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Filming in Jerusalem

I’ve just arrived in Jerusalem where I’m staying at a little hotel just outside the Damascus gate in the Old City Walls. It’s a bit wierd – there are almost no tourists here. No matter, I stumbled around and got myself lost in the maze of little alleyways (coming out, suprisingly, at the Wailing Wall). Lots of soldiers there with Uzi machine guns swung over their shoulders… and I started to feel even more out of my element. I’m filming here, for a series of podcasts that will accompany my book “Pilgrim in the Palace of Words.”

Wandering back, though, I realized that I didn’t have a converter for my camera battery (or not the right one anyway) and I went into a little electronics shop. Well, try explaining battery converter in Arabic. The guy actually understood – after lots of hand motions – three prongs instead of two – diagonal, not straight – and I eventually got my camera charged up again. Back at the hotel, the owner brought me sliced watermelon and some little kids from down the lane came over, giggling and pushing the bravest ones forward. “Hello, hello, English” they said, then ran off giggling… so I guess all is right in the world after all.

Tags: Dunddurn, Glenn Dixon, Pilgrim in the Palace of Words

About the author

I've paddled a dugout canoe up the headwaters of the Amazon. I've hiked over the Andes to the lost city of Machu Picchu. I've wandered through the Dalai Lama's palace in Tibet. I have camped under the palm trees in Tahiti. I've cried at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. I've fallen in love in Prague, fallen off a cliff in Turkey and fallen for a thief's clever ruse in the back alleys of Kathmandu. And this is my story.