On the 17th of February 2010, Habonim Dror took 11 budding leaders on a Hadracha trip to Paris. The 16 of us left on the Wednesday night from North and South Manchester, departing to London Habo House. After a long, long travel from Manchester to London to Dover to Calais we finally arrived in Paris at around 1:00pm pm only to find our rooms in the hostel wouldn’t be ready until 5:00. After a quick packed lunch, the very over tired 16 of us headed straight to the Louvre to see Mona herself. After spending an hour looking at the wonderful and very inspiring art, we took a quick stroll down the local streets of Paris before making another quick stop at the Aloha Youth Hostel. We headed straight to the Jewish Quarter and enjoyed lovely meal of shwarma before concluding our very tiresome day with a very emotional and motivating tour of the Holocaust Museum.

A bright and early start to our second day in this magical city, saw us head straight to the Habo House avec Français and began our hadracha training where we were taken through multiple peulot and then finishing with a fun-filled Shabbat dinner and a massive round of the song game!

Before we knew it, it was our final day and we still hadn’t seen much of this breath-taking city. With that in mind, we headed straight to one and only Eiffel Tower. We climbed straight to the top and enjoyed the exquisite view along with the amusement of laughing at a couple of Chinese tourists mistaking one of us for a famous actor. From there, we went to the Arc Du Triumph and after spending half an hour trying to find out how to actually get to it, we managed to obtain entry to this triumphant Arc. Our awaiting limo (mini-bus) took us straight to the Champs Elysees where spectacular shops and only the best designer brands awaited us. The Girls painted the town red, spending hundreds on clothes and make-up, leaving the boys dragging behind spending 8 euros between them all. We went straight to another area for lunch, stuffing our faces with the finest French pastries, crepes and bread and another round of spending.

We headed back to the youth hostel for the last time, collecting our bags and then went to meet Habo France at their Habo House, where we bonded with some games and then concluded our final day with dinner. At half nine, we began our 12 hour journey home.

It was a very fun and memorable few days and experience and I’m sure everybody loved the extravagant scenery and awesome banter. We enjoyed every minute we all spent together and can’t wait to continue our Habo journey in the future! Next Stop… Summer Camp ’10!

By Daniel Magid