Archive for November, 2009
Picture of the Week XXIX
This week we head down to the old, more rundown area of south Tel Aviv, into Levinsky Street. Here you can probably experience your first stab of culture shock in Israel, as you won’t find the pretty side of Tel Aviv down this way. The people here work hard, live hard and yes, shop for lingerie extraordinarily hard (see the pic below). I’ve rented places to live down this way; it’s cheap and definitely no-thrills. But there are some little gems to be found, you’ve just got to look for them.
The pic was taken by schnapper_j, a guy from Kfar Saba, just outside of Tel Aviv. He’s got some nice shots of Tel Aviv in his collection, definitely worth a browse. I love this pic and those faces on those mannequins, though there’s something scarily Joker-ish about them…
How I ended up in the Holy Land. And stayed…Part 11
Continuing on with my tale of woe and joy of how I ended up in Israel…tales of a non-Jewish potential Kibbutz volunteer who falls in love with Tel Aviv, dodges Scud missiles, lives and works illegally for years on end, gets besotted by one Israeli girl despite the best attempts of a legendary Jewish mother, but ends up marrying and divorcing another… and then marrying yet another to join suburbia and the hi-tech revolution, while becoming the seemingly respectable owner of an English school.
In case you missed them; Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.
Part 11: Out of the frying pan…!
So there we were, me and Ofira, in our own place at last as 1993 drew to a close. Things were at last looking like they were moving in the right direction, a direction we both wanted. This time there was no sofa to kip on, no angry father to watch out for, and no interfering mother to stick her oar in. Well, not from close quarters…
And we had fun, for a while. Although we were both working, and often I wouldn’t even see Ofira for a couple of nights as she slept over at her job (she was a counselor at a hostel for abused kids), we would usually be together at weekends and get to enjoy some of Tel Aviv’s delights, especially around the Central Bus Station area (and yes, it was a dive then and it’s got even worse since).
We had some really enjoyable times together, just doing the simple things in life; shopping together on Friday mornings at the local grocery store, cooking up some spicy pasta while grabbing chilled beers from our manky old fridge, and hosting friends who were always popping round to visit and even kip over for the night. It was home, and yes, it was our home sweet home.
But yes, those magical days were actually few and far between. Looking back, it’s easy to see that it seemed like such a blissful period, a moment of isolation, of freedom for both of us. But, truthfully, we were probably both aware that living together at this time in our lives wasn’t going to work.
Deep down I knew things weren’t right. But I hid behind the hazy shade of beer fumes which had started to make their way back into my life on a regular basis, thanks to some old beer-drinking pals who were still around in Tel Aviv. And as Ofira often didn’t make it back home for 2 or 3 nights a week, and even weekends started to disappear into a work-filled black hole, my license to roam and be merry was given plenty of exercise…
So, as spring crept towards summer, our relationship was again on the rocks. Some likened my hankering for summer fun to the Led Zeppelin classic, but it wasn’t something that I was purposefully looking for. Despite loving her like crazy, I’m an all-or-nothing kind of guy, and I felt that our relationship had headed into a one-way street, in so much that I, rightly or wrongly, was doing all the work, which wasn’t doing it for me.
The complexities of living together had simply worn us down. This time, there was no mother to blame (at least as far as I know), no other guilty party to get angry with. The simple truth was that we had probably grown apart, there was no real connection like there had been in the early Scud-laden days. Just one of those things, I guess.
And so I fell into the arms of Lilach.
Cue: Just when I thought I was out…
Aaah, sweet Lilach.
First of all, I should point out that up until this point I hadn’t cheated on Ofira. My pursuit of “fun” usually meant the ultimate goal of another pint and that’s usually as far as it went. Of course, girls passed through these beery occasions, but there wasn’t anything more than a friendly chat or innocent flirt.
But sometimes, fate throws the dice and there’s absolutely nothing you can do…
I met Lilach while gardening – yes, I was still toiling away most days in the suburbs, earning a crust while perfecting the art of hedge-trimming. I had been working on this big project outside a high school and it had been fun. I’d gotten used to being the novelty act, the English lad, but some of the female students at this high school took it to extremes. I’m no Brad Pitt, but getting called Brandon and getting wolf-whistled was new to me. I totally blame my freshly grown sideburns.
One day, a particularly forward girl came up to me and started chatting in English. Her name was Racheli, her English was crap, but in between the mispronunciations and bad grammar, I understood she had a sister who fancied me.
“My seester very bootiful. She like you much much.” Or something very similar.
And after another couple of mornings of this terrible English and me guessing just what the feck she was trying to say, I finally got to meet her sister, Lilach. And I wasn’t disappointed, Lilach was very cute.
So cute that any lingering feelings I had for Ofira were soon wiped away. Perhaps officially we hadn’t “broken up”, but when your girlfriend doesn’t come home for a week and you haven’t spoken civilly to each other for even longer (and God knows how long it had been since the last real conversation), there’s not really a lot to work with…we both knew it was curtains. Perhaps Lilach’s arrival on the scene was perfect timing on her behalf, perhaps she was the clincher for me to finally confirm in my mind that it was over with Ofira, but whatever the reasons, I was going on a date with Lilach, even if the date was just a meetup at the beach after I’d finished work.
She might have been 18 (and still in high school) to my 25, but Lilach wasn’t shy. She was a great, no-thrills girl; she knew what she wanted and she knew how to get what she wanted. Which meant I turned into something like a rabbit frozen in car headlights…
And you know what’s it like, the beginning of something new…all new, fresh and exciting. Lilach made me come alive again, something I hadn’t felt for a long time (OK, not since the previous summer!), and there was just such a buzz between us I think we both taken aback at the intensity of what was happening.
I even brought her back to the place I still officially shared with Ofira. At this point we were long dead but still sharing the rent. I never knew if Ofira was about, but knew her work schedule so knew I wouldn’t be having an “uncomfortable” moment. The next door neighbor however, wasn’t aware that we weren’t really living together and on her next stopover he let her know all about Lilach. Especially the moment the old buggar had peeked through the window and spotted Lilach in her, er, birthday suit. B’stard.
Anyway, the moment had come, and me and Ofira split up. Ofira was upset that it was over, but in my mind I had moved on weeks ago. In truth, I think she felt the same, but was upset that I was with someone new. We both loved each other, but the love had turned lukewarm. That raging fire that had burned brightly at the start of our relationship was now barely enough to shrivel a marshmallow.
So Lilach and me were together, as the summer crept ever closer. And before long, after meeting some of her family at a big Friday night gathering, I knew our relationship was in for a helluva ride. Sopranos Central you could have called it, with enough small-time crooks to keep the Miami underworld happy. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her Granny pull out a Magnum (and not the chocolate coated kind) if I had said something about the bony chicken and undercooked potatoes…
But to hear more underworld interaction you’ll have to wait for the next episode…oh yes!
Next up: Things come to a head with a real-life crime family!
Picture of the Week XXVIII
This week it’s time for some food-related goodness. Israel has some great foods to try of course, and the spices that are thrown into the bowl or frying pan play a big part in making those foods turn out as tasty as they do. One of my favorite spices is paprika, which can either come in sweet or hot/spicy versions. The mountains of spices in the shot below look like paprika, though I could be wrong. It also looks like they’re being used to brighten up a Jerusalem felafel stand, though whether or not the felafels are getting livened up with sweet or spicy paprika, who knows…
The pic was taken by Haravroth, who has a small but nice little collection of pics in his photostream (he only started uploading pics to Flickr last month).
Crikey chaps, I’ve got the munchies!
Israel to teach Brazil how to play soccer!
Er, no.
OK, so Israel teaching the Samba Kings how to play football might be a bit far-fetched. But check this out: the Brazilian government is sending over a team of its water experts to analyze how Israel has managed to conserve water. The Brazilians are apparently worried that the recent good work they’ve done in the area of conserving water (including ads that plugged peeing while having a bath, to save water of course) will go pear-shaped when the Olympics scheduled to take place in Rio in 2016 kicks off.
It seems the Brazilians are worried a thirsty and uneducated bunch of tourists might just send their water conservation program down the river, so are looking at cutting edge technological solutions, something Israel isn’t too shabby at.
I say there’s no need for technology. Just produce an ad with eye-candy supermodels, faces peeling and skin cracking, that’ll scare the public into changing their ways. I know when I saw Bar Refaeli’s face cracking away, I didn’t just stop flushing after taking a pee, I stopped peeing altogether. And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. Many of us felt we had to save the Bar; helping conserve Israel’s water was just the cherry on top…
Here’s the ad that did it…
Picture of the Week XXVII
This week’s pic is a tribute to the old horse drawn carts that have been a big part of Israel’s street scenery for who knows how long. This week they were officially banned from the streets of Tel Aviv, with 23 signs posted at various locations throughout the city (other towns soon to follow?). Personally, I’m going to miss those old rag and bone Arab guys crying out “Alte Zacken!”, which meant something like “Bring out your old stuff, we’ll buy it cheap!”. On the other hand, some of those poor horses being forced to pace the streets of Tel Aviv…
The pic was taken by a certain igoogledisrael. Good name for a website that. The pic is probably best seen large to get a good idea of all the little things that are going on in this pic. Check out his photostream too, there are some nice shots in igoogled’s collection…
Peter Murphy Live in Tel Aviv!
Peter Murphy performed two shows in Tel Aviv this week (Monday and Tuesday nights), both at the Barby Club. According to what I’ve found online, the shows were great, so I’m a little disappointed I didn’t make it.
Not sure if any of the audience came dressed in black with heavy black eye-liner, but never mind, here’s a clip of Peter Murphy strutting his stuff in Tel Aviv!
How I ended up in the Holy Land. And stayed…Part 10
Continuing on with my tale of woe and joy of how I ended up in Israel…tales of a non-Jewish potential Kibbutz volunteer who falls in love with Tel Aviv, dodges Scud missiles, lives and works illegally for years on end, gets besotted by one Israeli girl despite the best attempts of a legendary Jewish mother, but ends up marrying and divorcing another… and then marrying yet another to join suburbia and the hi-tech revolution, while becoming the seemingly respectable owner of an English school.
In case you missed them; Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
Part 10: The return of Ofira!
So the summer of 1993 had been quite a winner. I’d met a ton of people, had a good few beers, got in some quality beach time, and was free as a bird. At least I thought I was…
A few lovely ladies had passed through my summer…the lovely Vanessa, the exotic Helen and the ever gorgeous Talia (an Israeli girl) to name but a few. But there was nothing serious about any of these brief encounters; they all soon moved on to other countries or understood that it was all about the moment and not a lot more.
Nothing like the connection I’d had with Ofira over the previous 2 or 3 years. I hadn’t seen her in weeks and she’d almost been eradicated from my heart, when one afternoon Peter sat down with me and put me straight.
Like a hammer blow, his news about what Ofira’s mother had been up to hit me hard. It seemed her mother had been in contact with Peter’s Israeli wife almost every week. In fact, every time Peter and I had gone out for an innocent beer (over many, many weeks) Ofira’s mother had been on the blower, planting the seeds of distrust and jealousy in to his wife’s mind. Our casual beery afternoons had apparently become sordid little adventures of lust, and we were obviously on the prowl for as many women as we could get our hands on.
Oh dear. A very clear example of the cultural differences between Brits and Israelis.
We may well have chatted with women here and flirted with waitresses there, but there wasn’t anything more than that. But no, we were were the epitome of evil in Ofira’s mother’s eyes and her hate that she had kept mostly well-hidden from me was obviously bubbling over into the calls she had with Peter’s wife. It seems that these calls were the main reason for Peter’s rocky marriage that later fell apart. Peter’s wife had even sent her brother and father to follow us on a number of occasions, without us knowing.
Peter was only telling me now, in the prime of my summer adventure, because he’d had a big fight with his wife and all the sordid little details from the last couple of years had come flooding out…
Well, I was livid. I knew what my mate Peter had been going through the last few weeks at home, so the thought that Ofira’s mother was partly behind it all drove me mad! My shock quickly turned into rage and I stormed off to the nearest phone box, ready to give her mother a right rollicking…
But, of course, Ofira answered me. And all that rage in me quickly vanished as Ofira swore she knew nothing of what her mother had been up to. And I believed her. She was even angrier at her mother than I was, so it all seemed genuine. Before long we were catching up on old times…
…and another few weeks later had decided to rent our first place together. I’m still not sure how and why it happened, but it seemed we were destined to live together, at least for the time being. We were both very much anti-Ofira’s mother, and looking back, I can see that the idea of living together was probably Ofira’s way of getting back at her mum, rather than a full-on desire to actually live with me.
But rent a place we did, in the very rundown neighborhood of Neve Sha’anan, next to the new Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv. Rent was dirt cheap, and the apartment was probably one of the worst I’d ever come across, but a quick lick of paint and a bit of a wash and the place could almost be called “home”.
Home it became, and with plenty of visits from friends, including Mandy and Haim (the British girl who got married to Israeli Haim and took him to England) from my Purple House days, suburban bliss was hitting home. I was back to the gardening, a bus ride away, while Ofira took the daily bus to Petah Tikva where she’d been working since completing her army service.
And 1993 slowly moved into 1994. The great love affair with Ofira wasn’t really the great passion-fest it should have been, maybe because of a certain maternal figure pulling some strings in the background, who knows…but 1994 was about to be another very interesting year. And I was just about to leap out of the frying pan into the fire…
Next up: Mixing it with the Israeli underworld!
Picture of the Week XXVI
Back over to Tel Aviv this week for a slice of street action. These little juice stands are quite a common sight, and quite the refreshing alternative on a steamy day in the City That Never Sleeps. Some of the fruit combinations scrawled on the board behind the girl are making my mouth water: grapefruit and pineapple OR passion fruit, mango and orange…mmmmmm
The shot was taken by Tel Aviver Neta Gov, who has some mighty fine shots in her collection, especially her Tel Aviv set.
