Bumming Around

November 17, 2001-By Bus & Foot
(photos:Glenelg, Tram)

The people in Adelaide are so helpful. Several times we’ve asked for directions & they’ve gone out of their way to guide us. The owner of a Chinese restaurant (great chili chicken) almost put us in her car to go to a grocery store. It had started raining & the woman at our hotel desk offered to take my hat up to the room so I wouldn’t have to turn back. We asked a bus driver about which bus to take & where to wait for it & he got off his bus to point the way. Then he got off the bus to help a family with a stroller. I can’t say enough for the hospitality.

We went to the library to send you all email. It’s open to the public & is free. What we weren’t told was that out of a bank of 20 computer stations, there are only two they reserve for email & Internet usage. They were fully booked for the remainder of the day. We headed over one street to Rundle Mall where there was an Internet café with super fast machines. We spied a Borders store & couldn’t resist. We bought two bat mitzvah gifts for kids in the congregation. The price on the flyleaf of the books said, “$19.95.” The charge in Australia was $A 43. Even with the exchange rate it cost us $US 21.50. The shipping is a killer on imported printed material & there’s only one distributor in all of Australia. Even Borders has to buy through them & can’t ship direct.

Our next stop was the South Australian Museum. Adelaide is in the state of South Australia. We only got to do one floor. It was about the indigenous people & was a mixture of displays & interactive video. Some of the displays included movie footage shot in the early 1900’s. It was fascinating to see the people who were still living the tribal life going about their days hunting, gathering, cooking, etc. There were also videos of modern aborigines who told about the lives they were leading & the memories they had of the old days. One in particular reminded me of a video from the Holocaust Museum in Wash., D.C. The man told of how he & his siblings returned to the area where his family used to live. Elders joined them and identified the burial sites & skeletal remains of people who’d been friends. Some of the bones were of the narrator’s grandfather.

November 18, 2001-Dining & Whining

We had a lovely dinner at the top of a hotel last night overlooking the city at sunset. Havdallah (the service marking the end of the Sabbath & the separation between the Sabbath & the rest of the week) was led by Rabbi Aviva Bass (not the Rabbi Aviva mentioned in a previous email). She has a lovely voice & led us in an exquisite rendition of the Debbie Friedman melodies. There was an addition of a song about Miriam the prophetess to compliment the traditional song about Eliahu Hanavi (Elijah the Prophet). She also led us in a directed meditation. David said that’s a very Reconstructionist & Jewish Renewal thing to do. They’re branches of Judaism along with the more commonly known Reform, Conservative, & Orthodox. I reverted to tai chi during the meditation & did chi gung breathing. It worked. I managed to get my chi going. I really think I get more from a 10-20 minute nap than I do from meditation or the chi gung breathing.

We sat with the couple from our congregation who are trying to get pregnant. We were at a large round table for ten. At first no one sat with us. Most had been exposed to really cute 16 month old. When he wants something, he lets out a piercing scream that makes my ears ache. I’ve literally had to turn my head away from the noise or cover the ear nearest to him. The shriek has its effect on his parents. They immediately do whatever they can to stop it whether it’s feeding him, picking him up, or any other of the myriad & varied desires in the mind of a toddler. At last we were joined by five brave souls. Three were teen-agers who were with the youth group & the other two were the brother & sister-in-law of people in Akron who gets these emails. The man is president of his congregation in Adelaide & a professor at the university here. He teaches marketing & is an oenophile. He majored in horticulture at Ohio State & got his PhD. at Cornell, I believe. He was most helpful in planning our tour of the Barossa Valley & its vineyards after the conference.

During dinner, I was told some more about the rabbi from New Zealand who did the Maori chant. Before Hannukah one year, he went to some Maori leaders in the community & asked if it would be wrong to ask them to write a Maori “akkah” (epic story recited in a chant with hand motions) about the Hannukah story. They agreed so now there’s a Maori version of Hannukah. I’d love to hear it. I also learned that the Maoris are close relatives of Hawaiians. The language is very similar. For example, the Maori word for hello is “aroha.” It’s kind of like when Asians can’t pronounce the “L” sound. Speaking of Hawaii, when I told you about the sand on the beach here squeaking, many of you mentioned that the sand on Waikiki Beach also squeaks. I found out that this is because Waikiki Beach is not natural. It was constructed from sand imported from Gold Coast, Australia.

By the Sea

We took off for Glenelg this afternoon. It’s a seaside resort accessible by tram. The tram, built in 1929, is still used as an integral part of the transportation system of Adelaide. It took 30 minutes & many stops to get to Glenelg. Typical of what I’ve been telling you about the people in Adelaide, an older woman got on board & asked directions about getting from the stop where she would be getting off to the place she needed to go. The driver & ticket taker must not have been sure that she understood, because instead of letting her get off at the regular tram stop, they stopped the tram at the door of the place she wanted to go.

When we got to Glenelg, it was so cold & blustery we just ate lunch & headed back to town. We found a café with an enclosed, heated eating room that overlooked the Indian Ocean. We sat in our warm cocoon & watched a never-ending parade of dogs & their people. It was a contest of wills as to who would win the game of dogs vs. seagulls. I think the all around losers were the people who were trying to rein in their leashed animals. Our waitress told us that one of the diners on the outdoor patio was with her god dog. I was then formally introduced to Cooper, the Rhodesian ridgeback & got in a few good hugs before being overwhelmed by his very wet greeting of many licks.

I got brave when ordering & decided to try white bait. If you recall, that’s a tiny fish fried & served whole. They were smaller than my little finger & tasty. The bones, if any, were undetectable, but the coating didn’t always completely cover their eyes. I ended up asking for tomato sauce (ketchup) to mask it. They had a fishier taste than I like, but were not bad. I might even consider ordering them again. I also got an order of grilled veggies that were fine until a fly decided to commit suicide in them.

Some History

When we arrived back in Adelaide, we hopped onto a free shuttle bus they have roaming around the city. By now, it was drizzling & we decided to head for an indoor venue. Ayres House was en route, so we got off at that stop & headed for shelter. Sir Ayres is the man for whom Ayres Rock was named. He arrived in Adelaide at age 18 & by 19 he was able to buy a few shares in a copper mine in Burra where he ultimately made his fortune. He & his family lived in the house from 1855-1896. The house went through many additions as his family grew & as his position demanded he have grander quarters. He ended up being the premier of the state of South Australia & worked very hard for the formation of a union of Australian states. He died before that was a reality &, since none of his eight children wanted the house, it passed into the public domain. Eventually, it became a part of the land trust & was lovingly restored.

We had to rush back to the hotel so we could join the rabbis were going to Part II of the conference. The Moetzah (the council), as the rabbinic group is called here, was meeting in a Germanic town in the Adelaide Hills region called Hahndorf. It’s only 18 miles from Adelaide & a small bus was rented to transport us. As one of the rabbis got on, he asked if this was the bus to Cocksville. He then explained that “hahn” in German means rooster or cock & “dorf” means village. We agreed it was an appropriate name.

Shacking Up

The drive was a slow climb through green hillside. We quickly left the city & were in farmland. It looked like Holmes County, Ohio, without buggies or Amish. As we turned into the resort we did see a petting zoo with kangaroos. I’m assuming they aren’t the roos featured on the menu here. The place is more like an old resort in the Catskills Mts. of New York. We used to call them bungalow colonies in the 1950’s & these housekeeping cottages were most likely built around that time. Believe me, it’s nothing like the famous Catskill hotels of yore where food was king & entertainers started their careers. This is pretty basic, but is nowhere near as bad as Alice Springs. David’s not happy. He really liked our hotel in Adelaide. He’ll have to be patient. We go back there the 20th & 21st on our own.

For those of you who’ve been impatiently awaiting the vote on the name change for AANZUJP, the tally is in. The new name is UPJ:ANZA. It stands for Union of Progressive Jews: Australia, New Zealand, Asia. If I had a vote, it would have been for a simple JUP or PUJ.

Toby