Travel Blog

Saturday evening Hania and I drove down to Hollywood for dinner at Sage (using the $50 gift certificate I got for speaking at the Boca library). Laurent presided over the open kitchen, and the food was as good as at his Ft. Lauderdale location, but the music was a little loud. Soft jazz should be played softly - or, even better, not at all.

We took a postprandial stroll down Hollywood Blvd. Hania checked out the clothes in one store while I kept an eye on the parrot behind the counter. "His name is Chi-Chi," the salesgirl told me.

On our way out, we passed two older men talking by the entrance. "Are you speaking Hebrew?" I asked them.

"Yiddish," the one man said.

"Yiddish," I said. "You don't hear that very often."

"Why not?" the man without the sportcoat said. "What language do you speak?"

"English, French and Polish," I said.

"Pan rozumie po Polsku?" he asked.

He was born in Krakow, in the Jewish neighborhood of Kazimierz. Then he was sent to Auschwitz. He had gone back to Poland a few years ago. "But it's not my country," he said. "They're not my people." His friend said that during the war there were many Poles who were good to Jews. Hania asked if they'd read Jan Gross's book on Polish anti-semitism.

The conversation moved to religion. The man without the sportcoat said he'd taken an interest in Buddha, reading about his life and philosophy.

They both owned property in downtown Hollywood. I said that what the town needed was a bookstore.

"There used to be a bookstore over there," the more talkative one said, pointing across the street. "But it didn't make it. Now it's a club - people drinking, dancing on the bar."

Well then, I thought, instead of a bookstore cafe, a bookstore bar.