Holy Smokes - our flight to Tel Aviv

After fighting with the wireless internet, the non-wireless internet, and my computer for an hour, I finally am able to let you all know that WE MADE IT!!

In short, we flew from Paris to Tel Aviv through Frankfurt and arrived at the hostel around 3:30 this morning. Surprisingly, after all of the horror stories we had heard, the security checks were not at all worse than what one must endure flying into the US over Christmas, and the security personnel were much more polite. Even the border guards, fabled to be harsh inquisitors, were nothing but a bunch of pleasant young women asking harmless questions like "where were you born?" and "what is a harp?" (granted, neither El nor I look terribly dangerous, especially that late at night). I was expecting questions like the ones my poor long-suffering husband has to answer when clearing immigrations in the US: "Are you a convicted sex offender?" is my personal favorite. Upon our arrival at the hostel, El's passport got confiscated by the night security guard - complete with scary pistol at his side - until this morning for "security checks". I guess she looks scarier than I do.

The highlight of yesterday's trip, however, was our flight from Paris to Frankfurt. At the entrance of the plane (a Lufthansa A321, for those of you who are interested), we were reassured by the following plaque:

Having breathed a sigh of relief, crossed ourselves (at least I did) and found our seats, we began to notice, with no little anxiety, that the plane was smoking. There was steam coming from the upper part of the cabin walls, where they meet the panels with the fasten-seatbelt and the somewhat now ironic no-smoking signs. It looked at first like we were being gassed, then when nothing happened, we settled on a more rational explanation. It must have been some strange atmospheric effect caused by a difference in humidity and temperature between the outside and inside of the plane. This smoke proved to be very difficult to photograph, but here is my best shot:

No one seemed to be too worried about it, so we followed suit, and worked on studying scores together. For my last picture, El's ear being illuminated by Salzedo's Scintillation (!)