The Blog
Diary of a solo traveler wandering around Europe

Here in England, for an unexplained reason, I feel my Jewishness — I, who all my life believed in my complete secularism and didn't want to hear anything about the dispersion and persecution of Jews — here I feel my parents, my grandparents, and the place of the Jewish tradition in their lives and mine. And just now, Mimy the cat is rubbing against my legs as she purrs loudly.

Everything in Berlin is big - the streets, the buildings, the history, the wall, everything. For the next week or so I will stay at Krosinsee Camping in my humble camper van and just enjoy being nobody in Berlin.

Here in Jena, in the light rain, among the tall trees, I become a Jew. I long for this landscape and this coolness because they are embedded in my history, yet I do not belong here either. Not here, nor in the Near East, where I truly suffer. What will become of me?

Now it’s June 2023. In my home land, in every major town and city book festivals are happening and book booths are sprouting everywhere like mushrooms after the rain. But I am sitting on a hill in central Germany, watching rabbits peek at me from the meadow and then scurry away.

When I breath, for some mysterious reason I hear a distant voice commanding: "Be afraid." It's only then that I relax those knots in my belly and this weird trembling starts at the pit of my stomach and works its way up right to the crown of my head. My whole body is tingling and shivering and that, I'm told, is the Energy of Fear.

The decision to leave your familiar and beloved comfort zone and to put your current life behind you is, to say the least, a challenging one. Beyond all the emotions you experience, there are also many technical matters to address. You have the house you live in, whether it’s rented or owned by you, there’s the car that needs to be sold or stored, and depending on how long you plan to be away from your homeland, you may need to notify certain authorities about your time abroa