No, not the kind of man I became on that drunken night of my 16th birthday.  A JEWISH man!  As some of you may know, I have a bit of a rebellious streak, and so when it came time for all the good little Jewish boys to go to Hebrew school I flat out refused. Thus, I never had a Bar Mitzvah when I was thirteen. Frankly, I never really regretted it. Other than at a few awkward High Holiday moments when it came up in synagogue, or seeing the heartbreak on my in-laws faces when they found out, it hadn’t been much of a factor.

I wasn’t really expecting my time here in the Holy Land to change any of that, either. I knew it would be a great place to find out a bit more about my heritage, and possibly connect on some deeper level, but nothing as drastic as a “mid-life-crisis-bar-mitzvah”. Until I got here. And then it didn’t seem so out of the question anymore. I was discussing the idea of “wouldn’t it be neat if…” with some friends we met here, Katie and Naomi, when Naomi said, “Well, I happen to know the perfect Rabbi!”. Since we were leaving for Jerusalem the next day I figured what the heck, let’s give him a call and see what the situation is.

Rabbi Ezra turned out to be just the man for the job. A hippie Jew about our age, he made me feel very comfortable with the entire process, and assured me that whatever my reasons might be they were mine and mine only, and it was completely my decision. We talked a few times on the phone and then it was time to meet the next day at the flagpole in front of the Kotel (i.e. The Western Wall – the holiest site in Judaism). It was also fitting for this to take place here since my brother was Bar Mitzvah’d in the exact same spot 27 years ago.

I won’t say that it was an intimate affair. The Western Wall is an absolutely crazy place, and there were several Bar Mitzvahs going on at the same time as mine. In fact, we combined mine mid-ceremony with the one next to us so we would have enough men to make a minyan (ten are required). And so I said my prayers, and carried the Torah, and did the blessings. It was such an amazing place for this to happen. Almost as amazing was the lunch we all celebrated with after. I’ll let the video speak for itself. This is just one of those things that is especially hard to put into words. For my gifts, please send checks payable to “Joy Zimmerman Walker”. It all ends up there anyway.

While most Jews tend to go FROM Germany TO Israel, we decided to do it in reverse. Why Germany? No good reason. We had an extra week before we needed to be in London and it seemed as good a place as any. Granted, we bought the plane ticket before realizing it’s absolutely freezing this time of year. Our first destination was Cologne. Near the French border, Cologne is a little more laid back than your typical German city. Very charming and picturesque, and not very crowded at the moment which is a welcome change from Jerusalem.

The main thing to do while in Cologne is visit The Dom, an enormous and imposing gothic cathedral in the center of the city. It truly is impressive, and we’ve seen our share of cathedrals by now. We decided to be troopers and climb the 510 stairs to the top of the spire. As usual, I huffed and puffed my way up and couldn’t stop telling myself how awesome I was for making it all the way, only to see a bunch of old ladies at the top. This is a common theme of our trip and we still don’t understand it.

The rest of our time in Cologne was spent wandering around the old streets and shops. We took the cable car from the Zoo across the Rhine, walked through all of the parks with their many colored leaves changing for fall, had Italian, Mexican, and Indian food but no German food, and went to the Media Center, a lifelong dream of mine. Well, not really, but it looked cool on the map and I was determined to get there. We probably would have stayed a day longer, but as usual our hotel had an awful internet connection so we decided to hop a train to Hamburg.

The four hour train ride was relatively uneventful, and upon arriving at our hotel we were met with yet another bad internet connection. So bad that we had no choice but to switch hotels, which really puts us in a bad mood. But we made the switch, just in time for me to start in on the work day, and then before I knew it dinner time was upon us. Obviously while in Hamburg one must have a hamburger. In reality, hamburgers have nothing to do with this place, but I’ll cling to any excuse to eat one. Now it is morning, another dark grey sky with constant threat of rain, but we have been so amazingly lucky this trip with weather that there is no room to complain. We shall wander around as Wandering Walkers do, knowing that this is one of the final cities we will wander this trip.

We’ve been in a lot of places that are traditionally considered expensive: Tokyo, Sydney, Paris.. But nothing had prepared us for how astronomically out of whack prices in London have become. The main thing fueling this is the strength of the Pound, which it now costs $2.08 to buy. The problem is that everything is priced as if it were in dollars. So our simple Thai lunch special for 8.95 – exactly what it would cost in dollars in San Francisco, itself a tremendously expensive city – is in reality more than double that at almost $20. This applies to EVERYTHING – take what something normally costs and more than double it.

Even a one way ticket on the Underground costs 4 Pounds – that’s over 8 bucks per person just to go a few stops down the street. I guess it all becomes what you’re used to. When we were in Vietnam we would yell and scream at the little old lady selling water that she wasn’t going to rip us off an extra 3 cents for her overpriced 10 cent water. We know a liter of water is supposed to cost 7 cents lady, and we’re not paying a penny more. Here we pay six dollars for half a liter and all seems right with the world.

But if you happen to be making pounds as your salary, life is grand. People here have more money than they know what to do with. Every single car is either a Mercedes, BMW, Rolls Royce, or Bentley. It’s like the luxury car industry farted out a huge cloud of its finest works and they all settled squarely over London. And the snotty British accent only adds to the effect. A trip to Southeast Asia would basically cost nothing. The finest hotels in Laos are no more than $100/night. Here, there is no hotel that would be decent enough to call home for a few days for under $400/night. And that’s for the basics. There were many rooms in the $5,000 range when we were looking to book our place here.

The one upside is that this is a great place to come back home from. We kept saying while in Cambodia that we could never imagine going back to San Francisco and paying the sorts of prices that we’re used to. That once you pay $3 for an amazing dinner you’ll never be able to pay SF prices again. But coming back from London, I feel like our lives are going to be a bargain. Heck, it’s practically free compared to here.

And so our 6 weeks in Arizona comes to an end. That’s right, six weeks in Arizona. Why six weeks in Arizona? Well my whole family (Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister-In-Law, Niece) are here. Also Joy’s maternal grandparents are here. Believe me, if it weren’t for that we would have been out in 3 days tops. I’m going to come right out and say it (as I often have in this blog) – I hate Arizona. Specifically Scottsdale, where we were staying. It’s a generic sea of strip malls and chain restaurants mixed with excesses of space and traffic. I’m constantly singing the theme song to Weeds over and over in my head.

We stayed in a beautiful vacation condo that was walking distance from Kierland (think upper scale strip mall, with upper scale chain restaurants). We picked it in large part because of the amazing pool and outdoor grounds. Unfortunately for our entire stay it was too cold to use any of it. We did walk (a completely unheard of concept in Scottsdale) across the street a few times, but after awhile it just wasn’t worth the strange looks we would get. I think people felt bad for us thinking we were too poor to afford a car?

Despite our dislike for all things Scottsdale, the visit really was fantastical. We were able to spend true quality time with my family. We ate many Walker Style meals (dinners with huge portions starting at 5:00pm), did the occasional “Art Walk”, but most importantly spent time with my niece Ari. I took her to her swim lesson (actually getting in the pool with her), read her countless Dora stories, and watched her constantly miss her mouth in her 2-year-old attempt to eat. We even went to the ballet with Joy’s grandparents (thanks to my best friend from college Heather who is now the ballet’s marketing director). We finished off the stay with dinner with my business partner Samantha and her boyfriend (now live-in) Rob who came out from San Francisco to visit family of their own. Sorry for the “here’s what we did” style post, but there just wasn’t much world insight to share...

As an added bonus, however, we had the pleasure of driving our car back up to San Francisco.  My brother had been using it while we were away and we needed to get it home.  So we packed up all our stuff and drove it straight for 12 hours.  Got in late, spent the entire next day running errands - the day before Xmas no less, awesome day to be running around to Target, Sears, Home Depot, Sleep Train (bought a new Tempurpedic mattress!), etc.  And now, today woke up at 5am and hopped on a 5 hour flight to Maui.  The Wandering Walkers never rest!

Slightly undercooked. Still good.