EUROPE: SAVE YOUR KISSES FOR ME

 

Aunt Joni and me in the countryside of France, September 1976

In the late summer of 1976, before moving to Tel Aviv, my parents bought a green Fiat 128 in Amsterdam and we drove it through Europe. We went to London first, then Amsterdam where we bought the car, then on to The Hague, Brussels, Luxemburg, and Paris. And to my delight, my mother's twenty-year-old sister, Joni, had come along and was going to live with us for a while to gain travel experience and adventure, which was a sure guarantee when you joined our family. 

It was the same year that the United Kingdom won the Eurovision Song Contest with: Save Your Kisses For Me by Brotherhood of Man. I now imagine us driving through the French countryside with the lyrics: Save all your kisses for me, bye, bye, baby, bye, bye. So long, honey, so long...coming out of the car radio. It was also the year that Jimmy Carter became president of the United States, Apple Computers was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Mao Zedong died, and the movie Rocky was in theaters. 

Mom supplied plenty of wine, cheese, French bread, and grapes on our trip, to complete the European experience, as we got off the main roads and drove through little towns. I do not have clear memories of this trip, but scattered flashbacks, and the feeling of happiness. I remember feeding the pigeons in London, staying in a 16th-century hotel in Brussels, and eating mussels, the national dish of Belgium, which I then declared as one of my favorite foods. In Paris, I remember we stayed in a hotel next to the Arc de Triomphe, we went to the Louvre Museum and had dinner in a quaint restaurant next to two young men who had a fox terrier puppy. I was very impressed that the restaurant allowed dogs, and the men were kind enough to pass the puppy around for us to hold. From my six-year-old point of view, pigeons, hotels, food, museums, and puppies are what stood out for me. 

Mom, Joni, and I in Paris 1976

At the end of our vacation, we left our little green Fiat at the US Embassy in Paris to be shipped to Israel, then boarded a plane to Tel Aviv. Security at the airport, for those headed to Israel, was extremely tight and everyone was frisked, including me. This was the same summer as Operation Thunderbolt when Israeli commandoes rescued 103 hostages being held by hijackers of an Air France plane at Uganda Entebbe Airport. One Israeli soldier was killed, the brother of now Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Our flight to Tel Aviv stopped in Rome, then took off again and flew down the Mediterranean Sea. It was nighttime and Joni looked out the plane window and said, "Oh, look! I see lights!" and we all peered out and saw the coastline of our new city.