No Such Thing as Coincidence

I am writing this late evening in from the lobby of Hotel Anglais in Stockholm, very possibly the only place in the city with wireless access at this time of night. Normally a nice quiet place, unfortunately tonight it is full of graduating high school seniors partying the night away to house music. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Weather here is extremely sunny and warm –- much to my surprise since I never trust a Swede’s temperature judgment. I am not particularly tired, still riding high off the light-fueled adrenalin kick. The sun hasn’t set yet even though it is past 10 PM local time.

The only snag in my journey here was that I stupidly forgot to drink up the water in my water bottle before going through security. A security guy on a power trip would not let me just drink the water, he insisted in it down the drain. OK.

Then, like a frazzled idiot, I let my camera (inside the camera bag) slide down my shoulder when I bent to pick up my other bags. It hit the floor. Not hard, but hard enough for me to have a horrible feeling I had cracked the filter (it’s happened to me once before). Sure enough, I had. I’m very, very happy it was only the filter as these are cheap to replace but it does make me think I should invest in some extra padding for my camera bag. I’m pretty sure my camera is ok, though.

On the plane I had the pleasure of being surrounded by the gentlemen of the metal band Tesla. (In existence since 1986, they told me.) They were on their way to play a festival but had forgotten which one.

I was a bit worried they would be all rock ‘n’ roll and drink heavily. Happily they all took sleeping pills before take-off. Weirdly, I was reading a book where Nikola Tesla was mentioned. I pointed this out to the guy next to me. He said Tesla invented the radio and that the band was named for him.

While I waited for the bus at the Central Station in Stockholm, who should come biking by if not Melinda. Thus we were able to continue our tradition of random unplanned meetings outside Swedish train stations.

Admittedly banal occurrences, but these types of coincidences happen way to often for me to believe they are random.

Shaliach Tzedakah

Things are starting to get critical. I’m leaving in a day and still haven’t done laundry, made key copies, or cleaned my apartment. Eeek! Det börjar brinna i knutarna, sagt man auf Schwedish.

I spent half the day yesterday frantically sending emails to get my shit in order work-wise before I leave. The other half was spent running around town like a headless chicken buying stuff for my father and buying myself a pair of canvas shoes and a linen shirt (both feel like essentials for the modern summer traveler).

I am about (insh-allah) to publish the long article about Chabad’s outreach activties in Williamsburg that I wrote for a class. Thus I wanted to touch base with Leah, the Chabad lady (who I should clarify to those who don’t know is 26 years old, in case anyone is picturing an old woman) to make sure she was ok with appearing in print and also make sure that there were no inaccuracies in the article.
Earlier Leah had offered to lend me a book about a Lubavitcher family by a writer named Lis Harris — originally a series of articles that appeared in the New Yorker. So, I popped by for the book and for a chat. (Since I hadn’t heard back from Leah after sending her the article ten days ago I was secretly worried she was offended by it). All went well and I emerged from the meeting with two extra books on loan (for my spiritual edification, courtesy of Leah).

Leah also introduced me to a custom I was not aware of. She gave me a dollar to give to charity during my journey (tzedakah) also to protect me during my travels. Apparently this act of giving for someone else is called Shliach Tzedakah (Shliach means emissary, I am her tzedakah emissary of sorts). And yes, I am probably ruining it by blogging about it, but whatever.

After I deliberated for a while over which country it would be best to give the dollar in, Leah gave me two more so I will have one for each country.

I am guarding the three dollar bills in a separate, secret place for depositing one in Stockholm, one in Berlin and one in Tel Aviv. Though it occurs to me now I will need to change them for local currency. Ah well, I will figure our a way around that.

Last but not least, in the evening I had a very enjoyable dinner with Miki and Sanna at Wild Ginger, my favorite vegan-Asian restaurant. As usual I was paralyzed by choice, I am so used to only having one vegetarian option. I can’t handle a whole menu full of choices.

Countdown to Leaving

During the month of June, roughly speaking, I will be traveling from NYC, to Stockholm, to Lund, to Berlin, to Tel Aviv and then back to New York City again (if all goes according to plan).

To keep in touch with my friends, to keep a record of my travels, and to narcissistically broadcast my thoughts and random goings on to my friends I’ve decided to keep a travel blog. The idea is I will be updating it a couple of times a week and also throwing some pics up on Flickr.

Well, here it goes. I you are indeed reading this. I’m leaving for Stockholm in 4 days.