Travel

Hitchhiking now and then

August 20, 2015

Exactly 30 years ago today, I was in a car with a group of German strangers on my way to a standing room only soccer match just outside what was then West Berlin. As part of a two-month trek across Europe, I was feeling young and adventurous when I decided to try hitchhiking. Getting to […]

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Tragedy in Nepal Brings Back Trekking Memories

October 31, 2014

The tragedy in Nepal two weeks ago, where 40 trekkers, including four Israelis, lost their lives in a sudden freak snowstorm along the well-traveled Annapurna route brought back a flood of memories from my own trip to the Nepalese Himalayas. In 2011, my family and I went hiking in the same Annapurna region, and, although […]

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Will the World’s Largest Seder be Canceled this Year?

March 25, 2014

The sanctions and now full strike at Israel’s Foreign Ministry have already wreaked havoc with the country’s diplomacy. First, a planned trip by the Pope to the Holy Land appears to be on the verge of cancellation. Next, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s historic visit to Latin America also looks likely to fall to the editing […]

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Waze in the South Pacific

July 24, 2013

That Waze is one of Israel’s biggest hi-tech success stories of the last year – perhaps even the last decade – is old news by now. The crowd-sourced mapping and traffic app has saved countless hours and hassles by travelers around the world. But just how far has Waze penetrated? Would it work on, say, a small […]

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Glass Half Full – Better Place Transforms Station Error into Customer Service Case Study

February 20, 2013

Hey Better Place electric car aficionados: ever wonder what would happen if you pulled into one of the company’s fully automated battery swap stations and it didn’t work? Well, I’m here to tell the tale. It’s a classic glass half empty/half full situation. Half empty: the station broke down and we weren’t able to get […]

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Waze to go, GPS

January 9, 2013

I wrote last week on Israelity about some innovative ways that data from the Israeli traffic and mapping app Waze is being used by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Waze was in the news again this morning, but for less positive reason. When the intense rains that have hit Israel over the past three days flooded […]

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Buses Here and There

December 7, 2012

I grew up in a small suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area with no public transportation. This was tough because I have always been fascinated (my family would say obsessed) by buses, trams, trains and the like. San Francisco had pretty much everything a transit head like me could desire, including electric trolleys, streetcars […]

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Politics and Electric Cars

November 21, 2012

Does electric car company Better Place discriminate against driving across the Green Line? Now, certainly, Better Place will be happy to sell you a shiny new 100% gasoline-free Renault Fluence, no matter where you live. But in our brief time driving our own Better Place car, OSCAR – the company’s personable if flaky GPS – […]

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Stepping Out on the New Jerusalem Bike Trail

October 5, 2012

I’ve never been a cyclist, but after seeing some of the incredible bike trail ringing Jerusalem, I think I’m might just have to take up the sport. Every year, during the intermediary days of the Sukkot holiday, the city sponsors the Tzada’at Yerushalayim – translated as roughly “Jerusalem Steps”(or perhaps better “Jerusalem March”  – a series […]

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A Date in Jerusalem

August 9, 2012

Every year on our wedding anniversary, my wife Jody and I try to get away to a bed and breakfast/spa, somewhere in Israel for a night or two. This year, however, the prices were even higher than usual – the cost for a vacation in Israel was double that for a flight and hotel in […]

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