Month: October 2020

The chapter in which people are happy to meet the new kibbutznik who turns out to be me with a surprisingly severe haircut, which just goes to show that you should never get a haircut in the Holy Land, especially just days before you’re scheduled to head home. Then, I finally say goodbye to the road in a chapter I call “And Casey’s Counting ’em Down.”

A visit to Petra prompts a meditation on lost cities which raises the question, how can it be lost if the people who live there know where it is? And then I re-entered the Holy Land without my shoes in a chapter I call “David Volk And The Temple Of….Damn, That’s Big!”

I end up at Kibbutz Ketura, my final stop of the trip where I learn the importance of squeegees, get kicked out of a kitchen job, get transferred to the melon factory and admit that I steal the tops of chamberpots. Not too shockingly, it’s in a chapter called “Squeegee Nation: The Strange Stories Of A Man Without A Home.”

The chapter in which I sign up to volunteer on a kibbutz and am repeatedly told it might not be my cup of tea, which confuses me because I don’t even like tea. And then I walked into the city’s central bus station and never left. In fact, I may be wandering there still in a chapter I call “Confusion As Counterterrorism And Other Tales Of Tel Aviv.”

The weird and wonderful friendship continues as I allow myself to be talked into an early morning trip to Masada, a swim in the Dead Sea, a stop at Ein Gedi wildlife reserve and a revelation that renders me speechless. And that’s saying something. All in “If This Is The Land Of My Forefathers, How Come They Weren’t Here To Meet The Boat?”

In my effort to find a quick route to Israel, I end up on a bus filled with Kiwis and Aussies on a pilgrimage to Galipoli, visit Troy, hide in a Trojan Horse, tangle with unhelpful travel agents, board a fast ferry to Haifa and begin a weird and wonderful friendship in “I Keep Working My Way Back To Jews, Babe.”

I beach myself on the shores of the Bosporous in Istanbul where I treat myself to a Turkish bath and am not sure what to make of it when I am offered a “special” massage. It’s all in a chapter I call “Beaten In The Name of Comfort.”

I take getting shaken down for cash twice in one day by a beautician, fake passport police and a really big bear as a hint that Sofia, Bulgarian might not be the place for me in “Danger There’s A Shakedown Dead Ahead.”

I call an end to the Tragical History Tour in Budapest, decide to just wander aimlessly and unexpectedly get a call from my biological clock in the chapter “The Place Is Lousy With Jews.”

The chapter in which I learn it’s possible to locked in while being locked out while trying to play a practical joke long distance. I call it “A Very Expensive Practical Joke.”