Shabbat in Tel Aviv

On Friday, in the train from Rehovot to Tel Aviv, we were asked by a passenger, who was dressed in the orthodox way, whether we were Jewish. When we answered no, he turned to the next passenger - in fact he only asked men. One accepted his service, then an arm and his head were wrapped with a black band to both of which belonged a small, black box.
We were a bit surprised to see this ceremony. Only later on, I read that these "tefilin" (the black bands and boxes) belong to prayers on weekdays, so Friday morning (before the Shabbat started) was within the designated time. We observed this happening also in the streets and at the beach of Tel Aviv.

At the entrance of the central train station, we saw a piece of wood or metal with letters at the door, and people touched it, but we could not guess why. Later we heard that these "mesusot" are attached to every door as a religious protection.

Before sunset, we noticed that many men were walking towards and into the synagogues. Many shops, restaurants, cafés, juice stands closed, but there was still life going on in Tel Aviv.
Of course, there was no train on Shabbat, but we went back to Rehovot by sherut. Long-distance sheruts depart from the central bus station. A driver was announcing his destination Be'er Sheva (100km away) and was looking for more passengers. We asked which sherut would go to Rehovot and immediately a driver opened his sherut for us. There was no direction written on the car. Maybe he flexibly decided to offer a service to Rehovot because there was demand. We were the only ones in the beginning, but on the route trough Rishon, 4 more passengers entered. He even asked us where to stop in Rehovot, so we had a shorter walk home than from the train station. It took 35min from Tel Aviv (only few minutes more than by train) and the price of 20 NIS (shekels) per person (4.70€, not comparable to a normal taxi!) was only 4 NIS more than by train.
Thus, our experience with the sherut system has so far been really good! Despite the shabbat break of the trains, we could get everywhere we wanted, and even back :-) 

Particle physics seminar all over Israel

Once a week, the particle physiciss phenomenologists from the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Tel Aviv University (TAU) and the Technion at Haifa meet at one of these locations for the joint seminar, a journal club and discussions. Today we had the pleasure to visit TAU. Until yesterday we were asked to sign up for the shuttle from Weizmann to TAU. In fact, this morning there were only Ryosuke (another new postdoc) and the 2 of us in the big shuttle. The driver spoke only very little English and we only very little Hebrew. He knew he should bring us to TAU, but neither he nor we knew where the physics department is located. After 1 hour drive through a dense traffic, he stopped at one of the TAU gates, but was sent back. Apparently other drivers were not particularly pleased by his driving style so that we were surrounded by a chorus of horns... Next gate, next chance, but the guards told him: "shtaim" (2). He dropped us at the gate with this number where we had to open our backpacks for a security control. We asked the guards "Eifo habait shel hafisika?" but they did not know either where to find the physics department. We found a campus map in Hebrew, but we were not able to find the letters for fisika. Finally we spotted some colleagues in front of the maths building and followed them. Inside, we were welcomed by many phenomenologists and a buffet :-)
The seminar included a lot of discussions. Today, there was no journal club, but food and drinks after the talk. One of our Weizmann colleagues organised a shuttle that transported the 3 of us new postdocs back. How nice!

IKEA, busses and sherut

The small adventure on Monday was to get to IKEA after work (yes, there is IKEA also in Israel!). We had to take two busses. Instead of the first bus, a sherut (taxi/minibus) with the required bus number arrived at the bus stop and we were not sure whether an ordinary bus would come afterwards. So we showed the driver the name of the stop (that we had written down ourselves in Hebrew!) where we wanted to get off. There were about 10 seats and the sherut left immediately so that it is better to sit down first (if there is a free seat) and to find the correct coins while sitting.
We found the stop of the 2nd bus which we had to buy a new ticket for, not only because we changed from sherut to a normal bus, but mainly because the tickets are valid per bus, not from your initial stop to your final destination. The more often you change busses, the more you have to pay... At least the single tickets are not expensive (ca. 1,60€).

At IKEA, there was a security check at the entrance. Inside it looked very similar to the European IKEA stores. We found everything we needed, just some more cutlery, glasses, mugs,... but the institute's apartment is luckily fully furnished.

Our way back went well although we had not checked the schedule. The bus driver checked for us how to get back and where to change busses. He also told us his story that he had nearly moved to Hamburg.

Shabbat in Rehovot

Weekdays in Israel are from Sunday till Thursday. Friday and Saturday are the weekend. On Fridays, shops are open until the afternoon. Shabbat begins before sunset on Friday and ends on Saturday evening. During that period, there is no public transportation. Busses and trains stop their service, but sherut (large taxis/minibusses) drive along the official bus routes and offer their service even on shabbat.

At our arrival on Thursday evening, there was quite a lot of traffic on our street. This became significantly more quiet during shabbat! We also noticed a big contrast on the main street of Rehovot with all the restaurants, bars and shops. On Thursday evening we had a falafel there and many people were out on the street. When we just went for a small evening walk on Saturday evening (after the temperature had finally cooled down a bit...), Rehovot seemed to be rather empty. Only few bars were open. Tonight, we saw how shops were re-opening after shabbat. Many people were walking around, eating in restaurants and buying lots of fresh bread in a bakery. A European Sunday evening would look more empty...

While we hardly saw any people wearing a kippa on shabbat, they were again outside tonight, as well as orthodox Jews with traditional clothing, such as a black hat, and sidelocks.

Arrival in Israel

Yesterday, on October 15th, we arrived in Israel! Matthias flew from Stuttgart via Berlin and I flew directly from Berlin to Tel Aviv, so we met at the security check at the airport in Berlin. Expecting a security interview before the departure, I arrived 2.5 hours in advance, but they just checked my passport. In addition to the normal scanning, every person and some pieces of hand luggage were inspected. Of course, my viola was travelling with me. Germanwings officially allows musical instruments smaller than a guitar, but only in a soft case, as hand luggage. However, nobody objected to my viola in a hard case as my only hand luggage. The main luggage consisted of a suitcase and a big backpack. This is what I will have for the beginning of these 3 years abroad...

The flight took 4 hours and 10 minutes - actually not much longer than e.g. to the south of Spain, but it feels further. Unfortunately, many clouds did not allow us to see the south-east of Europe, but we saw some islands between Greece and Turkey. In fact, we travelled the Balkan route of so many refugees in the reversed direction, though comfortably in the air... Finally we could see the Israeli coast and the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv before landing at Ben Gurion Airport.

We were queueing in the "foreign passports" line. The lady looked at our passports, did not even need the extra hand-written form by the embassy, asked "Weizmann?", we answered "Weizmann.", and that was it. No interview.

Once we entered the arrival hall, we found Yossi, a professor from the physics department of the Weizmann Institute, who had come to the airport to pick us up - what a nice welcome!! He drove us to the Weizmann Institute where we got our keys and a welcome package, and to our apartment in Rehovot.