The Jerusalem Post Podcast - Travel Edition (New Orleans & Copenhagen)

from the latest on Caribbean cruises to kosher safaris pilgrimages to Jewish Eastern Europe and award-winning wines and international cuisine in sundrenched Tel Aviv sit back and enjoy the trip with the travel edition of the Jerusalem Post podcast welcome to the first ever travel edition of of the Jerusalem Post podcast I'm Mark Gordon and here's my travel buddy David Harris Mark thanks very much and a welcome from me as well over the coming weeks we'll bring you destinations worldwide and of course detailing Jewish locations Israeli tourism kosher travel and so much more on this first edition we take you to New Orleans for some kosher gumbo and we visit a newly reopened Museum in Copenhagen to get you in the mood for each destination we'll give you a quiz question and here's our first question which building in New Orleans is the world's largest still constructed room unobstructed by polls and we call them Danish pastries but what are they called in Denmark we'll give you the answers at the end of the [Music] show around 18 million people visit New Orleans each year most come for the music the food and the great Street atmosphere for the lowdown on The Big Easy and Jewish tour ISM in the city we spoke with professional guide Rooney bosin who owns the wandering crew tour [Music] company I've had a uh Onan show tour company for the last few years it's called the wandering crew so it's kind of based on the wandering jew obviously but the spelling in this case is crew k r e w and that is based on uh English spelling of or British spelling of uh the word crew and this is because the different marra parades that we have in New Orleans are all called Crews so you can belong to a crew it's spelled k re we so that is my play on that for the past 20s something years there's been a Jewish Crew called crew deju or crew duju which is spelled j i e x which is the New Orleans or French way of spelling it is you know how when you have uh two Jews and three opinions so they had some argument within crudu and now there's another one called crud de mishas how did you end up in Louisiana seven years ago I went to visit a friend of mine that had just moved from New Jersey to New Orleans and as soon as I got off the plane I felt like something was different and great compared to other places in the US I've been to it was everybody was warm and friendly and they had time to stop and talk to you and tell their stories and hear your stories it just gave me me a really really good feeling so I decided I would come back at some point to New Orleans in the few years that went by since and I had this idea that it had anyway from a long time ago being a tour guide and I decided there's no better place to do that than uh New Orleans there's one time in the year where visitor numbers are guaranteed to Peak and that of course is Mig would you say that's a good period to visit the city or a time to stay away it depends so marra is a very very busy week here's the thing if you are willing to be engaged only in Migra that is a great time to come to the city it's great weather the few days leading up to Mar day itself which means in French Fat Tuesday everybody's dressed up they're in good spirits but if you want to do something else like being a tour guide for example and I learned this the hard way you can't really do anything definitely not on the day of that I've never done and nobody can really do anything cuz like there's there's hundreds of parades official and non-official all over the city the day before that and even a few days before that so if you're the kind of person that wants to be engaged in it you like dressing up you like partying like talking to people you like basically being a free spirit that is the best time to come to New Orleans if you are not really into that or if you want to get away from the city uh that's probably not the best time but I can also tell you that Marty season is is a long season it's not just that Mar week and it's a great time to come to New Orleans if you want to go to more low-key parades and low-key events and the season always starts on January 6th which is 12th night as far as religion is concerned but also January 6th aside from it being 12th night happens to be the birthday of Jon of Arc and there is a Jon of Arc uh statue in New Orleans of her sitting it's all made of gold and she's sitting on the horse and the very first parade of the margar season because of this is the Jon of Arc parade somebody climbs up to the horse and puts some beads on her neck in New Orleans we don't call call her Jonah VAR because she sits on a horse everybody calls her Joanie on a pony tell us a little bit about the the Jewish tourism in the area there's several synagogues one of which is the uh oldest synagogue outside of those original 13 British colonies and that is a Toro synagogue it is connected to Toro synagogue in Newport Rhode Island which is the oldest synagogue in the US there are uh old buildings that uh are relevant to the Jewish history there's a beautiful yakova gam Holocaust Memorial that's been there since 2003 and the way it's built it's a bunch of different panels when you walk around you'll see various depictions of symbols of the Holocaust the Toro family from Newport Rhode Island so one of them was Judah Toro and he left the Massachusetts and he comes to New Orleans in uh 1801 which is a couple years before the Louisiana Purchase it wasn't even American yet it was Spanish and then French again and then American and he makes his money in uh real estate and uh shipping export import that kind of thing and he was a bachelor and towards the end of his life he kind of connected to somebody who was even more involved in Judaism and his name was garam kers and he gets a little bit more involved in the Jewish Community there and at some point in the in his will which is in the 1850s he States in his will that $50,000 of his uh estate will go to the use of uh the poor Jews of Jerusalem to be um utilized by Moses Monte Fury but what they end up doing with that money is they built the very first neighborhood outside of the Jerusalem City walls and that's Mish if you go to Mish name there's a spot there where there's a plaque in stone and it's written there New Orleans which is elim or God will protect her New Orleans obviously with all the Hurricanes and all that that's a good bling to have a lot of the New Orleans scene is about food and foods like Creole gumbo and a lot of it is very much Seafood and Meat how can a kosher traveler experience some of the the genuine flavors of New Orleans it really depends how kosher you are if you are okay with for example eating vegan but obviously there's no certificate of kosher uh you can go to a place called Sweet Soul Food and it's basically vegan food run by um an African-American uh owner and it it's all the stuff you would want to have in New Orleans like gumbo and jumbalaya and you'll have it it's vegan so there's nothing non- kosher there but there's no certificate now if you go one level up uh probably the most famous food institution in New Orleans uh arguably is Cafe Dumont which has been around since uh basically U 1862 right when the uh Union Army takes control of New Orleans kind of a strange time to start a business but anyway they've been open since and what they have there is Cafe which is basically hot coffee chior with chory and hot milk and beignet and beignet is really fried dough and beignet is kind of like if you guys know what a spinge is which is what Moroccans and Algerian Jews will have during a kanuka uh it's very similar because we have the French influence in algers and Morocco as well but anyway since 2008 keduman has had a kosher certificate from the LKC which is the Louisiana kosher committee now if we step on up another level the most probably authentic Jewish New Orleans sorry Louisiana kosher place is a place called kosher cajans and this is a place in met which is a suburb of New Orleans and uh you can have all kinds of local food there that is koser for example a shrimp pooy which is obviously not a shrimp it's made of I believe Alaska Fish Beyond new orans what is there in Louisiana for visitors the most popular thing to do in Louisiana outside of New Orleans is the swamp tours all of Louisiana or great parts of Louisiana are swamps and marshes and there's over 2 million gators in Louisiana wow yeah and there's really great swamp tours that you go either on an airboat which is if you ever seen like in the Everglades that bat with a big ventilator in the back uh or in one of those slow boats which you can sometimes the animals come even closer because it's quiet so those are great tours to take you can also go down to the Gulf of Mexico so a lot of people don't know this that even though New Orleans is officially a port town uh it is actually 90 mil or 150 kilm above the Gulf of Mexico so you still have another 90 Mi down river all the way to the gulf and there's a place there called Venice Louisiana which is beautiful you see the gulf uh you can go fishing there or just like look at the sites so that's a great place to go as well and you can go to um Cajun Country which is areas like um Lafayette or Abbyville and Cajun Country is they got a lot of great music zido which sometimes reminds me of um Bulan music and the cajans are another type of French people that ended up in Louisiana you have Crees and you have cajans is the weather always hot and humid in New Orleans well the simple answer is yes it's always hot and humid but there are some days in the winter that it can get really really cold and you feel it even more because of the humidity but as far as Seasons that are not like ridiculously hot humid uh the best seasons to come are around Halloween time and Halloween is by the way the second favorite holiday in New Orleans so more or less end of September beginning of October toward to November the it's pretty good weather and then your next season is basically the marar season pretty much more or less February all the way to June but I would say May and June already starts getting pretty hot but those are the those are your windows for when it's not always like ridiculously hot humid just to wrap up um how can people get more details about your tours the best way to reach me is my website the wandering crew.com so crew remember k r e we just want to let people know that my tours now are virtual so what I do is a kind of an immersive experience that combines PowerPoint slides with photos Google Earth which is a technology that enables you to feel like you're traveling from place to place and uh my live storytelling roony bosen the wandering crew owner and tour guide It's been a wonderful tour virtually of Louisiana and New Orleans thank you so much for your time thank you very much Mark and David it has been a pleasure thank you for inviting me the New Orleans fact file domestically American Delta Frontier Spirit United and Southwest all serve Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans Air Canada flies in from Toronto and ba from London the 20-minute taxi ride from the airport costs around $33 while a shared shuttle is about $5 for accommodation tour guide Rooney bosen recommends The bbon Orleans the enville house lar maerin provincial and Andrew Jackson sustainable French Quarter hotels can be found on new orleans.com recommended museums include the World War II museum the Louisiana state and the Ogden Museum of Southern art the kabad Louisiana website details kosher restaurants and religious [Music] services and now here's the latest Jerusalem Post podcast travel news news American Airlines announced it'll start flying from New York to Tel Aviv from May 6th you can already start booking your trip American is planning a Dallas Fort Worth Tel Aviv route later this year Tel aviv's benorian International Airport remains closed for the time being because of the covid-19 pandemic the Israeli government initially imposed a onewe closure but with fears over the new strains of the virus borian could stay closed for up to 5 weeks US President Joe Biden reinstated Corona virus travel restrictions for individuals traveling to America from the UK Ireland South Africa Brazil and the shenen area of Europe and now some good news on the covid front seels welcomes visitors from any part of the world provided they have been [Music] vaccinated as the song goes Copenhagen really is a wonderful City it's an ideal launching point to Europe for visitors from North America and just a short top from the rest of Europe and Israel in addition to the classic tourist attractions like the tiv gardens and the Little Mermaid the city's National Museum tells the story of the miraculous Escape of nearly all of Denmark's Jewish community in 1943 meta boritz is curator at the Museum of Danish resistance for the first three years of the German occupation from 1940 to 1943 we still had a government here in Denmark and the politicians were doing their normal business so we did have a sort of agreement with the Germany occupation that the parliament could still exist here in Denmark but they became more and more strict with regulations from the Germans in 1943 the government did not exist anymore and then it was the more and more German occupation and more different rights but Denmark was a little bit different than other countries during the second world world war in relation to the Germans they were not so strict in us because Denmark is very close to Germany and they were are small country so they didn't have so many interest in in Denmark one of the main activities of the resistance was saving nearly all of Denmark's Jewish population how does your Museum tell that story The Dan is resistant and a lot of other Danes not only resistant Fighters but a lot of ordinary Dan families Etc help man use uh Escape during the second world war in 1943 on the 1 of October the Germans started to take Jews the idea was to send them to concentration camps in Germany before that they had had an ordinary State status here in Denmark as ordinary citizens and the Danes were really trying to to save the Jews and let them stay here in Denmark but but when the government didn't exist anymore here in Denmark the Germans started to to attack uh the Jews in that way many resistant Fighters and and members of the resistant tried to help you escape to Sweden because Sweden was a neutral country a lot of Jews here in in Copenhagen were quite poor in those days and it costed money to take a boat over the to Sweden and some of the members of the resistance trying to raise money for the Jews to go over um to Sweden others helped them Escape trying to find fishermen that were ready to to take them over in our Museum we have a special boat one of the original boats that were transporting Jews to Sweden it has a very special story and not so long ago we actually found the family of one of the Jewish families that joined that boat and they were called steinbook um I found Abraham steinbook he was the one that bought the boat from a fisherman south of Copenhagen to take his and another family over to Sweden and uh we found his daughter and she could tell us the exact story because her father did his Memoirs I have to interrupt you at this point and ask you was the name of the daughter Aviva yes she's my cousin it is that's yeah um her Abraham's wife was my mother's second cousin ah how funny isn't that amazing yes and I I have seen a lot to Aviva during the last month so oh how funny wow wow it's a it's a small world we say in the Jewish world is even smaller of course yes and actually uh because we did have the boat and we only had a small newspaper article about Abraham and when we were going to exhibit the boat in have the boat into the exhibition I said we must have a picture of the family that that joined or of Abraham because we wanted to tell his story so I just took a Google Search and found that he was living here in Copenhagen the museum uh was rocked by a fire in 2013 how much damage did that cause to the museum and your ability to tell this and Other Stories it caused a huge damage to the building the fire was destroying the building of the old Museum but fortunately the firework rescued all the objects and the archives and nobody was harmed by the fire so it was only a building and a few days after the fire former prime minister of Denmark came out and say we are going to build the new Museum it's going to be in the exact same place and then our job started a lot of young people doesn't know the the story they don't have grandparents and parents that can tell them that story so we wanted to in our new Museum to tell the story to a new generation of people that do not have the family connection into the world anymore so is the museum suitable for children and families it's not for very small children because it's a complicated story about Nazism communism about the people getting killed and about resistan Fighters that were um fighting for very different reasons and uh with different um backgrounds but it's for young people and it's for tourists as well because the museum is in the Cent Center of Copenhagen and many foreigners know a little bit about the Danes helped the Jews Escape during the second world war but they don't know much about Denmark's position during the second world war so we actually help also people foreigners to come to the museum and learn about how the second world war were in Denmark how long does a tour of the museum take normally we planned that it should be a normal museum walk uh but we have learned uh during the last month we have been open that many people spend two or three hours at a m at the Museum and it's quite not quite big it's a very small Museum 800 square meters of exhibition but people use quite a lot of time there and listen to lots of story because of course we have amazing objects archive material in our Museum but we also tell story about people during the second world war about resistance Fighters uh we use their own words and their own stories you can follow five different persons four men and a woman and you can also listen to special story like the one about the boat sailing to Sweden with the Jewish families so if I'm visiting Copenhagen for the weekend how easy is the museum to get to it's very easy to get to because it's in the center it's you can say it's between The Little Mermaid and the the queen's castle so it's right in the center of many of the other things that tourists normally will come to see of course everything is in English so everybody can join uh and listen all the stories are also uh translated into English so it's very easy to to to see the museum and and follow the stories meta boritz Creator at the Museum of Danish resistance we thank you for your time you're welcome you can find out more at the website which is aten for English n.n like National Museum nm. DK that's .nm mus. DK and if that's a bit difficult for you then you can always Google it uh and look for the Museum of Danish resistance meta again thank you for your time thank you meta you're welcome and now our Copenhagen fact file SAS offers direct flights to Copenhagen from New York Chicago San Francisco and Washington DC from Israel you can fly direct to Copenhagen with Norwegian it takes around 20 minutes in a taxi from the airport to downtown it costs around $35 15 minutes by Metro for $6 visit Denmark recommends the brand new sustainable luxury hotel at Villa Copenhagen next to the central station around $250 per night for a double room at $100 is the hotel Denmark by the city hall Square the currency is the Danish Crona 100 Danish Crona will cost you around $115.50 kabad of Denmark provides catered kosher food and host Shabbat meals it also runs the thaim kosher restaurant and now for the quiz answers which building in your orans is the world's largest still constructed room unobstructed by poles the answer was the Super doome and we call them Danish pastries but what are they called in Denmark and the answer is ven BR or vienes bread well that's it for our maiden voyage our thanks to Rooney and meta please remember to give us a positive review and a five-star rating with your podcast provider join us next time for more adventures with the travel edition of the Jerusalem Post podcast [Music]