The day I nearly flew in Israel - Tel Aviv, Timezone UTC +2

My standby line had another surprise for me - a layover in Tel Aviv! As soon as they told me, I sent a text message to Ilan. When I was in Tel Aviv last time, about 7 years ago, I didnt know any pilot in the city.
Ilan answered immediately, aksing if I could bring my harness. Not possible, as I was already in Frankfurt airport, waiting for a flight to work on. With a nice crew we flew to Israel and got to the hotel around 5 am. After a few hours of sleep, Ilan picked me up at the hotel and we went two hours north to Mt Tavor. He got his friends harness for me, but it did not fit, so he gave me his own Moyes harness and his new Litespeed 3,5 s, the same model that I fly.
The country looks beautiful, big dark fields to the southwest, the Golan heights and the sea of Galilea to our east. Take off was as flat as Monte Cucco, and the wind was not really there, just some smoke on the ground indicated not exactly a perfect direction. Ilan took off anyway, I was impressed with his power run.
I hoped the sun would create a thermal and some good launch conditions for me, but instead the wind crossed and finally came in from the back, unfortunately quite strong. I started packing up, much to the disappointment of the two young arabian boys behind me who had expected to record a cool film on their mobile phone... I communicated with hand and feet (I dont speak arabic) and got them to pick up the glider - I just wanted to show them how heavy it is so they could understand what was going on. When the first one lifted it, his eyes nearly popped out his head and the other one laughed. Well ok, we had a nice tail wind on the sail ;) then the other one tried, and they both said goodbye and left on their scooter.
Ilan was braught back up by his friend Miki and we had a short chat in German. On the way back to Tel Aviv, we had a falafel stop at the greatest falafel entertainer of Israel - the falafels were flying through the air! Then a freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, and I decided I wont wait another 7 years before coming back to this beautiful country.
Our crew left at 3 am to fly back, I arrived in the afternoon in Munich and now Im about to leave for my next trip tomorrow - probably Hyderabad in India!