Another calendar page turns over ...

Well here it is December and I'm mentally counting down the days we have left. Then I look at my to-do list to see how many things I can squeeze in and I'm starting to realize just  how little time that is. Considering we will be in Spain (more about that in an upcoming post) for a week at the end of the month, we only have 3 weeks netto, as they say here.

Besides joining a gym, I've been busy training with Shefa and my original krav maga teacher, Moshe. We met on Tuesday at a large public park, Gan Sacker, and trained outside, Yes, it was that warm. We trained for 3 hours, split between learning the finer points of momentum and leverage and disarming guns and knives. Very cool stuff.

Learning to push off an attacker.

It's hard to see, but that yellow thing is a gun. A training gun.

On Wednesday we went to Tel Aviv to meet Dori and Itzik, her bf, for lunch. We took the train and it was very quick and efficient. Once we got to Tel Aviv we had to take a local bus to the Carmel Market to meet Dori. The hardest part of the transportation was locating the bus stop. The train station is connected to the bus station by a bridge that goes over a major highway, so they are more or less together, which solves the confusion of two weeks ago when Sid went back to Sar-el. They have done a lot of renovations, but someone forgot to tell them to make signage for the buses. The bus parking lot is huge. The bus stop signs are small. I asked a driver where the #18 bus was and he replied, in typical Israeli fashion, over there. So we walked "over there", and finally found it. The rest was a piece of cake. We met at Erez Hatemani, one of the hole in the wall restaurants in the Yeminite Quarter, which used to be a slum and is now prime real estate. Location, location, location. It's very close to the beach and the Bauhaus neighborhood.  We sat outside; yes, it was that warm. It's always interesting to talk to young Israelis about their plans for the future, which usually include a several-months break before settling down to the working world. This, of course, is after the several-months post-army trip. I'm all for it. If you don't do it when you're young by the time you get around to it you're too old. These trips involve hiking, backpacking, hitchhiking. camping, hostels and local buses. 

After lunch Sid and I went to Liebling Haus, a new museum in the Bauhaus neighborhood. It opened in September with a special exhibit called Transferumbau (Transfer Agreements), which was the name of a program between 1933-1939 that made it possible to get some assets out of Germany. This is a little-known chapter of the pre-War Holocaust. Jews who had the foresight and means to get out of Germany and go to the Mandate were prohibited from taking assets with them. A program was set up between the German government and the Jewish Agency whereby Jews could sell assets, deposit them in a bank, and purchase construction materials with those funds. While Liebling Haus was being renovated walls that through time had been plastered over and floors that had been re-tiled were uncovered. Lo and behold German building materials from the 1930's were uncovered: wall and floor tiles manufactured by Villeroy & Boch, plumbing fixtures, doorknobs, building materials etc made by other German companies. The curators mounted photographs of the two families that lived in the building, along with photographic collages of the rehab work. A small and highly personal account of two families who were forced by circumstances to flee the homeland they loved, where they had lived for generations to a hot, dusty, primitive city where they didn't know the language or customs, but knowing they were among the lucky ones who got away with their lives and at least some of their possessions and assets.

Getting ready for an overnight guest and candles are in 15 minutes.

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem,

Peggy and Sid