"I Saw Him Putting on His Pants": Day Three

This day was a mostly filled with tedious and often times nerve wracking trips on busses. To get from where we were to where we wanted to be was a little bit complicated and we ended up traveling on four busses to get to our next hotel and waiting at train stations for what felt like hours. We rode from Akhziv, back into Nahariyya, to Acre (Akko), Amiad, and then to our hostel in Karei Deshe.

Despite the marathon bus rides, there were two pretty awesome parts of traveling that made it all worth it - well, other than getting to our actual destination. When we got to the bus stop at the Amiad Junction the bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere. It couldn’t have been more nowhere. The landscape is very hilly with gold stalks of some kind of plant and it’s hot. There is small road crew working on repainting the lines in the stress and us and that’s it. Our bus wasn’t scheduled to come for another hour and so we sat down in what little shade the bus stop offered and prepared to wait. Just after settling in we saw a man approaching the bus stop from the right. And as he is descending the hill towards the bus stop it clicks to me that the something I can’t put my finger on that isn’t quite right about him is that he doesn’t have any pants on. He’s not naked, but those certainly were his undies and not his shorts. Max emailed about the experience to his brother and I’ll let him retell the story.

“We were taking buses all the way in from the Mediterranean to the Galilee two days ago and we were stuck at this ridiculous bus stop north of the lake. Suddenly, we see this disheveled, pantsless Israeli walking towards us with a goofy grin, a boat cap and a backpack. Seriously, no pants, no shorts, just some skimpy boxers that had probably lasted long past their sell-by date. Anyhoo, he walks around the side of the bus stop for some privacy to put pants over his ratty boxers and Brooke leans over to me and says "I just saw him putting. on. his. pants."

I would like to add that he didn’t put his pants on immediately, he hung around for a little bit talking to Max before nonchalantly reaching into his bag for his pants. The “putting on his pants” is a Stoneman joke that they will especially appreciate, but you don’t have to know the joke to appreciate the insanity of this moment.

(Here is a video of the nothingness)


The second moment that was hilarious in hindsight, but a little nerve racking at the time was when Max told two religious teens waiting at the bus stop where we thought we were headed. “Karei Deshei?” The red headed one said with his eyebrows arched way above his glasses. “Karei Deshei?” He repeated incredulously. He then went on to discuss in Hebrew with the man painting the street that he’d never heard of this place and certainly this American had the wrong information and maybe the street painter man could explain it to us in English. “Karei Deshei?” he said, as if to say “Good luck, you sucker”. Karei Deshei wasn’t on the pantsless man’s map either (yes, we made friends) and so we were indeed a bit worried at this point. Our bus picked us up a while later and with the help of a newly immigrated guy riding the bus to his next military post we made it to our hostel in Karei Deshei, which did actually exist.

The courtyard at the Karei Deshe Guest House. It was delightful.