As I was approaching passport control in Ben Gurion airport on my way out of the country, I gritted my teeth and decided to stop at a food stand for something to tide me over. I always feel like a trapped mouse when I have to buy anything at an airport - they know they've got you, you know they've got you, and you might as well just open your wallet and let them take what they want for their watered down coffees and their stale croissants.
And though this food stand did feature prices three times the norm, it also featured something quite unexpected: real food. I had a smoothie, and watched as the attendant plucked fresh slice after fresh slice of mango and honeydew melon from the fruit arrayed in front of her. All the way to the brim, then orange juice, and finally, to top it off, mint leaves. Mint leaves! What a change from the squirt of synthetic peppermint you get at Starbucks, or the precisely measured quarter-cups of fruit you get at Jamba Juice. All this for nineteen shekls. And it was delicious. I felt like I got quite the bargain.
Israel, modern though it is, is still a tiny country. Even in its sleek new airport, you're still not that far removed from the corner market, the shuk. A franchise could never afford that kind of quality, but in a country of only five million people, there's still room for smaller businesses whose focus remains on the customer and not the bottom line. What a pleasure. what a relief it is to be in a country not (yet) dominated by economies of scale.
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