Day 6. Mile 600. West Virginia

We woke up slowly in the Edison Motor Inn in Edison, NJ, and went to get breakfast in - that’s right - the Edison Diner. We were eating slowly because we were supposed to meet up with a couple of friends, Dan and Lyla, as they were driving along the same route in other direction, and we have been discussing this random meetup for a few days. When we felt like they were getting closer we started driving towards them, but since neither of them carries a smartphone, or even a map, they could not tell us where they were. We gave up the idea and continued driving towards Maryland.

We got to Baltimore, where Julia’s sister, her fiancé, and their dog live. We got all our remaining stuff there - this time it was the real deal with the heavy boxes, our bikes and stuff. When we were done we still had the truck pretty empty, which made me happy, because I don’t like the feeling of having a lot of things. I had a lot of things before I left for the states, and now I’m much happier, at least about this part. and some other parts. anyway, this is not what I want to talk about right now.

The in-laws (see what I did there?) made us some pizza, and by the time we were done it was time to drop Julia at the airport. 

From the airport I just started driving into West Virginia. When it was dark and I decided to find a place to stay I was already too deep into the  Virginianess of America - there was nothing around. not even gas stations, and I was running low on gas with a truck on top of a fucking mountain. 

I found gas eventually. An hour later - a motel with no vacancies. Half an hour later - a motel with an old lady with only one room left. Do they have wi-fi though? “have what?”

Internet? In-ter-net?

"Son, I don’t understand what your saying!"

Have a good night, Ma’am.

The last motel was closed - it was already 11. I realized that it’s too late now for the small motels to have someone at the desk - I need to head to a bigger town. The map (yes, map. there’s no reception in WV) took me to Keyser, WV, where I got a room in a Mircrotel - kind a fancy Super 8.

Day 18: Passports!

We woke up for the day of our flight, still no passports in our hands. The tracking showed that my passport has left Ellicott City’s post office, and Julia’s passport has left the post office in Baltimore.

Julia drove to her sister’s house in Baltimore to wait for hers, while I stayed in her parents’ house waiting for mine.

Express mail is guaranteed to arrive by noon. At half past twelve I was already engaged in a pointless conversation with the post office (me: “where is the envelope that I was supposed to get by noon?!”. Lady: “sir, we just got it today!”).

I called Julia, to see how she was doing, and as we were both sighing on both sides of the line, she started yelling “somebody just knocked on the door!”. A minute later she called me and reported live the opening of the envelope and the revealing of the visa page in the passport.

She came back to her parents’ house and we had lunch with her parents who were working from home in order to take us to the airport, but it was already two o’clock, and my passport’s location was still a mystery. In an act that I interpret as “I can handle my daughter leaving, but not leaving her terrible boyfriend in my house”, Julia’s mother called the post office and started yelling at them. Turns out that the envelope was left in their mail box. Julia and I ran outside and obtained my passport. Let me say this one last time: we had the two passports six and a half hours before we were moving to another continent.

So I’m writing this from the airport in Washington DC, and we fly in one hour. We stop in Iceland for an 18 hours layover. The plan is to rent a car and drive a little bit, and then continue to France. We can’t believe we made it. Really, we can’t.

There are, however, two more days of adventures until we finally settle down in our new home in Paris. Stay tuned.

I will leave you with something to think about – take a look at the sign for the chapel house in the airport. Is it just me, or does this sign portrays a child preparing to give a blow-job?

Day 17: Train wreck

We were both a nervous wreck when we woke up. We fly to Paris the next day, and we still don’t have our passports. We called lady B, and she said she didn’t go to the consulate to look for our passports, since they haven’t returned her email. This was one of those times when my implosive Israeli side has to battle his well-trained American counterpart. “It was my understanding that you are not waiting for their response, and just planned to go there. Our flight is tomorrow. I’m not sure I communicate well how stressed we are.” Let me translate to this my Israeli friends: “would you get your fat ass up and MOVE!”. As you can see, I have learned a lot during my two years here.

Lady B. had a brilliant idea – she would cancel her meetings and go to the consulate. Duh. An hour later we got the report: Julia’s passport was sent the day before. That’s already weird and distrurbing, since we can’t track the envelope on-line. Please don’t tell me they have lost it. The good news about this were that lady B read to me the tracking number as was given to her by the consulate, and it was the same number we had, so somebody had a visual on that envelope at some point. Well, whatever. Where’s MY passport?

“Ah,” said lady B. “I have it! They didn’t want to sign you visa because.. (something about a missing document) so I told them it’s OK, they approved it, and gave me your passport which I will send you right away!”

The fascinating thing here is that if we hadn’t insisted the she goes herself, that morning, without waiting to be invited, to the consulate – I would have never known there’s a problem. My passport would have not been sent to me, with or without a visa. I would just be sitting like an idiot in Baltimore waiting for something interesting to happen. I couldn’t believe it.

So now we wait for the envelopes. In the meantime, we went to the Baltimore railroad museum:

Lot’s of trains, lot’s of history of trains, two very big mode train layouts. Not enough technology to my taste, but it’s still a pretty cool place:

In the afternoon we checked our envelopes trackings, and it was bad. My envelope was already tracked, but Julia’s wasn’t. It’s either somebody in the consulate is just being lazy taking the box with letters to the post office, our that the envelope is indeed lost. We called lady B. again. She was getting impatient, which really annoyed me, because patience and support were exactly the things I needed. She said that if the passport doesn’t show up by noon the next day, I should fly alone, and Julia will join me when the passport shows up. Very saddened, we started adjusting ourselves to the idea.

And just as we were about to turn the lights off at night, I decided to try just one last time. We couldn’t believe it – BOTH envelopes were tracked! Making their way to Maryland, and should be in our hands by noon, less than nine hours before the flight.

Day 5: Baltimore

My Cousin, Guy, lives in Rockville, an hour drive north of Baltimore. We both left Israel to live in the states about the same time - his wife got a post-doc position around here in NIH and he followed along with their daughter. We haven’t been in touch in a while, from way before we moved to the states, so I was really happy for this opportunity to  meet him. We said we’d meet today at 5PM, which left me some time to kill in Baltimore.

I drove down to the inner harbor. It was very touristy, but slow at the same time.

I started to wonder around, ended up in a sketchy street. When you’re surrounded by strip clubs - you know you’re in the wrong place. well, if it’s 11AM.

This car had “Bitch” keyed on the front door. Seems like someone went to have some fun and discovered his girlfriend found a new job here:

I googled my options, and decided to walk to the Baislica - the first Catholic church ever built in America:

Inside were maybe two people, sitting on the benches and mumbling to themselves. I noticed the wonderful air-conditioning and let a soft “thank you Jesus” out of my mouth. I sat on a bench and browsed the books in the pocket of the seat – They have the songs there, with the notes and the lyrics and all. After 10 minutes or so I raise my head and found out that some 30 more people joined us, and that service is about to begin. Crap.

The dude said some stupid thing about the kingdom of God being like fishing net. We got up and sat back down a few times, we mumbled (we’ll, I didn’t, but I don’t think anyone noticed) some stuff.

And then the dude had some bread which he started breaking, and some wine that he started pouring. That is a not good at all – what if he comes up to me and tries to stick bread down my throat? I can’t eat that! I’m Jewish!

Luckily, everybody got up and walked to him to get some bread and wine, which was a perfect time for me to get up and leave.

I didn’t want to be a bad Jew and not drink any Christian people’s blood that day; I decided that a good replacement for Jesus’s blood, which is wine, would be St. Patrick’s blood, which is beer, so I headed to look for a tavern. I also reminded myself that people always eat his flesh and drink his blood, but what about breathing his spirit –that wonderful cool air-conditioned air inside the church? I had plenty of that. I think I’m all set.

I got a couple of beers and some chicken sandwich at the Water Street Tavern, while I was watching the a Olympic games.

When I was done, I went back to the car and started driving towards Rocksville. I got there about an hour early, so I killed some time in a plaza, eating terrible ice cream I bought at the Dollar Tree and checking out Hobby Works, an awesome hobby store. I love radio controlled cars and airplanes, model trains such! That’s one of the big disadvantages of moving around - you can’t engage in hobbies that require having a large work-space, your own tools, and storing space.

I then went to my cousin’s place. His parents, my favorite uncle and aunt, had just arrive from Israel for a visit. They didn’t know I was coming so it was quite a surprise for them to see me. We talked for an hour or two, and when they collapsed, me and Guy left drove to Georgetown to get dinner and some beers. We talked about our work, compared living in Israel and in the US, and discovered we’re both very passionate about atheism. Too bad we drifted apart all these years, but that’s life. I’m really glad I went to see him.

Guy and his wife insisted I stay for the night, which was a great idea. Their 6 year old daughter was kind enough to sleep with her parents, leaving me her tiny bed. It was so amusing waking up next to a tiny tea-party table.

Day 4: Made it to Baltimore!

Today I mostly drove. I had a lot of driving to do in order to make it to Baltimore on a reasonable hour.

I’m not completely sure whether this is due to missing a turn or not, but I did end up driving through NYC. Manhattan, to be more specific. Of course I got stuck in traffic, and then I noticed that I’m not doing very well on gas. The fact that the gas meter was dropping rapidly while I was on a narrow, one lane bridge caused me a minor heart attack, but somehow I made it through, got out of NYC, and stopped for fuel at Paterson, NJ. It didn’t seem like the best place in the world, but I still wanted to park and hang out. Only when I realized I don’t have any quarters for the parking meter, I decided to drive on.

I stopped for lunch at Newark, NJ, in a Jamaican, well, place. they sell food and tickets for Reggae concerts. I had brownstew (?) chicken with rice and beans and some cabbage salad. That was pretty good. It was fun watching everybody play “don’t-stare-at-the-bald-white-guy”.

Next, I left the highway to visit Bethlehem PA. No special reason. turns out there’s an awsome music festival there soon. Other than that everything I ran into was closed. Maybe I didn’t go deep enough into the city, but I didn’t find it too exciting.

The rest of the drive through Pennsylvania was beautiful. I passed through small place like Kutztown, which looks just as cute as its name sounds. There’s a fair there on the 13th, which means we might catch it on our way from Maine to Maryland right before our flight.

I stopped for some coffee, ehem, somewhere, which was good since I got to witness this little place:

Witty, isn’t it?

And about an hour or two later I made it to Julia’s sister’s place in Baltimore, MD. Since her sister was not back yet from work, I took a seat on the bar in Dimitri’s Tavern, right around the corner. They serve peanuts, but there are no bowls for the shells. People just use the floor:

Also, a beer is only 1.75! I had three beers, and then went to Julia’s sister’s place, where I unloaded our stuff. Success!