A letter from Israel

The HaHagana train station in Tel Aviv at night. I recently started to commute to Tel Aviv with the train and has to get off at the last station called the Hahagana station. It means “the defense” in Hebrew and is named after the HaHagana street nearby. Travelling from Benjamina (my home station) is a quiet and fast 30 minute ride to the first stop at the university. Then the journey carries on to the central train station also known as Savidor, the third one that is called the Shalom train station and the last one is the HaHagana train station. You will embark at the Shalom station if you come to the city to shop or see museums. The other two will provide further connections inland or take you to the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv. But HaHagana station will be your gateway to the real heart of Tel Aviv. If you disembark there, your destination is down-town baby! The first three stations all seem to have to the more upscale-y clientele. They are also closer to each. It is bas...

Although it is already nearly the end of October, the days are still very hot in here in Israel. The rains of autumn and that cool, clean feeling they bring are still just a wishful longing for the most of us. But one gets tired of sitting in front of the perpetual-turning fan or the headache-inducing hum of the air con. No matter how hot it is going get, I promised myself, I am going on a HIKE already!!

A clerk: Raphael Kohn, and a cop : Joseph Kuperman Not a yet a city  but not a village anymore.. I live in Zichron Yaakov, a small medium-sized town in the northern part of Israel. We have grown from a dusty village on a hill top in the middle of nowhere to a large vibrant nearly city.  Though we still do not have any traffic lights, I am pretty sure that the Romanian founding fathers and mothers would not recognize the place anymore. They bought their land in 1882 but had no luck growing anything in the rocky soil. Also the nearby swamps were totally invested with malaria-carrying mosquitoes causing the death of far too many people, especially children.

How long does it take for a new immigrant to become a bona fide Israeli? See if you have mastered any of these activities of the list. I personally cannot crack sunflowers like a pro..yet. 1. You do not allow anybody to wriggle in front of you in a queue. We take our garlic VERY seriously in Israel!

My photo for the 52Frames Chair photo challenge I recently had to go into the city for a meeting but just before my train reached my stop, the meeting was unexpectedly cancelled…! Of course I wrote about the entire incident and how miserable I felt that cloudy winter afternoon with ice-cold winds whipping through the tall buildings... (yes, I can be a bit of a drama queen sometimes). But let me rather tell you what I did with my unexpected free afternoon in Tel Aviv.

Every year TONS of Israelis make the trek to this hill top to look at the flowering cyclamens The news from Israel is often so depressing. Everybody always hears about the kidnappings, and stabbings and bombs exploding. People who live outside of Israel probably think that this place is a constant war zone...

Any offers for my daughter's genuine clay penguin?  For this blog post we are going back in time to the 1880's.  Israel was still known as Palestine and was part of the Ottoman empire.  The Jewish born Moses Wilhelm Shapira from Kamenets-Podolski, which is today part of the Ukraine, emigrated to this world in 1856. Somewhere along the way he converted to Christianity.