The French Connection

Partie Une

How do you get 35+ Lithuanian campers aged 5 to 24 from Vilnius to Paris?
Stick them on a bus with five cooks, two counselors, and two Polish Bus drivers (from hence forth the Kurczaki)
I found out that Lithuanian kids had never heard the joke, "Why did the chicken cross the road? '. . . they were the first people I ever met who got it . . . they didn't tell me what they got though.
Two days on a bus can be tough, kids get nervous, bus drivers need to sleep . . .
We stopped of in Berlin for the day on the way.


Holocaust Monument

Baruch -the youngest camper.


The Reichstag



The Brandenburg Tor


Humboldt -the Rebbe's University









France

Arriving in Troyes, the home town of Rashi and our camp grounds, we
began to settle in -to return to our comfortable habits . . .

The counselors ate and slept, the campers played soccer, and the Kurczaki got drunk and began roaming the camp grounds singing in Polish.















(From Wikipedia) Rashi died on the 29th of Tammuz
4865 (July 13, 1105) at the age of 65. He was buried in Troyes. The
approximate location of the cemetery in which he was buried was
recorded in Seder Hadoros, but over time the location of the cemetery was forgotten. A number of years ago, a Sorbonne
professor discovered an ancient map depicting the site of the cemetery,
which now lay under an open square in the city of Troyes. After this
discovery, French Jews erected a large monument in the center of the
square . . .

As of note it also says on Wiki:
Jewish historian Rabbi Berel Wein has estimated that 80% of today's Jews of European origin descend from Rashi







Rashi's shul















Paris

Much to my chagrin, camp schedule kept me rather busy during our 'Grand Trip' to Paris, preventing me from getting a really good look at the city . . . but instead only the most superficial and touristy parts -The Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and the outside of the Louvre (yes, the outside!)
I suppose I'll just have to wait until next time . . .









Tefillin 1000 feet up











It's 1,706 km to Vilnius . . . Start walking








In the Pletzel














Here ends The French Connection . . . part One.
Stay tuned for next time . . .