STANDING ALONE IN THE HOLOCAUST TOWER, by some uncertain primal instinct, I drew my arms around myself and shuddered. I don’t remember thinking about it. It was cold, as cold as Berlin gets in November, and without a jacket or scarf or direct sunlight I hugged myself immediately, shrinking up. The Holocaust Tower is an enormous and empty stone triangle that shoots up from an … Continue reading In Berlin: A Tale of Two Museums
I HUGGED V GOODBYE under the scolding gaze of an unpleasant pear of a woman in Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. The Pear had advised her, after she had arrived three hours early and been forced to empty her entire bag and comply with a full-body search for two of those hours, that her flight was “boarding in 20 minutes, so you’d better hurry. No … Continue reading The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Traveller
IN AUGUST 2007, I rode a bus for 17 hours from Toronto to Chicago to cover the Lollapalooza music festival. I was 18 and had just graduated high school, and that I was able to somehow convince my editor, not to mention my parents, that I was capable of independently making this cross-national trip to cover one of the world’s largest music festivals without a … Continue reading Chicago, IL: Reflections on My First Solo Travel, Wherein I Feign Maturity and Venture to Lollapalooza Alone
A Long Way Back 