Laundry: An Expedition

Yesterday was laundry day for my apartment. The outing began as nothing remarkable but quickly evolved into a series of (misfortunate) events.
1- The cheap laundromat is not in my town, Bat Yam, but in the neighboring town of Holon, a quick bus ride away.
2- It would have been quick except for that we missed our stop and had to double back, the whole time lugging our laundry bags on and off the buses.
3- When we finally found the laundromat a somewhat sketchy local was mumbling to himself (or us- wasn't quite clear who he was addressing) and kept puffing smoke from his cigarette into our faces.
4- The floor of the store was flooded with an unidentifiable, extremely slimy liquid that we slipped on far too many times.
5- In America you need quarters to do laundry. In Israel you need 5 shekel coins. Didn't have enough of those, so that was another adventure going to the nearby stores asking for change.

However all of these little setbacks were worth the shwarma shop we found while waiting for the clothes to finish. It was one of those small hole-in-the-wall places that serve incredibly delicious, cheap and authentic food. While eating my shwarma in pita quite contentedly against the wall in the store the nice owner continued to press us to eat more of the endless salads and to taste samples of all these different foods. It was so casual and... Israeli.
Bottom line: I'm going to wait a very long time before I do laundry again and I'm not going to wait very long before I get my next shwarma.