You know, Tal was not our first Israeli CS guest. As a matter of fact, when we first discovered CS (almost 2 years ago), we were originally thinking of traveling to Tel Aviv - I think it was around the time that Israel abolished visas for us Macedonians...We even sent out a couple of CS requests...And even though that trip never materialized, about a year later, our first CS guests turned out to in fact be Miriam and Tamar from Jerusalem.
 
On her second day of staying with us, Tal went downtown to meet a girl from Israel who is married to a Macedonian man and lives in Skopje. Our day was hectic with work and errands, but thankfully Tal easily found her way downtown and back in the evening. I was a bit tired (and coming down a sinus infection that's been my constant companion for the past 5 days) so Ivica cooked for us.
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The home city of our guest Tal, Tel Aviv, is 101 years old and its name literally means "hill of spring" (Aviv or Abib = spring, in Hebrew). Tel Aviv is the first all-Jewish city in modern history, first founded by some 60 families as a Jewish neighborhood near Jaffa.

A part of Tel Aviv is known as The White City, a reference to the many Bauhaus/International style buildings built in the city in the 1930s by German Jewish architects. As a result, there are more Bauhaus buildings in Tel Aviv than any other city in the world (Germany included). Whole neighborhoods were built in this style - a total of around 4,000 buildings, of which only about a quarter have been renovated. Tal tells us that many of them are dilapidated and you wouldn't think they're a part of some architectural site of interest. But not this one, I guess...
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Yes, it's been a while, but we were CS-less for 2 weeks! During this time, we traveled a bit ourselves (not too far, just to our house in the mountains and for a weekend visiting old friends and colleagues in Thessaloniki). While in Thessaloniki, I managed to catch up with Linn and Daan, a Dutch couchsurfing couple spending a student exchange year in Thessaloniki. When they stayed with us in Skopje during the winter, they came on the absolutely most disgusting day of all winter - there was muddy slush all over the city and they were wearing very summery shoes. The sight still gives me shivers dispite them saying that they're used to that kind of weather.
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