Wilhelm Scherübl jr.

Designed as a labyrinth in which you can get lost, the world’s biggest bus station is situated in Tel Aviv. It was built for one million passengers per day, which roughly corresponded to one-third of Israel’s population at the time when the station was planned to be opened. Up until today, it has not really worked out. It was a bad investment and changed investors umpteen times. As a result, a confusing building mixing diverse styles and adapted several times emerged in a construction period of approximately 30 years. The building offers everything from illegal nail bars and toy weapons to a club and conspiracy theories. It is a place where you easily get lost and suddenly discover a corner that you have never seen before. Even after going there and roaming around numerous times, I had not realized the station’s sheer scale. In addition, there are also numerous levels below the public areas.

Let’s start at the lowest level, i.e. the area of the nuclear shelter that is not used as such anymore or maybe still serves as a command centre of a secret military unit behind “the” locked door. This door, however, might also provide access to secret floors located below the official storeys according to a “conspiracy theory”. It could even lead to the underground network of tunnels that run across Tel Aviv. There are many theories but none of them is confirmed.

If you go up the ramps passing by the largest bat colonies of the city which have found their home in the bus station, you reach the level on which the abandoned cinema is located – very glamorously furnished with a golden fountain and mirror surfaces. Expectations were high at the opening, but it closed already after a few months afterwards in view of a lack of success. It has lied dormant beneath the bus station ever since. Once in a while it is used for other purposes such as theatre performances or film screenings – a small misinvestment within the big one.

The same has happened on the floors further up. They were intended to be used for retail outlets, but have been vacant most of the time. Now they serve as studios and exhibition space. Deliberately or inadvertently, the flair of the surroundings inspires the selection of the exhibits. They often remind of props from horror movies and perfectly blend into the surroundings with papered shop windows and the building’s squeaking and rattling noises. The perfect set for a scary movie, but unfortunately not really of use in Israel – there are only five such films here. After all, you do not need any fictitious horror when you have a conflict on your doorstep and reports on it are disseminated in the media.

However, not everything failed at the bus station. One level houses the Filipino Boulevard with travel agencies accepting cash, a weekly Philippine market offering exotic food that you cannot get anywhere else in the country and ladies who converted the furnishings of the bus station into nail bars – of course, only semi-legally: a microcosm within the big construct that is in stark contrast to the rest of the station. The same goes for “The Block”, a club that animates the station with its thumping basses also outside of the buses’ operating hours.

For me, the station situated in the middle of the city mirrors many aspects of the country: many small islands and corners that are all different, do not fit together and still work; poor decisions that cannot be reversed so quickly but leave their mark on the country; the adjustment to situations, the party scene…and so much more.

Website resident:              scheruebl.me