Stop Working, Start Traveling

A fortnight ago (I like the fact that I'm so behind on blogging, it's an excuse to use the word fortnight) I went to Jerusalem with a bunch of my friends for the 8th Annual Jerusalem Beerfest. Immediately after ulpan, 15 of us took the bus to Jerusalem, checked into our really nice hostel, and had dinner in Machane Yehuda (the main market), before heading to the old train station for Beerfest. It was ridiculous, breweries from all over Israel and Europe each having a little stand where you could taste or buy cups of their beer. There were tons of people, and I think I heard more English than I did Hebrew, because of course any American in Israel at the time would come to a beerfest. There were young people, old people, soldiers and civilians. I met people from the States, from Israel, from Russia, from Europe, it was truly quite the experience.

The day after Beerfest, we met up with the rest of the OSP group next to the market for a food tour by a food anthropologist from the University. The tour started out in the neighborhoods surrounding the market, in order to get a better idea of the area and how it has changed over the years. In the past, the neighborhoods were fairly run down, poor, etc, however in the past decade or so young, relatively wealthy Americans (aka hipsters) thought the area was nice and had spirit, and thus gentrified the area and turned it into one of the more expensive neighborhoods in Jerusalem. While the tour was interesting thus far, it got a lot worse. We finally got to go into the market, but didn't actually explore it, we walked. Slowly. Which is not easy to do on a Friday morning when everyone is shopping for Shabbat. Plus, we spent far too long in the market without actually shopping or even attempting to shop. Everything was so tempting and I just couldn't wait until I got the chance to wander the market by myself for a while. Finally we got a chance to shop on our own, and after a while in the market, returned to Beer Sheva.