Golan Heights

October 7th 2023

We're moving north, to the sea of Galilee and beyond.

I'm starting to become a bit numb to all the biblical holy sites, but this is where Jesus did the thing with the fish and the bread. Some Germans built a church there.
Heading even further north into the Golan Heights (technically Israeli-occupied Syrian territory), we take a little hike up to the source of the Jordan river, past waterfalls and old flour mills and fish ponds. There's a Roman-era temple here for Pan, god of the wilderness and patron of the nymphs. The artistic renderings show a beautiful compound with a large temple standing in the entrance of the limestone cave from which the river springs, adorned with statues of pan and the nymphs. They sure knew how to build a temple.
About halfway on our way back there's a park official guarding a crossing. He explains that because the park closes in 25 minutes, we absolutely cannot walk the remaining 15 minutes to our car — no, we have to turn around, go back to the start and then walk on the main road back to the car park. Cool, great, sure.

The main road is flanked by barbed wire fence and actual, literal minefields to either side with ominous three-language signs posted every few meters. Lovely.
We eventually make it back and drive further into the heights and up a hill with some old military fortifications on it that looks out over the border to Syria.
We just barely miss the opening times of the café up here which is supposedly very lovely. But that's what we have the 750g hummus and pita in the trunk for, isn't it?

We try to buy an apple from a chatty Syrian vendor who set up shop here and walk away with four apples and two jars of... something. He's a great salesman, very strong arguments ("Angela Merkel liebt Dattelhonig Feigenmarmelade").
Just down the hill are the ruins of the Syrian Intelligence Headquarters, heavily damaged in the conflicts between Syria and Israel. It's just a stone's throw to the Syrian border from here, and we can see the yellow gates of the UN buffer zone just a couple hundred metres in the distance.
The building's structural integrity is questionable, with several walls completely blown out from explosions and parts of the staircase just hanging on from bent rebar. And while I don't quite dare to go up to the second floor, the rooms on the ground level form an objectively impressive informal street-art gallery.