Driver's Education

Contrary to what my Israeli coworkers told me on my first day of work, Israel does not have the worst drivers in the world.  Either India or China has probably secured that distinction.  Israeli drivers are not “bad”—they are just overly creative and aggressive.

For two and a half weeks we lived in the city center at the top of the hill.  Our commute to work consisted of a steep downgrade, several one-way streets, five roundabouts and three pedestrian crossings.  Cars or people could come from anywhere at any time.  Cars could be backing out of street parking, trying to pass on the left down a narrow lane, going around a bus, waiting for a parking space, or waiting for a pedestrian.  People could dart out into traffic, crossing streets unexpectedly in unexpected places. 

Horns are used liberally.  A short blast on the horn can mean anything from a warning “hey I’m coming through” to an aggravated “get out of my way, dummy,” or the parting jab, “you almost hit me!”  Several blasts of the horn pose the interrogative “what the heck is going on here?” and are usually common in traffic jams.  On occasion whole groups of cars will take up the question and the street rings with music.

Israeli drivers are very aggressive.  Cars are small, speeds are relatively slow, and nothing is very far so there’s no real concept of a road trip or enjoying the journey.  Cars are means to the end of getting from point A to point B as soon as possible.  Once point B has been reached, it is common for cars to be ditched in amazingly creative ways.  Kenny and I have seen more than a few cars up on curbs, sidewalks, and medians.  Ticketing is uncommon except for cars that park in metered parking without paying.  Parking on sidewalks is just part of life.

Our car is a Mazda 2 which we have named “Camel” because she is dirty and she smells.  She also hauls us around without complaint and so far she’s managed anything we’ve thrown at her.  I have not been brave enough to try driving here for reasons mentioned above, so Kenny does all of the work.  I am navigator which is also a big job as the streets are not well marked, have different English names depending on which map you use (see SGN LNGG for why), change names repeatedly, and are rarely in a grid pattern.  We have a GPS with maps of Israel which helps, but it is not a guarantee that you will find parking, a through street, or even the destination.  When we were going to the Grand Canyon Mall, for example, we found the mall with the GPS but missed the turnoffs to the underground garage three times!  When we visit Jerusalem again with Z and V we will have directions to a first choice parking garage and a second choice one (just to be sure).

On the plus side, the highways between the cities seem to be in excellent shape.  Highway 6 to Jerusalem was a breeze (miles of open asphalt).  Drive for two hours in any direction and you nearly cover the entire country (with the exception of four hours to Eilat).  Distances here are so small that the drive is never the centerpiece, just an interlude.  Before you know it, you’ve arrived, and it’s time to ditch the car.  Pray for parking!

Our Trusty Camel

Life's a Beach

The flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, and the sea is a deep turquoise.  Here are some pictures of our home away from home.  Yes, we live in a hotel--it's a two bedroom apartment with living room, kitchen and bathroom located within the hotel, but unavailable for normal hotel booking.  We live on the 10th floor of 20 (see highlight below).

The apartment faired poorly in the wind/rain storm we had last week.  The ceiling in the master bedroom leaked on to the bed for about 3 days, but now the sun is out and we don't need to worry about it raining on both sides of the windows for a while.

Pictures of the place:

This is the view from our main dining/living area.  Can't beat it!

Our Kitchen

 

Bathroom with surprisingly good hot water and water pressure

Guest Bedroom with Balcony



Master Bedroom

Sunset view south towards MATAM



Sunset over the sea



We walk to work (30 minutes) along the beach when the weather is good.  The site provides a light breakfast of rolls, cereal, coffee, tea and yogurt until 9:00 so that's our first meal.  We meet up for lunch in the cafeteria which is our main meal.  After lunch we take a brief walk and then it's back to work.  We walk back home as the sun sets into the water.  Dinner is pasta which Kenny cooks in our little kitchen.  Dessert is dates or nuts or whatever we happen to have in the fridge.  Not a bad life!

Typical scenery on the walk to work

Pictures from Jerusalem

This was a close as we got to Dome of the Rock

Who knew there would be that many different Christian costumes?

Old religion meets new technology

Jerusalem is a crowded place filled with people and history.  It is like no other city in the world: international and segregated; worldy and religious; anciently decaying and being reborn from the rubble.  It's a living myth that's so sacred it cannot help but be profaned simply by the act of existence. 

A story from one of the guidebooks:  the Dome of the Rock was built by a Muslim caliph who took control of Jerusalem in ~600 AD.  The temple had been destroyed in 70 AD so for roughly 500 years the Temple Mount had been nothing but rubble.  The Caliph, upon seeing the trash and debris littering the most sacred site, declared his intention to preserve this sacred mountain and erected his shrine.  As to why the few Jewish inhabitants had not tried to rebuild or clean up the Temple Mount, the book says that after the temple was destroyed there was no longer any guide as to where the holy of holies had been located.  Rather than inadvertantly trespass on that most hallowed ground, they avoided the Temple Mount altogether, preferring to worship at the Western Wall. 

Now they are barred from the Temple Mount entirely.

Shabbat Observed

Exodus 16:29 (New International Version, ©2011)

29 Bear in mind that the LORD has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where they are on the seventh day; no one is to go out.”

One of the hardest things to adjust to while living in Israel is the difference in the weekend and what it represents. 

In the US, the weekend is quintessential freedom—the freedom to rest, the freedom to play, the freedom to eat out indulgently and the freedom to shop.  All stores are open and ready for business as crowds of people who worked through the week hit the mall, go out for large lunches, or otherwise indulge in rampant consumerism.  The weekend is a time when revenue flows into local suburban communities and all the stores are ready to receive it.  Sunday is just a repeat of Saturday with perhaps a slightly later start to accommodate those who wish to attend Sunday morning church.  Restaurants thrive on the hoards of people going out to eat after church—it’s practically tradition.  It’s a world of 24/7 availability and weekends are when the purse strings get a little looser and the family gets a little fatter.

            The weekend in Israel bears little resemblance to its hedonistic US cousin.  For starters, it is Friday-Saturday to correspond with the Jewish Sabbath.  Decades ago the weekend was only the Sabbath—Friday was a normal work day, ending just before sundown after which everything shut down.  Fortunately, they have embraced the two-day weekend which is almost necessary now because Friday is always market day.  Any shopping that couldn’t happen during the week happens on Friday before 3:00 and stores are absolutely packed.  Kenny and I tried to go to the largest mall in Haifa, the Grand Canyon, and although it boasted 2500 parking spaces, there wasn’t one to be had in the entire garage at 10:30 a.m. People had parked illegally, up on curbs, in the middle of the road and still the cars circled like a school of sharks trying to find one open patch of concrete.  After 30 minutes of circling and several near-accidents we decided that the mall was not for us.

            On Saturday, the only action is in the Arab towns and villages.  Nazareth was humming like any other city due to its large Arab population and its popular Christian sites.  Churches are open on Saturday, no problem.  In Haifa, the Christian Arab section of town in Wadi Nisnas holds its outdoor market and keeps open its falafel and shwarma stands but wander out of that small quarter and it’s a ghost town.  Cafes are shuttered.  Supermarkets are shut down.  Streets are empty.  In the US, the only equivalent is Christmas Day in a big city.  Like Christmas, you have to plan for this and the anxiety about having 2 days bread on hand by the time the sun sets on Friday makes the weekend a much more worrisome prospect than it is in the states.  Haifa is one of the more progressive cities.  With its mixed Jewish/Arab population the city bus company allows buses to run on Saturdays (albeit with a reduced schedule).  In all other cities, public transportation is completely shut down.  Even the elevator in our hotel runs on “Shabbat mode” which means it stops at every floor in sequence so that a person wishing to avoid the “work” of pushing an elevator button can simply hop on and ride it to the desired floor.  In practicality, it takes an elevator out of commission and if the Shabbat elevator happens to be on your floor when you wish to take the other ones, you must wait for it to go on its merry way before calling another one.

            After the sun sets on Saturday, the whole world of commerce suddenly springs to life.  Lights flash on, restaurants open up and the market place is humming again.  If you can wait until dark, there are once again a host of dining options, buses and trains.

            The day of rest is definitely a mixed blessing to the foreigner living here.  On the one hand it concentrates shopping into one big hectic morning rush which is not very pleasant.  On the other hand, the day of rest allows families to visit, books to be read, and a sense of quiet and peace otherwise missing in a big city to once again prevail.

Mint and its many uses (Drinking in Israel)

Today I am sick with a cold so naturally my mind turns to more daily living topics such as drinks.  Drinks here are not like the US.  Soda (Coke, Pepsi, and Sprite) is available but it shares shelf space with a variety of juice drinks ranging from 10% to 100% juice.  If you are lucky there are also street vendors who will squeeze oranges or pomegranates into delicious beverages while you wait.  It is very common to see pitchers of fresh squeezed lemonade offered in restaurants and, based on my three samples, its quality is impeccable. I have yet to encounter anything made from frozen concentrate.  Alongside the juices is the herbal drinks made from the same company.  They come in three flavors: lemon verbena, sage and lemon grass, and spearmint.  To make them the company boils the herbs in hot water, creating an infusion, which is then added to a lemonade base.  They are delicious—especially the mint.

            Mint infusions are also common in tea drinking.   When a business meeting has tea and coffee in the conference room there is always a small bowl of accessories on offer.  There is the expected sugar and 3% milk (real milk, not creamer), but there are also slices of lemon and sprigs of spearmint.  It is common to take a lemon slice and a sprig of mint alongside a tea bag and pour hot water over the whole concoction.  Once the tea has been drunk, it is also possible to pour more hot water on the mint and drink the infusion as a final digestive.  In the fine restaurants, mint tea is provided by putting mint leaves in the hot water that the patron can then pour out on to the tea bag.  I find it to be one of the best drinks I’ve had, but then two of my three favorite flavors are lemon and mint.

            Coffee is available at Intel Haifa in the same way that soda is available in Intel Folsom.  It is ubiquitous.  Espresso is the water cooler drink of choice and the most popular form is cappuccino.  Each floor in IDC-9 has at least one coffee drink maker that will steam the milk and grind the beans at the push of a button.  Near the machine is a small refrigerator stocked full of milk since it is common to have to reload the milk steaming vessel before noon most days.  I have limited myself to only two cappuccinos per day in an attempt to control my caffeine addiction.  It is tough during the weekends when I no longer have access to those wonderful machines.

            Alcoholic beverages are also less common in Haifa than in Folsom.  There is beer but it is not cheap.  Our favorite pizza restaurant serves beer from Italy with a very mild flavor but it is a far cry from the German hefeweizens that I have loved in Europe.  I have heard that Goldstar is pretty good but I have yet to try it.

            Wine is also not cheap and it is not commonly drunk at restaurants.  Coming from a wine state, California, my palate has been spoiled on Napa Cabs and Amador Zins, but I have yet to taste a fine red wine in Israel. I have heard that the Carmel region is good wine country so I’ll leave my opinions open to future experiences.  With so many tasty beverages to choose from, I don’t miss it too much.

Stormy Thoughts: 3/9

I was very sick when I wrote this and in the middle of a big storm, but I like the poetry of it so I'm posting it.  Don't worry, I'm feeling much better now.

Having converted an entire box of tissues into several small piles scattered about the apartment I gaze out into the roiling sea and wonder if I will ever be well again. The wind howls with an angry voice threatening violence as if it would tip me from my crow’s nest, pitching me headlong into the raging surf.  The sky is bruised black and the sea in sympathy reflects the brooding storm where it is not white with rabid foam.  Last night I heard it distantly, listening to ghost voices from half the world away, imagining that I was home, home again and waking up coming back to myself in a bed in a foreign land overlooking the sea and dreaming of rolling hills.



This is a picture of the storm in all its fury (minus the lightning)



SGN LNGG

Israel is a demanding place, at least until the jet lag wears off.  The people are some of the friendliest I’ve ever met but even the most well-intentioned encounter can’t take place without struggling to cross the language barrier.  The locals may have learned English but they live Hebrew and any conversation in English is always a challenge to find the right words.  The people are amazing, though.  Our landlord has given us the use of an umbrella, a box of strawberries, sweets, fresh flowers and tonight he came by to give us some of his dinner.  Nice guy!

When going out into the city there are signs all over the place, only a small fraction of which are in English and even they are sometimes spelled in three different ways due to the varied phonetic representations of the Hebrew characters.  For example, the city of Ceasarea can also be “Qisariyya,” “Kesarya,” or “Qasarya.”  On a previous trip to Israel Kenny nearly missed the exit for the city due to the fact that his map used one spelling and the road sign used another.  Even the English needs some phonetic gymnastics before it becomes totally intelligible.

            Hebrew characters are another story altogether.  First, they read right to left, which means that the logo for the Israeli airline runs one way in English and another way in Hebrew EL (AL) AL (EL)—not to mention that the “al” character looks like LY which is why the flight numbers show up as LY006.  Weird.  At any rate, even when you’ve successfully matched the character to the phonetic sound, you still have an uphill battle in front of you because A) the vowels are missing and B) you have no idea what the Hebrew word means!  One word I did learn was “Supersell” the name of our local grocery in Haifa.  The first character can be pronounced “sh” or “s” depending on the placement of a dot above it, but the logo has stripped that out, leaving the ambiguity.  What we’re left with is “SH/S P/F R S L” and knowing that it should be “SUPERSELL” we can make sense of it.  I’ve mostly given up trying until I learn a few more words.

            Some restaurants in the city center have adopted creative English branding in an effort to appeal to the tourists who stay in the nearby hilltop hotels.  One of the few burger joints (offering lamb burgers as well as beef ones) is called “Zestys” with the slogan “meat in & out.”  A nearby restaurant heralds passersby with “Reubens: when meat meets bread.”  It doesn’t get much better or simpler than that.  Today I used “Fairy” dish detergent in my washing up.  I don’t think that would export well.

            Today we hiked down a wadi (valley) to get to the beach.  It was a very mentally relaxing day because there were very few signs to read and no people to negotiate with other than my husband.  On the other hand, it was hard walking and now I am exhausted and ready for bed.