Sunday, February 24, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Thumb tacks
Making a home for yourself in a foreign country is easier said than done.
In ones home country it is easy to know where to get what. Say for instance that I want to buy a toaster, then I would know what kind of shops would sell it in Sweden and I would know where to find these shops.
But things aren’t like that here.
There aren’t many big department stores that have everything.
There aren’t any DIY shops that sell fencing, paint and everything in between.
There are, however a lot of tiny little holes in the wall shops that will sell everything within one genre. Like a shop that just sells pillows or a shop that only sells stuff for the bathroom. But then the range in these shops is not very big partly because of the size of the shop but also because it seems like most Israelis have extremely bad taste.
To make myself at home a bit quicker I brought some stuff with me from Sweden, a couple of pictures from Laos and Cambodia, some small golden mirrors and my shower curtain.
For the pictures I wanted white thumb tacks (häftstift) to put them on the wall, but there aren’t any white thumb tacks to get in the entire country! They have the plain silver and bronze metal tacks but not colourful ones. And when I ask in the shops or my friends they don’t know what I mean. So now I am thinking of framing the pictures – I’ve seen a shop which sells only frames of all shapes and sizes…
Also I want to get a few items like lamps but I don’t really want a new modern lamp that costs a fortune, I wanted a second hand, cheap lamp with more personality. But there aren’t any second hand stores in this country either!
We went to IKEA one day, just cause I knew what I could get there and that it would be cheap. But NO, it is not cheap, it is three times more expensive than in Sweden! So we ended up buying just candles...
When we finally got a real bed in the bedroom I took the other two beds and made a sofa out of them. I planned to get some simple bed covers of a nice colour to match the other stuff in the living room. But even though this country has the largest amount of bed cover shops I have ever seen, the only kind of bed covers one can get are fluffy with leopard spots or Winnie the Puh on them. I could also go more fancy and get silky golden covers with a tacky frill along the side.
Finally and desperately I went into a shop with materials to buy some material and make my own covers - no matter the cost.
In Sweden it is impossible to save money on buying your own material and making an item yourself. It is much too expensive, so you can imagine my shock when I realised that corduroy material (Manchester tyg) only costs 10 shekels a meter (20kr, 2Euro) that is about the tenth of the price in Sweden!
So now we have a nice golden corduroy sofa.
But it is really frustrating, every time I go out I have an idea of what I want to get and I always end up coming home with - nothing.
Other stuff that is hard or impossible to find in this country:
100% wool
simple shelf for spices
Yellow cheese
Mushroom Soy Sauce
Tins for tea, coffee and cocoa
Network cable (a longer one than 3 meters)
In ones home country it is easy to know where to get what. Say for instance that I want to buy a toaster, then I would know what kind of shops would sell it in Sweden and I would know where to find these shops.
But things aren’t like that here.
There aren’t many big department stores that have everything.
There aren’t any DIY shops that sell fencing, paint and everything in between.
There are, however a lot of tiny little holes in the wall shops that will sell everything within one genre. Like a shop that just sells pillows or a shop that only sells stuff for the bathroom. But then the range in these shops is not very big partly because of the size of the shop but also because it seems like most Israelis have extremely bad taste.
To make myself at home a bit quicker I brought some stuff with me from Sweden, a couple of pictures from Laos and Cambodia, some small golden mirrors and my shower curtain.
For the pictures I wanted white thumb tacks (häftstift) to put them on the wall, but there aren’t any white thumb tacks to get in the entire country! They have the plain silver and bronze metal tacks but not colourful ones. And when I ask in the shops or my friends they don’t know what I mean. So now I am thinking of framing the pictures – I’ve seen a shop which sells only frames of all shapes and sizes…
Also I want to get a few items like lamps but I don’t really want a new modern lamp that costs a fortune, I wanted a second hand, cheap lamp with more personality. But there aren’t any second hand stores in this country either!
We went to IKEA one day, just cause I knew what I could get there and that it would be cheap. But NO, it is not cheap, it is three times more expensive than in Sweden! So we ended up buying just candles...
When we finally got a real bed in the bedroom I took the other two beds and made a sofa out of them. I planned to get some simple bed covers of a nice colour to match the other stuff in the living room. But even though this country has the largest amount of bed cover shops I have ever seen, the only kind of bed covers one can get are fluffy with leopard spots or Winnie the Puh on them. I could also go more fancy and get silky golden covers with a tacky frill along the side.
Finally and desperately I went into a shop with materials to buy some material and make my own covers - no matter the cost.
In Sweden it is impossible to save money on buying your own material and making an item yourself. It is much too expensive, so you can imagine my shock when I realised that corduroy material (Manchester tyg) only costs 10 shekels a meter (20kr, 2Euro) that is about the tenth of the price in Sweden!
So now we have a nice golden corduroy sofa.
But it is really frustrating, every time I go out I have an idea of what I want to get and I always end up coming home with - nothing.
Other stuff that is hard or impossible to find in this country:
100% wool
simple shelf for spices
Yellow cheese
Mushroom Soy Sauce
Tins for tea, coffee and cocoa
Network cable (a longer one than 3 meters)
Fresh herbs (in a pot)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Snow in Jerusalem
A couple of weeks ago it snowed.
For me that is not very unusual, it is supposed to snow in winter, but in Sweden not in Israel. And this year they are growing potatoes and carrots in Sweden cause it is so warm. So far I don't think there has been any snow there.
But anyway it snowed like mad for two days here.
Old people became kids and wore silly looking thermal overalls, all the students in the campus where we live were out all night building snowmen and having screaming snowball fights and the city was at a standstill for three days.
I mean a complete standstill.
There were no buses and no one went to work, all schools and universities were closed. They said that on those three days of snow only 15% of the workforce actually went to work.
15%! Wow!
And all because of a little snow.
Everybody we knew called us and told us not to venture out in a car but we didn't really listen to them. The loved one was so excited to drive through the slush of white. Mumbling to himself "Wow! Its like a disaster zone! Wow! Shit! Cool!"
It was fun, the only other vehicals that were out and about were the police and rescue services that stood on standby in different areas of the town.
But since we live in a campus that is situated within the grounds of Jerusalems largest hospital (more about that later) all the roads leading to it (and our home) were cleared of snow first thing. So it wasn't difficult to drive at all.
And we even have penguins in the street:
Monday, February 11, 2008
Central Heating is Not to be Taken for Granted
The second best thing apart from the view in the apartment, is that we have central heating!
This may sound strange for you, most of you think that Israel is a warm country and if you look at the weather on the news you’ll see that the temperatures in winter are usually above +15.
They don’t tell you that at night it is sometimes below zero.
They also forget to mention that there is no insulation in the buildings or that the windows only have one pane of glass nor do they mention the cracks in the walls where the draft whizzes through.
Oh, and another small detail they refrain from talking about: The floors are nearly always made of polished ice cold stone.
And no one that I know has central heating! They will have a small portable heater or if you are a little more posh - air conditioner with hot fuzzy air - like in a car.
So, if you are out in the evening you put on some warm clothes, a hat and gloves. And when you go indoors, you take your jacket, gloves, hat and shoes off – cause you are indoors, it is warmer indoors, right?
WRONG!
When you go indoors, you put the kettle on, to fill the hot water bottle; you wrap two or three blankets around you; roll on an extra pair of thick woollen socks; and keep the hat and gloves on. Then you drag your small protable heater around with you where ever you may go even and probably most importantly to the bathroom. But you have to keep moving it around cause it is so very hot that it will burn you toes off if you aren't careful (although your heels will still be stone cold).
That is how it was last year when I was here during the winter.
But not this year! And not in our home!
Cause we’ve got wonderfully hot central heating!
This may sound strange for you, most of you think that Israel is a warm country and if you look at the weather on the news you’ll see that the temperatures in winter are usually above +15.
They don’t tell you that at night it is sometimes below zero.
They also forget to mention that there is no insulation in the buildings or that the windows only have one pane of glass nor do they mention the cracks in the walls where the draft whizzes through.
Oh, and another small detail they refrain from talking about: The floors are nearly always made of polished ice cold stone.
And no one that I know has central heating! They will have a small portable heater or if you are a little more posh - air conditioner with hot fuzzy air - like in a car.
So, if you are out in the evening you put on some warm clothes, a hat and gloves. And when you go indoors, you take your jacket, gloves, hat and shoes off – cause you are indoors, it is warmer indoors, right?
WRONG!
When you go indoors, you put the kettle on, to fill the hot water bottle; you wrap two or three blankets around you; roll on an extra pair of thick woollen socks; and keep the hat and gloves on. Then you drag your small protable heater around with you where ever you may go even and probably most importantly to the bathroom. But you have to keep moving it around cause it is so very hot that it will burn you toes off if you aren't careful (although your heels will still be stone cold).
That is how it was last year when I was here during the winter.
But not this year! And not in our home!
Cause we’ve got wonderfully hot central heating!
Home
Two and a half rooms.
One: Bed room.
It has one wall of yellow (?) cupboards and a double bed, or so it seems at a first glance. The double bed is actually two single bed frames with very thin mattresses on top. The silliness of this so called double bed is that no matter how one lies in it, even if you lay a still as a corpse you’ll end up sometime in the night with at least one limb stuck in between the two cots.
Lovemaking in this “double bed” is a gamble. If one isn’t careful and the love a bit rough it could break ones neck as the two bed slide apart so that the head is on one of the halves an the rest of the body on the other.
But the view from our window/balcony door (without a balcony) - is amazing.
Two: Living room.
It has the same view but double the amount of windows/balcony door (without a balcony) as our bed room. There are some built-in white bookshelves on the white walls and a Hodgepodge of quite ugly but practical furniture.
The best part about the flat is the view, one can stare at it for hours. At night it is as if we live in amongst the stars in the sky and by day we are small people looking down on the villages and olive trees in the valley below and on the hills above.
Half: Kitchen.
Tiny. The huge fridge eats up most of the space. I did care a bit about the very strange and strong smell that came from the fridge in the beginning. A smell similar to chlorine. The campus janitor told us to put a glass of coffee (ground) in the freezer and fridge and funnily enough the smell disappeared.
Also a part of the kitchen is a small gas stove. And being from Sweden where it is more common to have an electrical stove, I had in the beginning, a lot of respect for the small thing.
For something so small it is strange how intimidating it can be.
So for the first two weeks I treated it with the respect it demanded, not leaving its side for a second when it was a lit and always checking three times before I left that it was properly un-lit.
Then I got a bit more comfortable with it.
Which I shouldn’t have become.
It’s ok to burn the food once or twice, but to burn it about ten times in one week?!
Things go ever so much more quick on a gas stove.
Like hair for instance. One minute you have nice long hair and the next moment: wooosh and you have a nice smelly fringe.
One: Bed room.
It has one wall of yellow (?) cupboards and a double bed, or so it seems at a first glance. The double bed is actually two single bed frames with very thin mattresses on top. The silliness of this so called double bed is that no matter how one lies in it, even if you lay a still as a corpse you’ll end up sometime in the night with at least one limb stuck in between the two cots.
Lovemaking in this “double bed” is a gamble. If one isn’t careful and the love a bit rough it could break ones neck as the two bed slide apart so that the head is on one of the halves an the rest of the body on the other.
But the view from our window/balcony door (without a balcony) - is amazing.
Two: Living room.
It has the same view but double the amount of windows/balcony door (without a balcony) as our bed room. There are some built-in white bookshelves on the white walls and a Hodgepodge of quite ugly but practical furniture.
The best part about the flat is the view, one can stare at it for hours. At night it is as if we live in amongst the stars in the sky and by day we are small people looking down on the villages and olive trees in the valley below and on the hills above.
Half: Kitchen.
Tiny. The huge fridge eats up most of the space. I did care a bit about the very strange and strong smell that came from the fridge in the beginning. A smell similar to chlorine. The campus janitor told us to put a glass of coffee (ground) in the freezer and fridge and funnily enough the smell disappeared.
Also a part of the kitchen is a small gas stove. And being from Sweden where it is more common to have an electrical stove, I had in the beginning, a lot of respect for the small thing.
For something so small it is strange how intimidating it can be.
So for the first two weeks I treated it with the respect it demanded, not leaving its side for a second when it was a lit and always checking three times before I left that it was properly un-lit.
Then I got a bit more comfortable with it.
Which I shouldn’t have become.
It’s ok to burn the food once or twice, but to burn it about ten times in one week?!
Things go ever so much more quick on a gas stove.
Like hair for instance. One minute you have nice long hair and the next moment: wooosh and you have a nice smelly fringe.
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