Israel's Ikea and Health Food Store, Eden Teva

It was such a long day! Yesterday after ulpan, my roommate Ma'ayan and another girl on our program, Geulah, took the train to Natanya to visit the Ikea store and the Eden Teva health food store there. Ikea was great, Eden Teva was a big disappointment.

We took the same sherut and train as we did on the way to Pardes Hanna, we just got off a few stops before (the Beit Yeshuoa stop is the right one for the Ikea, not the Natanya stop, FYI. And then you take the 84 sherut for about 10 minutes to get between the train station and the store.) It was about an hour train ride, and we had a good time just talking.

The Ikea was such a trip, because it was exactly like the one near Boston, but everything was in Hebrew. The colors were the same, but the letters were in Hebrew. The store layout was the same, but the maps were in Hebrew. The Hebrew was expected, but walking into a store that could almost have been in Boston was not! It was fun to walk through the store and find things that we have in our house in Boston. We ended up getting some lovely dishes, two lamps, glasses, wine glasses, outlet extenders, and other odds and ends.

We did not get a blender (we were informed that "Ikea does not carry small appliances") so we headed over to BIG, a store kind of like Wal-Mart that was across the parking lot. And we had a TII (This Is Israel) experience. We tried to buy a blender at the price advertised, but it was apparently a member-only price, which we did not find out until after they had charged us double. A long conversation ensued in which both of my companions who are in the ulpan bet class (I'm in alef) argued with the store while I stood there and tried to look like I knew what was going on. They ended up refunding everything and giving us cash back, but it was just a weird experience.

After BIG we headed over to Eden Teva, which I was sorely disappointed with, as I've mentioned. I was expecting something like Whole Foods or Trader Joes. It wasn't. They had gorgeous ice cream, but almost everything else in the store we could have found in Ramla (and there is not much in Ramla.) Everything was also about twice as much as it would cost in the US, which means it was about four times as much as we would pay in the shuk here. We ended up getting some American spices, flax seed oil, tofu, and others that were hard for us to get any where else. But I don't think we'll be back.

My entire house is really excited about the new dishes. Our house came minimally furnished, and this means that we don't have to constantly be doing dishes, and that we can have people over. We also have broken about half of our glasses, and two or three plates, so the plastic dishes are much appreciated!