Stranger in a strange land...

Hell on Earth

2006-08-02T15:34:00.000+02:00

I went to hell yesterday. I walked it's surface, touched it's structure, and smelled it's odor. I felt it's cold hands and burned with fire. I went to Auschwitz-Birkinhau...

This was the trip I dreaded from the moment I came to Poland, but the journey I knew I had to make. Before making this trip I anitcipated it with great fear. I didn't know what would befall me. Thinking about going there was enough to make me cry. I feared that something deep would be shaken in me, something so strong that I might fall into intense depression or even be taken by some dark spiritual force. I went on a Tuesday, but on Sunday morning Kinga and her brother suggested going together. I wasn't ready and I didn't want to go with others. In my mind, I had decided to take this journey alone. From my discomfort of going and my sensitivity to the issue, a huge fight broke out between Kinga and I. Ugly things were said and we cut eachother deep with our "knives". Tears were cried and blood was shed(figuratively), but in the end we learned from our mistakes and our ignorance. In a sense, we finally stabbed the elephant in the room. Needless to say, we didn't go on Sunday.
I took the trip at about 1:00 in the afternoon. I took the bus to Auschwitz, a normal daily bus that goes into the city of Auschwitz. My first suprise, people actually live around this camp. On the way there I was nervous. I didn't know what to expect. My mind would start thinking about it and then suddenly move onto other topics. I would look out the window and wonder if these were the trees and villages the poeple on the trains would see before entering the camp. Then my mind would move to the topic of somebody's hair. In a way, I wanted the city and experience to slap me in the face. I didn't want to anticipate it, I just wanted it to come upon me, and it did. When I saw the first sign, my stomach dropped to my knees and I looked away as if trying to avoid the sight of something ugly. And then the bus stopped. I, alone, made the walk to the gates. As I approached the main entrance, I desperatly scanned the faces of the vistors, searching for a clue as to what to expect. I didn't see many emotions, in fact, not a tear or a trace of one so I kept telling myself, "See it can't be that bad, it's not as bad as you think, people look normal, there is nothing to be afraid of, kids are still playing with toys and peole are smiling eating ice cream, everything is fine". And then I saw two girls crying and my armor was broken. It really was Auschwitz, and what happened was real. As soon as I stepped on the premisis, chills startd to run all over my body. I was cold the entire time there. I went in and bought my tour group ticket. Now, the fight with Kinga began because my mind wanted to fight the idea of going so I asked her if you have to pay to go to auschwitz and she said yes. this infruriated and offended me! Out of pride, I will not step foot in a place that expects me to pay to see the blood of my people! But of course, nobody has to pay to enter but you have to pay for a tour. this i was ok with. Before the tour started, we had to watch a movie and read some personal stories of people who died in the camp. This was a good way to ease you into the experience by giving these people a face and a story. It also proved to you that this place was once active. Now as a Jew who has studied the Holocaust all her life shouldn't doubt the fact that this happened, but when you enter the grounds it looks just like any other place. There are some things that shock you because somehow they are unexpected. First of all, you are shocked that the sun shines above this place. In your mind, you expect Auschwits to be dark and gray. It's not, it's sunny, and what's more, it's colorful. trees live there, grass grows beneath your feel, and the buildings are made of red brick. Auschwits shouldn't be colorful. It should be black and white like the pictures. Color is almost offending. But it's there. But something that is interesting is that birds don't fly over Auschwits. the only birds around are scavenger birds. In times of migration, all other birds fly around the area and they have recorded this on video.
So the tour guide took us around the important sites and explained what everything was used for, but she didn't make the experince human. She wasn't at all insensitive, but she didn't bring human faces to the story. We walkied through many distrubing things and I will mention some of them that come to mind now. The gate above the entrance reads "hard work brings freedom" and this is a very synnical sentence as it was exactly the opposite. An orchestra would play as they marched to work, and one day a month during a concert for the prisionrs, they would only play German songs as a spit in their face. The moment I really broke down was when we entered the building that housed their personal things. When I saw the prayer shalls that belonged to people hanging in the room I cried, but I became furious when she told us that they would use the tzitzit to wash the floors as a way of humiliating and disrespecting the religion. I cried very much when I saw the baby clothes, the eyeglasses, the shoes. Shoes that belonged to little babies begining to walk and heels belonging to women that would feel beautiful when they wore them. the hair was shocking, but what was more shocking was the fabric they made out of it. Disturbing was the toothbrushes and hairbrushes they took away as a way of stripping them of everything that was theirs, anything personal, anything that humanized them. Their luggage was attached to the idea of beginning a new life, something hopeful and instead they left their luggage and marched to their death. This area was extremely difficult to handle because these millions of people were given a face. I walked out of the building and just stared at the brick wall for a while, searching for any sign of human existance and I found it. I found bullet holes, the sign of death. And that was all that was left, death, nothing more. Following this we went to the death wall where they performed their bloody executions. we walked over the ground where thousands of people died and were soaked in rivers of blood. It felt so wrong and disrespectful to walk on this earth and turn my back to this wall that so many had lost their lives on. I walked backwards most of the way, the way you do when you walk away from the bimah. throughout this whole time, I kept reciting the kaddish in my head, but I had forgotten many of the words. I did it anyway. I felt pathetic. We then went into the building where most of the people being executed in this courtyard would stay. It was mostly for political prisinors but they did not discriminate. Also inside this building remained their punishment cells, like the "standing cell" where 4 to 5 people would stand all night in a space half the size of a small elevator and then go to work for 11 hours a day, then come back and stand again all night. sometimes they would do this for weeks. Another cell was a suffocation cell where 40 people would stay in a small room without a window until they suffocated to death. And if you looked closely at the walls, you could see inscriptions dug into the walls with their nails. Their last words...
While in this building, I leaned on the wall for a moment and my skin began to burn. It was very weird. the rest of my body was cold, the wall was cold concrete, but my patch of skin was burning. I decided that it would be better not to touch anything.
After this we went to the gas chamber and the crematorium. This is the one in Auschwitz, which is considerably smaller than Birkinhau. This was the first gas chamber and it was able to kill only 500 people at a time and the crematorium could burn only 350 people a day, 3 people at a time. So they built 4 ovens in Birkinhau that were bigger and ran 24 hours a day. the gas chambers in Birkinahu were able to kill 2000 people at a time so it was more efficient. So, they would lead the useless people and even sometimes useful workers when the camp was overcrowded to "take a shower" and after their long journeys they all went in with ease. then the doors were shut behind them, the poisen was thrown in and the people died very painfully. the gas takes about 7 minutes to kill but they left them in there for 20 minutes just to make sure they were all dead. then they would be taken to the crematorium where their husbands and neighbors would burn their bodies. women on the bottom because they had more fat, children in the middle and men on top.
We then took a bus to Birkinhau, the really huge camp that housed the majority of the people and killed most of the people. They lived in wooden barracks sometimes made for horses in really aweful conditions. they lived amoung rats the size of cats, lice and fleas. 10 people slept on one bed in extreme weather conditions. They had no place to use the bathroom and when they would go outside to do it, they would be punished by having to stay in one of the holding cells. they were allowed to use the bathroom 3 times a day for 5 seconds. sometimes they would be pushed inside for shits and giggles and would drown because they were too weak to swim out. You could still smell the piss in the barracks. As we were in the barracks, a thunderstorm came through and it began pouring rain. The tour guide told us that the Germans would dispose of the human ash by pouring them into the rivers or lakes and there was so much of it that on rainy days you can still find bones in the mud. When we stepped outside, the rain brought out the smell of the earth and all I could think about was that this earth is soaked with blood. I hated every careful step I took. But I saw Birkinhau the way it should look, dark and gray. The sun wasn't shining anymore.

And the only living things that remain are the trees. I kept looking to them and wishing they would share their secrets with me...

At some point, I had almost completly shut off. I couldn't feel anymore, I couldn't understand what had happened. My mind just couldn't wrap around the reality of it and I just wanted to get out of there. If I wouldn't have known so much about the Holocaust, if I wouldn't have seen pictures of the dead bodies and shadows of what used to resemble a human being, I wouldn't believe that it happened, I couldn't understand it. Our minds can not understand the horror that took place there, we are just incapable, which is why I think I shut off. I felt guilty about it, insensitive, but I was just unable to concieve it. The whole time I kept seeing the faces of my family in the camp, the picture of my brothers being torn out of my arms, loosing my father and never seeing him again. asking everyone I met if they knew what happened to my family. I would wonder if I would make it, if they would choose me to work. And what about my mother and my sister and my father? Who would survive? who wouldn't have a chance? Everyone would suffer. I saw my friends, especially Nir, and my whole community of people. All the people I see on Yom Kippur and Jewish holidays, my community. People I know would just be another dead body, an opertunity to get a better place to sleep. But when I began thinking of the numbers I realized that the amount of people that died would equal twice the size of all the people in LA. That just blows my mind. What did they do to reduce humans to something even less than an animal, into nothing more than a thing? How did they rip out anything but the need to live from the hearts and minds of these people? How could these people not curse the sun for rising another day and spit in the face of life? are these souls doomed to roam Auschwitz forever? their energy is there, there is no doubt about that! This was humanity's biggest atrocity! And who payed for it? And the feeling of walking out of there freely, unharmed, without a scratch was shameful. I was starving the whole time there because eating would be the most disrespectful act in my eyes. But what could I do to show respect, what can I leave of myself for them? I couldn't even recite the Kaddish.
On the train ride home I was soaking wet and looking out the window wondering if these were the same things they would see on their way to Birkinhau. Suddenly the train stopped and the lights went out, and a pang of panic rushed to my heart. I don't know what I could have been thinking, but for a second, the possibility of the camps became real.

Mourner's Kaddish
Yeetgadal v' yeetkadash sh'mey rabbah
B'almah dee v'rah kheer'utey
v' yamleekh malkhutei,b'chahyeykhohn, uv' yohmeykhohn,
uv'chahyei d'chohl beyt yisrael,
ba'agalah u'veez'man kareev, v'eemru: Amein.
Y'hey sh'met rabbah m'varach l'alam u'l'almey almahyah)
Y'hey sh'met rabbah m'varach l'alam u'l'almey almahyah.
Yeet'barakh, v' yeesh'tabach, v' yeetpa'ar, v' yeetrohmam, v' yeet'nasei,
v' yeet'hadar, v' yeet'aleh, v' yeet'halal sh'mey d'kudshah b'reekh hoo
L'eylah meen kohl beerkhatah v'sheeratah,
toosh'b'chatah v'nechematah, da'ameeran b'al'mah, v'eemru: Amein
Y'hei shlamah rabbah meen sh'mahyah,v'chahyeem
aleynu v'al kohl yisrael, v'eemru: Amein
Oseh shalom beem'roh'mahv, hoo ya'aseh shalom,
aleynu v'al kohl yisrael v'eemru: Amein

NY Times article

2006-07-26T17:32:00.000+02:00

This is an article I found on the NY Times website that offered some insight into the antisemitism that existed in Poland so I thought I would share...

Correction Appended

Sometime in the late 1950's, a pair of Jewish newlyweds walked arm-in-arm down the streets of Lodz. Like all surviving Polish Jews of their generation, the two had lived through the Holocaust against enormous odds, making the joy of that moment all the more poignant. "Look at them," a well-dressed passer-by suddenly sneered, loud enough for them to hear. "It's like they're in Tel Aviv." To them, his message was clear: Jews had no business living in Poland, let alone being happy there.

I thought of these two people, who later became friends of mine, as I read Jan T. Gross's new book, "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz." The Polish-born Gross, a professor of history at Princeton University , does not recount their story; even had he known it, there'd have been no room, or time. He has too many greater indignities to relate. He has to tell how surviving Polish Jews, having escaped the fate of 90 percent of their community — three million people — returned to their homeland to be vilified, terrorized and, in some 1,500 instances, murdered, sometimes in ways as bestial as anything the Nazis had devised.

One might have thought that if anything could have cured Poland of its anti-Semitism, it was World War II. Polish Jews and Christians were bonded, as never before, by unimaginable suffering at the hands of a common foe. One might also have thought there'd have been pity for the Jewish survivors, most of whom had lost nearly everything: their homes, their youth, their hope, their entire families. Besides, there were so few of them left to hate: only 200,000 or so in a population of 20 million.

Instead, returning Polish Jews encountered an anti-Semitism of terrible fury and brutality. Small wonder, then, that nearly as soon as they set foot on Polish soil, most fled all over again. Many went westward, to a place that, oddly enough, had suddenly become an oasis of tranquillity and safety by comparison: Germany. Far from being celebrated, those Poles who had sheltered Jews during the war — and there were many — begged them to say nothing, lest their neighbors deride them as "Jew lovers," or beat them, or break into their homes (searching for the money the Jews had surely left behind) or kill them.

Polish attitudes toward the Germans remain understandably bitter. During his trip to Poland this May, when he visited Auschwitz, the German-born Pope Benedict XVI took care to speak mostly in Italian. But as Gross reminds us, in at least one respect many Poles applauded Hitler: just as he offered a final solution to Germany's Jewish problem, he was taking care of Poland's, too. Nazi policies toward the Jews, the legendary underground Polish diplomat Jan Karski reported to his government-in-exile in London in 1940, formed "a sort of narrow bridge where the Germans and a large part of Polish society meet in harmony."

It wasn't only Karski saying so. Eyewitnesses in the Warsaw ghetto saw Poles watching approvingly or even helping out, acting as spotters as German soldiers shot Jews. Polish girls were overheard joking, "Come, look, how cutlets from Jews are frying," as the ghetto burned. Nazi accounts of Judenjagd, or "Jew hunts," detailed how Poles pitched in to find any stray Jews the Germans somehow managed to miss. As the deportations proceeded, and practically before the trains had left for Chelmno or Belzec or Treblinka, Poles gathered on the outskirts of towns, waiting to plunder Jewish property or move into Jewish homes. And while the Nazis killed millions of Jews, Poles killed thousands — most famously, as Gross related in "Neighbors" (2001), a book that caused an uproar in Poland, 1,600 of them in the town of Jebwabne in July 1941 — crimes little noted at the time nor since remembered in Polish history books.

With the war over, and to tumultuous applause, a thousand delegates of the Polish Peasants Party actually passed a resolution thanking Hitler for annihilating Polish Jewry and urging that those he'dmissed be expelled. Indeed, the mopping up soon began. Returning to their villages and towns, Jews were routinely greeted with remarks like "So, ____? You are still alive." Their efforts to retrieve property were futile — and, sometimes, fatal. Some Jews met their end on trains — not cattle cars this time, but passenger trains, from which they were thrown off. If the trains weren't moving fast enough, they were beaten to death.

This is a book filled with arresting, appalling images. There's Treblinka, September 1945: a lunar landscape pockmarked with craters, where Poles had dug thousands of holes searching for gold fillings amid the bones and ashes. Or Polish synagogues disassembled for construction projects, and Jewish cemeteries used for landfill. Or Jewish schoolchildren being harassed and Jewish artisans and professionals denied work.

With the police and courts looking the other way, Jews were murdered randomly, or in pogroms. Behind these massacres, invariably, was the old canard of Jews killing Christian children for their blood, but with a new twist: Jews now craved gentile blood not just to make matzos, supposedly, but to fortify their own emaciated selves.

In the most notorious episode, 60 years ago this month, residents of Kielce, among them policemen, soldiers and boy scouts, murdered 80 Jews. "The immense courtyard was still littered with blood-stained iron pipes, stones and clubs, which had been used to crush the skulls of Jewish men and women," the Polish-Jewish journalist Saul Shneiderman wrote the following day. It was the largest peacetime pogrom in 20th-century Europe, Gross says. But he maintains that Kielce was nothing special: during this era, it could have taken place anywhere in Poland. Polish intellectuals, Gross notes, were mortified by what was happening in their country. Only a psychopath, one wrote, could have imagined such cruelty.

Days before the pogrom, the Polish primate, Cardinal August Hlold, had spurned Jewish entreaties to condemn Roman Catholic anti-Semitism. Afterward, he charged that by leading the effort to impose Communism on Poland — Jews were in fact prominent in the party, though hardly in control — the Jews had only themselves to blame. The point was seconded by the bishop of Kielce, who suggested that Jews had actually orchestrated the unrest to persuade Britain to hand over Palestine. It was a neat trick: being Communists and Zionists simultaneously. Only the bishop of Czestochowa condemned the killings, and was promptly reprimanded by his colleagues. One wonders how Karol Wojtyla, then a young seminarian, later Pope John Paul II, viewed this cesspool of ignorance and intolerance.

I want my MTV!!!!

2006-07-25T15:49:00.000+02:00

I began contemplating very breifly about some of the effects MTV is having on America and the world. During my stay in Shanouf (it's spelled totally different in Polish) I have much time to kill and my morning ritual with Kinga is to watch MTV before she goes to work. Now this is something I would never do when at home because, more than anything, it would make me extemely angry and later deppressed at where the world was headed. But I have indulged myself these days because there is not much else I can watch without having to know what the people are saying. In fact, that is what is making it more bearable. Nevertheless, it is still disturbing and absurd, but there is entertainment value in that. Sick as it might be, it's true. I figure that is why anybody intelligent watches MTV, but what perplexes is is that they don't take a bat to their TV set after watching (i don't have this option these days as it is not my TV set).

But as I was brushing my teeth this morning, I was suddenly struck with the realiztion that this is THE window into America and American culture, especially here in Poland where most people have never met a foreigner, let alone an American. The common reaction to "I'm from America", is, "really?, that's fucking far" in an ironic way, like what the hell are you doing here. there is a thread of self hate running through this sentiment as well. Also there is this intital disgust and sudden disrespect I sense from them. Why? Becasue they think I'm like the people on MTV!! The people I hate the most!! They assume that Americans are stupid, shallow, and easy whores. But after five minutes of conversation, they are shocked that a human lives in me. they are delightfully suprised that I have manners and that I respect their country. They are shocked taht I am kind and open to talking to them. I try to change the image of the American, but I am fighting with years of MTV.

But the worst part of all this is that when I sit with Kinga and watch these low people on MTV in disgust I again realize that these people are real, they exist and I can sit here in Poland and vouch for it! When I see a girl from Calabasas on Dismissed, I can say, "yea I went to high school there for a year and that is exactly how they are", or when I see a girl from LA, I cringe because it is too close to home. the truth is that America is swarming with these people and now they are spreading this culture to the rest of the world. Little boys and girls have a distorted idea of what is "cool" and this will affect their entire concept of life, happiness, and success. And of course, Americans have tarnished their name even further. We really have the lowest reputaion in all the world. And these stereotypes follow us everywhere. Yes, there is an entertainment value in MTV, whether you are a part of the MTV culture or you just watch to laugh at how ridiculous and absurdly awkward these people are. But by watching these shows, you support the program and spread this disease called reality televison and pop culture.

And don't get me started on reality TV. The people on these shows are the people that should stay undiscovered. Seeing these people on TV makes me sad for them and myself. Somehow I hope taht the people on these shows get paid for making complete asses of themselves, but I'm almost sure that just showing their face on TV is enough. They got their 15 minutes of fame, but at the expense of the viewer and the desrruction of soemthing good on tv. They are not even trying to read their scripts naturally, they don't give a shit!! This is insulting to me.

MTV has destroyed anything sacred that may have existed. They have destroyed respect for the family with shows like "date my mother", they have completely destroyed the value and sanctity of the woman and feminity, and they have pissed on the magic of love, romance, and the intimacy of a relationship. (excuse my french but)Fuck MTV for ruining the minds of our future and current generations...

Sorry for the rant but this is effecting me directly now as everyone I meet thinks I'm some stupid girl from california that will take off my clothes and dance around the streets with a few shots of Vodka. I'm sick of this...

the bitter path of history...

2006-07-25T15:35:00.000+02:00

Correspondence with Nanaz

Nanaz,

I wanted to mention something I've been thinking about the past few days and that is the disconnect we have with our parents because we live in America. I always knew that a disconnect existed but these days I see how much and how much we've lost because of it. Seeing the relationship of my Polish family and the devlopment of language and national history is something we will never have. Can you imagine who and what our parents could have been for us if we weren't seperated from the motherland? We would respect our parents on a different level. We would experience their intelligence on a different level, see sides of them hidden to us because of the pressures of assimilation. We are children of the revolution, conscious of the things we lost, adn they really are lost. This saddens me deeply. Imagine the literature we could have discussed with our families, the heroic history of our people, and the ancient traditions that were lost along the way. You and I both have a rich sense of our culture as our parents did well, but only when you live in your country, only when you learn the same things your parnets learned in school can you reach this deeper understanding of our culture and our families. Can we provide this to our children, or better yet will we want to be the American parent, and do we have enough Perisan to pass on? Can we really tell our children why we do some of the things that we do? And these days, can our parents? nanaz, we have been robbed of something beautiful and these days I am mourning this loss...

Regretfully yours,
shabnam

-------------------------------

hi love. you're last email talked of a dormant ache. i have thought of it often during my life, but not as of late. i wonder how deep our parents wound is? they were the parties that were given the shorter end of the stick. i know i have added to their mistreatment; i have bared the sword that cut their hearts. as a child and teenager i carried my resentment for their "ignorance" openly, showingly, hurtfully. i often hated then for making me make sense of this strange new world on my own, for not being able to stop my classmates from calling me names i couldn't understand, for their accents and traditions i didn't want to acknowledge, and most of all for blowing my cover by calling me by that retched "n" name. i was too blinded with my egocentrism to see the daily battles they were fighting to give me what they never had as a child. we have much to learn from our parents...but most of it we will remain unlearnt because we don't truly speak their language at all. we have much to discuss when we meet.

love always,
nanaz
-----------------------------------------

Nanaz,
Yes your comments offered newer insight into this thought. Our parents have suffered geratly, something I considered all my life growing up, a burden I would take upon myself as a child. I too hated but sympathized with their struggles. And could they have found themselves in a more alien culture and country than America, where all their values and tradition were non-existant. And how I would push this sword deeper to force them to change and "get with the program". Was it cruel of me, or was I helping them cope with this new life, forcing them to adapt in a world where adaption is somehow survival. I see our peers and what they have become behind thier parents back because they didn't have the courage to stand up and fight for their mixed identity, to try to expalin and grow with their parents rather than hide and grow apart. I must give us credit as we succeeded and did it right. we are not like our Persian peers. There was no easy way Nanaz. And look at all we have overcome in ourselves. We are once again Nanaz and Shabnam with pride, rather than Sherli and Sara with shame and discomfort. They shame of telling my parents that if somebody calls looking for Sara, they want to talk to me. But what's wrong with Shabnam, it's a beautiful and poetic name? Yea I know mom, but it's soo Persian, it's embarassing. Everyone thinks I'm werid and they make fun of my name. Thank God for those days. They have built so much character. I will, without a doubt, give my children ethinic names and have them fight for their identity. That way, they will always know who they are, for they will have searched deeply, suffered painfuly, made their mistakes, and finally found their way and come out on top.

It is true that there is much that we have lost in exile, but we have succeeded in maintaining a lot. And our parents have succeeded in planting fruitful seeds. For this they are proud. Our torn identity has brought us much contemplation and consciousness of ourselves and this is the blessing of our burden. We are two people on the inside, niether one complete, but atleast we have the wisdom of two contrasting worlds. Persian is our aestic while American is our practical. We have the choice of choosing who to be and what to pull from at any given moment. My Persian side has aided me so much in my travels. It is the side everyone connects with and respects. It is what has set me apart from the "Americans". It has taught me humblness and hospitality., amoung many other things. We have in many ways created our own culture. And this to me is liberating as it transends the boxes many find themselves stuck in. Many of the things I learned in my childhood, people are now searching for in their travels. We are this magic...

Always,
Shabnam

Poetry

2006-07-20T18:58:00.000+02:00

Here are some of the earliest pieces I wrote. I don't have much but thesae are the first of the bunch. I hope they inspire...

WOMAN

you found me in the sun
cimbing berry trees
you gently held my hand
as i sat upon your knees

you whispered in my ear
of your stories from afar
while i lay searching in your eyes,
wondering where you are

but i could never find you
as your soul was wandering lost
but you had to keep on searching and
for this our love was the cost

Searching for the truth
without a moments rest
rather then laying your tired head
upon my tender breast

these answers you seek
are not floating out there somewhere
come and I will share them
as I stroke your golden hair

Then with your tired, weathered eyes
you will look at me a new
And say "the answers I've been searching for
I find within you"

GONE

Only a shadow of you remains
your colors have disappeared
your touch is merely a breeze that runs gently against my body
your laughter a distant echo
your warm and tender love replaced by a cool draft that dances
within the abandoned chambers of my heart
and my soul quitely mourns the loss of her lover...

THE ROSE

you long to know the depths of me
but you have only picked my outer petals
if you want to know what lies within
you must take the time to look

Poland...

2006-07-19T18:48:00.000+02:00

My blog has been neglected yet again, but I have ben far from the internet, an hour by foot to be exact. Anyway, because of my limited time, I have taken decided to cut and past a few emails to roughly explain some of the things that have been happening in my life. I hope this is interesting and somewhat fluid...

I am looking forward to the life i want to persue once I get home, but my journey is not over. i am still learning so much. Some great things have come into my life. Good friends and poetry. I had such a strong connection with Kinga and she is such a free soul. we are so much alike. so, we decided to live together in a home her parents have in a Polish village in the mountains. We have been here a week now and are begining to heal ourselves and explore our souls. We spend days just talking, picking berries, and eating. We are resting our suffering souls and talking out our feelings. We laugh and cry but in the end we have nothing else to cry about, so we just laugh. We started singing last night, which was so liberating. there is so much that you release when you sing (and you really don't need a voice, i don't have one!!). Another thing that he gave me by comming here was the rebirth of my poetic voice. I used to write poetry when i was young, but somewhere, somehow, it died in me. Now it has come back to life like a pheonix. i was writing a lot for about a week or two and now it is dormant again. this inspiration comes from deep pain and suffering. the loss of my love. perhaps poetry comes to me as a friend, a shoulder to lean on in my tough times. I will let it be and allow it to come to me when she is ready to be heard.

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I'm living in a country as an outsider. Everyone here is blonde with straight hair and they all not only know that i'm an outsider, but that I'm a JEW. this is a phenomenon here as I am the only Jew they have ever met. I am weird, mystical, and untouchable, but I am also dirty and of different blood. Kinga often asks me about judaism sometimes in a way that hurts me on the inside, but my face doesn't change. And now the war in Israel is not helping. they hate jews even more now for bombing the hell out of Beirut. Thanks Israel! today Kinga asked me why is it that everybody hates the Jews, so much so that throughout history they have wanted to wipe their existence, their species off the earth? That's what I want to know I told her. But I gave her some better answers. Perhaps deeper answers, and now she is mystified by Judaism. I don't know what I'm doing. Sometimes I want to run far away from here and other times I want to stay and fight for my right to exist, becasue they took that right away from my brothers. I now live in a city quite close to Auscwitz, in a city that used to be inhabited 70% by Jews. And this is true all over Poland. They are all gone and the only thing left of them are some fucking museaums. Its sickening. And I know I'm going to have to make that trip that I am dreading. I must go to Auscwits as a duty. It disgusts me. And of course discussions were had about the whole situation and how it was possible to kill jews without a second thought. Well Jews have different blood than we do, they are a different species. it's not like killing a human like myself. Apparently Kinga can understand the German mentality but can also grow from it. its a paradox apparently. In fact, Poland was the most antisemetic country in europe and still is. when the Germans came, the Jews welcomed them with open arms as anybody was better than their Polish Brothers. the worst stories come from Poland. The Germans didn't have to patrol the Polish police to do thei jobs, the Polish went above and beyond the call of duty. But that's all in the past, right? I sure hope so, but it lives in their hearts.

With all that I wrote above, I failed to mention something foundational. Yes, kinga is naive and her curiosity and ideas sometimes come off as offensive but she has very good intentions and honestly just doesn't know any better. I didn't mention to you how welcoming and loving her and her family has been to me. they honestly brought me into the family as a daughter, and i really mean that. I call them mommy and daddy and they refer to me as their daughter even to freinds and other family members. This touches me greatly and even brings me to tears. Her father is one spectacular person!! He is a humble electrictian but also a poet and lover of literature, along with bob dylan and other country and rock singrs. he is rally something, but most of all he is a very wise man and an incredible father. Yesterday and today i was teaching Kinga a bit about judasim. I discussed the torah and the role of jewish women our culture. she was fasinated but felt bad for asking me so much. she felt uncomfortable for being so ignorant on the mattter, but i assured her that i enjoyed sharing these things with her. She then appologized profusely for sounding so fascist sometimes. she said that it wasn't her intentions but they just came out tht how. she wants to explain our differences but she can't word them correctly. I assured her taht i understand her intentions, but this wouldn't do, so as I slept, she called on her father for some advice. she expressed to him that she felt she sounded fascist when talking to me and how can she express how she feels. So her father and her, over laughter and tears spoke of many things. Her father told her that these people that have now come into her life are a blessing and a window to something different and beautiful and tht she should not offend her new friends and dishonor herself, but that she is right in believing we are all different andf all of our differences have a very useful function in the world and to deny thaese differences is ofending. He said that Jews, Gypsies, and blacks are quite different than white europeans and that she she not offend these races by saying they are like white europeans. he compared these differences to difernet parts of the body. the way the hand is different from the ear, so are the people of the world, but the hand and the ear both serve very different functions. Europeans are people of action, gypsies are instinctual people, blacks aer peopel of lust, and Jews are Inspiration. We later saw these differences as colors of the rainbow. they all complete a different color of the rainbow, but at the end, all these colors together make the color white, pure light, the face of God. This inspired me greatly!!

Polskaaaaaa

2006-06-16T19:51:00.000+02:00

i am writing now from Krakow and though i have no time to explain, i just want to say that i have made some amazing connections and think i might stay, for a while. i will plan on a month or two here in the outskirts of krakow in a village called sucha. Kinga, my female soulmate has a house there and we will live there together inspiring and strengthening eachothers soul. this is what i was looking for. a place to rest, a place to search myself without the eyes of the world watching. i am inspired and greatful to have this experience. I dont think i will leave europe just yet. it wasnt planned well but now i have found something better. i will write more later...

Hell Day and back in Paris!

2006-06-06T18:24:00.000+02:00

Oh damn, the day I decide to write I have to use the funky ass french keyboard. please excuse the typos. I am back in Paris, marking my wo moth anniversary in the very place I began, Rphaelle's bedroom. I spent 24 hours on a train to get here from Lisbon, and I must say that it was the most difficult ride of my life! Just to give you a very little picture of what i went through, I got on the train in the middle of a very hot day to find that the train had no air conditioning. no problem because at this point there were only two of us in this compartment. the compartment was a narrow room that SEATED 8 people in very upright positions very close to ech other. there was only one armrest that seperated the four people on each side. So in the begining I was happy; i thouht i really lucked out, a whole compartment practically to myself. i thought, wow, the ticket counter guy really hooked me up. But then the rest of the passengers started to trickle in at the different stops. Mind you its still very hot and we are all sticking to our seats, but i was lucky, no one was sitting next to me. so i thought, maybe I'll catch some sleep before someone sits by me, and if this were to happen, I'd be fucked as i didn't have the window seat. So night began to fall and just as I was about to get some shut eye, I get company. Oh what a miserable night! we were all in pain, as everyone smelled, but it was too cold to leave the window open and we were all sleeping straight up like sardines. Oh and i had forgotten to bring food with me so i was starving on top of it all. At one point i fell asleep, but a little too deeply. I almost forgot where I was and was about to let out a thunderous fart but thankfully woke up to just barely catch myself. Close call!! Upon arrival in Paris, i saw the guy I was sitting next to on the train and we looked at eachother in passing and just laughed. I hated his presence in the seat next to me so much last night, but felt so close to him as we waved goodbye. What a silent bond you create with the ones who experience the same pain as you.

So much has happened within these two months, its hard to place myself now. I have had so many wildly different experiences, but have taken them in with such peace. So let me work my way back...

Portugal- I loved Portugal for the experience I had, but I was not particularly inspired by the energy there. It was not Spain, and I think I left a piece of my heart there...I thought it was a beautiful country, especially Lisbon, but found it a little too familiar. It reminded me of California so I felt pleasantly at home, which was exactly what i needed at that point, but didn't have strong feelings of wonder. My time with Barbara was perfect. Barbara is Elina's (my aunt) very good friend. in fact, she was Elina's bridesmaid, which is where I met her. When I arrived, she happened to be on holiday so we really enjoyed our time together. I met her friend Hugo the first night. We went to the castle, went to an Indian dinner, which i had missed so very much, and then went for a sroll around the city and came across some interesting suprises. On one of the most busiest and poshy streets of Lisbon, we found a homeless guy standing against the wall with his very big erect penis hanging out of his pants. Barbara and I were so intrigued by this that we spent about 10 minutes just laughing at this guy and the reaction of people as they discovered him. After about an hour, we come back to find him still there, still erect. He was having a great time. Then just down the street, a black woman had her legs spread wide open, scrathing herself in various places. What a night, what a city! HUgo was embarressed and apologizing for this, but I assured him that to me, this was a treat! I spent a couple days in Lisbon with Barbara going to Belem for a picnic, going to Cascai for lunch, etc. I then went off to Porto on my own. I expolred the city the first day, getting lost in the winding allys and enjoying the tile work on the face of these old buildings. The following day I took an hour boat ride on the river and ended my day with a nice port wine tasting. After this I felt at peace with Porto and felt it was time to move on. I find myself getting tired of sightseeing. In Portugal, I just wanted to hang out. I spent the next day in Sintra, where I explored a beautiful, un down Moorish castle, but had no desire to see another palace or be around any more tourists, so i again, went back to Lisbon. I really just looked forward to being around Barbara. I needed her energy, needed her companionship, which is exactly what the medicine cards told us both (she had the same medicine cards I had and she brought them to me just as i was thinking about my own). Barbara and I had an interesting connection. we came together strongly and connected on a very spiritual level. Anyway, i pulled the card of the Elk, which symbolizes Stamina. It warned me to slow down and take heed not to burn myself out. It also told me that I needed female energy, a female companion. Another perfect reading. I love those cards. And so went our days, reaching deep down and sharing stories and feelings, alloaing our eneries to bounce off eachother. On my last day, we took a trip to Evora together. It was perfect as it was a quiet and peaceful Sunday. We had an amazing luch together and then found the Chapel of Bones. This place was incredible!! They had built a chapel with human bones, about 5000 bones that were the remains of people who had lost their lives during a war. The structure was made of human bones and skulls! Kinda errie, but really incredible!! And we met this man along the way that made a life by collecting junk and recreating other things out of it. I mean, this guys house was filled with useless shit. He was so passionate as he told us the history of the town through these dusty old eye glasses with a missing lens. And as it always goes, I left the following day, brining an end to another chapter of my travels. Traveling is so very bittersweet...

Before going to Lisbon, I had some of my best experiences in Spain. After leaving Johnny and Arndis after our adventure, I went to Sevilla for what I thought would only be a couple days. I stepped off that bus and and took a deep breath, happy to finally be alone again. My time with the gang was incredible, but I was ready for an adventure of my own. I spent 2 days in Barrio de Santa Cruz, which was the area inhabited by the Jews and Muslims of old. It was unbelievably hot, but I found refuge in the narrow allys desined to keep away the heat of the sun and generate a cool breeze as you walked through. I spent hours roaming around these allys, looking in and finding hidden courtyards and old churches. Such magic happened these last days in Spain. Things just came to me so effortlessly. I saw a beautiful flamenco show and went to a sephardic music concert at the museum, and on my way back home, found a middle eastern festival where I found essential materials for my dancing balls. I failed to mention that I am trying to learn fire dancing, but before I burn I must learn with harmless balls. I am actually really good. Johnny was pisses because he had never seen anyone pick it up as fast as I did. Anyway, the day i had decided to leave, Rphaelle made me call her friends Julie and carlos and I'm so glad I did. The night I arrived, it happened to be carlos's 30th birthday. He had a bunch of friends over and we all had a blast. They were such great people. I spent a couple days with them and decided to catch the begining of the feria in cordoba. I decided to go for a day and stay with Carlos's friend Miguel. But when I got there, I knew I had to stay. It was incredible! The entire city was out celebrating the beginning of the Feria, the city's carnival that is basically a one week long party that the city anticipates the entire year. And this year, the gate was bigger and brighter than ever. I met Miguel at the end of the bridge and we immediatly hit it off. His English was pretty good, but got better as the night continued. I met his friends, but I especially liked his little brother Rapha. He looked just like Sascha, expect 26. I spent the night with these people drinking, dancing, and talking about life. Rapha and I had a deep connection. He was so inspired by me and what I was doing. He told me about his dreams, his fears, this deep change within himself. He was so confused about life and what he was doing, about his feelings for his girlfriend. He told me secrets he hadn't told a soul. And the whole time they all felt so lucky that I was there all the way from LA (they are in a band called LA Rose) speaking English to them. They dont travel much at all in Cordoba and had never met anyone from the states to practice their English with. Can you imagine? I'm in the middle of the biggest festival in Cordoba, something I would have never imagined doing, and these guys are feeling blessed that I was there with them. What an incredible feeling!! I ended up staying three nights and four days. Miguel is a gaurd at the Palace in Cordoba, so on my last day I got a special treat. He was working after hours so I got a private tour of the entire Palace , with nobody around but us. That means no stupid tour groups!! I finally, and very reluctantly, left Cordoba and went back to Sevilla to pack my bags and head out to Portugal.

I first arrived in Faro, which I absolutly hated. I was picked up by this hostel owner, who i later found out, was Armenian from Lebanon. They were extremely pushy and uncomfortable to be around, but when his father saw my last name he was almost in tears to find someone like them. The only fond memories I have of Faro are the soccer game I watched on a big screen in the square with the rest of the city and making my dancing balls in my hostel. I left Faro the very next morning, and headed to Lagos. I liked Lagos a lot more. It was a lot more touristy but I had a great time. I found a great, cheap hostel right in the center, I went to the beautiful beach and practiced my poi (dancing balls) between the caves, and spent my first night watching the city go by while sitting on my weathered window sill. On my way to the beach, i actually met a girl from California who stopped to ask for directions, but we ended up talking for 5 minutes about all the shit she was going through. She had gotten an abortion a few days before and had just put the love of her life on an airplane back to California. What a story! She felt so releaved to talk to someone about the pain she was experiencing. We had to laugh just a little about the cruelty of life. I spent the next day in Sagres, but i left my bags in Lagos. When I got there I was told that buses don't run on the weekends and i have to take a taxi to my destinations. Fuck, i thought, what luck! But then I had a brilliant idea. I rented a bike and rode to all the places I wanted to go. What a blessing it all turned out to be. I had such an amazing time on my bicycle!! I rode to the lighthouse, the farthest point in Europe, and rode to the fortress, and just had such a peaceful time with myself. I met a wonderful elderly dutch couple who invited me in their van for coffee and chocolate (exactly what i needed) and i approached a snake in the rode just as I was passing it, so i got fucked with snake juice (not pleasant, but humerous), and i rode my ass off on the way back going against the wind, but all in all, it was exactly what I needed. it was such a spiritul time! When I got back, my neighbor's beautiful guitar playing stopped me in my tracks and beckoned me to say hello. I did and met an interesting Australian guy who worked at the bar downstairs. I passes out but later met him at the bar to find that I wasn't missing anything by falling asleep at 10pm. I have not been in the party mood at all. At least not the bar and club scene. I am at peace with myself. I then headed to Lisbon the following day...And here I am now, in Paris, waiting to see Raphaelle and that crazy fucker Brent. I will be here a few days and then head off to Poland to see what awaits me there... And after that, who knows. I am actually getting sick of Europe. I don't think this is what I need right now. Europe is too close to home, too easy, too repetitive. I don't know how many more cathedrals and broken down castles I can see. I need something exotic, something different, something to put me out of my element. I need to be challenged. I am considering Thailand or even Africa. Any thoughts or insight?

The Adventures of the Guapateers

2006-05-29T14:40:00.000+02:00

ok folks, i have not had time to update my blog and Arndis did such a good job of retelling our adventures in Spain together that i cut and paste her entry on mine. I hope you enjoy this as much as i did. If you want to see the pictures too, her blog address is sidnra.blogspot.com

I am now in portugal and have access to a computer so i will write soon, i promise. and i promise to write better. I have only been providing hollow skeletons of these days, but it is difficult so spend time writing on computers. oh i will explain later. In the meantime, this is a good idea of what i have been doing...

On tuesday afternoon Johnny, Shabby and I got our rental car and set off to find a cozy beach to sleep on. It was a good thing that the two girls from Quebec had decided to bail at the last minute because the first thing the car rental guy said when he saw us and all our luggage was "this car is too small for you". A moment of panic as this was the last car available but she turned out to be the perfect size. We christened her Guapita (we decided that this means "little pretty one"). Drove southeast along the coast to Los Canos de Meca and found a good parking space for the car, right beside some steps that lead directly down to the beach. Which was perfect...nearly deserted, separated from homes and their inhabitants by steep cliffs and walls, overlooking a rough patch of the Atlantic and a lighthouse. While the sun set we drank to our good fortune and found a spot for a fire, then feasted on the greatest smoked salmon/cheese/fried eggplant sandwiches ever (why does food taste so much better outside?). At first we thought someone should stay in the car overnight considering the group of fairly dodgy hippies we'd seen hanging out with their half dead dogs earlier in the day but a nice British passerby told us that the hippies usually disappeared at night. So we ignored the "beware" graffiti that was all over the walls and stairwell and grabbed our sleeping bags and a bottle of local sherry (Canasta?) and settled in for the night. Have you ever tried to sleep through a sandstorm? Neither had I. I don't recommend it. At least I wasn't awake while the rats were working on the bag of food we had left outside with us. Still, the sky was clear and the moon and stars were out and I could track their progress across the sky as I work up every hour or so. We managed to get a little bit of sleep and the next morning headed back past Cadiz to Huelva. Found another amazing beach, this time with warm calm water perfect for swimming in and big dunes to shelter us from the wind (and other people). We bought tinfoil and vegetables and roasted up everything we could think of - garlic, potatoes, bread and cheese, peppers, asparagus, onion...Johnny noticed wild rosemary growing all over the place but when I went to pick some for our meal I went to the wrong plant and came back with some other vaguely rosemary-ish plant instead. Hey, it was dark. This unknown stuff made its way into a little bit of our food before the others noticed it was not rosemary and someone with a better sense of smell went off to find the real thing. It doesn't seem to have been poisonous so all is well. After dinner we drank our second bottle of sherry and decided that since the beach was completely deserted a little skinny dipping was definitely in order so stripped down and ran through the moonlight into the warm ocean. The next morning, since the beach was still deserted Shabby and I did the same thing, wearing only slightly more clothing. Smart girl went down earlier than I did...a bunch of lucky fishermen showed up while I was still in the water. Oh well. It's Europe. They're used to that kind of thing. Johnny fried up some eggs and potatoes and cheese and whatever else would fry and we rigged up a shelter from the sun. It is amazing how unbelievably cold it can get at night and how unbearably hot it can be only a few hours later once the sun gets up. Then it was time to head north into Extremadura, exact destination not really known but we knew it when we found it. While Shabby and I slept, Johnny noticed an isolated lake at km 103 on the highway. We stopped in the closest town for yet more provisions (in retrospect three blocks of cheese was overkill) and drove down to the lake. It was beautiful and the photos do not do it justice, surrounded by wildflowers, absolutely full of fish...once again we watched the sun set and the moon rise while we laughed till we cried over our good fortune and various other things. The crying part may have something to do with pollen since we were running around in the flowers (I've discovered allergies I didn't know I had). Found stones that looked like faces and watched the water ripple as fish chased the stones J threw in the lake.Once again ate one of the greatest meals ever as J fried up some fish with onions and garlic and sherry and potatoes...a simple simple salad of cucumber slices with lemon. Appetized on a giant jar of Extremadura olives/pickles/onions and drank a bottle of the smoothest Extremadura wine...everything tastes better in Extremadura. Later J pulled out his poi and taught me how to use them. This went well once (well considering there was no fire. If they were on fire I would not have a face left) until I slammed one into a tree and kevlar exploded all over the place.Once again we set up our sleeping bags on the ground but this was not so fun as it was freezing outside and there were a lot of mosquitos. It was way too uncomfortable so I decided to sleep in the car. Unfortunately when I started hearing the plastic food bags move of their own volition I got the impression that something else had made the same decision, something unpleasant like a snake or a rat. I went back out to the ground but we never did find any creatures in the car. After three mostly sleepless nights in a row, plus the past several days in Cadiz at the Hostel of No Sleep we were a bunch of wrecks the next day. Drove further north to a small town called Zafra where we stopped for lunch and a quick nap, sleeping bags and all, in the public park. Just like dirty nasty hippies...oh the shame. At least we didn't have half starved dogs and cats on leashes with us. Then continued north to Caceres where we expected to find a sleepy little town with plenty of empty cheap hostal beds to welcome us. Imagine our surprise when, after finally finding a parking space and wondering why there were so many people walking around, we walked into the Plaza Mayor (main square in Caceres) to find thousands of people hanging out, dancing, drumming, drinking and a huge stage set up at one end. It seems that universe did not want us to sleep and sent us to the WOMAD music festival instead. We inquired at a few hotels and even asked the police but everyone told us that everything in town was full. Great. What to do? Buy beer and go dance, that's what to do. A funk band was playing, featuring a tiny wizened old guitar player that we originally thought was a woman but who turned out to be a man...people were dancing with kids on their shoulders and storks were flying overhead wondering what the hell was going on. Blood sugar started dropping and we ate two large pizzas in record time, "like frat boys" as J put it. Our appetites were a major theme of this trip, at least for Shabby and I...we were eating like maniacs, all the time. Constantly hungry for some reason. Johnny would sometimes just sit back and watch us like the circus freaks we were.Eventually, around maybe 2 a.m. after some time spent around a drum circle (and if you can fall asleep in that noise you really need to go to bed) we needed sleep. Desperately. The inital plan was to sleep in the car but this was really not appealing expecially since the car was starting to smell of old food. We drove around the town for a while, hoping to find a motel (North America style) on the outskirts. Nothing. J drove to the next (tiny) town where S asked someone at a bar where we could find a motel. Nothing there but he led us partway to the next town in his car and told us about a couple of possibilities. The first place was staffed by a suspicious looking fat man who said "completo" and sent us packing. The second place thank GOD had a triple room and we finally finally slept through the night. I have never appreciated a bed more in my life. Saturday we felt a million times better and drove to Trujillo where we hung out in the square and watched the storks and made tuna sandwiches for lunch. Then drove waaay back down into Andalucia to Ronda where we had brief scare when it looked like there was yet another event happening (a bike race). Happily we were still able to find a room and spent the evening wandering around Ronda, eating dinner in the square and watching teenagers tamper with the fountain. A beautiful girl no more than 15 but dressed like she was 21 and on her way to a club walked by a couple of times to the delight of some skeevy guys at the next table. The next day we got up and wandered around old Ronda, came across yet another spectacle (Spain is one spectacle after another after another)...a religious parade winding through the streets. We also saw the best preserved Arab Baths on the Iberian Peninsula and drove to some small town whose name I forget and ate gazpacho and some other thick pasty soup and some of the most delicious beef I have ever tasted. Our waitress was adorable, bullfighting was on the tv, and the power went out every 5 minutes or so. We then tried to drive up to a mountain (again I forget the name) but partway there the clouds were so thick that there was no visibility so we decided to decend. Here is where things started to get dodgy. According to the map, and various road signs, the road we were on would take us all the way to Malaga which was the direction we wanted to go. Unfortunately we were extremely low on gas and the road kept getting narrower and cloudier as we went on. We came to a fork in the road with signs that pointed to Malaga in both directions...we took what turned out to be the wrong road which started to climb again and turned into a one lane barely paved track which had cats lounging in the middle of it and inbred looking dogs lurching out at passing cars on dangerous curves. J finally decided he had had enough and turned around back to the fork. Thank god because THAT road led to an actual real highway and a real town with a real gas station. Lesson in this is to stay on the thick red and green lines on the map, not the skinny white ones that run through the mountains. We stopped in some resort port near Marballa and tried to figure out where to go...S made a reservation with a hostal in a nearby town called San Pedro de something and we took off to find it. When we got there we drove around for a while before finally nabbing a parking space right around the corner from our hostal; this town was full of parked cars and we were ecstatic to find a spot. So ecstatic we neglected to look for signs re: parking rules. Dun dun dun.....Grabbed our packs out of the car and walked to what should have been the entrance to the hostal. I noticed a man wearing too short shorts taking out his garbage and looking at us curiously. We got to the hotel door and pressed the button but there was no response and no sign of life. After the couple of minutes Shorts Man came over to us and started speaking to us in rapid Spanish that none of us could understand. Something about another door....so we followed him around the corner while he tried a key that didn't work on another door. More unintelligable spanish while we follow him back around the corner and he starts pointing at a building across the street. At this point we are looking and whispering at each other about finding another place while Shorts Man follows us saying something about a mother and baby. Then another guy shows up who may or may not work at this hotel but there is still nobody to let us and and frankly at this point we are a little weirded out. We find another place down the street and dump our stuff. When we go outside again Shorts Man is standing on the corner and we carefully avoid him. The next morning Johnny gets up to get some food or use the internet or something. He comes back more quickly than expected with very very bad news...Guapita has been towed! This leads to a day long ordeal which features Shabby running around trying to find the police station, then coming all the way back to where we are to get the car key, then going back to the police station, then running to find a bank machine because they only take cash, then taking a cab out somewhere because the car is not actually at the police station, then driving back downtown to find us, sans navigator. I should mention that she only learned to drive stick about 5 days ago and first gear has continued to be a problem. Trial by fire! Meanwhile I mostly sit on my ass and eat cheese. When she finally drives past us we cheer and Johnny runs to haul her out of the car so he can park it. Then we feast on chinese food. What a way to start our last day together...Things improve when we drive to Tarifa and find a hostal with kitchen where we can cook our Last Supper. Once again this is mostly Johnny cooking up a kickass pasta and steak combo while Shabby and I work on the salad and pre-dinner cocktails. At 10 the night manager came up to kick us out of the kitchen so we retired to our room to get wasted on gin and end this trip RIGHT. The next day we get up just barely in time to check out, eat our dinner left overs for breakfast because there is no power for cooking eggs for some reason, and then say good bye. The timing is impeccable because just as they walk out the door Tara, my Australian travelling partner for Morocco, walks in. Turns out she knows Johnny from Granada...small world, the hostels of southern Spain...And so I hug J and S and Guapita goodbye (and forget half my stuff in the car so they have to come back and return it to me) and get ready for Morocco.....

Leaving Cadiz :-(

2006-05-09T11:52:00.000+02:00

I quickly wanted to send a line saying that Cadiz is amazing. I have hooked up with a California boy and a Canadian girl and we are now about to rent a car and explore the rest of the west coast of Andalucia. We are quite excited as the car is very cheap and it gives us great mobility to check out the more obscure places. Are highlight is Extremadura. Though I am not saying anything of any value here, i figured it is enough to just drop a few lines than not write anything at all. I will try to be better about the blog. Anyway, if anyone has any favorites that we should check out please share, even though we will most likely not have access to a computer...Thank God! Kisses to all and to all a good night...

I´m back! (p.s. happy birthday Saamy)

2006-05-04T22:16:00.000+02:00

I´m sure you have all stopped reading my blog as I have totally neglected it on my travels. It has been difficult finding some time to actually write, let alone use up the computer for longer than 10 minutes when I´m at these hostels. There are lines to use this thing, and I really hate it. But I will just quickly give an overview of my travels thus far. Barcelona was a great begining in Spain. Beautiful city with a crazy party life. I was there with jessica and an awesome Australian man for the most part. We were staying at a party hostel which was welcomed after Paris. We saw all the Goudi architecture and they were really fascinating. We drank absynthe at this crazy old bar that Hemmingway used to drink in. In fact, the dust of those days still remains on all the chandeliers. I then parted with these friends and met Sivan and Carla, whom I traveled to Granada with. I love Granada and the hostel we were staying at. It has this fantastic roof where you can just sit back, smoke a joint, vibe with people, and enjoy gorgeous veiws of the city. I also went to Alhambra which was really something magnificent. I had to wake up at 6 in the morning to get fucking tickets but it was worth it. After 3 days, Sivan and I had to leave Granada because we no longer had a place to stay (Sivan and i have been homeless many a time together). Anyway, we decided we needed a beach so we went down to Nerja, or as we like to call it "fucking Nerja!!". We lived in absolute delight for about three days, having a hostel room to ourselves, plenty of hash, an incredible ocean, and perfect weather. The result- a fabulous tan, and good sleep but that´s about it. I almost felt trapped in Nerja as it was impossible to leave. We then went to the extreme opposite of Nerja. We searched and finally found Beneficio, an actual hippie commune in the middle of the mountains in Orgiva fulfilling one of my dreams. Fucking shit was ths place cool. Everyone lived in Tipis and made everything from scratch. It is also stunningly beautiful and again we were blessed with great weather and good fortune. The perfect time of year, right after some rain, and during this pagen fertility festival. Quite an experience, especially being stuck there and having to sleep, shivering, next to a dying fire. But an Italian named Mossimo came to the rescue and allowed us to slep in his van. God bless him. The rest of the time in beneficio consisted of exploring footpaths, chasing ants away, and taking showers in cascading waterfalls, yes naked. Amazing!! Oh and one morning I woke up to find a massive wolf spider next to my face. Lovely, really. Shortly after things got ugly. On our way to Beneficio we hitched a ride with this german guy and his mother. He spends a lot of time in Beneficio so he showed us to the main lodge (big tipi where everyone gathers and newcommers sleep). Anyway, two days later he shows up and we bump into eachother which was really cool. After the wolf spider incident he invited us to Santa Fe, an incredible campground with agua caliente, natural hot springs. Wow was this place incredible, and all natural. No buildings of any sort in sight. We had an amazing time, again blessed with perfect weather, until of course, nightfall. Once night hit, this crazy thunderstrom came rolling through (you would have really loved this Gooz). Oh i forgot to mention that in Spain people buy cargo trucks and make them into mobile apartments. I love this idea and am considering this when i get back home. So we were camping out of this dude´s car. Anyway, we were watching these amazing lightening bolts that were lighting up the sky with this incredible white light and this thunderous roar that followed, when German dude starts making passes. I very gently turn him down as i don´t know how he deals with rejection. Soon after i realized not well. Anyway, I wouldn´t sleep with him and this upset him quite a bit, but he was persistent and quite rude. We all wanted to leave the next day but were stuck with clay-like mudd left after the rain. So Sivan and I were fucked with this guy. We´re still trying to make things cool and we succed until dude took some acid. We, of course, avoided him entirely and this pissed him off again, but what really did it was the fact that I preferred to sleep on the floor rather than in the bed. So he starts talking shit and at the end said that he has a tendency to get violent. About three seconds later, Sivan and I took our sleeping bags and slept outside, in the rain. All our shit was in his car and we were kinda tripping out. Luckily we had really nice neighbors, but they were also tripping on acid and having a rave at 3 in the morning. So Sivan and I are helpless, trying to keep a fire going with wet wood, trying to sleep with all this noise and rain, but also keeping an eye on this fucking guy who has crazy fits and starts yelling "I hate you" while slamming the car doors. miserable fucking night. At about 6am I wake up, waiting for him to wake up, shaking because I don´t know what this guy is capable of. So finally he wakes up, still pissed, and starts throwing our shit out of his car, which was perfect because that is exactly what we wanted, to get rid of him. So, we packed up our shit and started our 5 mile walk back to civilization, tired, wet, dirty. But it was great and we are better for it. I learned some valuble lessons that night. And now I´m back in lovely Granada safe and sound at my favorite hostel, alone. Sivan had to go back as she left her backpack in Beneficio. Anyway, this has roughly been my life for the past few weeks. Fucking Great. I feel alive...
Cheers!!

Off to Spain...

2006-04-16T02:33:00.000+02:00

Ok so this is the begining of my backpacking travels. Up until this point, I have been comfortabling living with my 'marvelous' French family. I have had a home here, a home I feel I can return to. Raphaelle's family has been so warm and welcoming. Though at times we have a difficult time verbally communicating, we have grown quite fond of eachother through that basic human connection. I am so happy for this! This has been a wonderful transition into the new chapter in my travels. I leave for Barcelona tomorrow to meet my good friend Jessica who is traveling all the way from Atlanta to spend a week with me in Spain. But things didn't exactly start the way we had planned. I arrived at the train station tonight only to find that the train was packed. No seats left! So, I have to take tomorrow's night train. I didn't take into consideration the fact that its Easter Weekend. Boo on me. Anyway, Jessica will have to start without me. She is awesome!! She's also an experienced traveler so I can pick up some good tips from her. It will be nice to begin the first part of my backpacking trip with her. After she leaves, I get to explore Spain, Portugal, and the South of France before I make my way back to Paris. I'm estimatig that it will take me about a month, but I must make it back before Raphaelle leeves to canada. I'm super excited and extremely nervous! But, once I begin, I will be fine. So here is me saying 'Attutalore' to Paris. I will be back soon!

Passover in Paris (last night's journal entry)

2006-04-13T12:26:00.000+02:00

Tonight I celebrated the first night of Passover in Paris. It was also my first Passover Sedar away from home, and I must say, I have never missed home so much in my entire life. I thought the Sedar here at Raphaelle's house was beautiful and interesting, but it was nothing like home, nothing how I know Passover to be. Here, Passover involved a table of about 10 people and we went through the Passover book reading prayers with beautiful French/Morrocan melodies. It lasted about an hour and a half and then we ate a wonderful dinner I helped all day to create. The experience itself was lovely, but it didn't resonate as Passover to me. Passover at my grandmother's house consists of 30 people (give or take) and a whole lot of chaos! We are constantly singing, eating, laughing, eating, running around with onions beating the shit out of eachother, then pinching the shit out of eachother, eating, hearing my grandfather sing, and then finally after 4 hours when the sedar is over, we eat dinner. Passover is the funnest holiday of the year. You know not to wear something new or something white because you will be destroyed during dayenu. You know to where something long sleeved and thick for L'picka (probably something my family created). You know to come armed with a melody for the Gade shurhas prayer, so you can outdo your opponent! Two very different experiences. The interesting thing about Raphaelle's Sedar was that the women led the Sedar. They sang the prayers with beautiful melodies and incorperated very interesting customs. At home, the men mostly mumble the prayers and sing in their own melody, so I realized that I knew very little about the actual prayers, even though I knew the different parts and foods of the actual Sedar. For the most part however, I must give credit for this to the Ashkenazi hebrew school I went to.
So during the Sedar, I found myself holding back tears on a number of occations, because, well, I missed being at home, at my Passover Sedar, with my crazy, vibrant, hilarious family, where everything, including Judaism is always a party, always a celebration. It's always nice and important to experience different things, but I feel now that there is nowhere else in the world I belong every year for Passover then at home!

'But we were just playing Rome...'

2006-04-09T15:44:00.000+02:00

Raphaelle and I spent the day with Shahar yesterday. We had such a great time discussing topics relating to politics and American social structures, but things took a different turn after dinner. Well, we started getting drunk and lewd, so we took the party somewhere a little more appropriate, like for instance a bar with half naked guys walking around serving us more drinks. We had a fucking blast, but this is something best left for pictures. Retelling the night will do it no justice...hu hu, wee wee, hu hu.....

2006-04-07T15:59:00.000+02:00

I can't figure out how to get my new pics off my camera so I was experimenting posting pics with an old picture. Maybe if this computer wasn't in French, I would have a better time figuring it out! I hate technology!! Do I sound bitter?

2006-04-07T15:01:00.000+02:00

Ah, to be in Paris...

So I slept until 2 in the afternoon today and it felt fucking geat!! I figure I have the jetlag excuse for now so I will enjoy it while I can!! I honestly haven't slept this well in a long while. This morning I found that my stupid, annoying 'house guest' came to visit, unexpected as usual, so I decided to use this day to relax. Interestingly enough, I do not feel rushed into exploring Paris. I know that I will be here a while. So I woke up today, had my tea and nutella, and enjoyed a cigerette outside on Raphaelle's balcony because that's what you do in Paris, you smoke cigerettes. And it was in this moment that I felt the essence of Paris. Raphaelle lives in an incredible part of town. By the looks of it, she lives in the music district. Every other shop on her block is an instrument shop. They all specialize in either violins, guitars, or saxaphones, so you see parts of these instruments hanging behind windows as beautiful pieces of art. Sitting on the balcony today really made me fall in love with Paris. The buildings are truely magnificent and the lower level shops are as charming as you would imagine. They remind me of the store fronts Vegas tried so hard to capture. You know, those fake store windows that you are dying to enter. Well, in Paris you can very well enter but I wouldn't dare. At least not yet. I feel I should know a little more French before I presume to act French. The weather has tuely been lovely these past couple of days. I feel quite fortunate actually, as the weather had been less favorable prior to my arrival. But there is something missing here...a lover. Paris is a place for lovers, and though one can find a lover here, this place must be enoyed with someone you already love...Therefore, I must return...

2006-04-06T22:20:00.000+02:00

Bonjour! Today was my first official day in Paris. I arrived yesterday and was kindly welcomed by Raphaelle and her very kind family. I arrived at Raphaelle's lovely and huge Parisian Apartment at around 11am and was greeted by her very gay friend Mirza who speaks almost no English, so you can imagine how well we communicaed and killed time until Raphaelle got home from work. Ok before I continue, this keyboard is driving me nuts! lol the letters are in different places so I'm typing five words a minute. I didn't take this into considerqtion when agreeing to keep a blog. I fear this will be a nightmare. But I will continue to try. I'm sure I will get the hang of it. So anyway, When Raph got home, we went shopping for a top she needed for a business trip she went on today. I lasted about 2 hours before I began passing out at every store while she continued looking. Within the ten minutes it would take her to browse the store, I was in a coma! She finally sent me home to take a nap. I slept from about 6pm to 12:30pm the next day, only to wake up for about 2 hours to eat and give Raphaelle's mom the gifts I brought her. I feel like I haven't slept that long qnd that deep for years! it was fucking great. When I finally pulled myself out of bed, i found that it as a beautiful day in france. I had brunch with Mirza and took off to go see the Arch de Triomphe, des Champs-Elysees, and the Eiffel Tower. A few things about my first impression of Paris...
I love the way they have preserved their city by keeping the face of old buildings. It gives the city a timelessness that not many cities can claim. I imagined the Champs-Elysees to be more quaint and glamourus. Though beautiful, it was quite modern and almost manhattenesque (some parts). I was afaid to go into any resaurant except, dare I say it, McDonalds for two reasons. First to use the bathroom (thank god for that) and second, to order le cheeseburger and frities for under 3 euro! Yes I could have probably eaten something french for a little more than that, and I probably will tomorrow, but great way to conserve cash when on a budget!! I then made my way to the Hotel des Invalides. I must say that I was quite impressed by this structure, not because of its beauty (it as very beautiful) but because of its purpose. Napoleon built this structure to house the soliders who were disabled while in battle. I thought this was a very noble, responsible, and functional thing to do. Napoleon got these poor, homeless veterans off the streets of Paris and into this castle as gratitude for their service. By doing this, he simultaniously cut down the amount of homelessness in Paris and raised the country's morale for taking care of their fallen. Napoleons is burried in this building, but i did not go inside. I then walked to the Eiffel tower. The Eiffel Tower is a beautiful, magnificent structure, but I was not very impressed. I feel I have seen it so many times that it has lost its lustor. It's no longer as special as it should be. But I did see a portion of it from a distance at night and that was spectacular!! I finally ended my day by going back to the Arch, as that wa where I would catch my train. It was the blue hour (dusk, one of my favorite times of the day) and the Arch looked magnificent. I think Paris is more beautiful by night. As I was leaving, I was stopped by a policeman. Apperantly, he wanted nothing more but to flirt with me, so I flirted right back. He is French/Tunisian and speaks very litttle English, but we managed to communicate. He offered to take me to the top of the Arch, but the lady police officer didn't allow this. He also offered to take me to the Eiffel tower at night, but I had to go back to Raphaelle's. We planned to meet again on Monday to do these things and go to disneyland. hehehe, he's kinda cute....It might be kinda fun to have a police escort all over Paris!!

But I must say, I felt kinda lonely my first day. I had no one to talk to and no cell phone to reach for. It i going to be difficult for a while I'm sure. I have to learn to break old habits.