In my first post on this blog, I mentioned in passing that I had spent several years in Boston as a student. I was lucky enough to attend Harvard, where I got my MBA.

I liked Boston very much. It’s such an intensely college town, with several universities and colleges scattered around the Boston area, so student life is very full and fun. I lived in Brookline, a suburb just outside Boston proper, where I lived on what would in the usual circumstances have been a quiet side street. But Beals Street is the street on which the birthplace of John F. Kennedy stands, at number 83, and so it was a very busy area particularly around the time of his birth, when there are ceremonies and remembrances of him.

I liked living in Brookline, and I particularly liked that I lived just a block or two away from an excellent bagel store called Kupel’s. A Boston institution, Kupel’s is certainly the best bagel place I’ve ever eaten. To be fair though, my frame of reference is a little limited — strangely, Israel is not a great place to get bagels. Here we get a type of bread roll, called bagelim, which are quite pleasant, but they certainly aren’t bagels like any American Jew would recognize.

One of the things I enjoyed most about Boston was riding a bike to and from the business school. The driving in Boston is pretty erratic, but so long as you’re careful it’s quite a nice place to ride a bike. And there are some very pleasant bike trails, particularly by the Charles River, although at least in my time they certainly could have used a little maintenance. But nevertheless it was a good place to ride.

One nice thing about riding by the Charles is watching the rowers working out. It always looked like an intriguing sport, but when I made a few enquiries, I learned just how physically demanding it was at the high level that most of those rowers performed. Rowing really isn’t a sport that has made any inroads in Israel, so I was reluctant to get heavily involved in a sport that I’d be giving up on my return to Israel.