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)
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