Haverilag sorozatunkban Dan angol nyelvű vendégposztját olvashatjátok arról, hogy mért jöttek Ausztráliából Izraelbe, milyen volt egy kibucban élni és miért döntöttek a távozás mellett.
Why we came to Israel?
For as long as 5 years my wife and I had talked about moving to Byron Bay, a small beach town in Northern New South Wales. It was whilst we were there one holiday that we decided it wasn’t for us. Something didn’t feel right, but at the same time we were really disappointed. We were realizing our dream plans weren’t our dreams anymore. And there, on the trip, discussing what our next dream plan would be it came to us out of the blue. What about moving to a Kibbutz. I don’t know why, or from where the idea came. Neither of us were particularly Zionistic, nor religious. And neither of us had spent any time on a Kibbutz before. But no sooner had we muttered the words, than we were sure this was the right thing. 14 months later, having packed up our house, quit our jobs, taken our kids out of day care, said goodbye to our family and friends, and found new homes for our 2 amazing dogs, we landed at Ben Gurion.
Arriving at Kibbutz
Arriving was a shock to our system. A big shock. We had come from a big suburban Australian home, with all the mod cons, in a nice clean suburb. We arrived in 48m2 of a run down apartment, which looked like it was built 50 years ago and forgotten about. Very few cons, let alone mod cons, worn out couch and beds, mouldy bathroom. My wife cried when she saw where we would be living. She couldn’t help but think we had picked up our kids from a beautiful Australian life, and brought them to an Israeli dump in the middle of nowhere.
I think it took less than 48 hours for the shock of our new housing to wear off, and the beauty of Ein Gev to capture us.