We just got back to the kibbutz a little while ago after being away for 2 weeks! It was hard traveling around for so long, but quite adventurous of us. We had to pack up our rooms at the hotel in the kibbutz so that they could rent out rooms for people while we were gone. We packed two suitcases, one for Poland, and one for Sea to Sea. The rest of our belongings were locked in a room on the kibbutz.
The plane ride to Poland was good, nothing too special. It was a red eye so when we arrived, we barely slept. They took us immediately to a private room in a restaurant. After we were served a very nice breakfast, we still had to wait there for like 2 more hours because it was still very early and we couldn’t begin our tours yet. So a few boys started to lay down on some booths in the back. We thought they were crazy to do that in a public place! I laid my head down on the table just for a few minutes, I was soo tired! The next thing I know I wake up and it’s really quiet. A few of my friends were sitting around me talking, and said to go back to sleep. I look around and it looks like an epidemic has spread through Poland. People were sleeping everywhere- laying on the ground, on chairs, tables, under tables. It was so funny to see everybody passed out on the floor of a restaurant! That morning, we went to Kazmierich, the Jewish Quarter, and the Ghetto. For lunch, we went to the Krakow Town Square, which I remember from when i was there before! It's basically the only place in Poland full of life and culture, with lots of shops, food, and people. Then, we drove about five hours to Warsaw, where we had dinner in the Old Town Square. We immediately went to sleep afterwards, we were very tired from a long day. The next day we spent the morning in a small neighborhood called Tikochin and learned about the Shtettle Life. It was a very empty, bare, cold town that had a beautiful synagogue in which we prayed in before we left. The synagogue was a single room, but very tall and had the prayers written large all over the walls with lots of color, unlike when you walk outside of the synagogue into Tikochin. That afternoon, we visited a town called Lepochova. That night we departed for our next stop- Lublin. Every bus ride ranged from 2-5 hours which was not bad. We had fun on them and stopped at gas stations often to pick up weird Polish snacks- like steak flavored chips, chicken flavored chips, and kabob flavored chips!! (so good). The next day, we spent the morning in the Old Town of Lublin and at the very first Yeshiva! That afternoon, we went to Majdanek (pronounced My-don-ik), a death camp. I had never been to this camp before, so it was very sad and depressing, but it reminded me a lot of Birkenau. We ended our tour with a short service, run by our peers. That night we took another long bus ride back to Krakow. In the morning, we went to Birkenau. I had already been there so it was not a shock to me, although it was to others. It's very hard to see the barbed wire, the beds, toilets, crematoriums, and just the big open space, knowing the Holocaust happened THERE. At the end, we had another service like the day before, and then left and walked down the train tracks- something the victims of the Holocaust could never do. We spent the afternoon at Auschwitz 1, where I had also been before. To tell you the truth, it does not look like a concentration camp, it looks like a college campus. It has nice-looking brick building with trees lined down the paths. Each building was like a museum inside. Most people did not have any feelings here. We had services in a very old synagogue in the town where Auschwitz is and named after, called Ocswemcim. That night we left for Warsaw. In the morning, we visited the Warsaw Cemetery and the Ghetto Wall. Both I've been previously, but it was still good to see again. The Cemetery is very old and had a lot a lot a lot of graves! It was interesting to look at all the different graves and the Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish on them. We spent the afternoon at Yanusch Korchak's house, who had a orphanage inside the ghetto. The kids were taught very well by Korchak, until the day that he sadly had to put them on a train to be sent to a concentration camp. That night was Shabbat, so we had services at a kosher restaurant and then spent the rest of the night there having Shabbat dinner and singing and dancing. We had services the next morning, followed by the Ghetto Memorial Walk. Then, came Havdallah and then off to the airport! The aiport was very very tiny, it was literally one room, and we were the only ones on the plane besides like 6 Israelis. It was very scary but a cool experience!
When we arrived back in Israel, everyone was so relieved. Poland was so depressing and ugly. The people were cold, and so was the temperature! We wore winter coats, hats, scarves, and gloves the whole time. We got to the hostel that we were staying at, we went right to sleep because the flight was a red eye again. Then our Sea to Sea bags arrived and we switched those with our Poland bags. That day we got to go to Tel Aviv for the first time and went to a busy shopping street and a shuk, which is an outdoor market. It was so much fun! The next day, we all got on a bus which dropped us off at our Passover host homes! I went to my friend Noi’s house for a few days of Pesach, an Israeli girl my age who I met when I did NFTY in Israel in summer 2008. It was interesting to go to a traditional Israeli Passover seder! They mostly did everything the same as us because we all just read the haggadah, but I noticed some little things different. We ate rice and about halfway through the seder I realized that they must be Safardic because I am not supposed to eat rice. Noi’s mother was kind enough to buy me a very nice haggadah, which was in Hebrew and English so I could follow along with them! They made me read a lot because they thought it sounded better in English. Isn’t that funny? The next day, we met up with my other friend, Meirav, and we went to a brand new mall with a movie theater in it. I thought it might be cool to go to the movies in Israel, but it was the exact same thing as America. We saw Alice in Wonderland and it was really good. That night, Meirav, Noi and I had a nice little picnic, it was very cute. I left her house the next day and went straight to Sea to Sea, or Yam L’Yam. Sea to Sea is a 5-day hike from the Sea of Galilee to the Mediterranean Sea. It was actually not as bad as I thought it was. Our first day consisted of a little, pretty water hike for about an hour. There I saw my friend Dina from home because she is on a similar trip to me and her program was doing Sea to Sea the same time as us! It was so exciting to see someone from where I live! Then the bus drove us to our first campsite. It was the last place we would see with bathrooms! There was a cook there who cooked actually a very good Passover meal for us for dinner! Then we got changed into our sweats and went to sleep in tents on the hard, rocky ground. We woke up at sunrise, about 5:30 am, and started the biggest, hardest day of the hike. After having some tea and Passover cookies, we packed our night bags and threw them on the bus which drove them to the next campsite for us. We embarked on our journey with our hats, hiking boots, and hiking backpacks with 4.5 liters of water and supplies for lunch. We hiked for a long time, very uphill and rocky, until we stopped for lunch a couple hours later. We were all pooped because the hike was strenuous and physically demanding. We took out our lunch supplies from our backpacks and started to cook lunch ourselves with our groups of about 12. We had a pot in which we cooked rice. My friend and I cut vegetables, and there was some cold cuts and of course lots of matzah! We ate and rested in a shady place for a couple of hours while the sun was at its hottest. They told us to drink lots and lots of water all day long, so we did, and my friend Maddy and I nature peed- a lot! After a while we got used to it and it wasn’t that bad! After our break, we hiked some more and more, walking through gorgeous scenery, until we reached our next campsite and rested there for the rest of the night. The next day was a lighter hike, not that uphill, actually quite enjoyable. At our lunch stop, there was a fresh water spring so a lot of us dunked our heads in since we hadn’t showered in days. It felt so good! We also saw lots of wild cows walking around, you know just chilling, and a whole heard of goats and their goat herder! We stopped a few hours early because it was Shabbat that night. We did our usual thing at night, but with a very nice Shabbat service. We woke up a little bit later the next morning and set out for a hike that didn’t get us any farther to the Mediterranean Sea, but took us to a nice waterfall/stream area. After hiking a very steep and rocky downhill for about 45 minutes, we arrived at our destination. There, we went in the water, ate lunch, and just hung out for a good amount of time. It was a very popular destination on Shabbat I guess because it was very crowded! The hike back up was very hard, though. The last day, we rode bikes for the last leg of our journey! I don’t know how much we rode, but it was a very long time, probably 2 hours. It was easy and fun though because it was all downhill. We finally reached the Mediterranean Sea!! It was beautiful and it felt so good to have worked so hard. We literally hiked across Israel! All of my friends and I let out our French braids and went into the ocean and laid on the beach. It felt so nice! We said goodbye to our guides and headed towards Haifa, where we stayed at a hostel for one night. That night, we had services and dinner at a synagogue in Haifa for the second to last night of Passover. Then later that night I saw my camp counselor, Guy, who lives in Haifa! It was so exciting!! The next day we went to the Bahai Temple Gardens, a beautiful sight to look at and take pictures. Then we went shopping around the Druze village for the afternoon, and then had dinner in Abu Ghosh, an Arab village right near our Kibbutz. Then finally that night we arrived back home- Kibbutz Tzuba! It felt great after traveling for so long! We got new roommates and I’m so happy to be with my good friend Sarah!! We started back to school the next day thought which sucked but it wasn’t so bad.
love, paige alyse erlich
