הכיף הוא על הכיפאק

Last night I attended a concert in Tel Aviv that was a full decade in the making. Lets flash back to the late nineties for a moment. Yoyo's were at the height of popularity, while Pokemon were just making a splash. Everyone knew how to dance the Macarena. People the world over were panicked by the Y2K bug, except in the U.S. where everyone was more concerned with whether or not the President got a blow job in the oval office. And back home, I was holed up in my bedroom listening to Kaveret, Tipex, and a groundbreaking Israeli hip hop group called Shabak Samech. My fascination with Israeli culture would grow and diversify as the years passed, culminating in this 9 month sabbatical here in Haifa. Last night, I met Eli and his roommate Daniel in north Tel Aviv to see Shabak Samech in concert, performing live as a group for only the second time since 2000.

Me and my ticket stub.

Their music style is silly, bordering on ridiculous at times. One of their most famous songs has only one line: שום דבר לא כבד מדי בשביל הפיל שלי. Literally, it means "nothing is too heavy for my elephant." I'm sure its some kind of inside joke with the band and they think it is hilarious to hear a concert hall full of people chanting it along with them. Because of the general goofiness of the act, the crowd tended to skew young. If not for this one eminently creepy 30 something guy who was trying to dance with a group of teenage girls, I might have felt like the oldest guy in the house.

Clearly we were excited to be at the show.

In spite of the predominantly teenage crowd, the show was phenomenal. They were on stage for nearly 3 full hours, and played just about every known song they have from the last 15 years. They especially brought the house down with one of Mook E's solo songs,
.כולם מדברים על שלום, אף אחד מדבר על צדק

Shabak Samech

We generally avoided the pit area in front of the stage, because we had jackets with us that we wanted to put down, and because it was a good 15 degrees hotter crammed into the crowd. Even so, I couldn't resist the allure to spend some time jumping, dancing and screaming with the rest of the lunatics. For your viewing pleasure, here is a clip from last nights concert. It really captures what a lot of the show was like.


Dropping the bomb.

That night the three of us crashed at Daniel's parent's house in a small, wealthy neighborhood called צהלה, just outside of Tel Aviv. This morning I woke up first and had tea with Daniel's parents before the other gentleman rose. Around 12:30, I said my goodbyes and hopped on a bus bound for the Arlozoroff train station, where I would catch my train back to Haifa. Here is where the madness began. I'm not terrificly familiar with Tel Aviv, and the bus I was on took a very roundabout route, actually going out west through Ramat Gan before coming back into the city. Because of my poor knowledge of the city, I badly missed my stop and got off in south Tel Aviv, by the Azrieli towers. From there I was able to find the Hashalom train station.

Closing out the concert.

I was cursing my luck at this point, even though I was relieved to have located a train station. The runaround cost me a half hour, which is a problem on a Friday afternoon when the buses in Haifa stop running shortly after 3. I quickly lost the sourpuss look though, when one of our madrichim, Or, came running up to me on the platform! Only in Israel does this happen. Apparently he was hanging out with friends the night before in Tel Aviv and was headed back to Haifa also. We chilled and talked the whole way north. Of course my concerns regarding the bus schedule turned out to be rooted in harsh reality. I had missed the last 46 bus, the only line that runs directly from the central bus station in Haifa up to campus. I hopped a 131 up to the Horev Center, and then transferred to the 24 which took me home. Israeli public transit is frustrating sometimes, but I was too tired to worry much about it. I headed back to my room to shower and get changed, and now I'm ready for Shabbat dinner and then some quality time with friends afterwards. Classes finally resume next week. Shabbat shalom.

Dude, Where's My Passport?

I'm in Petach Tikva right now, spending the night at Alex's flat before we leave for our vacation in Cairo tomorrow night. Alex and I are both scatterbrains. Needless to say, things have gotten off to a (predictably) poor start for us. This morning we caught a bus to Tel Aviv around 9:30 with 3 goals in mind: We were going to handle our tourist visas at the Egyptian embassy, then go buy a guidebook to Egypt, and finally go to H & O to spend a fat gift card the army gifted to Alex upon his discharge. Halfway through Ramat Gan (and only 15 minutes to our destination), Alex turned to me, swore out loud and alerted me that we had forgotten our passports back at his apartment. Sound familiar? We busted back to his place, got our passports, caught another bus to Tel Aviv and made it to the Egyptian embassy at 11:15, well before the noon closing time he was quoted on the phone.

Alex and I on our travels in TA

Of course, the bastards like to play games with silly American tourists, and they were determined not to make things easy for us. There were 4 older guys sitting on broke down furniture outside the embassy. They arrived around 9:30 or later, and were told to come back at 11. The Egyptians never reopened for business. We sat outside waiting until noon, at which point we got sick and tired of waiting and walked off to get lunch and deal with our other business for the day. At least we can be comforted knowing that it probably wouldn't have mattered if we had remembered our passports initially. We would have been late anyway.

I can't tell if this is vulgar or not.

We had sabich sandwiches for lunch and then arrived at Dizengoff Center, a big mall in the trendy part of town. Alex wasn't too keen on the walk, but I talked him into it. He's gonna have to get used to walking a lot anyway, as I don't want to just see Cairo from the window of a cab. We played around at this indoor playground before we tackled the bookstore circuit. We visited 4 bookstores, and not a one had the damn guide book we needed. How perfectly frustrating. In an even greater stroke of serendipity, the mall doesn't have an H & O either. We had bad information from one of Alex's friends. Such is life. We made some calls and found out that the closest location was in ................ Petach Tikva!!! At the very least, it was quick and easy to get back, and we had a lot of fun once we arrived to the store.

Fun with the pricing gun.

We splurged hardcore at the clothing store. 1000 shekels is a lot of money. Alex bought himself a really nice middle weight jacket, a pair of designer corduroy pants, and 5 or 6 new shirts. He even got me an early birthday present, picking out a really nice new sweater and a long sleeve T shirt. Needless to say, I did quite well. We grabbed a sherut back to his flat where we settled in for an evening of movies, relaxation and food.

Alex stylin' and profilin' in his new jacket and a snazzy new shirt.

I want to wish everyone a nice Tu B'Shvat. We have shared some nice varieties of fruit this evening. Tomorrow morning, we are going back to Tel Aviv even earlier, and hopefully with our passports, so we can handle the visas. Our bus to Eilat leaves from the Tel Aviv central bus station at midnight tomorrow, and we cross the border into Egypt the following morning. I may or may not have the chance to update my blog between now and when I return from my trip, so I'll leave you now with the promise of good stories, fun pictures and wild experiences when I next update this page.

Haifa To Tel Aviv To Haifa

It's not quite a palindrome, but who cares. Lina, Lauren and I took a 10:20 train to Tel Aviv this morning and stayed all day to romp about in the sunshine. What an absolutely perfect day. Mid 70's, sunshine, low humidity and endless visibility. A Chicagoan could get used to this! Check it out:

Bet this looks pretty nice on December 9th. Or in mid July for that matter.

The only disappointing thing about my trip is that I had hoped to meet Reut for lunch. She was in Tel Aviv for a work meeting of some sort, but the damn thing lasted until 5:30 in the evening. I guess I will have to wait until Dahlia's wedding in a few weeks to see Reut. Even so, romping through Tel Aviv on a beautiful day was more than rewarding enough. Our first stop was the Maccabi Tel Aviv ticket office, so the girls could buy tickets to an upcoming game. They have a list of their accomplishments hanging on the wall, and their dominance in Israeli basketball would humble George Steinbrenner. In my 23 years on this earth, they have failed to win the Israeli national title once.

We walked Arlozoroff street down to Dizengoff street and wandered all the way down to Kikar Dizengoff. Along the way we passed the Turkish embassy which was pretty cool to see. The girls did a fair amount of window shopping. I spent the stroll enjoying the two fundatmental aspects of Tel Aviv that I miss in Haifa: The city is essentially flat, and every other person owns a dog. I even got to play with a small puppy while we were resting on a park bunch in Kikar Ha'Medina.

The Chanukka display at Kikar Dizengoff

We stopped at a falafel joint for lunch. It was good but not great falafel. The most memorable part of lunch was that I ate a really hot pepper and ended up having the hickups for ten minutes. Makes it tough to eat a sandwhich. Our next stop was Kikar Rabin, the largest square in Tel Aviv and the site of Yitzhak Rabin's murder. We stopped at the stop where he was killed to pay our respects. The square is very large but I still can't believe that 100,000 people can be packed into it as have been for demonstrations like the pro-teachers union demonstration a few weeks back. The municipality is holding a big candle lighting party in Kikar Rabin every night of Chanukka at 6:30. I had hoped to stick around long enough to see it, but we were all exhausted and ready to head home 2 hours earlier.

Grafitti and newspaper clippings memorialize the late Prime Minister Yitzkah Rabin.

We grabbed the bus back on Dizengoff and rode back to the train station rolling down Judah Maccabee ave for part of the trip. I got a kick out of that. We got on our train and all promptly fell asleep, waking up 45 minutes later at the "Hof HaCarmel" main train station in Haifa. I plan on spending some real time in TA and hopefully checking out the famous nightlife their sometime during my trip. It was enough for one day.

I couldn't resist!

I was a little tense from the day, but Levi (one of our madrichim) had a remedy for that. He was running a "visual imagery" relaxation workshop in the moadon at 8 P.M. It was phenomenal. I felt like I was filled with warm pudding by the time we were finished, and yet I felt more energized than I had all day.

A Restful Shabbat

As it turns out, I was able to relax and catch up on some sleep this Shabbat, which is exactly what I needed. After barely sleeping for about a week, I was beginning to run myself into the ground. I left Eli's place around 1:30 in the afternoon and made my way back to the central bus station in Jerusalem. What a zoo. My God. It seemed like the whole country was trying to escape the city before Shabbat came and everything shut down. I arrived at the central bus station in TA about an hour later, where Alex was waiting for me. We wandered through a shuk for a little while, looking at clothes and goofing off, before eventually buying some baklava for that night and hopping a sherut to his apartment in Petach Tikva.

We got a little turned around en route and had to ask the driver to drive us back to Petach Tikva. Alex has only been living in this flat for about a month, so he still doesn't know the area very well. He shares a place with 5 other lone soldiers. The apartment is very nice, supplied by the army for the use of its lone soldiers. The life of a lone soldier in the Israeli army is not the easiest life to lead. The people I met were the picture of mental exhaustion. They were young, on leave and just trying to forget about the army as much as they could before they had to return to base. Alex is a cook in the army, so we made a feast last night. Roast chicken, fried chicken, stuffed peppers with meat, rice, salad, pita and hummus. Some girls who lived in the building came by and we ate seemingly forever.

The artist at work in his studio

We watched a movie and then went to sleep. It was glorious. I slept until 10:30 in the morning and I needed every minute of it. I got up and got dressed, and at noon my cousin Itzik picked me up. Itzik and his family live in Givatayim, a wealthy suburb of Tel Aviv. Before March of this year, I didn't even know that I had family near Tel Aviv, but after much prodding from my dad, I ponied up and called him. I ended up spending all afternoon with him. First I met his mother at her home. She noted how much I look like my Bubbie Nacha (I didn't know that), and sat down to ask me all about my family over a piece of cake. A proud Yiddishe Mama. Next I went with Itzik to his family's home for lunch. I met my new cousins (although I'm having trouble with some of the names so I will get back to you when I am more certain of them) and we talked and ate and relaxed.

The Weiss family and I in Givatayim

Eventually Doron and Rina (Itzik's son and one of his daughters) took me on a short walking tour of Givatayim. It's a beautiful neighborhood, very different from Haifa. I don't know that I can really explain the difference, but the cities have a different feel to them. I did snap this photo of Tel Aviv from a distance.


The best thing about the afternoon was that four whole hours, I threw caution to the wind and spoke nothing but Hebrew. And I did pretty damn well with it too! I am finding that my Ulpan combined with my real life experiences are combining to enhance and expand my Hebrew vocabulary on a daily basis. I'm learning new words and phrases, and putting them to use almost immediately. Speaking Hebrew still requires more concentration than English, so after the visit was over, I was once again drained. I went back to Alex's and we hung out for another 2 hours, before I caught a 6:15 bus back to Haifa. Travel is great, but it's always nice to return home. Things get crazy again tomorrow, so I'm going to take the opportunity to get another full night's sleep tonight.