reminiscing

Now all this mess is happening down by the Mediterranean sea (not that I'm particularly fond of it, I'm more of an Atlantic Ocean girl) where grown ups can't seem to behave themselves and is blatantly shitting on humanity with all that violence, I am being reminded of my trip there the summer before last (the genesis of this blog) and all those wild episodes that I never had any time to blog about, as it was, like I said, wild. I do think, though, you guys need to know about the one episode called 'Crazy Myriam', but before I can start that chapter I think I need to start with the one called 'When Ella pretends she's a Jew' or even a little before with 'the Templars' loo'.

Here goes: When I landed in Tel Aviv airport summer of 2011 I took the train straight up north to Haifa where I was very generously received by some friends. After having explored Haifa through and through I took an overnight bag and went further north. First, I went to the Arab city Akko/Acre where the ruins of the Knights Templar's HQ from the crusades still stands (another bloody affair). I managed to take a picture of their loo (fascinating!) before my battery ran out and as I had, unfortunately, left my charger in Haifa there are no more pictures from that trip within a trip. But I can quickly conjure up some mental images for you by describing how I had the yummiest hummus ever in their crazy maze of a souk, and how the orange juice seller at the harbour let me climb up in the tiny lighthouse to catch the view, and how a young kibbutznik picked me up in their communal car and and we went cruising in a nearby Kibbutz checking out eucalyptus trees, horses and other kibbutzy stuff.Oh, and I almost forgot the coffee bean salesman (how could I?!) who'd lived in California and the two fishermen, Ali and Ali (they are cousins).

The next day I moved on to Tzfat/Tsfat/Safed/Zefat, a Jewish village on top of a hill where on a clear day you could see beyond the Libyan border. This is an über Jewish place where the Kabbalah mysticism originated with one Rabbi Ari something (forgive me, his name escapes me) and the cheapest hostel in this place is the one for Jews only. So I went.

Receptionist girl: “Shalom and welcome to the Ascent.”

Me (with my guide book open on their page): “Shalom. Do you guys have any beds for tonight?”

Receptionist girl: “Are you Jewish?”

Me (ultra honest, as usual): “No.”

Receptionist girl: “Then, unfortunately, no. The Ascent was founded by Jews and meant for Jews only, to study Judaism.”

Me (ultra fast thinking, as usual): “Even if you're descended from Jews?”

Receptionist girl: “Who's Jewish in your family?”

“My mother's mother”, I said as I silently prayed for forgiveness for converting Grandma Jenny for my own personal gain. “But she stopped practising when the Germans occupied Norway during WWII” I continued, praying now to God to not send me to Jewish hell for all these lies.

Receptionist girl: “but if she is your mother's mother, then you are Jewish.”

“Oh”. “I am?” I said, feigning a little surprise. “Even though she stopped practising?” I asked, to not sound like someone who is trying to con her way into a cheaper bed, but more like someone who is pleasantly, and somewhat naively, discovering her true origin.

“Just a second” the receptionist girl said, as she picked up the phone and hebrewed something down the receiver. I could see in her eyes that she knew that I knew that she knew it was all somewhat of a bullshit story, but she also knew that I knew that if I say I'm a Jew, she can't really contest it. At least not in this hostel scenario.

After what seemed to be a validation from up above (Yahweh?) she gave me the green light and asked me for my passport to be able to go through with the check in. When I pulled out my beautiful blue Icelandic passport (see prior blogs) and started to explain how my grandmother had married an Icelander, the only truth in this story, she just gave me that shut-your-lying-mouth-look and started with the check in. I'm not going to write in detail on how if you took classes you'd get 20 shekalim rebates on the room and how I said yes to one class, thinking I could do with some Kabbalah (and a discount on the already very cheap bed), but realising that obviously mysticism doesn't come after one Torah class about how if someone from the tribe of Abraham goes away and forgets his origin, he is no less of a Jew still. Never have my cheeks burned that bad and never have I wished to disappear through the chair that hard, as I was sure I had 'Gentile' written all over me (although my real Jewish cousins say that lying about being a Jew to get a cheaper room is very Jewish indeed).

What I am going to tell you is who I shared my room with (all girls, of course) as of this point in the story enters: Crazy Myriam. The first room mate I met was a cool middle aged hippie lady that was on her way out on a date. She is originally from the States, where she lives, but would travel quite often to Israel and Tzfat, having created relationships (oh yeah). She was really fun and spunky, like those guys that just seems to embrace life and everything living. My bunk bed buddy was a girl my age, also from the States. She was there with her boyfriend, who was in another room of course. They were both participating in classes and seminars that the Ascent has going on all year around (I still get their seminar invitations by email, they're obviously not yet on to me). The morning after, I brunched with her and so it happens, a part of the Knesset and Israel's Premier Netanyahu himself coming to Tzfat for the Shabbat that weekend. They must have gotten the intel that I was dining there through their very efficient Mossad network, as the village itself was brimming with agents on every street corner and crossroads (probably just regular police officers, but where is the suspense in that?). I felt ready to get out of Dodge as I started to feel the burden of being a Jew and the mysteries of Kabbalah were still very much cryptic to me. I raced the sun to collect my stuff and get to the bus station before it set as Shabbat was looming and everything would then shut down. To not backtrack (I hate backtracking) the only route to take was the bus to Tiberias, by the see of Galilee. And guess who else was lining up for the bus to Tiberias? Crazy Myriam! At this point I had no idea how crazy she was as the simple hello and the little chit chat in the room had not yet betrayed her level of insanity. So technically I should call her just Myriam. We greeted each other like long lost friends who hadn't seen each other after 40 years of desert tracking (sorry, Jew joke, couldn't resist).

Myriam (her Aliyah name, don't remember her original name) is an Aussie girl my age who had made Aliyah and resided, under normal circumstances, in Tel Aviv. She told me how she was travelling to get out of town for a while. I can understand that, I need to get out of Paris from time to time. Normal. 

We sat together on the bus and she started full on telling me about her boy problems back in Tel Aviv, the same way how I talk with my very close friends back home. Normal. 

I felt happy about having already this level of intimacy, this feeling of alliance. I was travelling alone on this part of the trip and I welcomed this instant friendship. Normal. 

The bus ride didn't take long, but long enough for me to know the whole story of her and her married-lifeguard-Netanya Mafia lover relationship that was extremely complicated (no shit) and was the reason she'd skipped town for a bit. Normal... I guess. 

We found a hostel through my guide book (welcome to all) and we shared a double room with a TV. We stashed our stuff in the room and decided to catch the afternoon sun down by the sea of Galilee. Normal. 

As we're walking to the sea side she asks me if I had noticed all the Mazdas (I had actually, but for a totally different reason than what she was implying). In retrospect I see how me acknowledging all the Mazdas was a terrible mistake as she goes on to tell me that her Mafia lifeguard lover imports these cars and the guys driving around are actually keeping her under surveillance. Not normal. 

I decided to ignore what she just said, like one ignores the sound of a fart in the metro, but I started to get a little uneasy as one gets when the smell follows the sound. When we got two big cups of ice tea from one of the seaside shops she elbows me in the side and nods towards two guys hanging over a banister, talking and smoking. Looking confused at Myriam, I hear her whisper how those guys belong to the Netanya Mafia and are here on a mission from her lover to follow her around. Nooooot Normal. 

Again, I chose to ignore her paranoiac comments as this is not the first time I run with psychos; half my family is on the verge and all my exes are clinically insane. To take my mind of things I tried some walking on water, ended up swimming (ha ha, Christian joke), but knew that our instant friendship had to end, hopefully as quickly as it began. I ended up excusing myself and going back to our room where I just chilled out, channel hopping. When Myriam got back and took control of the control, I did not object much as my strategy at this point was just to let this night pass and continue my journey, alone, the day after. Kind of how you would slowly back out of a lions cage. She eagerly showed me pictures of her lifeguard Mafia lover, mostly they were of his backside, with him in the distant and very blurry. How strange, I thought, sarcastically. She also told me how he did not only import cars, but was in charge of the MTV music station that broadcasts in Israel and that how he spoke to her through music videos by selecting the videos. And as she was compiling and sending seriously long text messages to him (strangely, never a message back) and singing along to Whitney Houston's Peace be upon her (score! Muslim joke) 'I will always love you' I did not have the heart (nor the guts) to point out we were actually watching VH1.

(Disclaimer: I do not discriminate, I make equally fun of everyone)

Family – Ugh!

As you guys might have gathered (have you been faithful readers of mine) I am blessed with family members all over the world. I've gotten to live in various countries, with family members close and sometimes closer. I have been able to travel to various places and I've been exposed to all variety of cultural and traditional happenings, that has done nothing but enriched my spirits and my disposition to life. Fantastic.

Last Sunday I flew to Iceland, the place I think I travel to the most. Once, twice a year, minimum. My need to breath the air where I was born seem to be an innate feeling that can't be discarded. But interestingly, I've noticed, that as soon as I land and I'm driving into the capital I feel tremendously satiated and I realize if someone would order me (good luck with that!) to turn around right this instant and go back home, it would not bother me the least. Funny.

Maybe I also like to come back here periodically to pay tribute to the country that gave me my passport, that heavenly blue passe-partout. In my 32 years of living, studying, working and general breathing in these various countries, I have never encountered any problems as long as I've waived this master key of a blue booklet. Not even when we accidentally drove into Switzerland on our way through the continent, with the car plenty of illegal substances and an Eastern European hitch-hiker in the back seat, did we get into trouble (tip: talk about Icelandic horses, the best distraction). Helps to have big eyes, just as blue as the Icelandic passport. Freaky.

But, regardless of my initial reasons coming here, I cannot disregard the fact that I am in the very place where the majority of my kinsfolk is to be found. The very humans, among 7 billion other humans, that have the same nucleic acid chain as mine, the descent that resulted in me, my blood, my tribe, my parents, my siblings, my grandparents. Family.

Which brings me to today's uncomfortable topic: Relations & Ships

Example: the only thing me and Grams can agree upon, and we've covered a wide range of topics, is that her bathroom scale shows 2 kilos too much. And when every other subject of discussion comes crumbling down on us like boulders, and we cannot even agree upon the weather, we go back to the fact that the bathroom scale is up. Fucked up.

True story(s)

Once, I had a really horrible teacher. Of all subjects, he taught Indian philosophy and because of that I thought he was going to be this cool, levitating guru who wore a loincloth sitting on a spike chair and would show me the path to Nirvana. Oh, how disappointed I was. He was (and still is) this snob of an academic with a bent down nose and crooked, tight lips that gave the inward effect of a black hole suction in the middle of his face. What I first thought to be a smile was a lift of the cheeks that turned the eyes into two slits and a slight nodding of the head, which was obviously not the regular nod of compassion that you get from people, as it reeked of disdain and superiority.

He would hold us captive for 3 hours in a small, airless classroom where no one dared to open the windows. During the supposed break in the middle I would run downstairs to have the quickest pees in my lifetime, get two machine coffees and run back up again, only to be the last (as I was the only one who dared to venture this far) that walked into the wall of non-oxygen space we had created during the firs 90 minutes.

He would talk non-stop for the whole time and after my inbuilt 45 minutes of concentration was up I would go on my regular out of body journeys until he'd stop jabbering. No one dared to ask any questions as he would take that student and thoroughly belittle her/him in the ultimate condescending tone with accompanying body movements: he would pull maniacally at his ears to indicate that we should listen better as he had already said it before, so the student's question was made instant-redundant, or he would fiercely point between the blackboard and the questioning student as the answer was of course already written up there, you imbecile! He was (and still is) the most disagreeable person I have met.

I hadn't been this sad with a teacher since my maths teacher 14 years ago. I left both those classes unfinished, with no regrets.

Once, I lived in Toulon for a semester. As a francophile, I was excited to try the Mediterranean side of France. Although the school was not promising, I did not care so much about that since it was my Erasmus semester and all I wanted was to live by the Mediterranean sea for a few months. Toulon is a nationalist city located between Marseille and Nice, between the mountain and the sea - it is neither like Marseille nor Nice, it is not a bird nor a fish. It is nothing.

It has a navy school and a library, a zoo on top of a mountain and a few cinemas. And a ton of hairdressers. The school was in the middle of an industrial zone far outside of the city centre and there was one bus that went there, once an hour. Getting there was an extreme nuisance, but finally when you got there, things would be worse as their Erasmus program was fucked, mildly put. Needless to say, I spent all my time elsewhere, except for my weekly walk across town to the library where I would pick up cartoons and French films. I would hang out with Buddhists in Fuveau, a tiny village inland, or with sober addicts in Aubagne. We would drive down to Cassis with their famous calanques cliffs, some 5 meters high and we'd jump in half naked/naked.

I left that city gladly and with no regrets.

Last week, I though destiny had called me on a mission to Nice. So I went. Had a lovely time with an open heart, mind and eyes – on the lookout for what was supposed to cross my path and change my life forever. After a whole week of 'same shit, different day' I realized that me being in Nice was not supposed to be life changing for me particularly (maybe I should have given that weirdo a time of day when he approached me walking the Promenades des Anglais one night?), but I still held on to that thought as I boarded the train coming back to Paris. Maybe someone smart, cool and funny would sit next to me? Well spoken, well dressed with BO's under control? Maybe even a boy! (with that, I mean a man).

As the train choo-choo'ed along the coast I silently watched people getting on, families from vacation, teenagers on their fist solo-trip, wondering who would finally occupy the seat next to me. The train stopped at Antibes, Cannes and St. Raphaël, but no one claimed the seat and I was starting to think that I would have all this space to myself the whole train ride. Then the train stopped at Toulon and I felt a twitch of nostalgia as I hadn't laid my eyes upon that city since I left it three years ago. I looked out on the platform and to my horror I saw a very familiar black hole suction face. Isn't that my old Indian philosophy teacher? 

Oh. My. Ganesh.

“Please don't sit next to me, please don't sit next to me, please don't sit next to me” went my silent mantra and I thought my prayers had been answered when he walked straight past me. I was breathing out in tremendous relief when I found him standing over me nodding disdainfully at my handbag in what seemed to be his seat, lifting up his cheeks so his eyes turned into slits of superiority when I apologetically moved my handbag for his royal academic ass.

"God, you're such a joker", I thought, as I left my body, with no regrets.  

Pétanque (French pronunciation: [petɑ̃k]; Occitan: Petanca [peˈtaŋkɔ])

From Wikipedia:

The current form of the game originated in 1907 in La Ciotat, in Provence, in southern France. The English and French name pétanque comes from petanca in the Provençal dialect of the Occitan language, deriving from the expression pès tancats [ˈpɛs taŋˈkats], meaning "feet together"[1] or more exactly "feet anchored".

Pétanque in its present form was invented in 1907 in the town of La Ciotat near Marseilles by a French boule lyonnaise player named Jules Lenoir, whom rheumatism prevented from running before he threw the ball.[4] The length of the pitch or field was reduced by roughly half, and the moving delivery was replaced with a stationary one.

Observation of the above mentined game in front of the Matisse museum today

Tools

Metal balls

Piece of cloth to rub the balls

Small wooden ball

Red circle (not imperative)

String with a magnet on the end (if you're sick of bending down and picking up your balls) – can also be used to measure the length between two balls in case there is disagreement of which ball is closest

Three legged camping chair

Great swear word vocabulary

Gauloise cigarettes

Game

Each contester has 2 metal balls and the object of the game is to get their ball as close to the tiny wooden ball that is thrown first out into the field, of approximate 4x4 meters, that seems to be mobile depending on the sun, shade, slopes and the general mood of the contestants. A red circle is laid down to mark the point of throw of every contestant. Contestants either throw to get close to the wooden ball or they throw to push other balls out of the way much to the opposing contestant displeasure manifested with theatrical and sarcastic remarks. Teams or individual play is optional. All good throws in the first round procures banging of balls together. For obvious reasons this does not happen in the second round. Contestants can either observe, standing or sitting on their camping stool while others are throwing, or practice throwing on the side if they feel the game is moving to slow. At regular intervals there is an assemble hoovering over after the final layout of the balls to discuss and decide who's the real winner.

Tactics

No subject seems to have the same tactic of throwing. Here are a few methods observed:

• bending of knees all the way and swing arm high with a hand-twist on the metal ball so it spins
• stand straight, lean forward, arm swings half way up, great force in the hand-throw (followed by some body movements in hope that the metal ball is telepathically connected to the body and will copy the movements)
• position straight up and then a slight lean to the right with the weight on the right foot, arm swung three quarters up and left foot leaves ground slightly when the ball leaves hand.

It's remarkable how every individual is clearly marked with their own trait and character and the only thing they have in common is the love of the game, buoyancy in the knees and the fact that they all push out their chest when a girl in an orange skirt walks by.

Nice is nice

Going to Nice this time, which is not as exotic as where I left off last time I recounted my travelling on this site (last blog was more of a spiritual voyage). Ok, it is by the Mediterranean sea like Israel, but that's about where the resemblance ends.

This is what I know about Nice:

• three hundred and some thousand inhabitants (not counting the urban) which is also the population of Iceland
• was not a part of France until sometime in the 18^th century
• became (and is) a popular destination for rich and frigid English folk (and other weirdos)
• is the capital of the French Riviera and has a lot of wealthy, and no longer wealthy, yacht owners
• is close to Monaco, where Grace lived (and sadly died)
• Cannes film festival is held yearly in the nearby city Cannes (hence the name)
• is named after Nike, the goddess of victory (something about the Romans founding and naming the city after a victory of some kind nearby)
• has its own salad that contains tuna and olives, amongst other yummy things.

During my horrible semester in Toulon in the beginning of 2009, I found myself going everywhere but to Nice. I realized that I am much more of a Marseilles-girl if anything. But I think I have passed through there once or twice on my travels to/from Corsica, but in my pre-judgemental state I floored it as soon as we drove off the boat and couldn't drive fast enough the little distance between the port where the Corsican ferry docked and through to the city limits.

Don't ask me why I did that. I judge things. It its my first reaction. I've learned to treat it like an appendix: totally useless, but when active it is extremely painful.

So now I've left my judgement in Paris (where it will be well nurtured until I pick it up again). I dropped it the minute I got on the train. God really wants me to go to Nice, in spite of my reluctant attitude and total confusion of what I'm supposed to be doing there. In spite of me oversleeping and unnecessary lingering in my kitchen, I still made the train (although not one more minute to spare).

The only thing is to surrender to the fact that this mission will make sense a posteriori rather than a priori.

Kind of like life itself, n'est-café!

Identity crisis – who hasn't had one?

Here are my qualifications:

Born in one country, raised in another. Absent father syndrome, working mother syndrome. An only child with a wide range of step- to whole-siblings - and this is just off the top of my head.

In my twenties I would travel around the western part of Europe, looking for me in various places. I would position myself like a piece of jigsaw and press into the whichever community and hang there for a bit. Weeks or months would go by until I'd realise that I am not really a Bayern nor a Scot. More of a Madrileña than a Londoner, but neither of those really.

The closest I've come to is Paris, where I now choose to reside (for the third time). I suspect it has nothing to do with Paris, France itself, but that it is central in my chosen play field as I know there are still unexplored territories that I need to press myself against to see if it is the right fit. The perfect fit, no less.

Lately, I've been playing less scavenger hunt and more house with my life, but got reminded of this topic at a dinner party last night. There was a great discussion about the need to know your origins. The spark to this debate was the fact that Iceland does not have a sperm bank and gets its sperm from Denmark and surely the next generation of artificial inseminated children (the children being the consequence of the insemination, of course) will most likely found an organisation that seeks there origin. Not to mention that Iceland will become Danish, again.

Regardless, I realised I had not had that pity-party for the longest time, and much to my surprise, I had hardly noticed the absence of my endless quest of who I really am. And today I woke up with the thought that birth is my mother, death is my father and I am life.