And on a lighter note
After all the nightmare stories about visas and Polish passports... Which custom of your adopted country is a step too far for you? You know, something all the natives do, and - after learning the language, eating the food, dancing the dances and all that crap - you say "no way"? I will start with my own private limit of endurance: the Dutch custom of spending the summer holidays camping in a tent somewhere. Call me a Jewish Princess (from a distance, if you're clever!), but I seem to recall hotels being invented at some point in history. Sharing toilets, showers and other facilities with hoards of other people who are disturbed enough to think that camping is still fun beyond the age of 8, is too scary to contemplate. My sister in law was telling me the other day how they are going camping in France with the kids this summer, and I just looked at her and said "why on earth would you want to do this?". I read a paragraph in yesterday's Observer magazine that illustrates my thoughts on the subject better than I ever could. It is written by the restaurant reviewer, a very funny and articulate guy called Jay Rayner, and relates to (food at the) Glastonbury Festival. Read and nod in agreement: "As a Jew, I believe I am excused from ever having to go camping. My forebears spent so long under canvas, after being chased off the Russian Steppes by antsy Cossacks, that our camping debt was paid in full. As far as I'm concerned something must have gone terribly wrong if I am now forced to sleep in a building with cloth walls. For this reason you will not find me in a muddy field in Glastonbury next weekend. I don't do fields." So what's yours?
