A small guide for the newcomers

Being a newcomer in Tel Aviv is not so straightforward, especially when you start dealing with the issues from abroad. 

First of all, once you manage to apply to a lab and to subscribe to Tel Aviv University, you should also be proactive in starting your research on accommodation and survival means for the very next days of your staying. This article gives you a step-by-step informal guide from the veteran researchers!😀

We share HERE the official TAU International School Handbook with a lot of tips and guidelines, if you were not given it. This book is thought for ANY student coming to TAU, while in this article we are trying to focus specifically on the researchers' experience.

Before your departure, make sure to have a valid VISA to enter Israel. Typically, the Visa manager or her assistants from the International School should have already guided you through, so that your legal status when you arrive at the airport is already in force. We remind that recently the immigration policy in Israel has become stricter than before and entering the country with the Tourist visa (with the intention of switching it later for the student one) is NOT recommended at all.  

Click HERE for the TAU International School recommendations and tips on Visa, and our dedicated webpage with a lot of details and stories.

Before the City. Advice on your arrival at the airport

1) When planning your trip, avoid coming on Friday or Saturday, as this is Shabbat and everything (except for some places) is closed from Friday afternoon (from before sunset) till Saturday evening (after sunset), mostly to have the highest availability in terms of transportation and to avoid paying extra fee (because it is Shabbat!). 

2) In the Airport there is free WiFi! Connect and check on your chats and emails once you enter the building.

3) The passport control (border police check) is the most time consuming thing that happens to you; there will be some automatic procedures, for example the biometric scan to receive the blue ticket (a kind of receipt of your check in the country), and a face-to-face mini interview from the border control personnel to check on your legal status in Israel. Since you are here for research purpose, go with a serene attitude through all the checks, follow their guidance and keep some documents (in papers or in pdf) that certify your affiliation with TAU. Be sincere and patient; Israel is a country with a delicate security situation and they take things very seriously, but if you are not a terrorist, there is nothing to panic!

4) At the end of the procedures, you will be given a small blue piece of paper called "Entry permit"(see also page 13 of the TAU Int. School Handbook) that you need to keep for your whole staying in Israel, before you leave and come back again. For example, if you go to visit Petra in Jordan, you will get out of Israel (they will give you the "Checkout ticket") and then after the trip you will be given a new Entry permit paper. Since the ticket is small and it can fade away with the time, we recommend taking a picture of it.

5) After you picked up your luggage, you will find yourself in the arrival lounge, where you can find ATMs (to take up some cash), cafeterias and a couple of shops, other than the Public Transportation Info Center.

In the picture, you can see the Public Transportation Information Center, where you might also be able to get a Rav Kav; two ATM machines from two banks (one - in red- is Hapoalim, a popular Israeli Bank); two shops where to buy an Israeli SIM card for the telephone.

The 019 Israeli SIM card shop is selling a specific telephone company service (019Mobile), while this Steimatzky Book shop is selling "Local SIM cards" in general.

Available means of transportation to reach the city and travel 

Take your time to choose where and how to go once you get out of the airport, since there are options.

1) We recommend using Google maps or another specific app, such as the popular Moovit, to navigate the city and notice the times of arrival of the lines (bus and trains). Moovit gives you a lot of information (also the live location of the bus!) and once you get used to it, it will be very useful; on the bitter side, recently the advertising pop-up within the app has increased annoyingly.

2)In order to get from the airport to the city, you can choose between the train, the bus and the taxi. If your luggage is minimal and you are an adventurous type, you don't need the taxi, because the train station is exactly a few steps (on the left) from the entrance of the airport (terminal 3) and to purchase a ticket is quite simple. There are vending machines outside accepting cash or credit card. 

• You will probably need to stop at Haagana or Arlozorov Central Train Station if you live in town. There is also another train station, HaShalom, but it is less throttled. 
• From each Train station,  there are tons of buses going around the city and surrounding areas and people who can help with directions, and the switch between train and bus is just a few minutes walking.
• If you are coming to the University (Broshim dorms or apartments in Ramat Aviv), you can drop off at the Tel Aviv University train station. From there, there are a few buses coming up to the uni, which could be helpful if you have tons of luggage. That's because the train station is downhill, and the dorms/University campus uphill.

In the picture below, taken from the official site of the Israeli train line, you will see Ben Gurion Airport position compared to the various stations in Tel Aviv (we circled them in Blue). Trains to Herzylia, Nahariya and Tel Aviv center bring you in town in approx. 20-25 minutes.

DISCLAIMER - This picture is adapted from https://www.rail.co.il/en/pages/stationsnlines.aspx. We don't own any rights on it.

3) Taking the Taxi from the airport to the city will give you the advantage of just paying without doing almost anything, for a service virtually available 24/7. Your luggage will go to the trunk of the car (and probably the driver will load it for you) and the travel destination will be one and exactly at the door of your apartment. 

On the downside, the travel time (already around 30-40 minutes) could change according to the traffic hour, and the time is money in a Taxi, because you are also paying the time you spend in the car, not only the mileage. Plus, traveling at night or on Shabbat cost more than the normal, which is ₪150–₪180 (approx. $40–$50 USD).

To get a taxi you can just reach the exit of the building of the terminal 3 and reach the taxi platform. Make sure to take the taxi that have the airport authority authorization to avoid overcharging or frauds. Alternatively, if you want to have more control of the situation, download the app of an Israeli Taxi company (for example Gett or Yango) and connect it to your credit card (doesn't matter if Israeli or international) so you get a clear and formal plan of your trip, other than booking a Taxi in advance.

A cheaper option between the bus and the regular taxi is the ride with a Monit Sherut, but consider that it is a shared service that leaves the airport only when all the available places are filled with a passenger. Additionally, these type of taxi has a less structured service and less information on the Internet. Nevertheless, these taxi are active almost 24/7 and they are very effective.

4) In order to use the public transportation, you will need a Rav Kav, an electronic ticket that serves a pre-paid card for virtually any means of transportation in Israel. Click HERE for more info on the official website, and HERE to see a video from a local Israeli guide who explains the means of transportation in general. 

• Tickets for the ride are paid ONLY electronically, cash is NOT accepted, except for the Monit Sherut, they might allow you to pay with both ways.
• Importantly, you can get the certificate of study from TAU that is made appositely to give you a discount on the public transportation. Click HERE to read more about this on our dedicated article.
• Click HERE for the Tel Aviv Municipality exhaustive webpage on the public means of transportation.

Navigate the city

This is a map of Tel Aviv from Wikipedia (HERE) that gives you a broad view of the city. TAU is in the North / Trans-Yarkon quarter, in the neighborhood of Ramat Aviv, which corresponds to the northern part of the area marked "1" on the picture above. The main train stations of the city are in the areas marked "8" and "6". The city center is in between areas 3, 5 and 8, while the historical part of the city, called Jaffa in Arabic and Yafo in Hebrew is market as 7. Area 2 and area 9 are mostly suburb of the city (not the hardcore), but still potential neighborhoods where to find an accommodation. Area 9 covers a big part of Ramat Gan, a satellite city of Tel Aviv. Eastward, where there are no violet bordered-areas, there are other cities such as Petah Tikva. From south of Tel Aviv (area 7) to north of Tel Aviv (1) it takes something like 45 minutes with the bike, a couple of hours by feet (if you like walking in front of the sea) or several minutes (from 15 to 40+ with the means of transportation and cars, according to the traffic. Recently, the first route of the light rail has been activated as a comfortable and quick alternative to the buses.

The urgent things to do here, and not abroad

Unfortunately, not everything you need to do can be done from abroad: except for a few specific services, you need to be in the state to settle things down. As we said above, things like renting an off-campus accommodation or opening a bank account must be done here in the state.

Once you recovered from your journey, the most urgent things you need to set are:

• A bank account --> check on our dedicated webpage 
• An Israeli telephone sim --> check on our dedicated webpage 
• A valid insurance--> check on TAU international official webpage to see the services available, or the general contracts we collected from Clalit, Maccabi and PassportCard insurance companies (to cite a few examples). Also, we wrote an article about the insurance issues in TAU and in Israel that we, as researchers, need to know about our safety. 

Let's go with order, and let's break the topics down one by one, starting from the most challenging issue, finding a home.

The accommodation issues

If you are a lucky one and you got a contract with Broshim dorms, you might be able to get a room immediately upon your arrival, as long as your PI has found an agreement with the Accommodation unit of the International School. Otherwise it typically takes a few months to enter the dorms, so you should consider a temporary solution.

As Tel Aviv is a crowded city with people wanting to live here, the studios, apartments or dormitories are always on full capacity and the hunt for a place to live is a bit frustrating, but of course not impossible. The slim strategy is to get an airBnB for a few weeks or a month and then start taking sublets till you find a permanent residency. Alternatively, the hostels around the city are a quite good starting points, and some places offers rooms with a small amount of people and some privacy. 

Anyway, pay attention to the frauds (there are many) and possibly visit the place before renting it because at times the pictures don't match the reality. Do not hesitate to speak to friends, colleagues or the International School employees; for the PhDs, there is also the possibility to consult a lawyer from the Student Union institution of TAU.

Pricewise, it is extremely unlikely that you will find a place at 2000 shekels or less. Typical rental prices are at least around 3000 shekels and also depend on the cost of living (CPI - Consumer Price Index) and some other factors. If you want to hear what people in the international community informally told us about prices and tips on housing, HERE we have an article with the results of the survey. 

• For more tips, visit our dedicated section on housing search HERE or consult the TAU Int. School Handbook at pages from 6 to 9.
• If you are wondering how life in Broshim is like, the detail of the contract and the facilities available, we wrote an article HERE. 

Financial issues (purchases, account opening, etc...)

Don't you worry, Tel Aviv has almost everywhere the POS transactions and the electronic payment terminals that accept most of the credit cards and payments via smartphone, therefore many purchases can be done easily, and as Israel is a member of  OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, you might have some financial benefits or smaller transaction fees. Nevertheless, you are going to have hard times and pricy expenses if you use your foreign card for everything, and several services are available as long as you have an Israeli debit/credit card and ID number.

To do so, you must start with opening a bank account, but after having chosen the bank that fits you the most. In our informal international community group people are prone to use several services, without a stark preference (as much as we can tell), so the bank choice is really up to you. HERE we wrote a small article about opening a bank account and the available bank services in Israel (but it might not be exhaustive because we are not the wolf of wall street😆 and we are not up to date on everything in Israel). The activation of the account and your first scholarship deposit might take several days, so meanwhile you had better survive with your cards and, more conveniently, with some cash.

ps. also The Handbook of TAUi school deals with the opening of the bank account at page 16-17.

In TAU then you will be required to provide the bank account coordinates in order to link the scholarship to your bank account. This is done through a virtual portal of TAU (which people will indicate to you, according to your level of researcher, PhD or Postdoc).

In case of the insurance services, all the companies offer a specific plan for students/tourists that can be purchased with a foreign credit card and some other documents. 

In both cases, you should always be provided with the acceptance letter of TAU and all of the paperwork that supports your regular staying. 

How to have some money in the early days (other than your credit/debit card):

• get some shekels from your home country in a bank;
• withdraw an amount of money from the ATM of the airport(at the arrival lounge) or the first one you find;
• arrange with some friends or acquaintances to give you an amount of shekels in exchange of your country's currency; 
• going to a change shop, even if it might be more expensive because of the exchange rates;

The bank account, once set is very useful to pay the insurance (you can ask to transfer the fees from your foreign credit card to you bank account) and also to pay the telephone services (monthly fee). In this regard, you can click HERE to read our article about purchasing a SIM card in Israel.

If you are looking for a specific person or activity, check on our CONTACTS webpage.