Back from Israel

I am back from Israel (actually I came back already 2 weeks ago). This time I took the visit reeaally easy. I travelled a bit around but I spent most of my time in Jerusalem talking to Jan, Aleš and Ivanka and drinking nana tea.

Still - with the little I managed to travel, I visited Bnei BrakBeit El

Tel Aviv
and also the south of Jerusalem West Bank
It never ceases to surprise me how many differences, paradoxes and problems there are on such a small space. I came back home to Prague in the time of the year when we, enlightened Jewish education teachers:-), teach about Israel before Yom ha-atzmaut. We should teach our kids to develop a possitive attidude to the country which undoubtedly has such a big impact on the way we percieve ourselves as Jews and how others view us through our Jewishness. At the same time, we should teach them a realistic picture of what the land of milk and honey really is. What a treat :-)

The joys of flying kosher

If you fly around Europe (and close around) and you choose to eat kosher, you usually win a much better meal than the other travellers around you. Most of the companies crossing the short distnces from one Old continent country to another choose to feed you a small snack and a cookie, while if you order a kosher meal, you are usually granted a full meal with hot piece of meat and nice desert. The most striking difference between the meals I have experienced so far was when I flew British Airways from Stockholm to London. While all the other passangers were offered a tiny stripe of tired looking pizza, I was served a delicious French duck with potato pire and a meat pate with almonds.

Yesterday, however, when I flew to Tel Aviv, the Czech Airlines made their revenge for all these months they have fed me nice kosher meals. I flew on the 3rd day of Pesach - therefore, while all the other passangers got a nice chicken and potatoes, vegetable salat, chocolate brownie and a small roll, I was served this:

Fair enough. I didn´t mind that much after all. Ultimatelly, the plane brought me to a country, where even on the foodwise crasy holiday of Pesach, you can keep kosher and still eat a thing like this:
(Which is what Honza Fingerland treated me for the moment I arrived in Caffehouse on Emek Refaim:-)

Pesach kasher ve-sameach!

Adult life

It has struck me recently how many hits on my blog are people who google "adult life in Prague." (I know it thanks to sitemeter.) It never occured to me what a vulnerable name I chose for my blog. Luckily (at least I hope that´s luck) none of these googlers stay on my blog for more than 2 seconds. Still - it´s kinda sad.

(Btw. 28 days till going to Israel)

You never know

Last summer I bought an olive tree (a bit childlishly - to remind me of my Israeli holiday) and put it on my terrace. It was all leafy and green the whole summer and fall, but during the winter, when I put it indoors, it regretfully shook down all its leaves and it seemed it dried up completely.

I had slowly started to give up on the plant when the other day I came home to find out that it has a few fresh green leaves. In a couple of the following days it began to bud also on a few other places and started to shoot fresh sprouts in all directions. I know it will sound silly, but not only was I happy the plant didn´t die, but I couldn´t help thinking what a telling sign it was. I had actually almost thrown away the plant a month before. Sometimes things look gloomy and hopeless. However, you never know when they´ll take an unexpected better move.

Tax declaration

The beginning of spring is usually marked by the early birds that start to sing with the rising sun, the more agreeable outdoor temperatures, sudden rainshowers, the first humble blooms of spring flowers and - the many friends who complain to you about the fact that they have to declare their taxes.

I have just finished counting mine. My accounting is usually rather simple because most of my taxes are done by my employer anyway. Therefore I have never used a professional and I have always done my taxes by myself. For me - counting the taxes follows the same sequence of emotions every year:

1) Filling in the personal information - name, ID number, phone-number ... and thinking - yey! It´s easy after all!
2) Counting all the money I earned that year and thinking - a) "Gosh! I must be the worker of the year when I made that much money" b) "Wait a minute - where is it all gone?"
3) Opening the "numbers part" of the form and realising a) there are loads of changes in the law compared to last year and therefore b) a number of new lines.
4) At first patiently and later on a little bit impatiently trying to find out my way through the form.
4) The "aha-moment" (usually after 3 or so hours and after having consulted several guidelines.) I finally got it and I fill in all the numbers.
5) Realising that I have to pay the amount I have just counted. Realising that it is actually really not that bad.
6) Realising that the fact that I have to pay taxes and I am not in red numbers actually means I am an independent, working young woman who can support herself. Not bad :-)

Great - I hope I counted it right. I will send the money tonight. Until next year then (all being well:-)

A mother-daughter Norway trip

During Christmas, I started to plan my summer holidays and among others I decided to go to Norway this July. For some time I tried to find someone that would be willing to share the hardship of climbing cold and slippery mountains, paying huge amounts of money for transport and lodging for the gain of the most spectacular views of Scandinavian fjords. I slowly started to come to terms with the fact that I will have to go on my own when one day I got a call from my mother, who said - "Why dont I come with you?" My mother has always wanted to see Scandinavia and she even got the first taste of it when she visited me during my studies in Paideia, but she has always wanted to see the hills and the wild nature as well. So we decided to take a 10-day backpacker trip to Norway together. This will be her first backpacking ever and it will also be the first time we will go for vacation on our own. I cannot wait.

Count down

Some time ago I added two ticker factory count down to the bottom of my blog. Just to let you know.

Twisted values

I spent today´s Shabbat afternoon in my parents´house leasurely reading newspapers. In the weekend suplement of one of them I read about the following event:
Karel Gott, an infamous Czech singer and the most eligible bachelor in the country got married last week to his girl-friend and the mother of his little daughter. The news has been making the headlines for the last couple of days, during which many newspapers have been searching for minute details of the event. Ths particular paper went to interview the principal of the high-school, where Mrs. Gott studied to become a nurse several years before."She finished the school and started to work in one of the local hospitals," the principal said: "but she quit soon, went to Prague and started to work in the showbizz. It had always been obvious to me she would do that. She had always aspired for higher goals."

Hmm. I am probably not the only one who personally knows a number of nurses that spend their days and lives helping people, who feel misserable, taking care of the sick, injured, disabled and terminally ill. They meet pain, despair, tragedies and death on a daily bases and many of them do it with a lot of devotion. On the top of that, most of those that work as nurses in this country do it for an embarassingly small montly pay.

Seeing that a principal of a school that trains nurses considers a career of a green-widow of an aging pop-star as a higher life goal than helping those in pain is slightly... disturbing.