Post Office, Tel Aviv, Birthday

I returned once again to the post office today.  I find the Israeli post frustrating.  I think back to reading Bill Bryson's, "I'm a stranger here myself".  In it, he describes the differences between the U.S. postal service and the UK postal service.  At least mail makes it to the destination there.

They have a tracking system here in Israel, but for some reason, my mail doesn't seem to be trackable, which I find hilarious after having gone through the trouble of locating the package details.

Armed with the package number, I made my way into the post office, and empty handed, much later, back out of the post office.  So much for that.  I decided to just eat the cost, and head to a place that can fix the phone.  It could be months I was told at the post office.  I explained it was sent express.  They told me it doesn't matter once it's in Israel, it will get here when it gets here.  Could be two months, but check back tomorrow.

The local place told me that they couldn't do that type of fix, so I headed in to Tel Aviv - where I was told they could, but they were closing early that day.  The other place I checked said for 250 Shekels they could try to fix it.  I said no.

I walked around, and then tried on a Marmot Jacket.  It's the problem I always have, the long arms fit in a Large size jacket, but my body is closer to a small or medium.  I told them it was to expensive, they offered me a lower price (never pay full price for anything here) and I said I had already stated my maximum, make me an offer that I can't leave the store without the jacket.  They didn't meet my offer, so I left.

Down in the basement of the Dizengoff center I purchased some guitar strings for Izy and then had dinner.  They have these booths set up and you pay a set price for a container, and they fill it with any selection of items.  Because I was eating there, it didn't have to be able to close.  So, we stacked on lots of things.  At the end, the woman helping me put some additional items on so that I could try different things.  I liked her way of thinking.

A nice walk down Dizengoff ended that part of my trip, and I headed towards Rothschild.

I ended up arriving just before the others from Ramla were arriving at Bala (it means bale of hay I was told), an awesome bar hidden away behind Max Brenner.  We were there for a good 5 hours, during which many people came.  It was nice at the beginning, and I was able to talk to Nicole for an hour or two and we had the cake that I brought.  It was awesome the whole night, but at the beginning you could hear people a lot easier.

I decided to drink cava, and since I am trying not to mix alcohol, once I started with cava, I committed myself for the night.  Yael came between 11 and 12, and we spent quite a while catching up and chatting with other people.  It was lovely to see her again.

I never found Ben - who was hoping to find us, but Nick eventually joined us and many of his fellow Ness Tsyiona participants came as well.  I had a lot of fun, and really enjoyed the party, the people, everything basically.