Better than a dog

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What?!  Giraffes??

I spied them peeking out from the backyard of an apartment building in the Beit Hakerem neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Safsal halimudim

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I always hear of the David Yellin Teachers College (founded in 1913), but I had never seen it.

I found it, back in the winding streets of the Beit Hakerem neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Entering and exploring, I was seized by an urge to register for classes.

The Bench on Friday bloggers who gather every Friday at Visual Norway would like this campus.

Outside the student cafeteria, picnic tables with benches on all four sides.

Two benches peeking through the little aquatic garden.

In the winter, rain is collected from the roof, stored in these containers, and fed into the circuit of the little waterfall and pool-garden to make up for water lost to evaporation.

The benches at the adjacent school's playground were the typical sturdy metal type, meant for wear and tear.

I really enjoyed my first visit to David Yellin teachers seminary. Lots of learning going on!

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Investigating the bench

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While on a bench-finding safari for RuneE's Bench on Friday mini-meme, I discovered a lovely place tucked into the shaded streets of garden suburb Beit HaKerem.

Have you ever seen palm trees growing through a deck?!

Simple sturdy benches

with a view to a rock garden, complete with a little waterfall.

The pleasantness of the garden and of the real grass lawn seemed incongruous with the serious and weighty purpose of the place. The sign says National Inquiry Commission.
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Private initiative

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Would you trust this rickety-looking bench?
Sighted outside the back entrance to a vintage apartment building in a back street of Jerusalem's Beit Hakerem neighborhood.
"Benches on Friday" is the brainchild of RuneE. His scenic benches are in Visual Norway. In his comments section are some other blog-friends who offer you a seat on their benches. Come join us!
May you have a restful and peaceful Sabbath, wherever you sit. Shabbat shalom!

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Rails in roads

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A lucky day! Just in time for my "Rails in Roads" post for ABC Wednesday "R" day a strange machine materialized, one I'd never seen before.
It is part of the on- (and on- and on-) -going Light Rail project this blog has been showing lately (e.g. yesterday), which Jerusalem's disapproving new mayor calls "the Blight Rail."

From what I could Google, I think the long machine is a slipform paver.

It advances on crawler tracks. Unfortunately, nothing was moving when I was watching. The workmen were sitting, watching the crazy woman taking pictures of a machine.

It goes in the direction of the wet concrete (to the left here).

A bunch of those black metal thingies ("rail fixings" maybe?) were piled in the crate. So I assume that with computer technology they are placed directly in the wet concrete slab, hopefully at just the right spot.

The concrete must dry for 3-4 weeks.
Jerusalem is having unseasonable warm (low 20s C) and dry weather.
Is that why they cover the fresh concrete, so it won't dry too fast?

Opening a beach umbrella in the middle of Herzl Boulevard?!

Just a block to the west of the slipform paving machine, this is how it looked in April.

Same place in July.

And the rails as of today.

They stretch all the way west to Mount Herzl, the starting point of the Light Rail, where we have the red Calder stabile, the beginnings of a train station, and the new underground parking for future tram commuters.
The Light Rail will zip across spread-out Jerusalem, up to her eastern suburbs, God (and Hiz Honor the Mayor) willing.
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This too shall pass

Having time before the next bus back to my village, I went exploring today in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit HaKerem.
The morning after! Just yesterday all these palms were the sekhach, the roof cover of sukkahs. Now the holiday of Sukkot is over and the sukkah-booths are being dismantled.
Flowers or birds? Don't they look like colorful crested cranes?
Even stranger than the car itself was its Hebrew lettering. On the left door it says "Gam zeh ya'avor" written from right to left (as is normal in Hebrew) and on the right-hand door the same sentence but written in mirror image and going from left to right.
At home I looked at the website. Baruch Hadaya is a 16th generation Jerusalemite. Wow! He is an artist, a storyteller, a jeweler.
He says that "Gam zeh ya'avor," meaning "This too shall pass," engraved on his rings, is based on a story about King Solomon. You can see or hear the tale here.
Hadaya says, "This story reminds you that when you have a bad day, it will pass. And when you have a good day seize the moment, enjoy it, appreciate it because you should know it would not last forever."

More surprises while wandering

Today was going to be my Shuk Machaneh Yehuda market day (after my aborted attempt last Sunday). Again it didn't happen. Where I usually transfer to the second bus there is a Mister Zoll supermarket. I noticed the sale signs in the window: tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, red bell peppers, and onions @ 39 agorot per kilo! That's like 11 cents or 0.07 Euro per kilo. Wednesday only, and with the purchase of at least 150 shekels of groceries. At the market these vegetables cost several times more than this. OK, so forget the shuk today!

So, suddenly having two extra hours before my bus back to the village, I whipped out the camera and went roaming inside the green garden neighborhood of Beit Hakerem.
Again delightful surprises!
Like this man contemplating his head.
And not one, but three, different spots where residents had left their old books outside, hoping passersby would adopt some. I took Cry, the Beloved Country, a 1968 edition printed in Malta.
Don't tell anyone, but I get a lot of my clothes in this same manner. It's so much fun.
Then there was this lovely synagogue which I had to shoot through a locked gate.
This is new too. Apparently the Jerusalem Municipality (see the lion symbol?) is trying to beautify the utility boxes by pasting big photographs on them.