Hills

The transition from Chicago to Jerusalem requires certain adjustments... cultural, linguistic, gastronomic. As far as culture goes, you would be on very familiar ground, as American culture has firmly marked its territory, and not always in a good way. The metaphor was not random. As to language, you hear as much English on the streets as you do Hebrew, with French not far behind. When it comes to food, it's so much better here. The quality and variety of fresh produce is amazing, and the food scene is exploding as an indigenous Israeli cuisine evolves. It will only get better with all the French people moving here.

Some people feel they have made the transition when they can convert celsius to fahrenheit or kilos to pounds without using a calculator. My yardstick is hills.

One thing that Jerusalem has in abundance is hills. Altho I consider myself in stellar shape on level ground, the hills here are a challenge at the beginning. Even a slight incline can leave me breathless. I take solace from the fact that Jerusalem's altitude is 2600 feet; Chicago's is 670.

Part of the game is figuring out how to avoid hills as much as possible. Thanks to topography there are many ways to get from A to B. As my friend Bevie said many years ago: for every shortcut there's a shorter cut. To that I added: and a flatter cut.

I feel I've truly accomplished something when I can get up a hill (and a flight of stairs) without an effort. I passed this milestone yesterday when I walked to the community center where I take art and Arabic classes, about half an hour and many hills away from this apartment.

But it's not all about me ...

Sid came home from his first week in Sar-el yesterday afternoon. He said it was more physically demanding than in the past. They have him packing and unpacking large, heavy cartons. He's working in the same warehouse he did last year. The manager's name is Mashiach (messiah), and he's a wonderful guy. I worked a shift for him the first time I did Sar-el. We will spend a quiet Shabbat by ourselves, then he returns for the second week on Sunday.

There are so many things I love about this city. Food aside, the people are the best. Everywhere you turn you see people engaging with each other in the kindest and friendliest ways. Perfect strangers start conversations while waiting for a bus or waiting in line at the grocery store. If you look lost someone will approach and ask if you need directions. Kids still get up to offer their seat on the bus. This morning the cashier at the grocery store (yes, the one who has a crush on Sid) saved us 10 shekels by telling us we should buy a different kind of wine than what we had in our cart - just as good and it was on sale. If there's ever some kind of emergency people rush to help. Unfortunately that's becoming an all too frequent situation these days since the knife intifada started in September.

I love the spiritual rhythm of Jerusalem on Fridays, which is more palpable than other parts of Israel with the possible exception of Safed. The scent of fresh baked challot, the fact that candle-lighting times replace traffic reports on the afternoon newscasts, the fresh flowers that are sold outside the grocery stores, the shopping rush hour, everyone (even the most rabidly secular) saying Shabbat shalom instead of bye. And the sense of peace that falls over the city as streets empty of cars and people as the sun sets behind the hills.



Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem,

Peggy and Sid

Winter Storm

We're in the midst of a terrible winter storm (they're even talking about snow) and I've been abandoned.

Sid left Sunday (January 24) morning for his 2-week stint in Sar-el, the program that places civilian volunteers at army bases to do the kind of grunt work that would normally be done by reservists. This program, unique in the world, saves 1.5 million man hours for reservists who would otherwise have to leave their families and jobs to do this work. It brings all kinds of people to Israel from all over the world. This is his 4th time. I've done it twice.

Dori also left in the morning to return to her base via her kibbutz. She has to move her possessions out of the kibbutz so they can welcome another group of Loan Soldiers. Her commander was sending a car and driver to pick her up. But on the bus to the kibbutz she got a text from her CO saying that in view of the weather he didn't want to send a driver out, so she's on her way back to Jerusalem and has an overnight reprieve. But if it snows as forecast, she will be stuck here. Jerusalem's elevation is 2500 feet and when it snows the road down to the coast is usually closed.

And my friend Bevie who was supposed to come over woke up not feeling well and had to cancel.

So it's a perfect day to do housework. I did a load of laundry, finally had a chance to look thru the closets to find clean sheets and towels, and in general made "seder", which means putting things in their proper place. I also took photos of the apartment ...

                                                       Living room/kitchen
                                             

                                                      Dining room/"corner office"

                                         Our room

               Ensuite bathroom where a balcony used to be. No partition and no way to block the light.

                                   

                Toilet (outhouse?) shoehorned into what used to be a balcony.

  

 Shower. It's like showering outside. Fortunately there is plenty of hot water.

                                                     Second bedroom and bath room

                  Laundry room with yet another toilet/sink.
                 It seems they wanted to install as many as possible.
                 Note: no dryer.

As things were at their dreariest, I got a phone call from my Krav Maga friend Shefa suggesting we meet at her gym for a boxing class. I explained about Dori returning to Jerusalem and said I wanted to check with her before making any plans. Long story short, Dori joined us at the gym, which is conveniently located across from the central bus station, and the timing was perfect.

The gym is a very nice facility. Lots of workout rooms and lots of classes, from the usual (Pilates, yoga, kickboxing, strength training and toning) to the unusual (Feldenkreis and belly dancing). If I lived here full time I would be there every day. As it is, I'm already booked solid two and a half days a week, and if I committed to any more activities Sid would kill me.

Brian (the instructor) was a character. Reminded me of the trainer in the early Rocky films played by Burgess Meredith. He's from South Africa and has been in Israel for 50 years. He trained professional boxers in South Africa, and has a style that is totally different from anything I've done in Chicago. He looks to be about 70, but must be older if you do the math, and he never stopped moving the whole time we were there (an intense hour and a half). The warm up consisted of (among other things) 90 push-ups (3 sets of 30) and 120 sit-ups (4 sets of 30). I was able to get thru 50 before I had to switch to girls push-ups; the sit-ups were a piece of cake. Thank you Fernando. We finished with 14 rounds (3 minutes each) at the heavy bags. Dori did well for her first time, but I have to say I have more stamina.

You go, Girl.

Brian, the South African trainer, getting up from doing his 300th push-up.

The snow never materialized, but the weather was bad enough to keep me imprisoned in the apartment all day. Going stir crazy.

Week 2

We moved into our apartment last Friday, January 15. But first we rented a car to move our 6 suitcases.

We went to Eldan (the car rental company) at 1130AM, which is about the worst possible time on a Friday, but shockingly it was not crowded and we were taken care of immediately. We had a brand new Peugeot, and decided to stop at the apartment to check it out before going back to the hotel to pick up our luggage. But we didn't even get that far. There was evidently something very wrong with the car. It jerked, had delayed reactions, and felt like driving a stick shift even tho it was automatic. No way were we going to keep it, so back to Eldan where the agent said, it's because the car is robotic. There's a way to take it off the robotic setting but we said absolutely not, we want a car that just goes without the robot. So they changed it.

The apartment is on the first floor, which really means the second floor, about 18 steps up. No elevator of course. And we had very heavy suitcases. Slowly we emptied the car ( we were lucky to find parking right in front of the building) and schlepped our way up the stairs. It's quite large and has very high ceilings. Two bedrooms, two and a half baths, combination living room-dining room-kitchen. It's been rehabbed. The balconies were enclosed in order to enlarge the living room and master bedroom. It's nice to have the extra square footage, but it comes with certain drawbacks. First, it's hard to heat a place with high ceilings, even more so because there's no insulation (it's only in the past few years that they use insulation in construction), so every wall is an outside wall. And while it's very nice to have an ensuite bathroom in the master bedroom, whoever designed this place didn't take sunrise into account. (There will be photos as soon as I figure out how to transfer them from my new phone.) When Dori gets out of the army she will stay with us. Her bedroom has bunk beds and an ensuite bathroom as well. There is a washing machine but no dryer, and without balconies there's nowhere to hang laundry to dry. At least this year the washing machine is normal - a cycle only takes 2 hours and no shake, rattle and roll like last year. The kitchen is nicely designed but poorly equipped. I guess the owners didn't expect the renters to cook. As last year, the owners are French. Anyone noticing a trend? According to what I've been reading 43% of French Jews want to emigrate.

We made a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up the minimum supplies - coffee mostly. We didn't worry about food because Batsheva had us over for both Friday night dinner and Shabbat lunch. And no one leaves Batsheva's hungry.

Saturday evening we took a walk downtown. Sid wanted to go back to Birman's, the jazz bar we discovered last year. On the way there we ran into the Korean Choir on Ben Yehuda Street.

Sunday we went to the shuk for provisions. No where else do you get the quality and variety that you get in the shuk. Everyone told us not to go on Sunday. Not every shop is open, the produce isn't fresh because they don't get deliveries until late in the day or early on Monday, etc etc. Israelis have a real thing about food being fresh, which is easy to do here because something picked at 4AM gets to the market at 6. If it's more than a day old it's considered ready for the waste bin. That may be true, but the great thing about going on Sunday is that it's not crowded and you can actually find parking. We were in food heaven. There are so many things we can get here that are so much better than in Chicago. For the last few weeks all we could talk about was the cheese, olives, yoghurt, and a particular dry biscuit I absolutely love. Feed me that and I could last a lifetime.

Mondays are my busy days, but this was busier than most. Sid returned the rental car and I walked to my women's class, from 10AM-1PM. The depth of the analysis, the breath of knowledge that each lecturer has never ceases to amaze me. My friend Bevie, who I've known for many many many years, came for the second lecture. We will get together next Sunday for quality time.

From there I walked to my Krav Maga class. Moshe, the instructor, wasn't expecting me till next week so I took him by surprise. It was good to be back with my posse. We are doing knife defense.

I wasn't up to walking home but considering how long I had to wait for the bus I might as well have. We ate and then it was off to Pardes for yet another lecture. It was the second of a four part series about King David. Very good, but not nearly at the level of a Yeshurun lecture. Ironically we studied the same material at Yeshurun 2 years ago.

Tuesday it was back to the mall. We still needed a couple of things and I was determined to get Sid a phone. Getting his phone couldn't have been easier. It took no more than 5 minutes, and they even gave him a number that's close to mine ... 058-70-999-40. If anyone wants to call him, there's an 8 hour time difference and the dialing sequence is 011 972 58 70-999-40.

Wednesday was again a busy day. The ceramics class from last year has expanded to include a drawing class. Just what I need. I'm so not into any crafts except beading, and I would have loved to find an excuse to get out of the ceramics, so instead I wind up with drawing AND ceramics. Much to my surprise I really enjoyed the drawing.We worked with chalk which is very messy. For that matter ceramics is worse. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a neat freak so by nature I'm not cut out for these activities. On the plus side it's actually a great escape and has been compared to meditating for clearing the mind. And the women in the class are wonderful. They welcomed me back like a long lost relative.

We didn't have much planned for today, except I had to change money, which goes so fast it just disappears. We walked to the shuk (where else would you go to change money?), and from there I walked to my krav maga class. Still working on knife defense. At the end of the class I got a text from Dori letting me know she was on her way to Jerusalem. When I boarded the bus to go back to our apt, there she was sitting in the first seat with her ginormous backpack on the seat next to her, wearing ear phones and her eyes were closed. I lightly tapped her arm and asked if she could move her backpack. She looked at me and it took a second for her to realize who had the chutzpa to get her out of her zone. What a coincidence. If we had planned this it never would have worked. She's here for Shabbat, then back to the base.

We're settled in the apartment and establishing a routine. Even tho the kitchen isn't well equipped I made a couple of great dinners this week. It's amazing what you can do with so little. And the food here is fabulous. The only thing between me and another 20 pounds is all the walking.

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem,

Peggy and Sid

Home

Thursday, January 14, 2016



Ask an Israeli living abroad where his heart is and 9 out of 10 will say in Israel.  No matter how good life can be (or the reason for) living in other countries, this is home. And home is where the heart is.

We are at the beginning of our third winter in Israel. When we left Chicago on January 12 the temperature was 0. When we landed last night it was 62. Winter is a relative term.

The flights were fine except for a delay of 1 hour and 45 minutes leaving Chicago. Because I'm a worrier by nature, I was concerned that we wouldn't make our connection in London due to the lengthy security procedures. Fortunately Heathrow has streamlined security and the airport was uncharacteristically uncrowded, so we made the flight and so did our luggage. I booked us on late flights, which is the best cure yet for jet lag. We landed at 9PM and walked into the hotel (we are staying at the Inbal Hotel until tomorrow when we move to our apartment) at 11PM. We went to sleep around midnight, and slept till 8AM.

Our apartment is in the same neighborhood where we've stayed previously. It's great to be in a location that is so familiar. We know the area, the grocery store (one of the cashiers has a big crush on Sid), the bus routes, the short cuts to restaurants and shops. In a word, it's home.

Speaking of luggage ... we checked 5 suitcases this time and TSA opened 4 of them. I don't know what they were looking for, since we've never had our luggage inspected before. It was probably the paper towels, aluminum foil, saran wrap and vitamins that show up suspiciously on an x-ray. Yes, paper towels, foil and saran. Every American I know who comes to Israel for a length of time brings these things because they are expensive and of poor quality here.

We spent this morning at the phone store. For reasons that anyone over 9 years old will never understand, I couldn't unlock my phone. Long story short I bought a phone. The young man who helped me was a gem. He imported my contacts, downloaded my apps and showed me how the phone works. This was a time-consuming process and he was very nice about it. The fact that the store wasn't busy helped.

Our granddaughter Dori got to Jerusalem late this afternoon. We had dinner at Olive and Fish, a restaurant we've been to several times, conveniently located across from the hotel. She is stationed at a base near the Gaza border and has a few days off. She made sargeant.

                                                   Yes, I do have a black eye.

I wrote the first part of this post from the 9th floor lounge at the Inbal, with a view of Mount Zion. It was clear with a few clouds. Israel has had a lot much-needed rain so far this winter, but the long-range forecast for the next 2 and a half months is for mostly sunny, pleasant weather.

My plan is to blog once a week, on Thursdays. I appreciate comments and followers.

Shabbat shalom,
Peggy and Sid