Pizza and Pasta and Wine, OH MY!

This spring break vacation was definitely a whirlwind- 6 cities  in 11 days. How we saw all of the sites, made all of our trains and planes,and made it back to Israel with our passports and all of our belongings is still a mystery to me! The trip began in Athens, Greece for the first day and a half. The second we got off the airplane we saw how friendly everyone was, and were even surprised when we were greeted by a smiling lady at the tourist desk that told us how to get to our hostel, all the sites, and more without getting fed up with all of our questions, like many Israelis do. After we got a routine down in Athens, we pretty  
much followed it in each of the following cities: 

1.go directly to hostel 

2. Get a map of the city in English 

3. Set a goal of which places we wanted to see each day 

4. Eat/ drink coffee. 

This routine worked like a charm and got us through the following 10 days with no anxiety. Being in Athens, Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris, and Prague was very different from Israel. We discussed several times a day about how few people we were seeing wearing kippot (head coverings) and how strange it was since such a large part of the population in Israel wears them. One of the coolest parts of the trip was that in 5 of the 6 cities there were  
Jewish quarters and synagogues and we visited several of them in  
addition to all the other sites (including churches and seeing the Pope speak!) that we saw. It was very neat to see Jewish communities functioning in these European cities. Even though they seemed so different from Israeli Jewish communities and American Jewish communities, we came to find we're more alike than we thought. I spent the first night of Passover in Venice and attended a Seder in Hebrew. We sang the tunes I sing every year at home and if I had closed my eyes at any point in the Seder and hadn't known where I was, I wouldve figured I was in Israel. It's amazing that I was far from Israel on this trip and everything was somehow able to connect back to it. 

Throughout the entire trip, we would find ourseleves in situations where people around us would be standing around and not taking initiative while waiting in lines,taking pictures, etc. Daily, we would joke that people needed to be more Israeli (like us) and be more pushy to get what they wanted, or  
they weren't going to get anywhere. Now I know I talk about Israelis as if they are awful people, but they are wonderful people with huge hearts, they just have a not so soft outside. When we arrived at the airport in Prague for our flight back to Israel, we immediately heard Hebrew being spoken and were instantaneously happy, despite our exhaustion. Of course it was mass chaos and the check in counter for our flight wasn't open yet, so we all stood in a huge group complaining together. Eventally the counter number came up on the screen and everyone bolted and pushed in true Israeli fashion into lines (not quite lines but more clumps). Although I had a great spring break trip, I am so unbelievably happy to be back home in Jerusalem. I saw some of the most beautiful sites and architecture that took my  
breath away, but nothing compares to my Jerusalem of gold.