Starting her travels early!

By Sarah Bier
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
KOC Assistant Editor

My English father and American mother ingrained the value of travel into me at a very young age -- three months. As an only child for five years, the one gift was the traveling we did to visit my English family. These visits infused me with an intense desire to travel -- at one point, to the extent that I wanted to be flight attendant -- but I grew up and while wearing the high heels and ridiculous outfits no longer appeals, my love of traveling abounds.

To celebrate my freedom from my parents and siblings (following high school graduation), I flew to England for the summer. I had spent the spring planning a car trip with a close English friend and the two of us had decided to drive from London to the southern coast of France. After months of exams, a friend of ours decided to open his house to twenty friends for two weeks and we couldn't resist the offer. We drove south across France for two days, got lost near his house and spent a glorious seven days swimming and eating. We went to Monaco for dinner and ventured to the Mediterranean Sea for a day. There were olive trees and lavender, symbols of the Mediterranean, throughout the gardens. But it was the following week, our journey back to London, that was the highlight. My friend and I wanted to tour and not just roast in the sun, so we decided to return to London over the course of a week, stopping in various cities for one night each. We traveled during the months when carnivals abound in France and we were able to see theater in the streets and carnivals in each town we visited.

We had spent the first half of July traveling and our trip climaxed in the Parisian Jewish quarter for Shabbat, which also coincided with Bastille Day. After more than two weeks of eating vegetarian food, the shwarma we found in a kosher restaurant was heavenly. We found a shul between the storefronts, apartment buildings and restaurants. We watched the parades and the celebrations and visited all the free museums in the city. At night there were fireworks above the Eiffel Tower and concerts celebrating the event.

We had watched the scenery change throughout our travels - from wiping smushed bugs off the windshield in the north to ogling at the lavender along the highways in the south. We noticed the change in culture and food -- both of which we liked better in the south. The southern architecture reminded me of Jerusalem stones and the atmosphere was that of the Mediterranean -- where people enjoy great food, terrific wine and sit for hours.

It was a fantastic way to start the summer and the beginning of our adult lives. I was off to Israel for the year shortly after and my friend was bound for a prestigious English university but for those three weeks, our only care in the world was whether I could navigate us into the next city.

[Posted 12/5/02]