Lost and Found in Tel Aviv: A Tale of Two Devices
We arrived in Israel after a 9 hour flight – unable to sleep and too tired to read, I watched a movie and numerous episodes of Downtown Abbey during the flight.
I am gathering my things to deplane, but I cannot find my cellphone. I last had it just before take off when I switched it to airplane mode. So it cannot be in my backpack, which was in the overhead compartment. That leaves only my back pockets and my very tiny purse, neither a place where a cell phone could stay hidden. I check the seat pocket and the floor. The cell phone is nowhere to be found.
The airline attendant has us wait until everyone else is off the plane; then he takes apart our seats – and there it is, having slipped down between the seat and frame. Whew!
My niece Beth and her boyfriend Kevin meet us after we get our bags and direct us into Tel Aviv via mass transit. First a train, then a bus, each taking about 12 minutes. We arrive at our hotel. Steve – my brother in law – looks around and says, “where’s my attache case?” No one has it. Then Lou recalls seeing a black case on the bench as we drove away from the bus stop and thinking it must belong to someone else.
Steve is very upset. His iPad and medicine are in the case. Beth and Kevin offer to go look for it while we check in. They grab a cab back to the bus stop.
When Beth & Kevin get back to the bench, the case is still there. But there has been a perimeter set up around it and it is surrounded by police. A person in a puffy suit and a bomb-sniffing dog are about to check out the case when Beth yells out – that’s my dad’s briefcase! The police laugh but they still check out the case before giving it to Beth.
Meanwhile, Steve has been lamenting that someone will look inside the case, see the iPad and take it. He does not expect to get it back. But we are in Tel Aviv, not New York. What a difference a place makes.
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Love your welcome to Israel. Hope things go a little more smoothy hereon in (even though you did get lucky twice in one day!) and glad you made the police laugh.