Author: fredcasden

Jambo, Jambo (Part 4)

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Once we had decided to ‘go on safari,’ and we had sent our money to Shai Bar Ilan Geographical Tours, I decided to look at an on-line map to find out exactly where we would be heading. Don’t ask me why, but looking at a map gives me a sense of security, as if I would learn something I didn’t know before.

It looked as if all the places we were scheduled to visit were in close proximity. Of course, there’s ‘close,’ and then there’s ‘close.’ I could mean ‘close,’ as in it takes us twenty minutes to walk to the mall, as opposed to the folks who live down the hill, who need a bus ride to get to the same destination. I wouldn’t consider ourselves ‘close’ to Tel Aviv, although it’s now only a half an hour train ride from Jerusalem. Continue reading →

Jambo, Jambo (Part 3)

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It may be anti-climactic to be writing about our safari just now, with all the travel restrictions, bans, quarantines, and lockdowns out there, but I will resolutely press on with my narrative, no matter what. Plus, I have a lot of time on my hands to work on these posts! Let me begin by mentioning an Op-Ed piece in our edition of the NY Times, written well before the latest difficulties, by an activist who was, shall we say a little too frenetic, suggesting that people stop traveling by airplane in order to Save the Planet. (Guess what: he got his wish!) My off-the-top-of-my-head reaction was to envision the likelihood of the Schwartz family with their four children bicycling from New Jersey to Florida to visit grandma. (No!) A more considered response came a few days later by another interested party, who reminded one and all of the virtues of environmental tourism. The fact that folks would come from all over to gawk at exotic animals in far away places with strange sounding names – providing the local human population with a way of making a living – was keeping those exotic animals safe and sound. Otherwise, their habitats might well be turned into cattle ranches, because what the planet needs now, more than anything else, is another ten million burgers. Every day, that is. Continue reading →

Jambo, Jambo (Part 2)

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(Before I begin: a concerned reader, responding to my last article, suggested that I might have been foolish to travel – considering my age – given the current concerns about the corona virus. To allay any fears, let me mention that when our plane arrived at both the Kigali and the Kilimanjaro airports, all the passengers were interviewed and checked by a team of doctors. Of course, back then we were asked only if we had come back from China in the last two weeks; unfortunately, the list of countries has expanded greatly until now it’s most of the world. As far as I know, there have been no reported cases of the virus in either Rwanda or Tanzania, where we were. So I’m probably ‘safe,’ at least as safe as anybody else is, given the ability of corona to spread itself around at the blink of an eye. I should add that, unlike other ‘viruses,’ this one is not spread over the internet, meaning you don’t need to disinfect your phone or computer screen, at least on my account. Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.) Continue reading →

Jambo, Jambo (Part 1)

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Don’t step in any elephant poo, said Irwin, and that was useful advice – unlike the well-worn suggestion to ‘break a leg’ (something I heard all the time back in the days when I was on-stage with Encore!) – especially considering where we would be going. Please understand that a safari to Tanzania – where we just might come across some elephants and their ‘leavings’ – was not what I had planned or had in mind. My original wish-list itinerary for this year had been: Feb. 9, attend Sommelier in Tel Aviv, the most prestigious wine-tasting event in Israel; and, whenever they finalized the dates in June, the kosher culinary trip to Tuscany (where we would make our own pasta, dig for truffles, and visit Terra diSete, the only kosher winery in that part of the world).

My plans for the wine-tasting event on Feb. 9 fell by the wayside, victim of another four-day AACI study trip, where we would be staying at a hotel with a breath-taking view of the Mediterranean and, among other things, visiting the local sea turtle rescue facility. But then, that plan got changed as well at the last minute.

When we went on an AACI-sponsored trip to Morocco (you remember Morocco, don’t you?), we had the services of Cindy Kline as our guide, and I’ve been in touch with her on Facebook ever since. She sent me a message on WhatsApp (kind of risky, since I rarely look there), something to the effect of: I know it’s last minute, but would you and Barbara like to join a trip to Tanzania? Because I am a dutiful husband, I showed my wife the message, which got her truly excited. Have Cindy send me the information, which she did. Continue reading →

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea (part 6)

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They don’t have a sign like this, but there ought to be one: Sic transit Gloria mundi (So passes the glory of the world), and it should be placed prominently at the port in Dubrovnik for all to see and contemplate. Today, this city is merely the fourth largest in Croatia, but at the height of its glory, Dubrovnik (then known as Ragusa) was a rival of Venice as a regional maritime center. What’s left is an Old City that dates back centuries in time and is now a UNESCO heritage site. Like its former rival, huge numbers of tourists clog its streets during peak season – another reason to show up at the end of October. (I told you so, Barbara….) Continue reading →

Sailing the Wine Dark Sea (part 5)

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Being an ex-pat American living in Israel, I generally leave it to others to pontificate about the merits and demerits of Brexit, as in England leaving the European Union. I don’t pay much attention to the European Union period, at least most of the time. However, having an ‘open border’ does come in handy once in a while.

Day 8 of our cruise brought us to the very top of the Adriatic to the venerable city of Trieste, our next scheduled stop. However (a big ‘however’), the Golden Iris did not dock in Trieste, but in Koper, which is a half an hour bus ride away AND is in Slovenia (which is not the same as Slovakia). If you ask me why our ship couldn’t or didn’t dock in the port city of Trieste, I don’t know; it never occurred to me to ask, nobody else thought to ask, and nobody bothered to explain why. We just did, and that meant crossing the border between two countries, which at some time pre-E.U. might have meant the usual bureaucratic border control folderol. These days? You just keep going on the highway, and nobody thinks twice about it. Even the fact that we were using a Slovenian guide to show us around an Italian city didn’t seem at all out-of-the-ordinary. Continue reading →

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea (part 4)

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Lest you be concerned: having returned to Ma’ale Adumim on Dec. 12 from our Study Trip, my venturous wife and I had just enough time to get back on board the virtual helicopter. It took off from the parking lot next to our building and landed on the Golden Iris’s heliport, bringing us back in time to Oct. 28, enabling us to join our ship mates the afternoon before we reached Venice. I should have had time to get in a nap before we left the ship in the late afternoon, but I’ll get to that shortly.

Venice has always been high on Barbara’s “while and before” list of places to visit, the “while,” in general, being while she is still physically able to handle the journey. In this case, the “before” meant before the city sinks into the sea. (No joke.) My wife had broached the possibility of going on a trip there in the summer of 2018, but I had strongly objected to that idea. You do not want to go there during peak tourist season. (Between twenty and thirty million visitors come every year, and it becomes standing room only in the center of town.) There’ll be another cruise next year, I said, and maybe it won’t be at peak season. Continue reading →

Sderot Redux (Part 4)

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On trips of this kind, it’s almost always we, the AACI-ers, who board the bus and head off to where the people we are going to meet happen to be. Except in the evening after dinner, when our featured speakers come to where we are staying to delight us with their well-chosen words. With one slight wrinkle. I mentioned that on this trip we had two busloads of folks, and we were staying at different hotels. Our group had to get back on the bus to go the few minutes to the Harlington Hotel, more of a ‘business hotel,’ which has conference rooms that could accommodate all 80+ of us. Each night we heard a different speaker, each from a very different background, but who wound up doing very similar things, under the radar that the media use to decide who is important and who is not. Neither of them had much to say about themselves and a lot of about what they were doing. (Maybe that’s why they remain under the radar.) Continue reading →

Sderot Redux (Part 3)

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Should you find yourself on a future AACI Study Trip, be forewarned that you will be asked (and reminded, but in a nice way) to fill out the evaluation form and rate 1) how well the trip was run; 2) all about the accommodations –the service, the food; 3) how good was the guide; 4) every place on the itinerary. No surprise, people don’t always agree. But to get a division of the house, yea or nay, that’s rare.

We had started out the next day (that’s Wed., if you’re keeping track) and made our first stop at the Sderot Media Center, a place that engendered opposing feelings by those of us on the trip. To be fair, its director and guiding light, Noam Bedein, was not around, and the task of explaining what is going on there was left to another young man. Maybe he just wasn’t up to the task. Dov did tell us about his own experiences: how the rocket attacks in recent years put a complete kibosh on his plans to do graduate work at the university in Beersheva, as well as wreaked havoc on his bronchial system. His take on the current situation was markedly different from what we heard from many of the other folks we talked with. Continue reading →

Sderot Redux (Part 2)

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Since we’ve been living in The Land, we’ve become accustomed to seeing the cranes just about every day. No, not as in The Cranes Are Flying or as in the migratory birds that come and go our way every spring and fall. I mean the large pieces of machinery needed to erect high-rise buildings. The ones you see in Jerusalem. The ones you see in Tel Aviv. The ones we kept seeing in Ashkelon as our tour bus left the city in the morning and came back in the late afternoon. What I didn’t expect to see (and I suspect I wasn’t alone in that) was the evidence of their presence in Sderot, that battered community. But, sure enough, as we entered from the south, there, for all to see, were a row of high-rise buildings, clearly constructed in the last few years, right smack-dab in the line of fire of the missiles from Gaza. I think we all had the same questions, directed at all and sundry of the locals we met on our trip. What are you doing? Why are you here? Isn’t it kind of dangerous in these parts? Continue reading →