While most of this year will be spent waking up in Warsaw (see what I did there?!), there are some minor benefits of not being a 9-hour flight away from everything…

With that in mind, in late December I flew over to Israel to meet up with some friends from home, celebrated the wedding of one of our oldest friends and followed that up by bringing in 2017 from Copenhagen. What a whirlwind 10 days!

As luck would have it, Tel Aviv is only 4 hours away from Warsaw (not the almost 24 hours that is Sydney) and so as soon as I knew I was coming here for my year of service I started looking up flights and dates so I could join Jodi and Amir for their wedding. While my time in town was short, I managed to squeeze in a ton of stuff during the few days I was around:

  • Met up with mum and dad who were also in town for the wedding (as well as an education program);
  • Caught up with friends I haven’t seen in a few years ; and
  • Ticked off multiple items on my Israeli-food bucket list (who can say no to a shwarma, sufganiyot during Chanukah or lollies from the shuk!).
Happiness in a million bites

I even had time to recover from what was an epic night of dancing and celebration, spending the day after the wedding hobbling around on my poor feet and the next few nights stretching out aching muscles before bed. I’ve never been to an Israeli wedding before, but what a party!

Soon after it was onward to Copenhagen. I was very fortunate to visit many European cities during my last extended stay in Europe, but I never made it further than the airport in Copenhagen. Being around New Years Eve – as well as the weekend – many of the museums and sites we wanted to see were closed or had limited opening hours, but we made it work.

There’s not much I love more than a good sunset – but fireworks come pretty close. Coming from Sydney – with the best backdrop in the world for New Years Eve celebrations – I’m a bit spoilt when it comes to fireworks, but nothing could have prepared me for a Danish New Years Eve firework show. Fireworks LITERALLY going off in the street next to us – so close that we kept having to take steps back to get away from the sparks.

Not such a pretty display to be fair, but definitely one of the coolest (and hair-raising) New Years Eve memories I’ll have!

Isn’t there some sort of saying along the lines of the way in which you spend the first days of a new year sets the tone for the rest of it? I’m either quoting The O.C or making things up at this point, but here’s to a year as exciting and full of adventure as my short break was!