowd we had seen in a while.

We had a chillin’ time during Rosh Hashanah. One day, early in the morning, we went for a run and passed by the bird observatory. We  had the chance to observe the act of “bird ringing”. Some birds out of a flock of the bird migration were caught in a tight net. The guys that worked at the bird observatory determined type, gender, age, weight and size of the birds and saved the data into an international database. This way, they try to learn more about the routes of the bird migration. As many other countries do the same thing, some of the caught birds already had a ring from another country around their leg. All in all, there are more than 3’000 types of birds in Israel.

The person that told us about the bird observatory in the first place was Dita. She picked us up at the bus station upon arriving from Tel Aviv. She was our first Airbnb host in Jerusalem: She took care of guests in her daughters apartment, who was renting it out while she was on vacation. Dita was very friendly and helpful, and even invited us to her home for coffee. We followed her invitation two days after, and had a serious discussion about faith, veganism and the political situation in Israel. Those were interesting subjects we talked to different people about: Especially young people seemed very open minded, and even told us that a large portion of tolerance is probably the only way of getting around easily in Jerusalem. And while religion is certainly a subject Jerusalem cannot be described without, many of those people don’t seem to feel the need of choosing one single religion. They all agreed that this would be a better place without borders, and without judging people for their beliefs. It remains a fact that Jerusalem is a holy city to three major religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The mixture of those three getting along taught me a great deal about tolerance.