The Next Chapter

Well, here we are.

Exactly one year ago today, I launched Show Me the Shawarma in an effort to lead those who cared to follow me through my 10-month journey in the land of Israel, and while I may have slacked off (a lot), I truly hope that I was able to show you all at least a little of my experiences. I’m not going to try to sum up my year – it’s really pointless to even try, and in any case, I already did so here. No, as the title of this post reflects, this post is all about the future.

On September 2nd, 2009, I arrived in Israel with no idea of what the year ahead would hold. On September 2nd, 2010, I will arrive in Washington, D.C., with even less idea of what adventures this year will hold. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity, from frantically searching for a place to live to seemingly endless days of shopping for an entire new professional wardrobe. I have no doubt that the weeks ahead will be even more chaotic, as I adjust to my new life in our nation’s capital in the internship of a lifetime. (Sidebar: You don’t get to know where on this blog. Sorry. Them’s the breaks.) As hectic and stressful as the months ahead may be, I am looking forward to them brimming with confidence and excitement, as I begin the pursuit of a career in politics that I only hinted at a year ago on these pages.

In terms of this blog – I don’t have any idea if it’s going to continue or not. Part of me feels that I need to give it closure, that I have too many stories that I never told. Part of me wants to end this here, possibly starting a new blog. I don’t know what I would write about, be it sports or my life in a new city, but I do feel like it is important for me to keep my writing fresh. There’s even a strong possibility that I will join with two of my close friends from this past year to start a joint blogging effort. As soon as I decide to do something, you’ll know.

When I graduated from Mizzou a year and a half ago, there was no way I could have seen my life heading in this direction. However, I have to think that this is the way it should be. I still hear friends all the time talk about how scary it is to be out of college, how they wish they could have never left. Me? I think that’s crazy talk, for two reasons. The first has me recalling one of my best friends musing on the idea that college is supposed to be the “best four years of our lives”. As he would tell you, why would you want that to be the case? I’m 23 years old, and my life has peaked? It’s all downhill from here? No, no, no, no, no. The very idea of that is ridiculous. I don’t know when my life is going to “peak”, but I sure hope it hasn’t already. I truly and honestly believe that as great as the past few years have been, the best years of my life lie ahead of me.

As for the other reason, I would call attention to the quote that my friends can find on my Facebook profile. It comes from the final few minutes of one of my favorite TV shows, Scrubs.

“As for the future, it doesn’t seem so scary anymore. It can be whatever I want it to be.”

My life, more than at any point in the past 23 years, is an open book. It can go in any number of directions right now, and while that probably should frighten me, it doesn’t. The idea that I truly hold my future in my own hands is oddly uplifting and exciting to me. I’m starting a completely new chapter tomorrow – who knows what the next one could be?

Max's Croatian Travel Tips Part II

Ahem. I've been informed by my family that from this point on, I am no longer allowed to do multi-part blog posts... well, for fairly obvious reasons. I'll finish up the ones I've started (probably not Meet the Hirsches), but I'll try to keep away from those from now on. Now, I'd hate for anyone to think that Croatia was a bad trip... quite the contrary! I had an amazing time, and before leaving for a week in Istanbul tomorrow, I figure it's time to tell you all why. Now, then...

(Sidebar: For those who don't remember, you can catch up on the first part of the post here.)

The Five Best Things About Croatia!

Number Five: The Food and Drink

Surprisingly, Croatian wine is really quite good. During the better part of our disastrous trip to Korcula, we stopped off at a local winery for a tasting. We had already had several fantastic wines over the trip, so we weren’t surprised at how good the wines were. They also complemented some of the great meals we had over the course of the week. Living in Israel this year, pork products have understandably been at a minimum, so we took full advantage of the Dalmation smoked ham that was readily available. We also found a fantastic restaurant that I mentioned yesterday for our 6-month anniversary dinner, which had amazing seafood and one of the best steaks I’ve ever tasted. (Unfortunately for me, Allie was the one who ordered it!) Besides the big dinners, Croatia is apparently known for both pizza and ice cream, both of which lived up to the hype. It wasn’t uncommon to see crowds of people, both local and tourists, walking down the streets of the old city with a large ice cream cone in their hand. Great stuff!

(Chocolate soup!)

Number Four: The People

Something that really stuck out to both of us was how incredibly friendly almost everyone we met was. They were nice, accommodating, helpful, and this includes people who weren’t going to make a buck off of us! I love Israel, but it was nice to have a break from people who have absolutely no sense of other people being around them in a crowded space. (If any of my Israeli friends are reading this – sorry, but you know it’s true.) Really, there isn’t a whole lot to say here, just that Croatians really are some of the friendliest people you’ll meet.

Number Three: Montenegro

Not all of our trips were as bad as the Korcula visit! In contrast, our day trip to Montenegro really was a great time. We decided to take a trip to the country based on the idea that, well, when else would you ever go to Montenegro? And we didn’t regret it.

First off, as beautiful as Croatia is (we’ll get to that later), Montenegro is even better. In fact, some of the sights in Montenegro are simply some of the most gorgeous I’ve ever seen in my life. We stopped at one site just to take pictures of the sea and the mountains, and for a second I was actually speechless. Really spectacular stuff.


Second, one of the towns we toured, Kotor, had a pillar in the center of the town square that, in the olden days, was used for public punishments. You see, the town was small enough that when someone committed a crime, they were tied to the pillar so that the townsfolk could throw fruit and laugh at them. The name of this site? The Pillar of Shame. That’s right. THE PILLAR OF SHAME. The official name of the thing sounds like it came right out of a Monty Python skit! How awesome is that! No? Just me? Oh well…

(I am shamed.)

We also were taken to a great seafood place in the town of Budva… however, when we arrived, there weren’t any tables left! There were some outside, but Allie (understandably) was set on eating by the water? The solution? Take a table from inside and move it outside! In fact, why don’t we put them, oh, 5 feet from the sea?
That was taken from my seat at the table. Cool, huh? The food was great too, but the view made it. In fact, the views were really why Montenegro was so amazing. Which, I suppose, leads us into our next topic…

Number Two: The Views

I’m not kidding when I say Croatia is stunningly beautiful. It seems silly to talk about it, so I’ll show instead of tell…

Amazing, huh? Without further ado…

The Number One Best Thing About Croatia…

The Old City and the Fort Walls

Seriously, this old city was amazing. (Sidebar: No Kotel, but no one’s perfect.) Allie and I spent several days on the trip just wandering around and exploring, and it was amazing how many things we found. For example, we found the local synagogue, which claims to be the 2nd oldest in Europe! But the main attraction of Dubrovnik is easily its City Walls, which span the entire old city and take several hours to walk around. Seems simple, yes, but when you’re there you realize how great it actually is.

Allie and I spent about 2-2.5 hours walking around the entirety of the walls, stopping to look at every nook and cranny. My favorite part was when we found one of the windows without bars on it, allowing us to crawl inside of it (the wall was about 5-6 feet thick) and sit close to the ledge, looking out on the harbor and the sea. Really took my breath away – and not just because I’m scared of heights!

The walls were one of the first places we went, and they really set the tone for what was a great trip. Full endorsement from me! Now, next stop Istanbul…

So Kool and the Gang, What Is Your Perception of a Jewish State?

Happy Yom Yerushalaim! For those that don't know, today is Jerusalem Day, which was established shortly after the reunification of the city under Israeli control in 1967. From what I understand, many other places in Israel celebrate it, but obviously it's a pretty huge deal here. (Sidebar: For me, it means a day off of work! I'm enjoying my internship, but no arguing here.) Tied into the celebration is Yom HaStudentim (Student Day), which features a huge concert festival right by the center of the city during the erev chag (night before the holiday). How could we miss it? So, about 8-10 of us headed down last night to check it out.

We got to the park around 9:00, a little after the first band (Monica Sex) started. After finding a spot to claim on the hill, we were a little surprised to see Chris Barron of the Spin Doctors take the stage. I gotta say... dude looked OLD. It was pretty clear that most of the crowd wasn't really sure why he was there, and they weren't really into it. The funniest part was when Barron asked the lead singer of Monica Sax if they were going to come to his upcoming concert in Tel Aviv, to which he got a lukewarm "Yeah... sure we're going to be there..." Ouch. Not even the guys you're playing with want to see you anymore. They closed his set out with pretty much the only Spin Doctors song anyone still knows, which was kinda cool.

(Just as a note, my Flip camera is having issues uploading to my blog, so the videos are from my regular camera. Just to explain the poor quality. Moving on.)

The festival was much more than just the main concert stage. There were a ton of booths in the back, including some weird "extreme sports" thing that was basically a few guys jumping off of things while holding a soccer ball. I guess that's Israel for you? One of the cooler booths was a huge painting that was being done by the crowd - the artist painted what it was supposed to look like, and then gave pictures of it to the "painters" to copy onto the big canvas.

Finally, around 12:15AM came the big event - Kool and the Gang! Yes, they were all in their 50s, but they still put on a great show. It was probably one of the most unusual crowds they had had in years, as a lot of the students clearly had no idea who they were. You'd think that they usually perform to American crowds that were fans of theirs back in the '70s, not Israeli students born in the late '80s! Still, it was easily one of the most entertaining concerts I've ever been to. I especially liked before the song "Joanna" when one of them asked the crowd, "Now, how many ladies out there are named 'Joanna'?" The five girls who cheered had to have been liars.

The clearest sign that a lot of people didn't know who Kool and the Gang were before that night was at the end of the show, when they walked offstage without playing "Celebration". Everyone seemed to assume the show was over, and most people seemed confused when the drummer stayed on stage and started a drum solo. Sure enough, however, they band returned to the stage to play their signature song, and the entire crowd loved it. I think Kool and the Gang might have a new Israeli following!

The festival was scheduled to go on until after sunrise, but after Kool and the Gang wrapped up at around 2AM, I and a few others decided to head back. All in all, a great night, with great music, and great friends. What more could you want? Happy Jerusalem Day!

Krembo Experience: Ben Yehuda Street

If you've ever been to Jerusalem, you know that Ben Yehuda St. is quite the interesting place. Less of a street than a strip mall, Ben Yehuda is right in the center of the city, and while often populated by Israelis, is a magnet for tourists looking for a souvenir. It can always be a fun (and sometimes frustrating) street to walk along, and since I started working at the Jewish Agency, I often find myself making the 2-minute walk over for lunch, a gift, or just to stroll around.

One of the defining characteristics of Ben Yehuda is that at any time, there are at least 3 or 4 street musicians serenading pedestrians in hopes of being tossed a couple of shekels. Mostly, they are your run-of-the-mill guitar players, but I've seen some pretty unusual musicians out there. Some examples include:

• A harpist
• A recorder player
• An accordian player
• A woman with a karaoke machine
• A man in full African tribal dress playing the drum (Sidebar: In case you were wondering, he was white.)
• A man in full Native American attire playing "Imagine" on the guitar and pan flute (Sidebar: Also white.)
• A full choir of about 20 Asians.

(Sidebar: That last one, for me, was when Ben Yehuda officially jumped the shark.)

On top of that, you can find any number of cheap "Israel" sovenirs, none of which you will ever see an actual Israel wear. (Sidebar: The single biggest giveaway that you're a tourist? Any IDF apparal. Just about every single person here actually served in the IDF, so none of them feel the need to buy a T-shirt.) Another popular item here are the novelty yamulkas (for the non-Jews in the house, that's a circle of fabric worn by religious Jewish men at all times, and by many other Jews during services) that can be found anywhere. They range from your favorite sports team (no matter what it is) to popular TV shows like The Simpsons or South Park. My personal favorite would have to be the "Obama '08" one, because quite simply, no one in Israel is going to be wearing that one anytime soon.

Since Birthright showed up a few days ago, the normal eccentrism of Ben Yehuda St. seems to have gone overboard into full-on crazyness. Once the hoardes of American college students descended, every single ATM on the street was out of cash (not an exaggeration), prices seem to have mysteriously gone up despite all of the "Discount for Birthright!!!" signs in the windows, and even more wacky street musicians have appeared. (Sidebar: If anyone on a Birthright trip is reading this, remember how you heard them playing your favorite Israeli dancing songs from summer camp? Yeah, they don't do that normally.) Allie and I made the unfortunate decision of going to get dinner at our usual little restaurant on the same night that seemingly every Birthright group was on the street, subjecting us to huge crowds, oblivious 18-year-olds freaking out that they can buy a beer at the convienence store, and the occasional Birthrighter's attempt at speaking Hebrew that was even more pathetic than my own. (Sidebar: And that's saying something.) And of course, the various vendors and panhandlers on Ben Yehuda were just eating it all up.

At the end of the day, Ben Yehuda St. is a must-see, especially if it's your first time in Israel. After all, it was even one of the first places I took my family to last December to get a shawarma for lunch. Besides, you never know what you'll find there - maybe you'll get a personal serenade from a choir of Asians.

The Wheel of Fire!

As usual, I seem to be neglecting my blogging duties. It's been a hectic couple weeks here, but I'll get the rest of the Croatia blog up in the very near future. Anyway...

So this weekend, Allie and I headed out to a town just outside of Tel Aviv called Rishon LeTzion for the holiday of Lag B'Omer. I'd tell you what it's about, but I still have yet to find someone who actually knows. What I do know is that we celebrate by making bonfires on the night of the chag, or as our friend referred to it, we destroy the environment. We were invited to this particular bonfire by one of our good Israeli friends, Moran, and we had a great time. Imagine a giant parking lot with about 20 fires going in all different spots - that's where we were. Anyway, towards the end of the night, Moran's boyfriend Inoy asked us, "Want to see a magic trick?" He then took a piece of steel wool, tied some sort of stick/rope/string/something to it, lit it on fire, and did... this.

Cool stuff, huh? You don't get a full sense of it, but the sparks were flying everywhere in a pretty huge circle - large enough that everyone around us saw it and cheered him on. I may not know what Lag B'Omer is about, but any holiday that involves a spinning wheel of fire is good in my book.

Max's Croatian Travel Tips Part I

As you may or may not know, during Passover Break Allie and I took a 6-day vacation to the Eastern European country of Croatia. Now, you might be asking yourself… Why Croatia? Why not Greece? Or Italy? Or Paris? Well, I was asking myself those same questions while trying to choose a place to go as well. We ended up choosing Croatia due to a few different reasons – I wanted a beach vacation, Allie wanted somewhere she could see the historical sites, and we also decided we wanted to go somewhere unique, someplace that would be harder to travel to from America. So, we found ourselves spending a week in the town of Dubrovnik, Croatia, a southern town nicknamed “The Pearl of the Adriatic”.

Towards the end of our week, Allie turned to me and asked me what my five favorite and five least favorite moments of the trip were. I gave her my answer, and then being me… I realized that she had given me a great format to write my blog post about Croatia! (Sidebar: She then smacked me on the arm for being such a dork. This happens more often than you would think. Actually… probably about as much as you would think.) So, without further ado, the five best and worst moments of my Croatian vacation! (Sidebar: Hey, that rhymes! If Allie were here, she would have smacked me in the arm again right now.)


The Five Worst Things About Croatia:

Number Five: The Language Barrier

Now, you might be confused about this one, seeing as I am currently living in a foreign country where the language isn’t even read in the same direction as English, which Croatian certainly is. And truth be told, this wasn’t even that much of a problem, but I needed a fifth issue. However, in Israel, even when you encounter someone that doesn’t speak English, a real effort is made to understand each other until some form of communication is established. My Hebrew is still pretty weak, but I can get around pretty well here. However, when you encounter the rare Croatian that doesn’t speak any English, you’ll find you have a problem. I’ll focus on the time that Allie and I went to a café in the old city for lunch one day.

(Sidebar: Hold on. This is number six. FROMMER’S NEEDS TO FIRE WHOEVER WROTE THEIR SECTION ON DUBROVNIK AND CROATIA. They had no idea what they were talking about, from their restaurant selections to their assertion that Croatians all eat a huge lunch and barely eat dinner. Every store in town advertised a “light lunch” of a sandwich or some pizza. This was really frustrating throughout the trip. Not the lunch thing. The bad advice. Grr.)

So Allie and I were looking for a place for our “light lunch”, and we decided on a café overlooking the main street. We asked the waitress for a menu, and after she got excited about her English customers… she gave us a menu in Italian. OK, so that’s not such a big deal. Maybe a bit of a warning sign, but no big deal. We sat down, looked through the menu, and Allie chose two dishes she was deciding between. We called over the waitress – “Excuse me, which of these two do you like better?” “Yes!” Um… no? This went on for a while. “How big is the sandwich?” “Uh huh!” Oy vey. This went on for a while. “We’d also like two glasses of water. Not bottles. No, NOT bottles. From the sink.” At this point, I was even pantomiming turning on a faucet and filling a glass. Any guesses as to what we were given? In the end we had a very nice lunch… but at least some effort to communicate would have been nice.


Number Four: The Weather

Throughout the trip, the weather was pretty consistent. Not too cloudy and between 60-65°F the whole way. Pretty nice, right? OK, now look back on what I wanted from the vacation. Does this sound like beach weather to you? For all my talk about how I wanted to relax on the beach, and how Croatia has the some of the most beautiful beaches in the world… we got to spend a few hours at the beach on the last day. We wanted to go to some of the islands, but they were all closed due to the offseason. (We’ll pick up on this again later.) Even when we did go to the water, it was way too cold to get in. Even the hotel pool was closed! Very nice weather for sightseeing, but not so much for getting a tan.

Number Three: The Museums

Allie and I spent a few days exploring the old city, and we decided to spend some of that time exploring some of the various museums that were available. It was a pretty good deal: 40 kuna for 1 museum, 45 for 2, and 50 for all three. After dropping the 50 kuna (or 10 bucks) for all three… well, we didn’t even make it to the third one. Our first stop was to the agricultural museum, which was hidden in some corner of the city about 75 stairs up. Probably a bad sign. To our surprise, we were the only people there – there was one curator who went scurrying off the second we hit her floor. On top of that, the items were barely (if at all) labeled. For example, next to the rake was a card that read, “Rake”. No year that it was from. No special description of how it was used. Nothing. For all I know, this thing was used a month ago and then tossed into a tub of water to rust it. Despite that museum’s failure, we headed off to the cultural museum – had to be better, right? Well, it was certainly more crowded, and the items were labeled better, but I had a bit of an issue with the curators. And by “curators”, I actually mean “security guards”, since that was the role they played. We were followed into every single room, and rather than be asked if we would like any more information on what we were looking at, we were watched like hawks to make sure we didn’t touch anything. In fact, none of them said a single word to us at all, instead giving us accusatory looks the entire time. “How dare these visitors look at our museum exhibits!” After that frustrating experience, we decided to skip the maritime museum – I had better things to do with my time than be treated like a delinquent child.

Number Two: Everything in Dubrovnik Closes at 9PM

On one of the first nights of the trip, Allie and I went to one of Dubrovnik’s nicer restaurants to celebrate our 6-month anniversary. We decided to book the reservation for 9:30, figuring there was no reason to rush. To our surprise, pretty much the entire staff (including the manager) was waiting at the door for us when we arrived, ready to guide us to our table. We quickly realized why – there was only one other group at the restaurant! It ended up being a great meal, but we began to realize that this was a sort of trend. For some reason, everyone in Dubrovnik shuts down really early, leading to a total lack of tourists in the city at night. When we attempted to find something to do another night, we found that every single shop was shut down and there was nothing to do. This was really part of a greater trend, that being that we had inadvertently shown up at the offseason (despite Frommer’s assertion that April was the start of the tourism season – damn you Frommer’s!). We managed to work our way around it, but there were quite a few things we weren’t able to do because of this.

And that leads us directly into our number one issue with Croatia…

Number One: Korcula

We took a few day trips during our week in Croatia, one of which you’ll read about later, and one of which was to the island of Korcula. The day got off to a good start – we had a friendly and informative tour guide (who looked just like Jimmy Fallon), we stopped off in a cool and tiny little town called Ston for some Croatian coffee, and then we boarded a long and slow ferry for the island. And then we actually got to the island. To our surprise, practically the entire island was closed, making it a virtual ghost town. No shops open. No restaurants open. No one on the streets. Absolutely nothing. The island is supposedly the birthplace of Marco Polo, but even his house – what you would think to be the main attraction – was closed. (Sidebar: Remember when Egypt claimed to have the Burning Bush? I put this in the same category. For example, the house we didn’t get to go in was built in the 15th century, but Marco Polo was born in the 13th century. Seems like that would be a bit of an obstacle.) After a quick walk through the very small town, we were on our own for three hours. Three hours. IN A TOWN WITH NOTHING TO DO. We tried going to a restaurant that the tour guide recommended, an Italian place with homemade macaroni, but they ran out of food by the time we got there… at 12:30. We resigned ourselves to eating at a pizza place where the waiter rolled his eyes at me when I asked a third time for the water he had never given me. The rest of the time was spent hanging out on a little rocky area by the shore that we found for ourselves, where a stray cat found us and decided to keep us company. Really, just a disaster of a day trip, and the easy choice for the worst thing about Croatia.


I'm going to cut it here to prevent this from getting too long, but check back tomorrow for the 5 best things. We really did have a great trip, promise!

The Krembo Experience

Well, I’m all moved into my new apartment in Jerusalem! Feel free to check out my post at the St. Louis OTZMA blog for a recap of how incredible our new apartment is and what I’ll be doing for the remaining few months of the trip.

Before we moved in, all of OTZMA participated in a 5-day seminar called “Link to the Future”, where we discussed various issues surrounding the North American Jewish world. A lot of it was very interesting to me, but something one of the speakers said really stuck in my mind. Lee Perlman, who works in the Israel office of the Jewish Federations, spoke about what he referred to as “the Krembo experience”. For those of you who have never been lucky enough to enjoy some Kremboey goodness, a Krembo is a popular Israeli snack that consists of a graham cracker with a mound of basically whipped cream, covered in a chocolate shell. (Sidebar: Krembos have quickly become Allie’s favorite treat here – she even named her pet fish in Netivot Krembo, and when it died after 2 days, she named the new fish Kremlobo [without cream]. Luckily, Kremlobo remains with us today.) Krembos are amazing, but as Perlman said, how do you describe it to someone back home? How do you explain the best way to eat one, or how tasty the filling is, or how you savor those last few bites? In other words, how do you explain those everyday events that happen over here in Israel?

Kremboee goodness.

This has been one of my biggest challenges when it comes to writing this blog. There have been quirky little “only in Israel” moments just about every day, but how do I relate them all to my audience back in America? Well, I’m going to give it a shot. I’m going to start a new ongoing series of posts called “The Krembo Experiences”, which will be very short posts every few days relating one of those moments back to you all. In a way, this is also for myself – those Krembo experiences come and go very quickly, and I would hate to forget many of the moments that have made being in Israel so incredible. Obviously the bigger moments will still merit their own, longer posts, but hopefully this will give me an outlet to relay the little stuff, like shopping in a shuk, or dealing with an Israeli maintenance guy, or any of the other funny little moments in my life. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy them as well.