A Jewish woman flees from a designer, precisely to Germany, and precisely by train

What brings a 61-year-old woman to go alone on a train trip in Germany?
the sadness

It’s not that I’m sad all day, sometimes I smile, those who look from the side can see joy in me. I try to maintain an early retirement routine as much as possible: take walks, exercise, read, study, travel, meet family and friends. Trying to be normal.

But the new normal is also a big sadness inside. A big stone that needs to be removed every time you want to do something is not to check at 6:00 in the morning what has been allowed to be published and what hasn’t yet.

***

It’s not depression. I’m from the old generation, we believe less in depressions. We have “moods”. We leave depression to pathology and not to everyday life.

Depression for us is not an existential position, we believe in the right to be sad, or happy, or thoughtful, we have moods and they are fine, they are not a disease that needs treatment. We are allowed to be sad and do not have to drive away the sadness.

But what do you do when the sadness has no end and you can’t bear it anymore? This happens mostly on holidays, just before the holiday comes. The anguish occupies a large place in my chest and I think where will I gather the strength for this holiday, and who even wants to celebrate?

But then came the holiday and its joy. The stone moves a little to the side, it becomes lighter and you can even be happy.

Towards Memorial Day this stone turned into a thick and dense liquid threatening to slide out of me and flood me. I felt that I couldn’t bear this sadness, that I no longer had room for this touchstone.

I decided to run away from here. Not forever, just for a while until sadness passes.

It is strange that a Jewish woman runs away from a designer, specifically to Germany, and specifically by train.

***

I have friends in Germany. I know Germany well since I was sent to represent Mapam in the delegation to the youth conference of the European Socialist International. There used to be a party in Israel called Mapam and there were also social democratic parties, Zionism was an attempt at social justice and the establishment of fenced kibbutzim. Nir Oz for example. I lived in Dan. Once these kibbutzim existed. Maybe they still will be.

I have a left-wing girlfriend and boyfriend in Germany, they define themselves as social democrats, or socialists. There awareness of the working class and respect for the working person is something you grow up with and don’t discover by chance when you grow up.

I have been in Germany several times with male and female students in exchange of youth delegations. I was with the family. During the Second Lebanon War, when my house was filled with a family from the north, the friend from Germany vacated her summer house in the forest for us and the children could feel some great freedom and space.

Strange, but I feel a bit at home in Germany. I know the places. I have experiences with them. I have girlfriends and boyfriends.

***

In Germany there is also a ticket for all public transport in the country for 50 euros per month. Yes, there is a government there that believes in accessible, clean, innovative public transportation for 50 euros per month. The fact that they believe in trains, we Jews already know, but it turns out that they also believe in buses, elevated and underground trains, light trains… and in general the human right to move from place to place easily and efficiently.

Although the subscription is for regional trains only, for example the journey from Munich to Frankfurt takes 5 hours and 48 minutes, you have to change 3 trains, but I have all the time and on the way I stopped to take a walk in the beautiful Würzburg on the river Main. Me, one small, rolling suitcase, a backpack and a neck pillow went to Germany for a train trip with an unknown route.

I have a friend who claims that a person needs “anchors”, so I arranged for me to meet one friend and one friend. The boyfriend took me to see the German women’s soccer cup final. 50,000 people came to see this game which is a festival of men women and tef.

The friend left me with her for three nights, because she claimed that I needed to rest and talk. We talked for three days straight. She wanted to know everything about us: what happened on 7/10, where was the army, Shin Bet and Mossad, where was the government. I had no answers. When she asked which of the dead and kidnapped I knew, I had many answers. We talked about the extreme right in Europe , about nationality, immigration, the status of women and workers, family and friends, but in the end we always reached 7/10 all roads lead to Simchat Torah.

***

On Memorial Day I left her and set off. I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t want one. I downloaded songs of sadness, or as they call it here “songs of the beautiful Land of Israel”, because beautiful Israel is always sad. I got on and off trains on the way to nothing.

The 50 euro per month trains were full of adults with patterned “hiking” clothes and walking sticks as well as immigrants. On one of the trains to Frankfurt, a Ukrainian couple sat in front of me, cracking kernels happily, chattering with pleasure and taking pictures of the Main River with excitement. When they came down the whole environment was surrounded by kernel shells.

On another train along the Rhine River, a French immigrant from one of the colonies sat in front of me, who chatted happily and loudly with the family. It was her birthday and they sent her songs that the whole caravan heard.

On the way to the Alps, the seats were filled by a quartet of girls and a boy from Denmark. I didn’t understand what they were saying the whole time, but they were saying it out loud.

A particularly strange trip was when a mother and son immigrants from an Arab country, Syria I think based on the accent, sat next to me. I understood their whole conversation. At a certain point the mother took out headphones and started listening to a religious lecture. The imam spoke and spoke and spoke. I remembered the drive from work that the driver also put on headphones and the rabbi spoke in his ears the whole way.

The mother kept trying to feed the child. He told her he was hungry, but not for the donuts she was offering him. They went to the funeral of some relative.

I hid my Israeliness and my Jewishness. Even when they talked about me.

***

Germany no longer believes the exact times. The trains are always late and sometimes even disappear completely from the travel screen. It didn’t change anything for me, only the route between that was determined from moment to moment.

It’s not that I banished the sadness in Germany, it’s that the despair became more comfortable when the green and the rushing water sprouted from the train window.

On Memorial Day, I began to feel the intense longing, not for the country as a great ethereal entity, but longing for words, language, longing for family, friendships, friends.

I hid my Israeliness, even though Israeli flags were waved at me from mayors along the way, next to the flags of Ukraine, the European Union, the region and the country. Eurovision surprised me along the way, with the sympathy we received among the viewers. The sympathy of the spectators and the Israeli flags on the municipalities made it clear to me that there is a gap between the declared policy of the politicians and what the citizens of Europe really think.

***

The citizens of Europe are afraid. The immigrants fear the rising nationalism of the old locals, and the old locals fear the spreading Islamization.

I walked in neighborhoods that friends told me not to. I took a hotel room in a place they recommended not to take. I felt no fear there.

In general, fear is a deceptive feeling. We are afraid of what we see, and if we do not see, we are not afraid. In the Gaza Envelope of October 6, there was no fear.

I returned to Israel. It turns out that areas where I walked along the rivers are now flooded. There are dead and missing. I didn’t see the fear of the rivers in them either before they were flooded. I saw them walking along them leisurely. Every piece of land and its sadness.

***

I ran away and came back. I am neither strong nor strengthened, I only understand even more that I have no other country but my land is burning.