The first recollection

The first thing you feel is the severance from the familiar comfort zone. Without looking back, you instantly feel the growing gap as you are leaving, and sailing with time itself into an uncharted dimension. In my case, that place was anything but known.

With a one-way ticket and a last picture with my family, I had deposited my large bag in the plane’s cargo hold and boarded the bus to the terminal. Not looking back, I felt the shudders of the bus while simultaneously I had felt a peculiar sense of levitating, a certain feeling of sweeping separation. While gushed by expectation, fear and excitement I sensed how I was led, unclear if by my will or forcibly, to uncertainty that will not cease to surprise me. That same lingering feeling was to be my first memory of my voyage.

As I walked through the jet bridge, advertisement and other smiling figures bid me farewell in foreign languages. It finally came to me that this was it – my journey begins. My childhood dream of visiting the vast Plaines of Britain and Ireland are coming true. As the plane took off and I saw the lights of the coastline disappearing into the distance, a broad smile spread across my face. I took out my music player and played the tune that summarized my feeling of expectation and excitement that held me.

Introduction

In my travels in Ireland, my favorite way of traveling was hitchhiking. It saved a substantial amount of money, but more importantly, it was an inseparable part of my trip. Meeting the people, conversing with them, hearing their stories and even the uncomfortable silences were a core experience and a way to really get to know the local people and culture. To start a conversation I always had to answer the usual questions (how old are you? Where are you from?) For one of that question, one that was a basis for the things to come, I always had a hard time to answer.

“So what are you, a student?”

The solution was to quickly and clearly answer No, that in Israel when you reach the age of 18 you are enlisted to the army, you serve your time (women serve two years and men three), you are relieved, you work, save money and hop, you travel!

For some reason they had a hard time understanding that my current status was “traveler” rather than a “student”. It was probably the conformist and common logic that said that, because at the age of 20 surly I will be at college.

It seemed that in the few seconds after I answered their question, they had to create a new category to classify my part in life. In a less known part.

In one of my hitchhiking adventures in the land of the Leprechaun, as usual, I entered a car and that same banal question was asked. For god-knows-how-many-times I answered the same answer that by now sounded like a broken record. I waited for the awkward minute in which the person has to digest and reacts to my answer with a fake polite smile, to pass as soon as possible. I already thought of defenses and explanation for my current status but this time - this time was different. He reacted different.

He had a different smile on his face.

A satisfied smile, not a fake one. A proud smile and not one of suspicion

“you know what?” answered this gentlemen “Better! Even perfect! What you are doing now is graduating from the University of Life”

     

Prologue

“So, how was your trip?” I was often asked in anticipation, in expectation, with a thirst for more. I am wordless. The fact is that my answer is jammed full of words that I am clueless where to start. Like fishing in the ocean, in hope to immediately catch the largest fish, the rarest one, the prettiest one or maybe the most famous one? I have no idea what to expect to find. However, I can tell you about my headfirst-dive to those cold and unfamiliar waters. Those waters that waited a long time for me to embrace them, to taste their salt, to float upon their ripples, to be washed away with them, to swim with their currents and sometimes against them.

A key moment in my travels has led me to you through writing. That moment surprised me three weeks before my return home. 

I was in Italy and my good friend, Ben, joined me. We climbed a small hill close to the mountains near Pompeii. As we reached the top, a magnificent sight stretched before us. Vesuvius stood high and in its shadow lay Napoli, glowing gently in the distance. Along the coastline were Pompeii and other small towns, all of which added a pleasant touch of civilization. Opposite was the island of Capri, floating in the horizon and serving as a visual ’counterweight‘ to Vesuvius bulkiness. Autumn’s birth brought here and there clouds that filled the sky with pigment and splendor. The sun was setting down, sending beams of light through the clouds, illuminating the hidden and exquisite corners of the vista.

Ben and I set down and marveled at the gorgeous scenery that lay before us.

“I went through so much” I thought to myself. “I saw so much beauty, so many views, vistas, people, stories. I went through the rarest of experiences and spiraling adventures. So much and yet all this is going to end in three weeks?”

I could not accept it. Everything was so astonishing that the mere thought that my trip will reach its end suddenly awoke (and it too wasn’t fully accepted. After all, I had three months of experience behind me)

Like a Genie begging to spring out of his lamp, to stretch out its muscles, the feelings flooded me, pleading: “LET ME OUT!”

I felt that I soaked so many experiences and that I have to share them.

So truthfully, honestly and fairly I will tell you of my adventures to the great unknowns, of my surfing in the human ocean, of my steps along the tip of the iceberg in the wild and colossal world and of my inner world that I discovered simultaneously.

With hope and with dare, I welcome you to walk with me in my adventures in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Italy. I will share with you the magical, mind bending, frustrating and defining moments that I experienced. You will see my revelations, walk with me into my world that was shaken and its borders redefined in those influential four months.   

 

“So, how was your trip?” you ask. Well…

Let us start from the beginning…