One year in Israel

That was fast. One year in Israel has passed already. 1 year plus 1week ago we landed at the Ben Gurion airport for the first time and 1 year plus 4 days ago (a Sunday) was our first work day at the Weizmann Institute of Science. What has happened in the mean time? I have been living a life full of contrasts in a country full of contrasts.

I have met extremely nice Israeli and international colleagues and friends, physicists, musicians, secretaries, technical staff and language course participants and teachers. On the other hand I have realized how ruthless many pedestrians and drivers are in the traffic and that many shops are not service-oriented at all.

The day-to-day life feels quite normal and safe, but reading the news is usually shocking and depressing. The most shocking moment was in June when we could not take our usual way home because of the terror attack at Sarona Market which lies on our daily way to/from the train station. I got used to all the security checks at train stations, the airport, supermarkets, public buildings, but not yet to seeing so many so young soldiers with guns over their shoulders everywhere like in the train.

I lived 4.5 months in a small city full of science (Rehovot) and the rest of the time in a big city full of life (Tel Aviv).


I have gone hiking in the Negev desert, the Eilat mountains and the Galilean hills, swimming in the Mediterranean, the Dead Sea, pools under waterfalls on the Golan heights, snorkeling in the Red Sea, I have visited Canaanite, Jewish, Roman, Nabataean,  Muslim and crusaders' historical buildings and ruins, synagogues, mosques and churches, dug in archaeological caves, visited Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Akko, Ashkelon. From different hills in Israel I saw Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi-Arabia and Egypt.
But on some weekends it was simply too hot and humid to do anything.

I ate sufganiot on Chanukka, dried fruits on Tu Bishvat, dressed as "Bilbi" (Pipi Langstrumpf) on Purim, tried mazot on Pessach (honestly I did not like them), smelled the smoke even in cities on Lag BaOmer, was standing still during the sirens on the memorial days and Israel's independence day, rode a bicycle on the highway on Yom Kippur and practised the Kol Nidrei on the viola, but I worked on Easter, Pentecost, etc.

I saw ultra-orthodox and ultra-hipster people.

I am German, and I feel welcome in Israel. I am surprised how often I was asked whether I am Jewish because of my family name.

I saw interesting animals and beautiful plants on the hikes, but also less pleasant animals in our apartment (cockroaches) and outside (cockroaches and rats).

Although it is a high-tech country, many buildings are in a bad shape and you often find small bugs crawling between oat flakes or other products bought on the market.

I have experienced loud noise (drivers honk, dogs bark, people shout and sing, construction around our apartment started before 7am) and extreme silence on Shabbat and much more on Yom Kippur.

I was freezing in a very badly insulated apartment with woollen socks and warm tea (10°C outside, 15°C inside) and sweating from doing nothing (90% relative humidity, 37°C outside, 30°C inside).

If it is warmer than 25° outside, the physics library is air-conditioned to 18°. If it is colder than 20°, the library is heated to 24°.

Once it rained so strongly that I could not cross the street to reach the bus stop, but in the past ~5 months there has not been a single rain drop.

Everything here is very expensive, except for delicious and super fresh fruits and vegetables on the shuk (market), e.g. mangos, figs, water melons, pomegranates, and I picked lemons, oranges, grapefruits and pomelos for free on the Weizmann campus.

I am a doctor (Dr. rer. nat.) and at the same time a student ("postdoctoral student" in the Feinberg Graduate School and language student in the Ulpan).

I learned the 7 binyanim (verb groups) and their subgroups and how to inflect passive verbs in the future tense and started chamber music rehearsals in Hebrew, but I forgot almost all of my Italian, Finnish and French skills and sometimes use English or Hebrew words when I speak German.

I play in a trio with violin, viola and piano and sometimes in a string quartet, but I did not find an amateur symphony orchestra and I hardly ever practise technique at home.

Within 365 days, I did not publish the paper that was almost ready at the arrival, but I wrote 2 new papers with Weizmann colleagues (the old paper came out on day no. 373).

I travelled to tourist places and family meetings, but also to physics places: many national seminars and a workshop, gave a seminar at Tel Aviv University, a journal club at DESY, went to a workshop in Spain, a conference at Chicago, gave a seminar at Fermilab and went to workshop at DESY.

It was an exciting and fascinating year! I hope to write some more blog posts soon.

Pessach sameach!

Tonight is the evening before the Pessach holidays that is traditionally celebrated with a big seder - a festive dinner with the whole family. seder means the "order" of the food and drinks and of how to set the table and arrange the food on the big plate (keara). On Pessach, leavened bread and any other leavened products (chametz) are forbidden to eat and even own. That is why already some days before, religious families clean their home very carefully in order to find and burn any crumb of chametz. Instead one eats mazot, unleavened dry flatbread.

The reason for this tradition is the celebration of the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt when they had to leave so quickly to the desert that the dough for bread did not have time to leaven.

Pessach is also called chag aviv (spring holiday) and many posters at train stations and people everywhere wish you in these days:
Chag sameach/ pessach sameach/ chag aviv sameach!
(sameach means glad.)

We celebrated Pessach in the Hebrew course, but we keep eating normal bread and our cleaning today was not as careful...

Purim sameach!

Happy Purim or Happy Easter? This year, these quite different holidays coincide because the Hebrew calendar has a leap year with an additional month of "Adar". Purim is a happy, colourful holiday involving costumes, sweets and a lot of alcohol.
It celebrates the salvation of the Jewish people from the evil Haman in the ancient Persian empire. The story in the book of Esther tells that king Achashverosh invited citizens from his huge empire to a 6 months long feast of eating and drinking. When his wife Vashti refused to come to the party wearing nothing but her crown, the king sends her away, looks for a new queen and chooses the Jewish young woman Esther. Her uncle Mordechai overhears a conversation of two guards at the palace gate who are planning to kill the king. Preventing their plan, Mordechai gains Achashverosh's appreciation.
However, for religious reasons he refuses to bow to Haman, the king's assistant. Haman finds out that he is Jewish and orders to kill him and all Jews in Persia. Esther starts fasting and praying, after three days she invites Haman for dinner with the king and herself. The king remembers that Mordechai saved his life earlier and asks Haman how a man of great importance to the king should be honoured. Haman assumes this refers to him. Instead, at the end, Mordechai receives the honour to ride the king's horse and Haman, his sons and many others are killed.


Today, Purim is celebrated over several days. Typically, one eats וזני המן (osnei Haman = Haman's ears), sweet triangular pastry filled with poppy seeds, dates, chocolate or nuts - very tasty, I didn't count how many of them I ate in the past week! Although the official holiday was on Thursday and Friday, people started wearing funny costumes already in the beginning of the weak.
On Tuesday, we had a short Purim meeting with our colleagues after lunch and ate - of course - osnei Haman, drank even alcohol and took a picture of the serious physicists in funny costumes. I dressed up as Pipi Longstocking from the famous book by the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, but I was not sure if she is also known in Israel. In fact, Israeli colleagues easily recognized the costume as Bilbi (her name in Hebrew)! In the Ulpan (Hebrew course), we read the story in Hebrew. Our teacher had simplified the original version a bit for us, yet it feels great to be able to read already a story in this difficult language.
On Wednesday, there was a joint Purim evening of all Weizmann Ulpans together and on Thursday, the international Weizmann office organised a party for all foreign postdocs and students. My minimalistic Pipi-costume won the "best-costume-award": a free guided day trip for 2 persons somewhere in Israel :-)
When we arrived back in Tel Aviv in the night, we walked along the Rothschild Boulevard which was full of happy persons dressed in amazing costumes.
On Friday afternoon, we enjoyed walking through the city, also on the market in costumes, and finally went to the Kikar HaMedina, a huge round square in the north of the city. So many cheerful persons were presenting their costumes and dancing on the streets - we joined them!

Purim is a joyful experience :-) Now I wish all readers of my blog who celebrate Easter in one or another way: Happy Easter! This year, I did not eat any chocolate eggs, but instead more than enough osnei Haman... Apart from some bunny costumes  I did not even see any symbols of Easter - not so surprisingly!

p.s. Pictures will follow tomorrow, I promise.

Security in the everyday life

Many people (including myself), asked me if it is/feels safe in Israel at the moment. The fact that I am writing this blog post only now, 5 months after moving to Israel, can already tell you that worries about the security do not dominate my daily life.
In general I can say that I felt quite safe in the day-to-day life here, both in Rehovot, from our (former) apartment to the institute (inside the Weizmann Institute without doubts) and to the supermarkets and market. Also now in Tel Aviv, walking around, travelling by bus and train, I am not too worried. People walk on the streets, sit in cafés and restaurants, use busses, trains and sherut and live their lives. This creates a normal atmosphere. However, I cannot compare to the time before the knife stabbing attacks started because we arrived after they had already started. In the beginning around the Jewish New Year (Rosh HaShana), the international newspapers were still reporting about those attacks. Nowadays one needs to check the Israeli online news to read if and where there were more stabbing attacks.
Two recent exceptions were the New Year shooting attack in central Tel Aviv and the stabbing attack on Sunday in Jaffa (which is part of Tel Aviv). On the same Sunday, there were also attacks in Jerusalem and Petah Tikvah about which the international press reported - maybe because of the accumulation of attacks on one day, maybe because attacks are less expected in Tel Aviv than in Jerusalem, maybe because an American was killed in Jaffa.

What I almost got used to are the standard security controls. Whenever you want to enter a supermarket, the market are of Tel Aviv, a shopping center, the airport building or just a train station, sometimes also a café, you have to open your bag or backpack. At the train stations, your luggage will even be scanned and you need to pass a detector.

All in all it is much more likely to become a victim of a traffic accident than of an attack here!

Tel Aviv, Petah Tikvah and Jerusalem, 6.3.2016
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.707689
http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/israel-angriffe-101.html

Tel Aviv shooting 1.1.2016
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.694926

Romans in Bet Shean

The historical and cultural density in Israel is really overwhelming. Basically every square meter contains signs or stories of ancient civilisation.
Today we joined another Weizmann trip, this time to Bet Shean and Mount Gilboa in the north very close to the borders to Jordan and the Westbank.

First, we visited the Egyptian city on a hill before walking between the Roman stones in the valley. It is a huge archaeological site, nearly as impressive as the Forum Romanum in Rome. We saw for example a large theatre, many columns and a well preserved bath house with a frigidarium, caldarium and tepidarium.
In 749, Bet Shean was destroyed by a tremendous earthquake. Still the area is shaken by milder earthquakes roughly once per century because it is situated so close to the Jordan Rift Valley as part of the Great Rift Valley where the African continental plate hits the Arabian plate.

Even now in February it was about 30° in Bet Shean because it lies 100m below sea level.

Afterwards, we enjoyed the view from Mount Gilboa (which is only 508m high) where one can see beautiful flowers in this season. The nature is very green now, but it will get dry soon.

Archaeological digging at Bet Guvrin

Believe it or not - I found pottery, bones, sea shell and charcoal in an underground archaeological digging site today :-) We enjoyed very much joining another trip organised by the Visiting Scientist office of the Weizmann Institute. This time we went with a large group to the national park of Bet Guvrin that belongs also to the UNESCO world culture heritage. This place and the neighbour city of Maresha in the Judean Lowlands (south of Jerusalem and close to the Westbank border) has a long and eventful history. Jews used to live there starting at least 3000 years ago. The city was destroyed by Babylonians, later Edomites made it part of their kingdom, then it had an Hellenistic episode until the Hasmoneans conquered Judea. In 40 BCE, the Parthians destroyed Maresha completely. During the Roman era, the inhabitants moved from Maresha to Bet Guvrin. After Jewish and Byzantine epoches, Bet Guvrin was conquered by Arabs. Also Crusaders built a fortress.
Long history short: whoever lived in that region exploited the soft structure of the limestone and dug huge caves into the ground that are now even open for tourists. First, we took part in a real archaeological activity! In fact, groups help there every day. Equipped with hoe and shovel, we helped excavating two basement rooms where ancient inhabitants had stored there belongings or were hiding themselves in times of war. We found really many smaller and few larger pieces of pottery, especially from amphoras. After putting the findings in one bucket and the dirt into many other buckets, we had to carry the heavy buckets out of the basement and then screened them for any smaller pieces that we might have missed. After this exciting activity, we got a tour into one of the fully excavated system of caves, even with an olive press. Another highlight was to crawl through honestly very narrow tunnels, lit only by candles, between several former houses! Underground, we also saw columbaria (many niches for pigeons).
The Sidonian burial caves from the Hellenistic time are beautifully decorated with wall paintings of real or mythological animals.
Furthermore, we entered the impressing, so called bell caves where a small hole into the uppermost hard layer of stone was the starting point for digging out huge volumes of soft limestone.
At the end of the trip, we had a good view from the hill Tel Azeka. Israel is so narrow that we could see on one side the coast line with the cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon (probably we also saw Gaza at the horizon) and on the other hand the Judean mountains nearly up to Bethlehem and Hebron in the Westbank. From the view point we also saw the valley where the battle of David and Goliath is said to have taken place. The Philistines where settling at the Mediterranean coast and the Israelites further in the hills.

It was a very interesting day full of history, archaeology and beautiful nature because now in winter the hills are green and some flowers are blooming.

Happy New Year - but nobody notices

"10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - Happy New Year!!" Imagine the New Year starts and nobody notices it.
Bars in the hip neighbourhood Florentin were full last night, but in our bar, only the 7 of us at one table were counting the last seconds of the old year and clinking glasses at midnight. Guests at the surrounding tables did not even pause in their conversations, they just went out on a normal Thursday evening (weekend is Fri+Sat). A few bars had some "2016" decorations in their windows, so apparently some people did celebrate New Year's Eve even in Tel Aviv, but is definitely not the standard. Well, this should not be too surprising, because the new year (rosh hashana) of the Jewish calendar starts in autumn. But somehow I had assumed that the lively metropolis of Tel Aviv would not want to omit such an opportunity to celebrate. The question if "New Year's Eve is someone else's party" is discussed in the following newspaper article: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.566236.

However, we enjoyed a very nice evening in Tel Aviv in a group of 2 Israelis and 5 foreigners. Before the drinks in Florentin, we had a delicious dinner in Jaffa in an authentic Arabic restaurant (Abu El Abed - I can highly recommend it) which was neither touristic nor crowded nor expensive. Even before we ordered food, they brought us lots of amazing appetizers like tabouleh, vegetables, spicy sauces, hummus... Later we had fried cauliflower in lemon-garlic sauce, stuffed vegetables and wine leaves, labane (yogurt-cheese with spices), mokka with cardamom or black tea with nana and baklava - I am sure I will come back.

Finally: Happy New Year to all readers of my blog!

White City, Neve Zedek and sunset at the beach

After we had stayed in Rehovot on two consecutive weekends because we were a bit sick, we were looking forward very much to new trips and activities. On December 5th, we went to Tel Aviv by sherut. It was a sunny, but very windy day and surprisingly cold (15°C). Israelis were wearing winter coats.
We took part in an interesting guided walking tour through the "White City", which belongs to the UNESCO world culture heritage. Tel Aviv is the city with the largest number of Bauhaus buildings worldwide. The Bauhaus style was developed in Weimar and Dessau between 1919 and 1933. It combined fine arts, architecture and design by a fusion of handcraft and arts such that the style should be present also in every day life. The Nazis considered it as "socialist, degenerate arts". Under pressure, the first Bauhaus school in Weimar closed and re-opened in Dessau. However, the Jewish artists and architects were in danger and fled to Palestine. At that time, Tel Aviv was growing very fast and a new neighbourhood was built in the Bauhaus style that is characterised by its functionality with interesting forms and some decorations, mostly in white. The tour started on the elegant Rothschild Boulevard where one can see historical buildings next to modern towers.
After the tour with walking and standing, we were quite cold and drank for the first time a coffee in an Aroma café. Aroma is the largest and most popular chain of cafés in Israel, you can find them virtually everywhere. On the first floor of Aroma, we enjoyed both the warm coffee and the view over the Rothschild Boulevard and the people walking or jogging along.

Next, we visited the beautiful Neve Zedek, a district with a creative flair, full of cafés, restaurants, small design shops, a pretty square with dance and theatre studios around. We enjoyed walking around and ended up at the sea where we also observed the sunset before dinner in a stylish & cosy vegan restaurant in Neve Zedek. The night was still young and we joined the party at the cocktail bar of the brother of our friend and colleague Avital. He celebrated the first anniversary of his bar in Florentin, a hip part of town where many students live.
After a long and beautiful day, we took a sherut back to Rehovot although trains were operating again on Saturday evening, but the walking distance to and from the sherut was shorter and the price is almost the same as by train.