Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv is, without doubt, one of my favourite cities in the world.

It's that Tel Aviv has character and the will to live. Everywhere you look you find people getting by somehow and the compassion of the place is infectious; Israelis here come in a million shades and the stories are as thick as the hummus stuffed onto your pitta at the falafel joints. People are loud, hasty and beautifully Israeli.

Tel Aviv started out in the 1880's with the neighbourhood of Neve Tsedek, a settlement of Jews breaking away from the city of Jaffa (Yafo) which today joins onto south Tel Aviv. Israelis prefer not to reflect about that kind of thing, however, as most envisage the Arabs lived in nothing but tents before the return of the pioneer Zionists.

Now of course Tel Aviv is a modern city with universities, train stations and all the rest and is something of a half way house between a European and a Middle Eastern city; everyone is educated but there