Heading for Parts Unknown - Well, Almost

My Alitalia itinerary included a plane change in Milan. As I left Milan on my way home to Boston, the boarding gates in the area to which I was directed by the electronic Departures board gave four choices to the intrepid traveler:

Boston, Casablanca, Minsk and Caracas

Boston certainly seemed like the "safe" choice - the others, places of story and somehow unreal.

You know what it's like when you hear someone you consider very ladylike - say Julie Andrews - swear like a sailor? Well, that's the same kind of disjuncture I experienced.

Casablanca? On a digital display board gate sign over a crowd of warm folks waiting with as much patience as they could muster? No. Of course, not. Where was Bogart? Where was the black and white? Why was this in color? And, so modern?

I must admit that if I were to have wandered off to parts unknown rather than coming home, it would have been to Minsk - on the hopes that it was a little cooler than the other locations. But, I really don't know where Minsk is (Poland? Russia? Pale of Settlement? Some country swallowed by the Soviet Union and then ejected into its own state 90 years later?) except in Jewish jokes and stories. Maybe it was part of the southeastern Europe heat wave where the temperatures soared over 100 for days on end and fires broke out in the countryside. It sounded cold. I imagined fur coats, fur hats and sleighs through snow - heading for homes warmed by roaring fires.

I had my choices. The road diverged in the wood with four paths.

I didn't choose the path less taken. Nope. I didn't head for parts unknown. I headed home.

Rabbi Heath