Introduction
Preparation for a road-trip in Eastern Europe began for me earnestly in February, when I managed to score some free flight tickets from a promotion by El Al, the notorious flag-carrier of the State of Israel. The aforementioned promotion distributed flight tickets to a variety of destinations, which mainly included spots reachable to El Al via Boeing 737 planes; anything requiring a bigger plane was off-limits. It was then, when I decided I needed to visit Zürich again, aIt was then that I decided I needed to visit Zürich again—a city that, during my previous visit in 2021, became my favorite European city. Zürich, however, tends to be problematic in a couple of areas, chief among them being its cost. Everything, from a tram ticket to lunch, was butt-clinchingly expensive, especially when compared to other, equivalent cities, European or otherwise. I decided to go for it anyway, given that I’m “used to” horrifying costs of living as a consequence to living in Isra-HELL. This trip was going to be notable as it would be my first time traveling out of the country without my family. Due to this, I picked a city in which I knew what to expect, to make the transition easier.
Enter Yoav
Yoav is, let’s just say, quite an interesting person to bring on a trip. In the past half a year, perhaps as a consequence of the boredom brought on by the October 7th War and ensuing war-related existential dread, he got pretty serious about studying the German language on popular language learning service Duolingo. This fairly basic knowledge of German allowed Yoav to get into the works of Berlin-based rapper Ski Aggu, with him knowing the lyrics to Aggu’s songs by heart. After asking him about the possibility of him joining the trip, he agreed on the condition of us visiting Berlin and clubbing. In the time following his purchase of a ticket for the Zürich flight, we worked out a basic itinerary of cities to visit, and the transportation methods to reach said cities:
- A flight from Tel Aviv to Zürich
- A train from Zürich to München
- A rental car pickup in München
- ??????
- A rental car drop-off in Berlin
- A flight from Berlin back to Zürich
- A flight home from Zürich to Tel Aviv
In the following time period, the circumstances of the trip changed. The war, barring the occasional Hostage Family-led protest, fizzled out of the Israeli consciousness, I got accepted to the Hebrew University for a Computer Science degree, and my actual first flight without my family took place in May, also to Germany, as part of a delegation from the Open University Model United Nations Society. Meanwhile, Yoav grew more and more pessimistic with concern to life in Israel, wanting to immigrate to Germany ASAP. Yoav also managed to get an early discharge from the military, and he came up with plans to study in Europe to become a data scientist. In short, we were both extremely excited for the trip.