A trip to Israel and its security

This 3 days trip to Israel, for Business, was very interesting. The business part was a couple of days dedicated to meeting the local teams and participating in the all hands. The rest was a visit of Jerusalem and a free morning in Tel Aviv.

We left Dublin on Tuesday Afternoon and flew to Tel-Aviv via Frankfort. The most interesting part of the trip was the security checks. Since this was a commuting flight in Frankfurt, we did not have to pick up our luggage but still had to go to security ... twice (Despite having gone to security in Dublin.) Once arrived in Tel Aviv (after 3 AM) we had to go to the Israely imigration and that is where most of the fun started. We had been told that once you have the Israeli stamp on your passport, there is a list of countries which will not open their doors anymore. Therefore, we were advised to ask not to have the stamp on the passport. Once I arrived at the immigration 'desk' a smiling lady asked me a couple of questions about the purpose of my trip. As soon as I asked not to have my passport stamped, the smile disapeared and the discussion was along those lines:
(Lady) - Why do you not want to have your passport stamped?
(Me) - I have been told that there are some countries I will not be able to visit.
- Which country do you need to go to?
- None but I'd like to keep the option open.
- We need to stamp all passports. Which countries do you need to visit?
- None at the moment but I often travel...
(...)
(Lady) - There are only 4 countries that you can not visit with the Israel Stamp: Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Are you planning on visiting those countries?
(Me) - Hopefully not.
A few other questions and answers later:
STAMP. Passport stamped... I'm free to go.

Aparently, a colleague of mine insisted a bit more to have his passport not stamped and the conversation was also slightly different:
(Same start...)
(Lady) - Which country do you want to visit?
(D) - Egypt?
(Lady) - You can go to Egypt with an Israely Stamp.
(D) - Iran?
(Lady) - Why would you want to go to Iran? That's not a country you should go to. ... ...

It took him a while to get past this desk and D. was then taken to the side and asked questions for a long while. In the end he did not got his passport stamped but was it worth the stress and waiting?

We also had to wait for a Turkish colleague who also had the chance of having to answer some specific questions like the name of his grandfather but in the end everyone was allowed to go forward. We found our taxis which brought us to the hotel. (By the way, some taxi drivers in Israel are a bit crazy and the others are worse... (Well not all of them.))
Once arrived at the hotel we asked for our room and they inform us that they have only 3 rooms booked while we were 8! Interesting. It turned out that half the rooms were checked-in the day before. Only one of our colleague did not have any room and that was because he forgot to fill a form. Luck turned around, they did not have any normal room and he therefore got a business class room for the same price!
At last, it's 5AM and I can go to sleep after setting the alarm clock for 7:30 since the first meeting is at 9AM. We received a little surprise from the hotel on that morning: They woke everyone up at 7:00 AM with an anouncement (in hebrew so none of us could understand). This special wake up was repeated a few times at a few minutes interval. I got woken up 3 times and got up twice thinking someone was at the door... After this, getting up at 7:30 was sooooo eaaaassyyyyy... zzzzzzzz....

During our stay, we spent an afternoon in Jerusalem and this was a very instructive and interesting visit. We saw several religious landmark like the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, The Temple Mount and the Western Wall. The old town was very nice. It was also very interesting to see those very different cultures living together and so close to each other.

I will not elaborate on the humidity and heat of both the air and the sea in Israel so all I will say is it was hot.

On our way back, we had another set of funny events (again, many security checks, questions, queues as expected) but everything ended well and we all arrived fine (and this time at a reasonable time)