Since my last post about restaurants was kind of kvetchy, I figured I’d balance that with a quickie about something that was awesome the same evening we went to a place and they started giving me THE STORY (read that post and you’ll understand!)
Want to know what’s cool here???
You go to order your sandwiches, and they’re served up with a side of scripture. That’s what.
Here you go, your typical Israeli deli takeout place, at the Kiryon, our local mall. Notice anything?
There's a story some restaurants will tell you here if you ask if they're kosher.
It's a long, long story. If you don't speak Hebrew, it can be daunting to understand the gist of what they're saying.
They'll take a long time telling it.
They'll pull out all kinds of documentation.
They'll explain some more.
They'll point all around the place.
They may even raise their voice, which is scary for a nice Canadian like me.
You may even buy food there, just to shut them up. After all, they sure wave around a lot and pull out letters that look like they're from rabbis.
See, the problem is that Israelis know about kashrus. I remember the first time I was shooed out of a non-kosher restaurant because I was obviously religious, but it has happened a few times since.
Even coffee, which I might have no qualms about buying in a non-kosher place in Canada, whereas here, they might practically refuse to serve me, which I see as a kind of respect for my practice - even if it's different from their practice - and I like it very much, except the one time, very early on, I had to pretty much beg a server for coffee and then decided it wasn't worth it and left.
In Toronto, if I stuck my head into a typical restaurant and asked if it was kosher, they'd probably say something like...
"Ummm, I dunno..."
"We do have vegetarian items..."
"Let me check with the chef..."
"I think so..."
One of the ways that you can tell, outside of Israel, if a place is kosher is to look at the clientele. If people with kippahs are eating there, it's a pretty good sign. In Israel, that doesn't always fly. A totally-kosher mehadrin place may be full of people who look completely non-religious, and there may just be a few kippahs in the crowd at that local non-kosher McDonald's branch.
The other thing about Israelis is that they know how to talk. Think the Irish have the gift of the gab? Well, they may, but Israelis are super-good at pretending it’s theirs.
Here, we've also learned early on that you don't ask if a place is kosher. You ask if there's a certificate, the teudah. The teudah means everything, almost always.
If you ask if it's kosher, they may say yes.
Ahhh.... but if you ask to see the teudah, that's when you get the long, long story…
What foods do foodies miss most when they move to Israel?
Maybe they dream about sitting down to a plate of nachos with tangy cheddar cheese… or a fruity flan with tons of fresh berries?
When I first started thinking about aliyah, in the early 1990s, reports out of Israel were dire. There were no chocolate chips - you had to chop up chocolate bars and hope for the best. Also, no canned tuna. Also, though perhaps unrelated, the toilet paper was really, really bad.
Today, things are different. Israel prides itself on being a haven for kosher foodies. (You can even visit them at the Israeli Foodies facebook group.)
Depending on where you're from, there are still many local treats and delicacies that you'll either not be able to find, or will have to reserve as a special treat.
Take graham cracker pie crusts, for example. Graham crackers don't exist here, and stores don't usually sell ready-made crusts. That doesn't mean you can't find them. This is the year 2015, and almost everything can be had - for a price.
Let me tell you a secret about making aliyah: Pesach.
When we decided to make aliyah, everyone said “Mazel Tov,” and then they’d start to coo. Ooh and awe in amazement. “Good for you,” they’d say. “You’re so brave. That’s so difficult. You must be so strong.”
It was embarrassing, really. But I believed it, too. I believed that we were doing something incredibly difficult. I believed that someday, by the sweat of our brow, we would earn the praise.
And then, along came our first Pesach here in Israel. Which was easy; almost unbelievably so.
Just about any yom tov here is easier. I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise in the world’s only Jewish country, but there it is; it was a surprise to me.
Like before our first Rosh Hashanah, when, in the post office, the teller was selling holiday greeting cards. In the grocery store, honey was on sale (regular and silan, the delicious local date honey). Along the shoreline, we were far from the only family tipping out our pockets come Tashlich time.
Then came Sukkos, Simchas Torah, Chanukah, Purim… they were all so much easier than the same day anywhere else in the world.
But Pesach. Pesach. Sweet, sweet, Pesach in Israel…
We have been here for two Pesachs now and each one has been a delicious, delicious surprise.
Okay, I don’t mean buying foods free from kitniyos (legume products forbidden to us minority Ashkenazim), which was actually harder this year than last, for some reason. But just… everything about the yom tov itself.
Here in Israel, there’s no Pesach Monster.
What’s the Pesach Monster?
In Toronto, at least, people treat Pesach like it’s a monster, coming to get them.
Do you know how much 5 shekels is worth these days?
Not much. About $1.46 Canadian; $1.29 US.
Which probably explains why this is Israel’s favourite new price tag for coffee and other edibles.
Five-shekel obsession started in the centre of the country, but it’s spreading out, propelled by chains like cofix – the original five-shekel fixed-price coffee joint.
Before cofix, Israel’s reigning coffee-bar champ was probably Aroma. I like the idea of Aroma more than I like the place itself, and I don’t love their icekaffe, the basic coffee slushie that every coffee chain carries.
The one thing you must know about Aroma is that it’s expensive. You’ll pay maybe 15-20nis for an icekaffe, and any of their other chilly or warm delicacies (served with their signature mini chocolate bar on the side).
Then, along came cofix.
It feels like the sort of thing I should have strong feelings about, like “Get your #$!% hands off my Israel!” But I don’t. Somehow, I’m happy as anything that Ikea is here, and would be thrilled to see more big chains like it moving in.
WalMart? Maybe not. Not much chance of that happening, but I do wonder where we draw the line.
I’m no economist, but as I understand it, there are a few arguments against big companies coming in and staking a claim here or in any small, threatened economy:
Channels money out of the local economy. True, but if I buy a shirt at an Israeli chain, much of the money for the shirt is probably going to manufacturers in China or abroad anyway. True, buying “kacholavan” should be a priority (although do I really want more and more and more plastic products manufactured half an hour away in the Galil where our veggies are grown???). But it’s not always possible.
Here are my arguments FOR our local Ikea store, in Kiryat Ata:
Convenience isn’t a sin. Sure, our puritanical nature tells us that if something is too easy or too fun, it shouldn’t be allowed. But the truth is that if Israeli stores don’t know how to create a great shopping experience – or don’t care whether they do or not, perhaps they will lose out to the competition. Thanks, Darwin!It’s funny. I’ve received two very similar objections to posts and emails lamenting the incursion of “American” culture into Israel: once when I ate at McDonald’s (“I’d rather have falafel!”) and once when I shopped at Ikea.
Both were from non-Jewish relatives, one of whom hasn’t even been here, let alone lived here. They’re entitled to opinions, but you’ve got to weigh that against the feelings of people who live here.
Judging by the numbers of Israelis in the Ikea store the day we went – many are quite strongly pro-incursion.
Nope.
Well, hardly anything.
(tee hee)
Two herb plants for 6 shekels each. Some drinking glasses for Pesach. A cute toy for Elisheva in the bargain-basement damaged-goods “metzion” section near the exit.
They do serve tasty meatballs, but they don't call them Swedish, and, disappointingly, don’t offer lingonberry jam on the side – even though it is depicted on their website.
Ikea has now become Elisheva's top "thing to do in Haifa, " displacing the Bahai gardens, which she didn't really like anyway.
Maybe somebody should make a rule that these big conglomerates should ONLY be allowed to expand outside of North America in the future.
That way, North Americans can be self-righteously rid of them for good… while those of us in the rest of the world can be grateful and thrilled that somebody is paying attention to us, and giving us the chance at a fun shopping trip even if we don’t end up buying a thing.
The new Ikea store (they pronounce it “ee-kay-ah”) in Kiryat Ata is only about 10 minutes away by a very convenient city bus, by the way. Doesn’t mean I’ll be there all the time, but it feels nice to be at the centre of things for a change.
Next stop… and no, I’m not joking. Pizza Hut in the Malha Mall in Jerusalem, tomorrow. I have to be in the area on an errand – it’s not a special trip, I promise!!!
Maybe someday I’ll get this junk food / junk culture thing out of my system… until then, bring on the Big Bad Corporations!
Okay, I will open it up, since I know mine isn’t the only opinion… What do you think of all these foreign interlopers? Are they Good for Israel??? Leave a comment and let me know!
Haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been busy. With what??? Showing off this new homeland that I love so much to my sister, who’s visiting from Canada.
If you had only fourteen days in Israel (twelve when you subtract Shabbat), what would you see and do??? That’s the question my sister had to answer when she arrived at Ben Gurion two weeks ago today.
It’s hard to believe that almost a year ago (well, ten months), we were strangers here on a pilot trip. My sister has been visiting for the last couple of weeks, which has given me a chance to do a bit of touristy stuff that I’ve really never had a chance to do – except this time, to do it as a real Israeli, kind of.
(Kind of because I gave my Canadian passport to the Arab-run hostel we stayed at in the Old City of Jerusalem… I think they’re Christian, but I was still nervous about what they’d do if an Israeli tried to check in. More about the hostel later.)
So where did we go?
First of all, I actually wasn’t quite finished Ulpan (Hebrew-language boot camp) yet… my sister arrived a week before my final exam, so not exactly ideal timing, as it was the most intensive week of the entire course. But I’m nothing if not resilient, and you can’t negotiate with holiday-season airfares.
Thursday: Tel Aviv / Yaffo
I suggested that for the same train fare, we could spend some time in Tel Aviv and Yaffo (Jaffa) instead. Well, she suggested Yaffo, which was a great call (apparently, she’d read up a little on the plane!).
In Yaffo’s Old Port, we walked in the footsteps of Napoleon (kind of) and viewed a fascinating historical presentation / tour of an underground marketplace called Jaffa Tales.
Then, we headed to the shuk (market), not far away in the new city of Tel Aviv. I don’t love the shuk in Tel Aviv; it’s bustling enough, but not much there is kosher. Having said that, however, there’s a lovely bakery inside that makes the most luscious cheddar-cheese buns. They’re not cheap, but I bought some to eat on the train back.
After that, plus a quick falafel break (my sister says this disproves my claim that there’s no kosher food around, but I really don’t count falafel stands), we hopped on a bus back to the train station.
This was the day of the big snow in Yerushalayim but Tel Aviv seemed completely unaffected and the day was lovely; brilliantly sunny and definitely warm enough for someone who’d just arrived from Toronto. It was also Elisheva’s 18th birthday, so – after waiting 5 hours for a bus out of Yerushalayim – she joined us up north for an impromptu (read: made by Ted/Akiva) birthday supper.
Friday: Teveria
Okay, I admit – I didn’t want to travel anywhere on a winter Friday when Shabbos came in just past 4:00 pm. So I sent my sister and Elisheva out to Teveria, thinking they’d have a grand old time seeing the Kinneret and whatever historical stuff is out there. But no… it was a freezing, rainy, miserable day by any standard, even a Canadian one. Everything there was closed and, oh, did I mention it was a fast day? (the 10th of Tevet) They came back frigid and miserable, but we had a nice cozy Shabbos together later on.
Sunday: Haifa
My sister wasn’t really all that interested in seeing Haifa, but the weather – though chilly – had cleared up and I didn’t want to shlep around when there are some lovely things to see nearby. I’m really glad we did.
From the bottom of the Bahai Gardens (the free tour walks you down the stairs and lets you out near the middle of the g
The unhelpful, borderline-rude woman behind the counter directed us to take the Metronit to a certain stop for the cable car… at which point we found out that it was nowhere nearby. We were also aiming to visit the Cave of Eliyahu (Elijah), which was also nowhere nearby. So we walked… and walked… and walked…
After that dullness, we rode back down and noticed we were spitting distance away from Eliyahu’s Cave, so we stomped off there, despite Elisheva’s warnings that it was weird and tacky and boring.
It was all that and MORE! The cave itself was decorated in the type of Rabbinic art-kitsch that one can find in many living rooms – pictures of rabbis and holy sites. There are some historical things up on the walls as well, which do provide a little interesting background, but it’s not exactly a tourist site.
Just as we were giving up and getting ready to leave, a bearded man in a long robe (his was white) came in carrying a shofar. He asked in Hebrew who we were and where we were from and if we had any special requests, and then offered a really lovely and long bracha, after which he blew the shofar (also long) rather dramatically.
In terms of showmanship, I felt that the Jewish site had won hands-down. So there, monastery.
Another quick Metronit ride (one transfer) brought us home, and I was glad to be so close to home at the end of the day.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: Eilat / Petra
In an effort to help me not fail the ulpan exam, my sister took off that night by herself via Egged overnight bus for Eilat and Petra, where she stayed until another overnight bus on Thursday night.
Shabbat: Home
To celebrate my birthday, completing ulpan and sister’s visit, and to commemorate my father’s fifth yahrzeit, we had a small but nice kiddush here for some of the people we know who live within walking distance. It was lovely.
Sunday: Caesarea, Akko, Rosh HaNikra, Yerushalayim
I accidentally or on purpose told my sister I didn’t want to leave for Yerushalayim until Monday, so she booked herself a tour of the north on Sunday. I was just in Akko during Chanukah and wasn’t at all interested in going again, so she left by herself early Sunday morning on a train to meet her tour bus in Caesarea.
Let me first say: I am NOT a fussy traveller. I have stayed in hostels before in all sorts of places. Thus, I am no stranger to bare-bones accommodation. Yet I can easily, comfortably state that this hostel was the biggest dump I have ever stayed in. It was pretty terrible, but over the course of 3 nights (and the sleeping wasn’t too bad), we sort of got used to it. (Or is that what they call Stockholm Syndrome?)
The hostel is in a very Arab part of the old city, and its location (just inside the Jaffa Gate) is the only thing it really has going for it… well, that and the price, which was ₪70 per night (about $20) in an “8-bed” (ie 4 bunk beds) women-only dorm. As I said, I presented my Canadian ID because I wasn’t sure how much they’d love having an Israeli staying on the premises. Still, I felt secure and comfortable – especially the second night, when I had a second blanket and they brought another heater into the room in an effort to put down the chill.
After I checked into the hostel, I figured I had about 4 hours to kill (turned out to be more like 6), so I wandered the Old City, which was really kind of great. I let myself get lost, safe in the knowledge that my trusty GPS would get me out if I was stuck.
Afterwards, we got dinner with Elisheva at a lovely if rather pricey Asian place (formerly Japanika, now called Sushi Bar, on Shlomtzion Hamalka, off Yaffo).
Sleeeeeeeep… I was so tired from all that walking.
Monday: Yerushalayim
Her idea of lunch was a little more complicated, and shifted halfway through the search to include a salad and pesto. But eventually, we both had accumulated a variety of delicious things and we made our way back (for various reasons) to a bench outside the Old City to eat them all.
We got to see all four “quarters”
We both tipped him happily at the end of the tour.
Not wanting to call it a day just yet (even though it was almost dark already), we headed back to the hostel to change (days were hot; nights were FREEZING) and then out again to buy tickets for the Sound & Light Show at the David Citadel Museum.
The show was a little hokey, and probably would have been more enjoyable at a warmer time of year, but still impressive. They project images on the stone walls of the Citadel (which has nothing to do with David HaMelech, our tour guide explained), showing the history of Yerushalayim from the earliest times… in a slightly whitewashed and somewhat more peaceful, calm manner than I suspect things happened in real life.
After that, we got dinner – tasty, tasty Big Apple Pizza on Ben Yehuda Street, and marched back home to sleep, exhausted.
Tuesday: Dead Sea & Masada
We stopped at the Ahava Factory Outlet, which I assumed would be our only 
Masada has never been high on my list of places to go. I’m not sure how I feel about Jewish zealot groups hiding out from the Romans and their group suicide makes it a bit controversial that we continue to memorialize them. 
Here we are, right up at the top!
The tour also stopped at the Dead Sea (Yam HaMelach), another one of my don’t-mind-if-I-miss-it sites, but it was interesting to feel the water – at first. My sister brought a bathing suit, but I just took off my shoes and waded in a bit, swishing my hands around as I went.
So this is interesting: it turns out my entire skin is made up of a network of fine cracks that exist only for the purpose of letting in the sea’s deadly mixture of salt, sulphur and bromides to inside my skin, where they can inflict the most pain.
They did. It was painful, almost right away. I washed it off and it was STILL painful. Later on that evening, my legs started to burn, and as I write this, two days and two showers later, they are still itchy from the “healing mud.” Feh.
Another one to chalk off the bucket list, anyway, and never worry about not having carped the diem.
Wednesday: Yad VaShem, Home Again
I’ve been thinking of Yad VaShem (Holocaust History Museum) as sort of a flu shot. It’s not that I WANT a flu shot, but it’s good for me and at some point every fall, I work up the nerve to get one. Except that every time I’m in Yerushalayim, I have young kids in tow, and even Naomi is too young (kids under 10 are not allowed).
No pictures are allowed inside Yad VaShem, which is a very good thing. The museum is free, and we declined to rent the ₪20 audio guide – figuring that a decent museum should explain itself to you. (We may have been influenced in this snobbery by our mother’s background in Museum Studies.)
Despite this, there were about fifteen big groups making their way through the museum while we were there, blocking the exhibits with guides shouting out explanations of all the exhibits. In the groups that included teenagers, many of the teenagers were wearing the audio guide headsets, listening to those along with their guide (simultaneously?).
My sister thought this was ridiculously excessive and I agree – if so much work and thought has been put into the exhibits themselves, what good does it do to stand a bored guide in front of them to shout about it to the viewers?
Because of the clumping of the groups at the entrance to every room and in front of every key exhibit, it was hard to pass through without getting a little annoyed. And then, at the very moving exhibit of shoes taken from concentration-camp victims, an Israeli girl was giggling and pointing at them. Sheesh.
Still, annoyance fades somewhat as you pass through room after room of exhibits that are so overwhelming and painful and brilliantly-thought-out. I was very much Holocausted to death (um, to coin an awful phrase) in Hebrew school as a kid, so I feel like I’m sadly inured to a lot of it… but at a few points it got through to me in a very moving way.
My phone started beeping loudly in the Hall of Names, which was embarrassing, as it’s meant to be a quiet place where you hear names intoned of victims of the Shoah (Holocaust). Whoops – it was Elisheva, texting to arrange lunch.
After Yad VaShem, we made our way via Light Rail Train to the Merkazit (central station) to meet Elisheva. Everybody got a salad except me – McDonald’s! Elisheva said a big, passionate goodbye to her aunt, and then in a flurry of confusion, we boarded the 960 bus back to Haifa.
It’s been an eye-opening couple of weeks, being a tourist here in my own country. The Hebrew I’ve learned has been very helpful, and although not a “vatik” (old hand) here, things don’t feel as fresh and new and scary as they did when we were here ten months ago on that pilot trip.
Yet I think I’ve enjoyed showing my sister around so much because it’s all new to me as well. My sister’s really the first relative who’s visited – hopefully, there will be more opportunities to guide future relatives’ “tours,” and perhaps those, too, will be full of firsts (still lots of places I haven’t been!)… but at some point, it may start to feel like a “been there, done that,” kind of thing.
For now, though, it’s all just a heck of a lot of fun.
What did my sister miss??? If you had only twelve days in Israel, what would be on your “can’t miss” list?
This little person had a not-very-happy run-in with a sidewalk today and ended up with a piece of something embedded in his chin (סַנְטֵר/santeir, which I kept saying over and over to myself on the way to the doctor so I wouldn’t accidentally say פְּסַנְתֵר/p’santeir, which is piano).
(Here’s the spiel I rehearsed silently all the way to the clinic: בני נפל מה”סקוטר” שלו בדרך הבייתה מגן וקיבל מכה על הסנטר.)
I don’t know if our experience was typical, but this incident happened just before 2:00 pm, and we were home, after having been seen by one doctor and at least three nurses, in two different health care locations, via public transit, by about quarter to 4:00.
Needless to say, though I’m sad he got beat up, I’m happy that this was one of those times when everything works.
Within about a minute of the accident, on a sidewalk on a main street, we were surrounded by a) a woman who gave me a whole package of baby wipes to clean him up with, b) a bunch of teenagers, girls and boys, offering water bottles and asking me if I wanted help to get him to the hospital (or an ambulance), c) a couple of cars pulled over asking if we needed a ride.
I almost accepted the offer of a ride, and perhaps should have, but as it turned out, the buses were working well and we didn’t have long to wait. Plus, bus transfers are good here for 90 minutes, regardless of how many stops you make, so we were able to get to both locations quickly on the same fare.
In fact, the only actual delay was when we arrived at the local kupat cholim, health clinic, to find that the nurses were still on “yeshiva” (literally, their “sit break” in the middle of the day). Fortunately, there were only 10 minutes left of that, and the woman with the number before us let us go first (a screaming kid will do that).
One slightly off-putting thing: arriving at the trauma area of the “mirpa’at” (local urgent-care centre) and being asked, up-front (after presenting GZ’s health card), to pay ₪23 for our visit. I assume this is a flat rate, as nobody had examined him. I don’t know if it’s a “child” rate or if it’s standard for everybody.
So here’s the thing: I know that is a very, very, VERY low price for the excellent medical attention he received immediately (we were in and out in under half an hour). In Canadian dollars, it’s less than $8. Maybe I’m just spoiled: this is the first time in my entire life that I have ever had to fork over money to receive care.
Then again, maybe I’m also a little scarred by a lifetime of raising children without ever having enough money to do the job exactly right. I keep wondering what they’d do if I didn’t have enough, if my bank card was declined, if, if, if… if we were in a situation where that ₪23 was a make-or-break. Seems unlikely (and as a parent, part of me wants to say “If you don’t have ₪23 to spare, don’t have kids!”), but I wonder.
On the other hand, maybe paying a little has helped me appreciate what we have here even more. When it was free, I never thought about the value of the services we received. But having paid ₪23, I cannot help thinking, “wow…” This is a country where you can barely buy a lightbulb for ₪23, or a big bag of chips (bear with me here – imagine a REALLY big bag of chips, and a huge colourful lightbulb).
For his part, however much I’d paid, GZ did not initially want to cooperate while the doctor stuck a needle in his face. He thought they’d have to poke right on the bleeding scrape, but even when I explained that it would not be right there, he squirmed and said no. The doctor walked out and said if he didn’t co-operate, the stitches would have to be done in a hospital under general anaesthesia (or so I gathered from the sign language of a mask-shaped hand the nurse put over her own mouth for illustration).
They kept saying to explain to him that it wouldn’t hurt after the initial sting, “like a mosquito,” that his chin would go to sleep. “Hisbarti! Hisbarti!” (I explained!) I said in my newly-perfected past-tense Hebrew. Finally, I told him it would be like the dentist, where he has always co-operated nicely. I also told him that, very often, when mommies took their children for stitches and there was a mall next door that had a kosher smoothie shop, they often felt like buying their child a smoothie with his own choice of fruit flavours. That worked.
I have no idea what kind of mosquito stings four times with a long injecting needle like the doctor did. GZ really did scream blue murder, and then the hard bit was done. Although GZ now claims he felt everything, he was very calm and in fact asked “what’s he doing now?” several times during the scraping and stitching – suggesting to me that he couldn’t feel a thing.
Four stitches later, the only little-bit dumb part was when we had to go into the Dr’s office to “receive the letter.” I went and sat and handed over the health card again and he gave us the letter and a few words of instruction, then continued typing. After I sat there for a few moments, awaiting further direction, the doctor said, “we’re done – you can go.” So we did.
My smoothie was strawberry-banana. GZ’s was strawberry-melon; his own creation, and he said it was delicious. The two small-sized smoothies, it has just occurred to me, cost ₪24, exactly ₪1 more than the doctor visit. I guess I really have very little to complain about.
And so I must end with a request that Hashem help all our life’s problems here in Israel be solved as easily, smoothly, inexpensively… and sweetly as today’s turned out to be.
So today was the test of that: how easily can we get to Yerushalayim from up here in the north? (and also, another importan
The answer is: it’s an easy trip – for an adult. For the kids, it’s a bit much.
For an adult, it costs ₪42 (about $12-14) from the Haifa bus station, plus the local fare to get to the bus station. Normally, that’s ₪5.50, but because they’ve just unveiled and are working the kinks out of a new super-duper high-speed Haifa transit system, the Metronit, it’s temporarily free to get to the bus station – bonus!!!
Time-wise, the Metronit makes it much easier, replacing a bus that was annoyingly slow the 2-3 times we had to take it during our short stay here. But in order to get to the station free and save the ₪5.50 (per person!), we have to walk to the Metronit, which is not exactly close. So what with kid-walking-speed taken into account, the travel time to the Haifa station is still about one hour. Drat.
The bus to Yerushalayim leaves once an hour (a bit more often during rush hour). Once you’re on the bus, it takes exactly 2 hours to get there, not a bad stretch of time, but a restless one for little people. We brought books and other forms of entertainment, but it still felt a little on the long side.
(The bus was full both ways. On the way home, as luck would have it, the last seat on the bus, ie mine, was waaaaay up at the front of the bus, far away from Ted/Akiva and the kiddies. So I had a nice, relaxing ride while they made him crazy the whole way back to Haifa. The last couple of passengers, both times, spent the trip sitting on the floor.)
Arriving in Yerushalayim, I noticed a difference in the weather immediately. They say it because it’s true: “It’s a DRY heat.” Yerushalayim is bone-dry right now. So’s Haifa, but here, we have the damp, salty Mediterranean air, with a humidity often reaching into the 90% range. There, you drink and drink and drink and drink… and it all evaporates out your pores.
It is VERY dry in Yerushalayim; did I mention that? But that means that when there’s a breeze, it feels nice. In the shade, it feels nice. Most importantly, the stickiness that has clung to our skin for the last 12 days finally evaporated, leaving us feeling slightly human again.
Our “errands” for the day were: daven at the kosel (kotel, western wall), find lunch somewhere afterwards, get ice cream at the place I saw near the kosel back in February, stroll through machaneh yehudah market (shuk) and then meet an old friend so our kids could play with her kids. Oy – too much for one day out with kids!!!
The pizza was very nice, though I refused (now that we’re officially Not Tourists) to let the kids buy sugary drinks to go along with them. They knew we planned to get ice cream later anyway.
However, stopping off BEFORE the kosel meant a longer walk to the kosel itself… a hot, sunny shlep until we reached the Old City, where all the weird covered alleyways were about 15 degrees cooler.
Eventually, we made it to the kosel:
It sounds redundant to say it was sunny there, too, but the big open plaza made it feel EXTRA sunny. Some of the ladies were taking shade under a temporary construction bridge across the ladies’ section, but most of those seats were taken. Anyway, I told the kids we wouldn’t stay long, and just did a couple of chapters of tehillim (psalms) before turning around.
Well, not literally. There’s a minhag (custom) to not turn your back on the kosel, just as you wouldn’t turn around and walk away from royalty; it’s just rude. Some people don’t know and just turn around and leave; others take it to an extreme and walk backwards the whole way out. I kind of do a compromise where I go backwards until I feel I’m not really “there” anymore and that it would be ridiculous to back up any farther. Then I turn around.
By the time we’d worked our way back through the warrens of the Christian Quarter, the rest of the plan had kind of gone to pieces because we were late. My friend was very time-constrained, as her son was coming home from school soon (chareidi boys’ schools started back on Rosh Chodesh Elul).
We tried to catch a cab, with no luck, so took the train to machaneh yehudah instead. Then we caught a cab to the park where we were to meet, only 15 minutes late. Found our friends and it was a nice playground; the kids had a good time, if not for nearly long enough.
They walked us back up almost all the way to machaneh yehudah (the shuk) and then left us on our own. Both kids were starting to complain about their legs hurting, so I promised that by the time we got to the other side of the shuk, they would have a) fresh juice drinks, b) halva, and c) a train ride back to the merkazit.
Happily, I was able to make all those dreams come true – cups of fresh limonana (icy-cool lemon-mint slushy) and countless halva samples later (yes, I bought some to bring home, but not much, because we’re NOT tourists!), we caught the train back to the merkazit.
Quickly checked the time and we had FIVE minutes to catch the return bus to Haifa!!! Pre-emptively, I had demanded a complete schedule and platform information when we arrived in the morning, knowing it might be a rush on the way home.
(Note about the bus station – if you go to a “tickets” window and ask for information, they will yell at you; if you go to the “information” window, they may still yell at you, but they will also happily give you all the information you need, and it is very, very useful!)
(She yelled because I asked for the schedule and then clarified because I didn’t think she’d understood me, so she yelled that she was getting it already. It may not have been actual yelling, but it was scary to my Canadian ears.)
I was happy now that I had done all that already, but I also knew that when security is tight, it can take way more than five minutes just to line up and get in to the merkazit, let alone three floors up to the departures platforms (ratzif, ratzif, ratzif… must stop calling them “ritzpah” (floor) instead of “ratzif” (platform).)
Weirdly, for some reason, there was NO security. Like, the door was wide open and the security guy was doing something else. He didn’t even wave us in; he didn’t even look. We ran up the escalators, ran to the platform (ratzif!) and eventually made it into the last four seats.
Exactly two hours later, we pulled in to the Haifa merkazit, and an hour after that, we tumbled sleepily into the apartment, two hours late for a Skype call with my mother, which lasted about two minutes.
Ted / Akiva had the BRILLIANT idea of having hot dogs for supper (oops, yes, we are eating a lot of meats-with-preservatives these days; hopefully it will average out over a lifetime). I was totally craving them after the delicious-smelling hot-dog stand we always pass in the merkazit in Yerushalayim. It is very, very nice to be able to find kosher buns at any hour.
GOOD: When we got home, a fedex was waiting for me with the replacement for my VISA card which was cancelled last week. They refused to mail it to my mother’s house but spent however-much to fedex it to me across the Atlantic. Whatever; I’m happy it’s here. Also, we found a bank machine that worked with our cards, all the way down there in Yerushalayim. Good to know, though it may be the only one in the entire country!
BAD: We dropped off Ted / Akiva at the store to buy the hot dogs and I took the kids home on the local bus (yes, I spent the ₪5.50 per person – GZ was so tired on the Metronit that I had to give him a Werther’s candy to keep him awake.) Naomi sat by herself in the back of the bus and I didn’t notice she got off without her “teek” – the brand-new extra-huge-for-school Roots backpack her Aunt Cheryl bought her when she came to Toronto 2 weeks ago. :-( So I have to call Egged Haifa lost-and-found in the morning and figure out how to tell them we moronically lost our bag. Also, our teudot zehut (identity papers) are officially lost and we have to spend tomorrow shlepping around replacing them. That’s actually kind of good news – by this time tomorrow, we may have them at last.
