Homeless No More

Well, after 3 weeks of listening to Afrikaners throwing up at 6 in the morning on the tail end of a 3 day bender, after catching the inevitable "hostel flu" and paying dearly for it, and after having at least one item of my food stolen every day, I've moved out of the hostel I was staying at and finally signed a sublease for an apartment that is one block from the beach in Tel Aviv.

Even though my room could not by any means be described as quaint, charming or spacious, it is, for all intents and purposes, decent pad for a foreigner to live in for a while. With a balcony from which one can see the Mediterranean, two Israeli shootafim (roommates) and an unbelievably low pricetag, I have to say that I lucked out a little bit when I stumbled upon this place on a great housing website called "www.HOMELESS.co.il". That's not to say that securing this apartment was a cakewalk... quite the contrary, actually.

In typical Israeli fashion, an Israeli couple who was looking at the apartment at the same time I was told me that they had already signed the contract and had, consequently, secured the apartment.

"eeehh vat are you saying?", Ofer, my current roommate and the tenant giving the tour, asked - surprised as I was.

"!אההה... כבר חתמנו את החוזה, אז הוא לא יכול לעשות שום דבר!" - rapid fire Hebrew with finger pointed at me...

"Ok, we talk with landlady and see what a fuck is going on", Ofer frustratingly said.

Two minutes later, Ofer came back with an answer: The landlord had never met or spoken with the Israeli couple on the tour with me.

Acting confused, the couple just shrugged it off as if maybe they had spoken with an associate of the landlord. Either way, they never signed the contract and I had already set up a meeting with the landlord to sign the contract just to get a foot in the door. I guess seeing the way Israelis successfully and stealthily weasel around these processes rubbed off on me in a positive way. With a few more situations like this one to navagate, I'll hopefully be a pro.

There was also the issue of me not being an Israeli citizen. There was absolutely "no way" that the landlord could let a tourist sign an official contract; but after a few minutes of sweet talking her with the other Israeli tenants - assuring her that I was just a nice Jewish American boy looking to study Hebrew in peace - she reluctantly conceded that it would be ok for me to move in... under the condition that I accept some "Jewish penicillin" (chicken soup) from her family's restaurant the next day. For the sake of securing the apartment and for the sake of killing off my "hostel flu", I accepted. All that was left to do was to move out of the hostel.

Not all was rough and tumble in the hostel; It was a great place to meet people from all around the world - and believe me I met some INTERESTING people that will be the subject of the next post - but to keep my sanity (in all senses of the word), to save a couple hundred dollars a month, and to give myself the best environment for achieving my goal - Cultural integration - it was a must to move out. Now, I can study all the Hebrew I want to in peace. Let's just hope that the block that separates this incredible beach from myself and also the temptation to have a little party every night on the balcony is not enough to throw me off course... it will be hard.