When I was a student in Ben-Gurion university in Beer-Sheva, we used meet on Fridays at lunchtime and drive to the market in a car or two (most of us did not yet own cars) for our weekly shopping.
The main volume or our purchases was of course fruit & vegetables, but we made it a habit to stop at the pickle stand and also get some cheeses, as well as pita bread, and once every few months we also visited the spice store.
We usually ate meat at the University canteen or on the weekends when we traveled back home.
The canteen served great couscous every Tuesday, and an amusing dish that was often chalked on the board was “Beef & beens” 🙂
Our weekly visit to the market was always fun, there was always an abundance of fruit & vegetables that changed according to the seasons, and the later it got in the day, the lower the prices dropped, we once bought a whole sack of artichokes for a song.
Often we would meet again in the evening to cook dinner together. At the beginning not everyone knew how to cook, but by the time we graduated, we managed to teach a few more students that cooking can be fun.
Last week, after a 20 year break (published in 2011), I returned to the market, Beer-Sheva has changed significantly in the past decade, ring roads, new neighborhoods, large shopping centers etc. but none of this progress seemed to have reached the market which had actually shrunk in size with many shops empty, and those that were open were a mixture of fruit & vegetable stands next to fish and meat stalls, a lot less cheese stalls than in the past and a lot more garbage – sad 🙁
However it was an opportunity to take some photos, some undercover (due to resistance) and some with consent. After the visit to the market we drove to “Carl Berg” (a Russian mini-market) with a number of amusing signs too.
It is a pity memories cannot be preserved like Qucumbers 🙂
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