Israel is a special, sacred place for billions of people around the world. Christians, Muslims and Jews all come to the place for its religious significance. And I? I mainly went to trace my family's footsteps, made in 1997 when my grandparents took everyone to the Holy Land. My trip was an amazing experience with some sharp edges. I think the best way to explain why is by showing you the spontaneous thoughts I had in Israel.

Nappy rash is possibly the worst thing I experienced as a baby. Not that I have any conscious memories of it, but there's an experience I had as a baby in Israel's Dead Sea that planted itself so firmly in my brain that I still instinctively shy away from salt water. There's this hint of a memory of a burning sensation, connected to being immersed in water. My mom told me I'd screamed and cried when I went 'swimming' in the Dead Sea at the age of one, while suffering from nappy rash. Twenty years later, I wanted a do-over. No screaming, no crying, just peaceful floating in the Dead Sea. I got my do-over in June, but... it was nothing like I'd imagined.

My big day started with a quick visit to the citadel of Masada. I wanted to climb the path to the citadel like my dad and cousin had done 20 years earlier, but my tour guide vetoed this plan. Because of this and the way he'd acted in Jerusalem, I was starting to suspect that he wasn't a big fan of adventures that had nothing to do with the Bible. My suspicions were confirmed when we spent ages talking about biblical events that took place at Ein Gedi (all I remember is that some king's father-in-law took a dump in a cave, sorry) and only got 20 minutes to take pictures and swim near the waterfall. Since the Dead Sea has no ties to any big biblical events as far as I know, me and the friends I'd made on this trip feared we'd get only a few minutes to enjoy this iconic place. Sadly, we turned out to be right.

After a short, very short visit to the place where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, we finally took the bus down to the banks of the Dead Sea. It was late in the afternoon already and with every cute and Instagrammable beach we passed, I got a little more frustrated. It wasn't like we had all the much time left in our day and I wanted to jump into that stingy salty water sooner rather than later.
Finally, the bus stopped at Kalia Beach, the very last beach on the western bank of the Dead Sea. It didn't look quite as cute and Instagrammable as most of the beaches we'd passed, but I didn't want to judge right away. The most important thing for me at that moment was getting my bikini on asap. Changing turned into quite the struggle though: first I had to walk past and through a few souvenir shops full of products with Dead Sea salt to get to a changing room. The changing room itself was a nightmare for a prudish, insecure and skinny girl like me. In one gigantic room without any cubicles, surrounded by loads of women, most of them middle-aged or older, in various states of undress, I struggled to get my bikini on while keeping as much of myself covered as possible.
My bikini wasn't cooperating at all. The temperature in the changing room was well above 30 degrees Celsius and the humidity high enough to support marine life. Every piece of fabric that came close to my skin got stuck like I was some kind of sweaty magnet. A few minutes that felt like a few hours later, I sprinted out of the changing room. As expected, we'd only gotten 60 minutes to spend on this beach and I'd wasted an awfully big amount of that time on getting changed.

My friends were already waiting for me on the beach and we quickly walked in the opposite direction of the rest of our tour group. We passed the Lowest Bar in the World, then finally saw the entire beach. It looked nothing like the Dead Sea beach I knew from the pictures of our 1997 family vacation. Kalia Beach was filled with cheap plastic lawn chairs and parasols that'd seen better days. It was also pretty crowded, so we made our way to the far end of the beach, where there were still some empty chairs left. We slipped and slid all the way, not getting much grip on the brown mud. There was a weird, slimy sheen over everything, making me feel like I was on a beach shortly after an oil tanker had crashed into it. I felt dirty. Disgusting.
'Now I know how birds feel in oil spills,' I said out loud, sticking to that allegory.
'It's certainly not the prettiest beach a tour guide could have taken us to.' Truer words were not spoken that day. 200 meters to our left, a chainlink fence marked the border with Jordan. All around us, everything was covered in a thin layer of brown, slimy water and salt. To the right, I could see a prettier, cleaner beach behind a small patch of reeds and other plants. I wasn't too happy with the whole situation, but decided to try and enjoy the whole experience anyway.


After I dumped my stuff on one of the many slimy lawn chairs, I kicked off my flipflops and tried to make a run for the water. Within five seconds I ran back, crying for my flipflops (and secretly, in my mind, I was crying for my mom). The muddy shore burnt my feet, making me feel like I was walking through fire. I took my flipflops with me as far as I could, though everything in this environment becomes slippery within seconds and as a result, I spent quite a few moments with my heels, toes or the sides of my feet touching the scorching mud.

Leaving my beloved Havaianas on the bank was difficult. Half of the planet seems to have the same black pair I have, and since I saw quite a few get picked up by other tourists by mistake in my time in Thailand, I hoped I'd see them back by the end of the day. My mind was filled with small worries like this one. It was quite stressful. How much time did I have left? What if I'd slip and fall? What if I'd accidentally swallow a mouthful of Dead Sea water? That could kill me, my buzzkill of a tour guide had said multiple times.
Carefully, I stepped into the water, trying to remain steady on my feet. On top of my conscious worries, the instinct born out of burning nappy rash making my previous visit to the Dead Sea a living hell. Of course, the moment I realized that, I slipped and fell...

I'M GOING TO DIE.
I'll swallow water and die.
That's all I could think as my legs gave way and my upper body splashed into the Dead Sea. I took a deep breath, braced myself for the moment my head would break through the surface. It didn't happen. My hands found solid ground, as did my knees. I let out an almost hysterical laugh, then waded further into the water. It didn't burn at all, though there was a slightly unpleasant tingle, which made rubbing mud and water all over me like some tourists do sound very unappealing.
When the water was up to my thighs, I leaned back and let myself float away. It actually worked, even though I usually sink within seconds of entering any body of water. I was tense though, afraid of swallowing water, annoyed by the shabbiness of Kalia Beach, rushed because of the lack of time we had at this unique place. I paddled around for a while, unable to fully enjoy it. I smiled for the camera as my friends took pictures, but wished I was on one of the fancier beaches.
Then, for no particular reason, I decided to let it all go. I leaned back further, until the salty water filled my ears. The noise of dozens of tourists disappeared. I looked up at the cloudless sky and saw the moon. I smiled. For the first time in months, maybe even years, I was at peace.


Despite the beauty of that moment, I wasn't fully able to shake my disappointment off when I left the water. But my Havaianas were still where I left them, so that was a plus. I sat down on one of the lawn chairs and slipped off right away. There was a slimy sheen on my skin. I'd gone from oil spill bird to slippery slug. I took a sip from the can of lukewarm coke I'd gotten at the KFC in Bethlehem the day before. Before I could finish it, or even take any good pictures for this blog post, I had to rush back to the bus. I was happy that I didn't end up crying like I did on my 1997 visit, but also a little frustrated that I hadn't gotten the time to relax and enjoy the Dead Sea on my own terms (read: take decent pictures and write on the beach). And so my visit became a paradox: a disappointment, but a satisfying one.

'You're staying in Bethlehem for the next three nights,' the tour guide announced. 'From what I've heard, as I'm not allowed to go there because I'm Jewish, it's a boring city with very little to do, especially at night.'
I raised my eyebrows in surprise, skeptical. I hadn't been in Israel for long, but long enough to question the tour guide. He had quite a few opinions I didn't agree with at all. I wondered if he'd be right about Bethlehem. It's a weird thing to hear a tour guide be so negative about a place you're staying in. I was used to getting recommendations, but I'd never heard a guide flat-out say that there's nothing to do just before you enter a new city where you're going to spend three nights. Call it boring even. So I braced myself and prepared for the worst. I'd only spend three nights in the Palestinian Territories, and though three boring nights is nothing to look forward to, I told myself I'd be fine. I had my book and a notepad: enough to keep me entertained for three boring nights.

Right after our tour guide's uplifting announcement, we joined the little traffic jam at Checkpoint 300. Getting through the West Bank Barrier already proved a tedious task, But the minute we actually entered the Palestinian Territories, I started to seriously doubt the tour guide's words. Enormous murals covered the Palestinian side of the wall. A larger than life Donald Trump peered through a crack, the colors of Palestine were everywhere. My heart skipped a beat; I love me some political street art. Mere seconds later, I spotted an original Banksy and I just knew I was going to like this place.

That night, I tagged along with half of my tour group for a tour of Jerusalem by night. We spent the next morning at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. I was starting to wonder why the tour guide had made a point of labeling Bethlehem as boring when we'd spend very little time there anyway. It wasn't until the afternoon that we got to explore Bethlehem by ourselves. Most people in the tour group to go with some other tour guide to see some places of biblical significance. I decided to join them for a little while, as their first stop would be the Nativity Church, built in the exact location where Jesus was born. Despite having no connection to Christianity whatsoever, I had to visit this church.

The Nativity Church was being restored, with scaffolding hiding most of the interior. The parts that weren't covered were decorated with so many baubles and other stuff that it made me dizzy. I was glad when I entered the cavern to the place where Jesus entered this world. The cavern is bare and basic, not special at all if you had no idea what happened there once upon a time. Still I'd recommend a visit. What happened on that very spot according to the Bible is still influencing the lives of billions of people every single day. Maybe it's just me, but I think that's not boring at all.

Okay, I know there are a lot of people who would call the Nativity Church boring. But that's not all Bethlehem has to offer. When I left the church, I was almost literally bouncing with excitement for my next little adventure: I was going to look at the art on the West Bank Barrier with a Frysian couple from the tour group, with whom I became friends thanks to a shared interest in things that the tour guide didn't want us to see. We walked back to the West Bank Barrier and approached it from Manger Street, taking our time to enjoy the streets of the old city center.
The West Bank Barrier itself was an absolute highlight for me. Palestinians came up to us to tell their story and we saw the side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that the tour guide tried to keep from us. Even if you don't care about politics, it's a great place to spend a few hours. The art is top notch and if you want to, you can hire spray cans and leave your own mark on the wall. And of course, there's the Walled Off Hotel for the dedicated Banksy fans among us.


We still had quite some time left when we returned to the streets of Old Town Bethlehem. Walking those streets is another thing some people may find boring, but I loved it. This part of town is so picturesque and full of character that I would've snapped shots of every piece of pavement if the sun and shadows hadn't ruined the lighting. For me personally, it was also fun to wander the streets of Bethlehem because a former co-worker of mine used to live there. 'I wonder if she's been here. Or here. Or here,' I found myself thinking.
My Frysian friends and I found ourselves on a rooftop terrace, where we had some drinks before we ended the day at the KFC with the best view a fast food chain could possibly have. I'd already enjoyed Bethlehem way more than I'd initially expected, and still had one night left in the town.


The next morning we left Bethlehem once again, this time for a visit to the citadel of Masada, Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea. We returned late in the afternoon and for the first time, I felt a little bored. My friends and I went to the market, but all the stalls were cleared out already. We then went back to our rooftop terrace, which was closed for some mysterious reason. In search of a new terrace, I mistook a Jesus museum for a restaurant, but I like to pretend that never happened. In the end, we settled for a place on Manger Square, right next to the mosque, which almost blew my eardrums out with its call to prayer. Honestly though, I loved being there and watching life happen on the Square while my friends and I talked about just about everything. We ended our day, and our stay in Bethlehem, on another rooftop terrace with a view of the entire city.

Looking back on my time in Bethlehem, I can't say I was ever truly bored. I actually get a bit annoyed when I think about the tour guide saying there's nothing to do there. It is simply not true. Bethlehem is a place you need to explore on your own. You have to put some effort in. And the more effort you put in, the more Bethlehem will have to offer you. So don't let old men put you off. Go out and explore!

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With swift movements, my hairdresser started cutting off about 30 centimeters of my hair. It was a spontaneous idea, born the minute she picked up a few strands to examine my curls. I immediately agreed to her plan. Every time I looked in the mirror, my hair reminded me of the shitty chapters of my life that I wanted to leave behind for good.

Since late 2015, I've worn my hair long. Very long, usually till halfway down my back. I think I had a grand total of three haircuts between then and now, and I always stuck to the same hairstyle. My hair was long when I went through a serious break-up, my hair was long when I was more or less forced to quit college, my hair was long when I was in therapy for my inferiority complex. And it was long when I started hating blogging for becoming overly commercialized.
Somehow all these negative experiences and feelings became entangled in my long curly hair. My hair represented every trauma I wanted to leave behind. Instead, I was confronted with them every time I looked in the mirror. Eventually, I started avoiding reflective surfaces, especially when my parents were traveling in Canada and I was too busy keeping the house habitable. Those were some strange weeks. My body was busy, but my mind sat idly in the corner. I spent most of those days slowly making a plan for the future. I didn't blog so I wouldn't get distracted. Neither did I write or read much. Pretty soon I was focused on getting ready for university. And as the pieces of the puzzle of this new time in my life were presented to me, I decided I don't want to be a blogger. I want to be a storyteller, and this blog will be my medium. The minute I came to this conclusion was the minute I felt like I could finally chase my dreams and make them come true at university.
Yet on the rare occasions when I saw my own reflection again, I was reminded of the unhappy, failed blogger who'd dropped out of college. I'd fall back into a gloomy pit of destructive thoughts. The past swallowed me whole whenever I looked in a mirror. I knew I could not let that keep happening. I had to make a change. And that's why I decided to cut my hair off. So I could let my life begin again at university without constantly being reminded of the past.

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In a few seconds, my long hair was gone. A few minutes later, I had a short, wavy bob. I couldn't help but smile when I saw myself in the mirror.
My hairdresser showed me the ponytail she'd just cut off. 'It's really heavy,' she said as she handed me my hair. It weighed way more than I expected, as if it really was saturated with all the pain, all the hurt and all my demons from the past few years. I grinned as my hairdresser dumped it all in the bin. 'You're free.'
'I'm free,' I said too. Free to start over, free to begin again. Finally. I'm ready to turn the page and start the next chapter. Will you join me?

One of the main to go for group travel to join on my trip to Israel was that everything would be planned out and confirmed already. You get some time to explore by yourself here and there, but visits to museums and transportation to the next city are all taken care of. So every morning in the Middle East, I'd look at the travel program I'd gotten and know what's up - until we hit Jerusalem. As it turns out, the travel organization had given out two different programs, with some significant differences between them. One stated we'd get half a day to ourselves to explore Jerusalem, the other said this would happen in Bethlehem. A quick vote decided we'd spend that afternoon in Bethlehem. I quietly cheered: this meant that I could go look at the street art on the West Bank Barrier!


The West Bank Barrier, under construction since 2000 by Israel, is a hideous concrete structure that spans 708 kilometers, separating the Palestinian West Bank from Israel. It's also known as the Separation Wall, Security Fence or Wall of Apartheid. The wall legendary in the street art world, partially because of how much space it offers, mainly because Banksy left some clear political statements on it. After seeing his work framed at exhibitions in Antwerp and Amsterdam I was dying to see Banksy's art in the wild. My tour guide, a very anti-Palestine man, completely lost his temper when he heard me say I was excited to go to the Barrier for the art.
'Do you even know why that wall was built?!' he basically yelled at me. I admitted that I didn't. As it turns out, the Israelis say that they built a concrete barrier to protect themselves from Muslim suicide bombers. The Palestinians, however, see it as racial segregation. They're vocal about it, and one way to show how they feel about the situation is through art on the very thing that symbolizes the problems in the region. It's this combination of art and politics that drew me to the West Bank Barrier while the rest of the tour group went to visit churches and biblical places as usual.


After a very brief, more or less obligatory visit to the Church of the Nativity with the entire group, I set out for the wall with the friends I'd made in the group, a young Frisian couple. We walked through the old city and soon saw the first signs of Banksy's visit in the shape of some relatively small stencils depicting children playing with bombs and toys made of barbed wire. One of these stencils happened to be on the corner of the street our hotel was on. It was a nice warm-up for what was to come, though we decided to take a little detour to one of Banksy's works on the wall of the Palestinian Heritage Center on Manger Street. Here, a huge white dove in a bulletproof vest offers an olive branch while trapped in a sniper's crosshairs. My Frisian friends hadn't seen it yet, so I showed them the mural and explained how it was made. In terms of artistry and message, it was one of my favorite pieces of the day.

Once we'd taken enough pictures to last us a lifetime, we left for the wall for real now. We approached it from Manger Street, then Hebron Road, where we were greeted by concrete blocks with slogans in crude spray painted letters on them. For a second I was scared. Up until that moment, I hadn't really thought about safety much, as Bethlehem was so calm and the people so friendly. But the concrete blocks and enormous watch towers sent shivers down my spine. What if walking too close to the barrier would be viewed as a threat by the Israeli army? At the same time, my mind registered the details and size of the enormous murals and I realized those were a sign of safety: if anyone approaching the wall would be seen as a threat, there would be no art there.


We walked straight up to the barrier, down an alley were not many tourists seemed to come. I was in street art heaven. I snapped picture after picture and eventually even climbed up on the base to slap one of my own stickers on the West Bank Barrier. It was so different from all the biblical places I'd visited with the group. It was beautiful in a painful way. It made me want to change the world in ways I can't, because I simply don't have that kind of political power. All I can do is talk and write about Palestine, just like most Palestinians can only paint on this awful wall to let their voices be heard.


"Make hummus, not walls" seems to be the slogan of the Palestinians, though they also don't shy away from calling the West Bank an 'outdoor prison' on the endless concrete. There are official plaques with information, but you'll learn far more about the situation in Palestine and the way Palestinians experience it by looking at the graffiti. The 'ugly' tags are voices shouting the opinions of those who experienced oppression, the beautiful murals are well-written pleas for peace and justice. There was a huge piece depicting Messi shooting a football through barbed wire, as Argentine canceling a match with Israel prior to the World Cup was seen as a positive thing on this side of the wall. There's a mirror, showing us we're all people, no matter our background, culture and religion.


The paint fills every inch of the concrete here with countless Palestinian flags, the words "Free Palestine" and the ever-present "Make hummus, not walls". Of course there are original Banksy pieces too, but though they were what drew me to the wall in the first place, the piece that hit me hardest was a huge portrait of Razan, a Palestinian girl who volunteered as a nurse/paramedic but won't ever treat another patient again: She was shot by the Israeli army while she was treating a patient close to the border in Gaza last June. The Dutch media has remained eerily silent on this story...


Though the situation is grave, the colorful murals lifted my spirits while I walked along the West Bank Barrier. Yet the art wasn't the only interesting thing on this walk. Soon Palestinians came up to us to tell us about life on the West Bank. The man attending to the small shop full of Banksy merchandise went out of his way to explain the Messi and Razan paintings. He pointed details out and handed us a ladder so we could take better pictures. Another man came up to us and, in an attempt to get us to buy a drink from his stall out of pity, told us he had fairly recently gotten out of prison. He'd killed a man: after his innocent father had died in a tear gas attack from the Israeli army, he went berserk and left the Israelis with one soldier less in their ranks. Though I can't vouch for this particular story, it was still shocking to hear, because this is the harsh reality for Palestinians on the West Bank as well as in Gaza. It's an insight like this, meeting locals and talking to them, that made the whole experience even more special.


After our conversations with the locals, we continued walking along the wall until we reached Banksy's Walled Off Hotel. I didn't go inside, because the wall intrigued me more. Sadly, the street art was quite low-quality here. Right next to the Walled Off Hotel, shops have popped up where you can hire spray cans and stencils. This has resulted into layer upon layer of rip-off miniature Banksies and generic images like superhero logos and even Taylor Swift's album cover for Reputation. The latter appalled me. To me, the West Bank Barrier shows we didn't learn from Berlin: It's a place to think about the way we as humans treat one another, not a place to stan your favorite artist. I also wonder how Banksy, who is known for his anti-capitalistic views, feels about his stencils being rented out as a fun activity for tourists, helping them leave their mark on this wall with no thought behind it whatsoever.


At that moment, just as I was getting fed-up with the commercialization of art and political statements on the West Bank Barrier, we decided to turn back and go for a drink in the old city. We could have walked on for much longer, all the way up to Checkpoint 300, but I think that would have become overwhelming. There's so much to see that you don't really take it in anymore after the first couple of hundred meters. I could've spent days looking at all the art, but we had a trip to the Dead Sea planned the next day. I fully enjoyed my time at the wall though, weird as that may sound considering the political situation it symbolizes. The thing is, this afternoon in the shadows of the West Bank Barrier gave me a better insight into politics and life on the West Bank. Without this visit, I only would've seen the Israeli side of this conflict's story. If you're looking for the Palestinian side, this is the place to go: you'll see it told in the beautiful and raw language of street art.