The Jesus trail is a pilgrimage hike that can be done in four days, walking between his hometown in Nazareth to where he delivered his famous sermons and performed his first miracles. Instead of walking I took the easier way of hitch hiking and riding bus, so that I could see both cities in one day.
Tiberias was a city by the Sea of Galilee, which I think sounded very promising with a sculpture park and lots of historical sites. When I came there I was quite dissappointed to see historical castle walls being covered with advertisement (like the pic below), attractions being closed down and St. Peters church which now also hosted a hotel and a bar. When a guy with a Kippah/ skull cap for directions to St. Peters church church I also got an arrogant answer “do I look like I go to church?”. When I said “No, but you must know where to find the most famous attraction of the city?” he just said “of course” and waived me off in the right directions. Although I really like the Jewish people, I sometimes don’t quite get this humor..
Nazareth was a city pretty much without Jews. Here the Muslims and Christians were living side by side- a place where I was standing in front of the church hearing gospels and prayers from the minarets at the same time. A place where I got the first time in life have seen a church where everything was written and spoken in Arabic.
I really liked the city of Nazareth. It was a place where I could walk the streets and feel the Christmas spirit for the first time this year. Being on a Sunday I got to join in on a mass, but the downside was that I missed the Nazareth Village attraction that was closed on Sundays, where people would act out the old city of Nazareth with historically correct clothes etc. That would have made my visit complete, as I felt like the city itself was much more modern and full of traffic and modern commercialism than I first had imagined.
