Statue of Liberty, Free Range Cows

You may think I have only been looking at apartments the last few weeks. This is mostly true, and unfortunately, the hunt has been unsuccessful (I write this from my friend's couch). I have half-filled a moleskine skinny notebook with apartment listings, in fact, and I see around 6 places a day. However, I have had time to see some other parts of Israel as I try to nail down what I am doing for the year.

I went to Sakhnin earlier this week. Sakhnin is an Arab town in northern Israel. It's also the home to Bnei Sakhnin (the sons of Sakhnin), a soccer team that won the Israeli State Cup in 2004. It's also the home of this classy statue:




Outside Sakhnin is a valley called El Batouf in Arabic, or Beit Natoufa in Hebrew. This is a farming area owned by people in Sakhnin and in a smaller Arab community called Arrabe. The valley is parched and only a few patches are actually cultivated or grazed by cattle.

Here's the valley:


This situation - an acute water shortage - is especially strange because the National Water Carrier runs through El Batouf. The National Water Carrier brings water from the Sea of the Galilee to the Negev desert. It's a sort of water socialism that irrigates Israel's dry south with water from the more wet north. But in El Batouf, the cement channel running through the valley shows how national resources can be unevenly distributed.



I went there to look at a project I may get involved in. I decided to take some photos of the area, along with free-range cattle that really made me happy.


A few days later, I went to the town of Ramle, about a half hour away from Tel Aviv. A hundred years ago, Ramle was an Arab town. Today, it's a mixed city of Jews and Arabs. However, some Arab Ramle residents live in shantytowns on the edges of the city. There's an organization I'm considering working for that is trying to get basic infrastructure to what's called the Train Neighborhood - around 180 people living in small houses in a patch of land between train tracks, a highway, and a major local road. It was pretty shocking conditions. Here's a playground that was build a few years ago but has kind of disintegrated from no one taking care of it. You can see the sign for the Ayalon highway in the background.


A few other images to show off:

I was in Nazareth to talk with another organization. Oddly enough, although I have been to Israel quite often I never even thought about why people would visit Nazareth. It was strange to be wandering around town killing time and seeing groups of Russian grandmothers or tourists from Latin America wandering around the streets where locals were making felafel and selling toy guns. Here's the Grotto of the Annunciation, where according to the Gospel Mary found out she would be the mother of the Messiah.


Onto more secular topics, there's a mall in central Tel Aviv called Dizengoff Center. It straddles Dizengoff Street, which is one of the more famous streets of the city. At one time, people used the verb "Lehizdangef" to mean "to walk around Dizengoff."

Dizengoff Center is built in two very skinny branches which feel like a tunnel when you're inside. I felt a bit of vertigo as I went in search of a public restroom (homeless people don't have bathrooms).

Dennis

There is a homeless man named Dennis who lives on the streets of Evanston, IL. Dennis has matted grey dreads and panhandles outside the movie theater. Most aspiring journalists, including me, have at some point interviewed him as a "human interest" story. You think it's cool when you talk to the token homeless guy, but then a few months later you realize everyone else has as well.

I find myself identifying with Dennis more and more lately. This Monday will be three weeks since I got to Israel and I still have no permanent apartment. It's not for lack of trying; I see at least two a day, sometimes as many as six, and I must speak to around ten different landlords/roommates a day. I don't know if it's like this in New York, but the Tel Aviv housing market is really insane.

For the most part I am searching online classifieds. There is one site literally called homeless (www.homeless.co.il) that I find offensive, considering it's true.

As for the posts, you can't make this stuff up:

- "The resident will be renting two of three rooms in an apartment. The third room is not to be entered for any reason. If the resident enters the room, he will be expelled from the apartment and sued. This applies even if the resident hears crying from the room"

- "A great apartment, big bedroom + common balcony. 3 minutes from the beach. There remains in the apartment a roommate you can say a lot about, but since it's me it's not nice."

For some reason, there is also a huge preference for people over 25. Everyone has a cat or a dog. There is rarely a living room. Sometimes a kitchen is really just a souped-up sink. There are a handful of men in their 30s who are looking for younger women to share space with.

I have a few leads, but still have a long list of places to see. I have noticed though that the better I dress, the more successful my searches seem to be. I showed up to a few places yesterday in a sweaty t-shirt and shorts and backpack, and I could read the disgust on my potential roommates' faces. Another life lesson.

Professional Masseuse

Do single women get hit on more than women in groups? Is there anything like strength in numbers? I was debating this with my friend, with whom I'm staying for the next few days, yesterday morning before we went to the beach in the city of Bat Yam. Bat Yam is just south of Tel Aviv, and right next to Holon, where I'm staying.

Three of us (all female) walked to the beach and put our things down. We had a swim and were lying on the sand. We were half asleep when a guy approached our towels and said, "Excuse me girls, I am a professional masseuse. Is there a chance I could give one of you a massage?"

"There is no chance," I said. We started laughing.

"Come on," he said. "Don't act like your from north Tel Aviv!" As in - act like the trashy girls from Holon that you are.

Such a charmer!

Bourekas, Etc.

So, I arrived three days ago on two-leg flight. This afternoon I finally sorted out my cell phone, so I can stop asking strangers to borrow theirs. Now the next challenge is figuring out where I'm living and working.

I'm in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv. It occured to me yesterday that I'm really clueless about the year. I know I'll be in either Tel Aviv or Haifa. I have a few interviews lined up in both cities, but they are all for next week (this week is a holiday week). Which means...that in the interim I don't even know which city to start scouting an apartment in.

I figured since there is a chance I may be in Tel Aviv, I should look into a few apartments while I am in the area. So yesterday I trolled some real estate sites and came up with a list of around 20 numbers. The first apartment showing was supposed to be at 9.30. At 8 I called the landlord for directions, who said he'd pick me up outside the Tel Aviv bus station. His name was Ezra Cohen.

Ezra showed up in a beat-up grey Mitsubishi and told me to get in. The inside of my door was missing its lock and window button. He asked me, "Why don't you open your window?" and then reached over me to press some electronic part to roll it down.

We went to a kind of run-down one-bedroom, which he said would be painted, renovated and furnished within a week. A likely story. I said I was looking for a roommate situation. "Have I got the place for you!" he told me. Then he took me to "The Pretty Ranch," which is like an urban farm in the middle of Tel Aviv. He lives there, with his wife, and they have a bunch of rooms in a few buildings surrounding their home.

Ezra showed me a room with three mattresses on the floor, and nothing else. "This is where our workers sleep, but you're welcome to stay here." It was a shitheap, and I told him I didn't plan to live in a hole, especially not for $500 a month.

Next he shows me another dump in the room next door. He said a French kid was staying there. The room was covered in ashes, there was a mini refrigerator, sheets that were crumpled without even trying to stay on the mattress. Both this room and its predecessor could be reached by walking through a giant room with a decommissioned bar in it, along with delapidated couches and old shitty furniture.

From there we looked at a better place, clean, well built and lovely - and taken. So Ezra took me to the room down the hall. The guy who lives there is called Roee. He had just woken up and stuck his head out the door, when Ezra hustled me in there. "Drink something!" Ezra said. "What do you want, coffee, tea?" Roee said he didn't have milk. "Don't worry about it! I'll go get some milk!" says the landlord.

Half an hour later, I'm still in this stranger's apartment. It was really awkward, because Roee had things to do and I was just dumped on his couch. We watched the Israeli food network together (they made matza ball soup) and he gave me some cake and told me about his job. Then we called the landlord - "I'll be there in two minutes, do you want two percent or three?"

Ezra showed up soon after, carrying a box of bourekas (flakey cheese and potato pastries) and no milk. He walked in and told Roee to cut up a tomato for us, then sat in his tenant's living room eating bourekas that Roee didn't want.

Eventually I got my act together and said I needed to go. At this point I had been in Ezra's company for two hours. "Why the rush?" he asked. "Listen, I'm having a birthday party on Sunday night, I'm turning 49, you really should come, I'll see you here!"

The punchline: The asshat didn't even have a free apartment in his happy farm.