Appliances

The next week I spent running around buying new appliances and getting the apartment ready, which despite many promises from the Israeli landlord (who lives in another city) that it will be ready, fixed and clean, was not even looked at. I have to say the previous tenant warned me about this landlord, but I was so tired of searching for something from the US by email and there were only 2 weeks left until the move, that I decided to take the risk anyway. I went to a local chain appliances store, Lior, to buy my appliances. There was a really nice Russian sales guy who told me lots of stories about his adventures in the army and explained the Israeli appliances situation.

He told me that I am not allowed to hook up the gas stove myself and I have to call the gas company to do it, because that's the law. So being a good citizen once the stove arrived that's what I did. I called about 5 gas companies who all told me that they do not service our building, until I finally I got to the one that does. They said that they don't have time to hook up stoves, it costs a ton of money and they won't do it. Now what? I go to ACE and look for a gas oven hook up kit (like the ones in the US) - no such thing. Finally, all frustrated and hungry (5 days after delivery still no oven) I bump into someone I know and ask him where do you buy a hook up kit for a gas oven? He says, "What kit? All you need is a rubber hose and 2 metal clamps." So he walks with me into a little local hardware store and shows me the clamps (the kind that in America you put on water pipes) and tells me to ask the sales clerk for a Tzinor Gaz - gas pipe. The sales guy bends down and pulls out a huge roll of rubber tubing and asks how long of a piece do I need. Cuts me off a piece and there is my "kit".

I tell this whole story to the Russian guy from Lior. He says that if the gas company finds out that I did it myself I will get fined. So I call up the Gas company (now that I know which one) and tell that I already installed the oven myself and they need to send a technician to check the hook up. No problem, that they can do right away. So the guy shows up, looks at it, says that everything is fine (despite the fact that the pipe is 2 meters long and supposed to be as short as possible according to the oven manual), give me a receipt and leaves. There is the Gas Safety Law at your finest.

The washing machine was not as exciting, but all of the knobs were labeled only in German (it was a Bosch). The instruction manual was in what language? Yes, you guessed it, Turkish. No English, not even Hebrew. But I downloaded a manual from the US Bosch web site fir a similar model and it turned out to be close enough. By the way, if you think that these machines are self explanatory, that's may be for a local. But to an American who is used to US machines they are nothing like it.

The food processor I got here was much better and cheaper than our US Cuisinart. And it take with a separate blender built-into it.

The only appliance that I brought from the US, a portable Maytag dishwasher, arrived broken in our lift. So I had to get a new one here also. But otherwise we got set with appliances.

In my opinion, everything that we bought here is a just as good or even better than US appliances. Although most of them are a bit smaller they work great. Our Bosch washing machine cleans clothes better than the US Whirlpool and it doesn't rip clothes because it loads from the side. The only down side is to it, is that it takes 2 hours to run instead of the 45 minutes on the US one, but no big deal. The Bosch dishwasher leaves dishes perfectly clean and dry, much better than the Maytag we had in the US.