Epilogue

I've been on American soil for over a week now.
I've eaten cheeseburgers and watched trashy television.
I've driven a car and showered twice in one day.

I tried participating in this thing they call a government of the people, by the people, for the people.
In this baby of a country, they actually elect their leaders. How naive these people are, right?
Despite what you might have heard I can walk outside at night and I haven't heard a single gun shot.

Next week, I'm going to give their public education system a try. We'll see how that goes.

E.


P.S. It's a surprise they let me back in looking like this...

Europe Pictures Redux

Amsterdam Centraal Station

Amsterdam Canal

Dresden Train Station

Prague Castle

Outside Prague's National Museum

The Last Supper (from a Falafel Stand)

The other night I roomed with some girls studying abroad from Southwest Missouri State. They gave me the impression that they thought California was more foreign than Holland.

Girl: So, you're traveling by yourself?
Me: Yep.
(Pause)
Girl: But, why?
Me: Well, I was visiting my dad who is living in Israel and then I decided to come through Eur-
Girl: So, you just walk around all day and talk to strange people?
Me: Um, basically yeah.

With all this walking around I felt I actually accomplished something. There is a point in time, as a foreign visitor to a city, where you begin to see places around the city and you just know where you are, and you can recall being at this place other times before, and you know where the closest internet cafe or bank or bathroom is. Even with the best built-in sense of direction, if you are only in a city for two days, it is very difficult to obtain this level of understanding. I eventually got this feeling after staying in Tel Aviv for a couple weeks and I think I finally feel that here in Amsterdam (although those canals are mighty confusing). It is comforting to know a place in this way, especially when you've been on the road for so long. Even when I am by myself without anyone to relate my experiences, I can look up and see the Artis Zoo and remember the nice pizza slice I had across the street when I was here over a month ago.

Unfortunately, all my walking/wondering/exploring has taken a hit because of all the rain. Right now, it is absolutely pouring outside this oasis of an internet cafe. But then the backpacking gods decided to smile upon me...

The hostel I chose (or was forced to choose based on financial and availability reasons) for my last two nights even advertises itself as a low-class establishment, with slogans like "enivronmentally friendly on accident" next to a picture of a barren mattress on the floor with no sheets. Its lobby feels well-trafficked and the main artistic theme is graffiti. But on the final stage of my trip, I really will take anything because I know my bed and my shower at home are just on the horizon. When I got to my room, I appeared to be the first one there. There are four bunk beds, blue graffiti-covered lockers (one says "Animal Mother"), and a small bathroom in which I have yet to see any cockroaches (although I saw one small spider). Good news is: no one else ever showed up! I think it is a glitch in their reservation system, because the place is supposed to be full. But Eli ended up with his own small motel room for only 20 euros a night! It is a much longed for break from the noisy and cramped accomadations that I have come to expect.

I had my last meal tonight from the same Falafel stand that I stopped at over a month ago. It seemed fitting, considering all the incredible falafel I have had on this trip. This was a very educational trip for me. I saw a lot and it will be awhile before I have internalized all of it and really understand what it all means for me and my global perspective. With that said, I'm not sure I could have done this trip one year ago. Being on your own on the road can be tough, but I think it was necessary for me to really understand what kind of person I am and my particular travel style. Thank you all for listening in and once I get home I will try to add some pictures to the blog for you all to see.

Much love,
E.

Drugs, Sex and Tourism.

Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, says that to be a good writer one must know how to balance the extremely anti-social and secluded act of sitting down to write with the actual living of life, which of course is necessary for the gathering of ideas. So, while I haven't really written anything in the last week, let's just say I've been gathering some ideas.

In Berlin, I found a really nice English used bookstore and picked up a copy of Mark Twain's travelogue, The Innocents Abroad, which documents his trip to Europe and the Holy Land. Although 150 years separate his journey and mine, I am excited to hear another American's opinion on this strange land.

I am in Amsterdam now, the point of my final departure as well as my first arrival over a month ago. Due to some late planning, I am staying in 3 different hostels for my 4 nights here. Today, in order to get to Hostel #2, you could have seen me riding my rented bike all the way across town with my giant backpack on. In the rain.

Last night, I talked to a Chilean guy who worked at my hostel. We talked politics. I told him that someday California would become its own nation and then my country wouldn't have been responsible for imposing any dictatorships in his region of the world. We discussed the relaxed social laws in Amsterdam and I said that the United States probably won't lower the drinking age to 18 because the majority of the country still thinks condoms should be punishable by death. For me, the verdict is still out on Amsterdam's policies on drugs and sex, but I think it is an important social experiment. Although it has its problems, the population of hard drug users in the city is an aging one and drug related deaths are few and far between. Getting off the train, I walked right into the heart of the city, an endless row of souvenir shops proudly selling Amsterdam's party-hardy image. This city has chosen to embrace the effects of controlled hedonism, instead of shoving all that activity underground, creating a whole dimension of the city moving illegally. The dark side of these streets is by choice, not caused by poverty like it is in many places. The other day I saw a study that said there have been steep increases in crime in American cities over the last couple years and although it had been increasing slowly for awhile, now the downtrodden economy will make crime in the innercity skyrocket. Just ask restaurant owners in Oakland. Amsterdam has taken a dangerous aspect that exists in every city and turned it into a quite profitable tourist industry meanwhile taking a little danger out of that pleasure. I know America is far from adopting radical policies like this, but it might do some good to start shifting the way our culture views these things if we want to improve the situation.

Europe: Take Two

It was almost three days ago that I arrived in Europe, but I'll try to catch you up on my travels since then.

I got off the plane in Vienna on Sunday morning, thinking I had left the heightened intensity of the Middle East behind. Not so. Just as I was about to hand my passport to the border control agent, I realized that I had no passport to give him. My sweat glands hit overdrive, as I tried to systematically determine where this all-important little blue book had ended up. After a good 15 minutes of stifled panic and phone calls back to the airplane, I found it. Of course, it was in some hidden pocket that I never use, except this one time. It was as if fate was trying to make sure I stayed on my toes for this week-long solo portion of my trip. Well, it worked.

I only stayed in Vienna long enough for a baguette at a sidewalk cafe and a short walk through some familiar neighborhoods from my previous fling in this city. Then, it was back to the Sudbahnhof where I met my train for Praha.

It really is a shame that I can only stay for such a short time in these cities, but I look at this trip like a sampler plate. Someday, I keep repeating, I will return to my favorite places along this route and stay long enough to do the city justice with an apartment and maybe a proper companion. Someday.

I could see myself living in Prague, except there is no way I'm learning Czech. My hostel was a little off the beaten track, which meant that a trip into the city center was 10 or 15 minutes, but it's always nice to see what a real residential neighborhood looks like instead of just the shops and the hotels of downtown. It seems to me that, unlike Vienna, Prague has a bit of a working class edge that probably comes from its Communist past. However, the grandeur of its finest buildings can stand with the best of them.

I met a good number of people, passing through at the hostel. Most seemed to be on a much larger trip, 6 months or so, and heading east from there, Krakow, Riga, etc. For these veterans, the first tier cities like Paris and Rome are far behind, constantly searching out the new up and coming city on the horizon. Yesterday I saw a sprinkling of Prague's sights: the castle, the national museum, its main boulevard. Not nearly enough, but I'm trying not to think in those terms, as I said, and I did enjoy myself, finding time to stop into an English bookstore, or chill in a park to read my book.

Today, I made a stop through the city of Dresden (more on this later) and arrived in Berlin this evening, which is a city large enough that even 6 months couldn't cover, so we'll see what I can do with a couple of nights and a day.

Back on the Road

I am just now leaving Tel Aviv after being here for 19 days. I have been so busy that I have even done more things than I had time to blog about. Now, it is back on the road. My rough itinerary looks like this: fly into Vienna, train to Prague (2 nights), train to Dresden, train to Berlin (2 nights), train to Amsterdam (4 nights). I hope to keep up from internet cafes.

Travel Tip #37: If you are all out of money, you don't need to exchange any currency when you leave the country.

Through the Walls of Jericho

There are no walls around Jericho anymore. I probably would have known that if I had read The Bible. In fact, it seems quite isolated. From a distance it might seem to be just a tight community whose only predators are the rocks of the desert.

To get there, we hopped on a small bus at the bus station just outside the walls of Jerusalem's famous Old City. The signs inside this bus show the swooping script of Arabic words, not Hebrew's blocky characters, but that change doesn't really mean anything if you can't read either language. Only 15 minutes after leaving the city center, we had reached a Palestinian village that might be called a suburb. The streets are more clearly lined with trash here. On the side of the road, a dumpster's contents slowly burn. We are only here to transfer, but the driver of our service taxi is waiting to fill up with a few more passengers. Meanwhile, we sat in the car without air conditioning, while outside several men chain smoke their cigarettes in the shade, draped over plastic chairs. It is probably getting close to 100 degrees.

The city of Jericho is completely controlled by the Palestinian Authority. There is an Israeli military post about a mile outside the city's border, monitoring the road in and out. Other than that, however, the city's security and well-being are lead from within. Only a small percentage of the West Bank has this set-up, a step towards autonomy.
Supposedly, Jericho is the oldest continuously-inhabited city on Earth, with records dating back 11,000 years. Today it has 20,000 residents.

When you are in a new and strange place, your eyes may strain to focus on anything that can spark a feeling of familiarity. Pulling into Jericho's main square, my eyes almost fell out of their sockets. A Palestinian kid riding a bicycle towards us was wearing a navy blue shirt with the gold, script lettering of CAL on the front. In a second he was gone, like maybe I hadn't even seen it.

We circled the entire town center and appeared to be the only tourists. It was a pretty regular market day it seemed. Parts of pigs hanging from butcher shop windows, boxes of plastic toys lining curbs, falafel boiling in large pans of oil. We stopped to eat at what looked like the nicest restaurant in town, which meant slight air-conditioning and tables off the street. Our waiter was a young guy about my age who spoke a sprinkling of key English words and smiled a lot. Our food was plentiful and very cheap and we made sure to leave a good tip. When we were leaving, our new friend shook my hand and asked where we were from and then if I maybe knew 50 Cent Rapper. I told him yes and that next time I would see him in California. He laughed and smiled at us as we left and then returned to work.

My dad and I discussed what it takes for a guy like that to get to America. I suppose the best case scenario is he has a relative who has already made it and maybe can send money or a job opportunity back home, but you'd probably have to be one in a million to get hooked up like that. I think maybe if he worked hard enough at the biggest business in town or a hotel, maybe he could afford to travel, if he could get through the roadblocks, much less all the red tape. Learning English is a must.

After another half-hour game of see how long the Americans sit in the taxi before they realize its much hotter inside than out, we were heading to the city limits. An Israeli guard took our passports and peeked inside the car and we were off, speeding at 140 kilometers per hour back towards Jerusalem.

I think what I learned from my brief foray into the West Bank was not that the Palestinians were living in hovels or prisons, or that they were being forced by Israeli soldiers to walk in straight lines and speak only when spoken to, but rather that their oppression takes more abstract forms. When you see the upscale malls and bustling intersections of any big Israeli city it is hard to imagine anyone utilizing the land any better. However, the Palestinian land issue is not a matter of who would use the area more efficiently or who would keep it cleaner, it is a matter of basic freedom. When the Palestinians are forced to live behind a wall or a fence, its more visible impact is the destruction of economic opportunities for individuals and the community, but its less obvious result lies only within the minds of its people. By telling someone to move away from their home and live in a confined space, you are refusing them the ability even to imagine a life beyond borders. After spending the last 4 weeks traveling halfway across the world, seeing a larger array of cultures than I ever have in my life, I realized how much I take this for granted. It pains me to think that this waiter, no matter how hard he may work, will be tied to the ground by some faceless exterior force. I have enjoyed my stay in Israel immensely and by meeting people and seeing the country top to bottom, many of my political preconceptions have changed for the better, but as long as Israel remains an occupying nation, I have no choice but to see it as an oppressor, a barrier to some kid's simple dreams.