Kotel itself turns out to be a small town with mainly wooden houses. There was something about the name that was both familiar and gave me a feeling of disorientation as well. For some reason it made me think of a photograph that hangs on my bedroom wall showing the Graf Zeppelin suspended over Jerusalem, a little to the right and behind the golden dome (in black and white) of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The year is 1931 and the motors have been turned off out of respect (for the Holy Sepulchre, according to the captain). Researching in the net turns up the fact that the name Kotel echoes the Hebrew for the Western (Wailing) Wall and explains my associative chain.

However, the minority here with the strongest presence is not Jewish but Roma and they have the reputation of having a very high proportion of musicians. The town grew to prominence under Ottoman rule stimulated by the special tax-free status given to settlements that supplied material to the Ottoman army, in this case woollen cloth. Carpet weaving also has a long history and the wealth (and security) generated also cross-pollinated into other arts (such as music) providing the basis for a, for the times, relatively independent strain of political thought.

We visit the Ethnological Museum and a Museum of Carpets where L makes kelim and icon versions of her synagogue and yellow brick road pieces.

The next destination is the small historic village of Zheravna which entails doubling back on the road south before taking a side road to the west. It is a hilly area and on the way we pass a huge statue on the top of the mound that seems to have been taken out of the second volume of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.