Beersheva was relaxing

Low key, calm in the old town. Very lovely Airbnb place, sweet host.

Small town/city. Big push to settle new immigrants there: over 200,000 Russians and Ethiopians. No night life really, but some funky places for brunch, so I was happy.

Stores had signs in Russian. I bought loose tea in one place but couldn’t summon up my Russian to exchange conversation. Sigh…

But there are problems with the immigrants, as you can see by these posters:

The reason I came to Beersheva was to visit the dig at Tel Sheba, where I spent the summer after high school. I was with a group through the Jewish Agency and we took several weeks of classes at Tel Aviv University before ending up in an empty sand pit near Beersheva. I was the only gentile. Most of the others were kids from New York, as foreign as the Israelis to me. We got up at 4:30, worked until breakfast. Then a few more hours before writing at lunch time. Then we’d doze in our bunks the rest of the day. It was fun.

There was nothing there on the desert. I mean nothing! There want even anything in Beersheva worth driving over for. Now… Well, it’s all changed.

The empty sand has revealed buildings and walls and cisterns. It used to look like this:

And now it looks like this:

Quite amazing! Now it’s a UNESCO site and they maintain it well.

I wandered the town and found some cool things.

Here is my Airbnb, the metal gate just past the overgrown greenery.

Here’s a beautiful 19th century necklace:

And a cool model town:

And my lunch. I’m liking the sweet thick Turkish coffee!

These two bonus (!) photos are of camels being herded along as a train goes past and a lovely Thai woman I met at the dig. We chatted while the camels went by.