A Child, a Suitcase and Exile - Part 1

A Child, a Suitcase and Exile — Part 1

After being deported from Israel, I arrived in Amsterdam with my child and little idea of what lay ahead. What began as a forced departure became a long journey through uncertainty, temporary homes, survival, and adaptation.

In this first part, I share the story of leaving Israel, arriving in the Netherlands, and navigating the early months of exile. From short-term sublets and bureaucratic hurdles to the emotional weight of raising a child while trying to re build a life from scratch, this episode explores what it means to keep moving forward when there is no clear destination.

A personal story about displacement, resilience, parenthood, and the search for a place to call home.

Israeli Goy is a podcast about identity, belonging, freedom, and the unexpected paths life takes us on.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to Israeli Goy, the podcast where the voices of an unchosen Israel get heard. My name is Adriana, I'm a Spaniard Goy with a very long, uncommon, and interesting journey in the land of Israel. Welcome back to Israeli Goy. This episode is the beginning of a story I've wanted to tell for a long time. It's a story of exile, not as a political concept, but as a lived reality. It's about what happens when your life is suddenly uprooted and you find yourself in a foreign country with a child, a suitcase, and a clear roadmap forward. After being deported from Israel, Amsterdam became both a refugee and a challenge. What followed were moments of uncertainty, temporary homes, financial struggles, bureaucracy, loneliness, resilience, and the constant search for stability. There were moments where when it felt impossible to breathe, and moments when unexpected people and places became small islands of safety. In part one, I take you back to the beginning, leaving Israel, arriving in the Netherlands, and entering a period of chaos and survival that would shape the years to come. This is a child of sweetcase and exile, part one. Talking about my journey of Israel per se anymore, or my legal journey during exile. It's talking about the time that I've spent since I was deported from Israel last year in January 2025, so it's almost a year and a half since deportation. And I want to talk about this, I want to talk about exile. So it's not about um Israel as a country anymore, or it's it's connected, of course, it's connected, but I'm gonna you know, um I'm gonna explain a bit more about personal circumstances or or the journey that I've endured since I was deported, especially the half a year I spent last year in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Um, you know, it's it's funny because uh people that follow me on social media and saw my stories or pictures, uh they would they they might have taken the impression that I had such an amazing time with my kid or I was like you know enjoying myself in a new country, visiting such a nice city because of course Amsterdam is buccalic, it is an amazing place, but only if you are going there with a structured life and traveling in proper conditions as I used to do it before, exile and so many things that happened in my life all at once. So, my my period uh with my kid um during 2025 in the Netherlands, it was all but idyllic. It was all but uh like nothing to do with the nice journey, nothing to do with the travel, creating memories for it was the most hard, um extreme chapter of my life that I barely survived. So, you know, some people might not expect what I'm gonna explain about my time in the Netherlands, uh, but that's a true story based on facts. So I thought that my this story because it it is connected, like everything is connected with Israel, not with the not to to prove the narrative that some Jews have that when a problem happens in the world you link it with Israel or the Jews, not in this sense, but because I personally have been uh connected with the land of Israel. So I have a kid from there, I have a story from there, what happened with Israel, of course, has had an effect on my life and journey, and it still has, and it's an ongoing uh battle. So that doesn't mean the fault is the Jews or Israel as a country, it means that in my case, in my journey, many things have been connected since I traveled to Israel with the nation of Israel. So the same that I could have been so inspired by Judaism and read the full Torah in just two months and present myself into a Midrasha school of Torah to in order to learn properly study Torah and convert and do you in Israel, and presented my application in the um in the ministry of in the office of the Prime Minister in Israel in order to become Jewish. And the same that I had all these chapters with Israel of fascination of you know following the nation in terms of uh uh wanting to belong there, wanting to be Jewish, learning Hebrew, learning politics, feeling like I am an insider, not an outsider, and I explained this in my peer episodes. The same that I had these experiences, uh I also had difficult moments that affected me, of course, a lot. Like the the time where the nation deported me and my kid, no, because the kid is Israeli, no, we were not just traveling, as just randomly going around Israel because look, you know, we don't have anything else to do with our lives. So that's of course a story that it's always gonna be linked, you know. My kid is from there, genetically connected. Now it's always gonna be linked because I have a kid from there. So it's not anymore just a dream, it's not anymore just a tourist experience I was doing with with uh tourist visas, going and living. Now it's it became something much more deep and and interconnected with my family, so it has uh huge impact. And I'm gonna start doing something. You know, I was today in a coffee, in a very nice coffee, just found it by chance around walking around town, and I was just not having a plan of what I was going to do with my time, and just sat and have my espresso tonic. You know, it seems like it's a new trend now, it's a new drink that they took out in 2026. They just mix espresso the coffee and they put a tonic there. And of course, it's I I hate tonic and I hate espresso. So you put them together, and it's the most disgusting, fresh drink you can drink. But I did it because I like to do different things in life. So I sat there and I thought, you know, maybe some ideas will come out of this moment in this coffee. And I got the inspiration, very, very inspired. I left with all the ideas wrote down in a bill paper, you know. The the waitress, the girl working in the cafe, she gave me papers from from the bill, you know, when you pay and they give you the bill, the paper they use in the machine that prints, you know, uh all the prices of the things you order. The same paper, you know, without anything, in just in white, and a pen. She borrowed that pen and then start writing things. Um and the first thing I want to say for this episode as an intro is that I want to make uh you know comparison, you know, uh highlight the common points in within my exile towards exile that I'm Israel has uh went through over the you know centuries. Um you know, because I want to contextualize here, you know, this is this podcast is connected to Israel, and again, this deportation is my life in the Netherlands, but it has uh you know still a strong connection toward what happened to me and my kid with Israel and what's happening still now, legally, and from exile. So, the points in common, first of all, um there's a pain of separation from the homeland. You know, when you are exiled, of course, you are not in your homeland, you know, you are being forced out of that land, and you know who knows the Jewish history knows pretty well the Jews have been forced out from Israel in several locations throughout history. You can vote, we can go back to the time of the Babylonians, they were the first two kick out the Jews from the land, then we can go back to the Romans who also kick out the Jews from the land, and so on, and so on. And they from the Romans they spent 2,000 years uh in exile until they went back and uh found the state of the current state of Israel. That's you know a short resume, like uh sum up of the story of the Jews and their exiles. So uh for the historical exile of the Jews, uh for the millennial millennials, for mill uh for millennia the Jewish people were torn from their geographical and spiritual center of their identity, forced to live as strangers in foreign lands. I think this point is extremely important. Strangers in foreign lands. Well, because the Jews come from Judea, they descend from um Jacob, Israel, not the son of Isaac, and from who the nation of Israel uh was disbuilt with him. Um and then from Jacob we have 12 tribes, one of one of the tribes is the tribe, the tribe of Yuda, the Jews. So um the land that was promised to the Jews by the God of Israel, as you know from Torah and the Bible. I mean, if you don't know that's what it says, it's the land of Canaan and the land of Israel, or in the land of Israel, and more lands that are not part of the state of Israel, if we go into biblical terms, not to get political now. And strangers in foreign lands means once they were kicked out from Judea, from Israel, they were forced into other places, no, and that's what they call the diaspora or the Jews have been living everywhere, from Middle East in countries like uh Iraq, um Yemen, um Lebanon, Egypt, to places in Africa, like Morocco, North Africa, America, South America, US, Europe, of course, um, so on and so on. But even when the Jews were living in exile in these foreign lands, they were strangers, meaning they knew they were not from there. They were they were yearning the geographical um compass, you know, the spiritual compass of the land that was promised to them, and that was the only place where they could completely fulfill the commandments that God gave them through the Torah in Mont Saint Night to fulfill in this role. So, again, the point, the common point with my story, their story, is that there were strangers in foreign lands. As for me, this is uh a curious point to highlight. Um I'm not born per se a Jew, so it will be you know difficult to consider uh in general terms that me being kicked out or forced out of Israel for deportation is the same because it might not be considered that Israel is my homeland. Um but I've experienced it soul-wise as my homeland. You know, I experience myself being a Jewish soul, that her homeland, her compass, her spiritual geographical um map, you know, the the GPS, uh it's it's really it's driving me there. And nowadays I also became the mom of a kid that is a descendant of a Jew and is an Israeli kid. So if this does not connect me enough to the land, I don't know what can connect me more than that, honestly. For me, Israel is a home, it's a homeland, it's a compass, is where my soul is living. I still pray in Hebrew, some days I wake up into Israeli songs, I sometimes just say out loud the Shema Israel, or Altira Israel, Altira when things get uh fucked up, you know, and I'm afraid that things won't work out in exile when I feel I'm surrounded by Gentiles and going, and I don't trust that there are gonna be good intentions from them because I only trust uh the Jewish people fully, you know, even if I'm not Jewish. To be honest with you, this is like uh you know a secret, you know. When I my family is not Jewish, I don't trust them so much because I think they don't really um like um how I feel about Israel and how connected I am now with my kid. I don't want to see them, you know, they just have this idea. So for me, it experienced a more like a modern localized exile. You know, I'm physically abruted, separated from the soil that answers my Israeli uh child's life. When my kid was born, he was already born in exile. He wasn't born in the land, although that was my my dream, you know, when I knew I was going to have a kid from an Israeli person. I I wanted him to be born in Israel. Circumstances didn't allow that, so he was born already in exile. But I fought for him to get in touch with the land, so I flew him uh to Israel when he was three months old, and I keep you know leaving and like entering without visa so he can you know connect uh with um with his homeland, you know, like he's national from Israel, so it's his you know, it says he's a citizen of the land, although we don't experience the reality of it, but it is a uh fact, doesn't change the circumstances we're undergoing now with the facts that we have. So, this is the first point, you know, the pain of separation from the homeland, the fact of being strangers in foreign lands. Again, for me, even if my passport says Spain or my family is Spanish, I'm a foreign in my passport or in my family. I don't belong, where I come from, or my passport. This identity doesn't represent my soul at all, it's like feeling trapped in the grown body, you know what to say? I don't I don't feel I am from here at all, I don't share any cultural interest with the place. I only to be honest, even when I'm in Spain, I most likely connect or make bonds with foreigner people, you know, even my friends in Spain are from Ukraine, Ukraine right now. Okay, these are my connections. I'm not making friendships normally or regularly with Spanish people. I don't read the news here, I don't care about the political scenario in Spain for you know ages. I never care. If I ever, you know, check or or read something about politics, which I'm kinda disengaged since deportation because I was very politicized with Israel, it's from Israel, where I almost landed my job in the Khan Asset in the parliament. But that's it, I don't I don't care about what I am in terms of what's going on or the culture or nothing concretely. So for me, being you know, locked out of what feels homeland, Israel, back to where my passport says Spain or Europe, it's pure exile. Like I feel trapped in geographical places where I am an stranger, you know. I am an stranger in Europe, I feel a complete stranger here, and I feel this is a foreign land for me. I don't feel this is home. So it's pretty the same, you know. If if we if we compare, I mean it it feels like what mostly a Jew can feel, mostly. I don't want to say exactly the same because I'm not totally Jewish, you know what I mean? I can I can feel Jewish people, I've been in the synagogue. I I completely understand everything as again as it's like I was reborn, like I was born on Jewish, but I was reborn as Jewish once in Israel. I don't know what what to explain about it. So, you know, I I root for the feeling that I understand, or if not the same, very very similar what they explain to be for them exile. It's what it feels for me to be exiled to. The stranger's status. Um in the Jewish exile, we have the diaspora, it's it's called in Judaism diaspora. It's an intrinsic feeling of being a guy, you know, a stranger, someone that doesn't belong to that place. Adapting to the new cultures where we're longing for a place of absolute belonging. So, this is what happens with me, even as a non-Jewish mother of an Israeli child, what which I am raising. Um even if the state's bureaucracy legally defines me as an outsider, I am genetically connected to Israel through my heat. Even if I'm still like I can be, you know, labeled again as an outsider, as an estranger, someone who doesn't belong in the system, in the rules, in what they the categories they've they've made in the state, wherever you wanna say or call it, this doesn't, you know, erase the fact that for me I'm like a girl in Europe, I'm still longing for a place of absolute belonging, and it's not where I am now. It's not outside of Israel, it's not where I've been locked, because if I am um forbidden to go to the only place where it feels its homeland, then I am absolutely condemned to endure exile, to endure this place that feels so wrong and distant from the place of full home and belonging. And third, the yearning for return. You know, this is a very Jewish uh thinking story for you know 2000 years, the of wandering. The Jews always had this yearning of return to Zion as it remained of the spiritual hurtbeat of the Jewish people. I mean, they never gave up on the dream to return to the land, and that's what exactly happens with me. I'm still not giving up my hopes and and ambition of returning because what can I do in such a situation? You know, will I just accept that I am deported forever and I'm never going to go back there? I mean, I can accept that reality. I can accept it. You know, I'm still fighting from from the like I'm using my exile to fight the system, still uh fighting um the court in Israel, still um creating precedent and defending the truth of my kids in front of a court, um facing a huge hurdle of of jurisdiction and form of convenience right now with Israel. So I'm still I'm still in the fighting mode. I'm not you know, one thing I say it's like the day I gave up on my dream ambition in Israel, I'm dead, you know. I'm not myself anymore. I just lost my my shamma. I you know it's not me anymore. Meaning I'm never gonna give up. Never, never, never, never, never. I can't be even 60 years old and still going for this thing. I don't know what it is, it's just like a compass in my life. So those are the the common points, and once I discovered points, I want to say what why like how like what did cause the exile? Um well basically again there's two there's two circumstances. Mainly the Israeli deportation, of course, like the fact that I cannot enter Israel, it's an absolute um equal of exile. And also because I'm sent back to Spain where you know from the system in Israel might look like my place of origin where I should belong or live, but uh it's not my place. So I find there are very conflictive family dynamics and toxic uh family relationships that um for me are not safe and I don't want to raise my kid around those dynamics. So, because Spain is not safe for me because I don't like the family that I have. There and Israel is locked. I uh just buy a ticket and fly to the Netherlands, you know, it's like a third country, it's not where I was born, and neither is where I felt I meant to go as as a that as a destiny. So um also in Spain I didn't have a home, I didn't um root my life there. I was living literally in hotels and paying tourist prices. That's what I mean. Why I'm saying a stranger in a front line, you know, it's like I'm a tourist in a tourist land, like in a land that's not mine, like literally living in places where tourists go, you know, where people that don't have homes are not not Spanish come when they come here. Living in hotels, you know, I was like already so expensive price that I said, you know, pay the hotel in Spain. I'm paying the hotel in the Netherlands, so I'm leaving. So I left with my kid and I had uh no plan, no house in uh the Netherlands, no financial stability, nothing, you know. So I left. That's how I left. Um that's it, and that's how it started. So um I end up in the survival uh period, in a very hard survival period. I arrived to the buccalic canals of Amsterdam, the beautiful city of Amsterdam, of course it's beautiful, but I didn't experience the beauty of the country. I didn't experience a short, beautiful trip where I am arriving with all the money, you know, spending what I want, enjoying and living and creating just memories and live back to where I live. Um I went to the Netherlands because I felt Israel didn't want me, and my family didn't want me either, so it was like you know, my my Israeli family doesn't want me, my Spanish family also never wanted me. So um, you know, I'm not supported by anyone. Um it's like the world doesn't want me, to be honest. And I don't want to be dramatic here, I just want to be, you know, very raw as how it all presented in my life and truly felt. Um so you know, why why should I stay in Spain? Like I just wanna go somewhere new, you know. And uh the Netherlands is a country that um as how I experienced it, it was not uh very nice. Apart from the horrible weather, that's you know, uh cliche, that's it's true, you know, it's always raining and cloudy and depressing, even the summer was only raining, and we barely had one week of sun and pool. That was everything about summer in the Netherlands. Depressing weather. Um, the people character of the Dutch people are not just to be honest, they are not nice, and they are direct, they are you know, I don't know, just I don't know, aggressive. I don't know, I didn't like how they are. I never get along with the Dutch people that I knew before when I was living, for example, in my Erasmus in Brussels. I knew Dutch girls, I never liked them, but not nothing personal there, but there were something in the character of Dutch people. I don't I don't like them, and I have some Dutch friends, but they are pretty cool. I don't know, they live abroad, but people who are you know living there from there are just not really social, not open, not warm, not helpful, not like when I came back to Spain, at least, yes, I need to admit that one positive thing for me was that people are much more warm and trying to help more or more like they talk, you know, with with each other and they are more close, more in the advance people are very distant, they don't talk to you, no, like they they are just very cold and um I don't know and and friendly somehow. Uh the country is very expensive too, um compared to Spain, like when you arrive there, uh renting houses, the groceries, you know, the food, like everything becomes way more um high. Restaurants, you know, are super expensive. And what else we say as a hurdle? Um you know, people again, the people don't make it easy, they are not nice. Uh the weather doesn't make it really easy, it's just rainy and depressing. And the country is expensive too. So if you took all these conditions and you mix them with financial stability, housing instability, a kid to raise with almost two years old, um, rest and deportation from the nation of your dreams where your kid is from, the father of your kid is from, um, and family conflict and trauma. You nail it, right? You you have all the ingredients for a nice experience in the Netherlands. And um just gonna, you know, laugh, not to cry because it was not fun at all. But um, you know, when things when when periods of life are pretty close already and left in the past, you can at least make fun of them because you know they are not in your life anymore. But it was really tough, to be honest, really tough. I'm still crying, I think, trying to protest the the absurdity of things I experienced um when I was there, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say that the absurdity was the Netherlands, I'm not gonna say that the country itself was absurd. The country itself was just the accidental place where I end up with all the cows and survival from deportation and and family trauma and conflict and cows. The absurdity was how my my my life was set up at that moment and and the things that I had been put through. I don't know even why for, you know, but really I don't know, messy, messy, messy, like uh traveling with phone. Um, you know, financial mess makes everything pretty more unstable and messy, of course, especially if you are abroad in a new country, uprooted. You don't have the financial, you know, basement of stability. Many things are gonna be chaotic just instantly. I had to figure out many things, many mornings to figure out where I want where I'm gonna sleep next night. I don't have a stable place, I have to improvise, see if the hotel I'm staying has more availability, or I have to move to a new hotel, and how much does it cost? Do I have the phones? Do I need to do things in my phone, move money in order to get the phones or make the phones available? Some days I just have you know absurd spendings because like I travel to the Netherlands with all these cows and more cows, even because I finished my paternity case with my prior legal firm in Israel, and I proved that I belonged through my kid, right? That's that was my my my my logical approach. Apparently, they never saw it like this, but for me it was like I just proved my kid is Israeli, and again I was met with silence, with no clear direction about how to register my kid in the Ministry of Interior, so he has the passport of Israel, nothing of that was clear at all. But worse than that, is what uh when I called a lawyer, there was like a war with Iran and Israel already in June 2025. I was in the Netherlands, it was in chaos. My account, bank account had you know, maybe maybe 40 euros. I don't know, I just like momentarily I ran out of phones, like I was all the time momentarily running out all the time of phones, and um I just you know made it to the next hotel, called my lawyer in the middle of a storm and chaos. And the first thing she says, like, oh, you still you know owed um I don't know thousands and thousands of shekels of from the case, you know. Because we had a deal that I will pay um half when I started the case and the other half in the end. But that was an agreement for four instalments of payment, never to pay all at once in the end. They never warned me about the payment just when the test was done. It was like the full bill was in my face. And imagine when you don't have phones, you don't have a house, you have to still secure where you where you keep going to sleep with your kids that are going to be hotels unless you find a home in the Netherlands, but you still don't have a home, you have to go through hotels, and you have of course to eat. And at least the basics, when I'm saying survival, I'm saying that I I had to go through this sequence, if not daily, most mostly daily, or every two, three days, or every running out of founds all the time, having to get constantly more founds, more money, and secure that I have the money, secure that I can pay an hotel, and secure that I have enough for food, and this daily, you know. So imagine when when you are in this kind of mindset of surviv surviving the day in a new country, and you still have a kid to raise, and the kid wants to go to a park and to explore new places, and um you don't know what you even what you are even doing with your day, you know, it's just like improvisation because uh in chaos, in chaos. So I called a lawyer and she you know sends me I don't know another huge bill. I was like, at the moment I saw it, I was like, I I'm I'm just um trapped, you know. Like I don't have a way to to move forward with my life in Israel and with my kid. Didn't provide directions about anything, but for sure the first next step is that I just fulfill the entire payment all at once. I didn't have the phones and I was like, well, how am I gonna pay now the lawyers when I don't know where I'm gonna sleep tomorrow? I mean, this is the degree of absurdity that I had to go through when I was in exile in the Netherlands last year, 2025. So yeah, maybe my Instagram might have looked like I am posting a picture of what I'm eating in the restaurant. That's my survival because I'm in hotels. I cannot cook, so I have to go to the restaurant to feed my kids. And I I I cannot or go to the grocery shop, you know, and and do some pre-cook, but when you are in hotels, you mostly can't really survive through groceries. You really need someone to cook for you. And then I you might see the nice streets of Netherlands and the canals, you know. Yes, I was still taking pictures, you know. I don't know why, because I mostly didn't want to even remember that period of time. I even had an accident with my phone when I went to a beach in the aak in the city in the Netherlands, the aak, the hack, dan haak in Dutch, that has a beach. Yeah, a beach in the Netherlands. Imagine a beach in such a country, and a wave came. I was with my kid, my my phone was there in the sand, and I just lost my iPhone, and you know, I didn't did the backup in iCloud, and I lost most of my pictures and memories of the Netherlands. So I think that was the idea, right? To make such a to cut off that period of my life from picture memory idea. Like my mo my my phone, myself, not just the phone, didn't want to, you know, um carry those memories to me with me, to be honest. So that's why I'm saying I don't know what I why I even was taking so many pictures if I was like enjoying and posing myself there because I was just going through the hell, even if the sk the landscape was still the canals, you know, and you know, still there were a lot of coffee shops and people were smoking with and having fun. I was having the hell of my time there, I was not having fun at all. Wanted worry as you know, fact for survival with a kid alone, and no family in the Netherlands, no close friends that can back me up, maybe some contact, but not really close. And if anything happened to me, I'm really in a vulnerable position. So that's the absurdity of things, like uh everything felt stuck. I'm not just deported, my legal case, like the legal case went stuck, no new directions, and just more payments in the moment when I'm drowning, you know. And that's how I arrived there. That's how I arrived in the in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam. I've experienced days that I paid part of those legal fees together with hotels, together with nannies. And I don't know, I'm in cows, I'm not even planning how I pay things. Maybe one day I have, I don't know, 3,000 euro payment, you know, in total. So I then go to the grocery shop with my kid because he's angry or he needs diapers. He was still using diapers, and we we ran out of diapers, so it's an urgency, and I have to buy the breakfast, some juices, some snacks, and once I'm in the cashier, it's like my my credit card doesn't go through. And of course I went through that when I was in the Netherlands, you know. So when like when the hell will I imagine that my credit card won't go through? And it was not because I like it was because I just made a 3000 euro payment, but that's not fun at all when you are abroad and alone with a kid because imagine I cannot solve that limited spending with my credit card as app, you know. And I'm by myself and I'm already stressed and I'm already in chaos, and I'm already so how do I get the food that time, or how do I get the diapers from, you know? So you know, go back to hotel, uh download the app, the bank, uh you know, um the spending limit of the day bigger, you know. And I don't know, um just going with chargers that were not really going well with my iPhone, and some days my iPhone won't open when I'm charging it, and I need access to my bank account urgently, I don't have uh hotel pay for the next day, I need to check my phones. So again, I I woke up, my phone is dead, I have to run to the Apple store to check if I have a problem with the phone, and suddenly the girl is like, Oh no, we just solved your problem, and uh the phone is working well, and was like, Okay, uh, thanks God, you know. But I got all these kind of huge adrenaline moments of this is my you know, and you know, this is gonna end here. I don't know what's gonna be about my life. Chaos, cows, cows. I even left Spain and traveled to the Netherlands with a broken luggage that says it all, you know. When you start a trip or a new life, whatever with a broken luggage, is that you or yourself are already broken. You know, I was carrying motherhood alone, deportation, a legal battle that was solved paternity-wise, but there was no new directions in that path. And paid legal fees, bills because the lawyers never, you know, gave me that bill before. It was supposed to be early on the payment with installments, like we agreed four months of you know partition of that payment, and suddenly they don't say anything, and the last day I call them, you know, and now you pay everything at one, like today. So like, what is this? Like we agreed to make like um like in part like partition in months, not just one bill. So it all took me out of you know, readiness and out of um you know surprise and no house, that's a horrible situation to endure uh homelessness, you know, or housing and stability. Um you know, hotels are very nice, but not when you have to endure them just to survive and have a place to stay. Not at all. Not at all, and everything happened to me in that period, everything. I don't know if I attracted it or you know, it was carrying my brokenness, my I don't know. Um they had a policy in the Netherlands also in the hotels that managers, if I you know, will make a criticism about anything, like won't like something and just say it, like I don't like how this person um you know like she say me this and I don't agree or I don't know. Whatever I express against someone, not in a bad term, just like my opinion, my criticism, they will return me these critics uh in not admitting me in the hotel anymore, like making me leave the hotel, something like this, which was a very weird thing that I experienced um in that country too. I was like, what do you say? Like I don't I cannot express myself when I'm your customer and I'm paying your hotel. Like I just express something, I don't agree with this, and just because I don't agree with you, you are telling me that I have to move out from your hotel. I will just wake up in the in the morning and say I want to extend another night, and they will tell me, oh no, the manager doesn't want to that doesn't want that you stay another night here because you say that or this or because whatever they made up an excuse and this just tell me that I cannot stay in the hotel. Which will reinforce the instability that I was going through. Because imagine, like I didn't have a stable house, my more sensibility will be that I can keep standing my stay in the same hotel, so I cannot I don't have to move hotel at least. I can avoid the checkout check in that nightmare when you've done it thousands of times with a kid. I can keep my same room or something like this, and I will have to leave that room, pack my stuff all over again, take my luggage all over all over again, do a checkout all over again, look for a new uh hotel, order a taxi if it's far away, arrive to the new hotel, go to reception, give my documents again, all the process of a check-in again, wait for the clean room until it's ready again. Imagine, it's it's you cannot imagine, it's just a nightmare that I experienced. A nightmare. And it happened to me that when I arrived to the Netherlands, I had to move almost every night from hotels, almost every night. Maybe I had two or three nights in the same hotel, that was the maximum. And I even have to move rooms in the same hotel because you know the room I was staying was not available, so you need to move to another room. If you're traveling for a while and you have a home, it's not such a big problem. If your new home is these hotels and you don't have any other base in your life, it's a nightmare. Because it touches you much more. You're much in a in a much more vulnerable housing place and position. Those hotels are your housing and you don't have control over them. You don't have any control over them. They put the conditions, they tell you when to check out, when to check in. Or someone else might tell you that you cannot check in before 3 p.m. and it's 1 and it's 2 hours, and you have a kit and you are tired, and it's like, I need that room, I want to rest, or my kid needs to nap. And they will tell you, um, if you want the room earlier, here we charge 30 more euros, and you say, No, the 30 euros are for dinner or lunch or whatever, or I'm already paying, I don't know, hundred something for one night in a small room just because it's another, what are you gonna tell me that I have to pay you extra just to check out check in earlier? You know, so I felt like I was in their hand of conditions, or they will say you need to pay a deposit. I was like, no, this this budget is for other expenses, survival expenses, not that you know. So I had to like you know, be on on flight or or fight mode all the time, fighting everything because I was surviving. I was not able to just give you I don't know 200 euros in in a deposit when that was for my food during those days in the hotel. I mean, what am you how can I just freeze 200 euros when you know I'm already in chaos and survival, I cannot put money on freeze like this. So I really had to, you know, push back and everything, but it felt very detraining. Um and then the conditions, no, like maybe one night it was cheap and the next night was double price, depending on the day of the of the week, or if it was more full, less full. Um So yeah, always under conditions and terribly, terribly, terribly draining. And um I don't know, you know, that was the first part in Amsterdam. We arrived there, yes, we explored the city, we made memories as well, yes. We rented these bikes with seeds for kids, yes. We went to the famous Fallen Park, yes. My kids enjoyed, yes. We did a lot of plans and things, improvising every day, the city and eating and going to many places, but you know, innerly I had only cows. I was not liking a place of enjoying and being relaxed and present and everything is safe and stable. It was like I'm in danger, I cannot relax. I am hypervigilant of what's the next street, how I'm gonna pass the next crisis, I'm not secure yet, I don't have stability, I don't have granted house, I don't have granted finances. So how can I make my nervous system relax in such a circumstance? I was in a huge mental trouble, like in in terms of I don't know, feeling like I was in my end, to be honest. Feeling I cannot do it anymore, feeling like um I don't know. I just I don't know how to express it. I don't know, like you you really have to undergo such a such a hard moment in your life that um if it doesn't break you, it makes you invincible because I don't know where I keep where I took the strength to to keep going. I don't know. It all felt so weird, so unfamiliar, so I felt so unsupported, so far away from the reality. I I always knew I was secure and safe, you know. I don't um see family, I don't talk with my mom, I don't um have my old friends around, I don't even talk with old friends anymore, I'm isolated, I'm you know, thinking again, this is my aunt. You know, I have a kid, I don't know how to how I'm gonna go through this situation with one kid under my responsibility, and I fight every day and every night, every day and every night. I had to fight my thoughts, I have to challenge my thoughts, I had to tell myself you can, it's gonna be fine. But I didn't believe it, you know, it was like I don't know, I don't know if I can believe it, it's fine, I don't have guarantees. This is crazy, it's insane, it's in the limit, it's it's in the edge. Um so yeah, these kind of things will happen, you know. Kate cards won't pass through um um my phone will die, I will think that I'm out of phone. That's my my most terrific, like horrific scenario to just be without communication and access to apps and access to a tool that can you know solve all the crises and calling someone that can help, whatever it's like. My tool. Um carrying a solar, a broken luggage, um, with barely clothes, I don't have space to organize, um, buying more clothes, having more, you know. I don't know where I'm gonna sleep. Do you think my priority is to, you know, accumulate more more t-shirts or more trousers or more? No, I don't have that priority in my life. Uh chaos, changing rooms, changing hotels, losing things in rooms. Uh when you move so much, uh your life with a luggage, you don't know where you left the things anymore. It's it's crazy. So, you know, I had a lot of stories of crazy like of of of limit situations in my life in 2025 in the Netherlands in exile. I had um I endure it. I also do like I went through a very moment like I trained so hard physically. Every crisis gets me back to the gym. I was like, it's gonna make me stronger, I'm gonna overcome the crisis, I can lift more weight, I can go, you know, this this this weight that is on my shoulders in my life, I can physically lift it in the gym. So I'm gonna lift it in my life too. So I never accept that this difficulty is gonna finish my life, but I had to push through very hard. So we travel in around country uh around the Netherlands, sorry, in other towns or cities that we're really nice to. We went to Bollendam, we went to Harlem, but in crisis, in chaos. Um I arrived, for example, in the in the city of Vollendam, a small coastal town in the Netherlands, and I had a night booked in a hotel when we arrived. In a it was not hotel, it was like a Dutch ho house, like an Airbnb. And the next day I will wake up and I won't have any place to sleep there, or I won't have the phone, so I will like go through a crisis in the entire morning until I will solve it and find a new place. And like this. Luckily, in the beginning of July, I found a home at short-term rental um in Amsterdam. Amazing home. When I saw it, it was like I cannot go from hotels to this family, huge, two floors house with garden. I was like, at that moment I was in survival. I'm I was not trusting anything, I was not trusting anyone, I want I was not trusting stability, I was not trusting a home was for me, I was not trusting anything. So the family was like, okay, this is yours for your kid and you, and um you know, the I think it was like 18 July, you can just enter, and for one month we are traveling and you are renting our house. That's it. We got the deal, it was so easy, it was like, I don't believe it's so easy. It was in survival. How things can just become easy in survival, it's impossible. The nervous system doesn't believe in easy. So, of course, it was like the entire period. I think I visited the house in the 1st or 2nd July, and it was like until the 18th that I moved in. I spent two weeks doubting that they will not change their mind. Even the day I was moving into the house and I already paid them the rent. I had this, you know, imagine the thoughts that I had. Uh thoughts of imagine the family, you know, disappear, took my money and never hand me the keys, and I never got to have the house. You know, like worst case scenario, but very worse, like the the you know, the the most horrible thing that could happen, you know, very extreme. When everything went smooth, it was like a serious Dutch family, and of course, we went to the house and they were there, and they handed me the keys, and nothing happened so far, but I couldn't believe you know that I was going to breathe. I was going to have a house. And you are in such a long period of time in hotels surviving every day, and suddenly you find like again, two you know, floors, amazing, big, beautiful, modern, with plenty of toys. It was like a family with kids, they had a lot of toys. They tell me, your kid can have all the toys, we're gonna leave them here. I was like, what the you know, this is Hashem, you know, it's it's it's you know, it's landing us this house, you know. This is our sanctuary to rest. But even when I got the house, because I was I I was in a moment of so much house, I just went through such a big storm, such a big storm. I remember I entered my laggard and was like my my my head was living in the cows still. It wasn't relaxed, it was not um how to say, I was not in ease. I wasn't like the storm is over, I'm safe. I was just feeling like I'm I'm in a house, but I'm not safe. I was like still not feeling safe, still stressing with things, but of course things weren't a bit better with that house. Um it helped to have a house, of course, it helped. Um I also found an annie in the Netherlands because we are arrived without money, imagine with a kid all the time, horrible. I I don't know. Uh surviving with a kid, I mean exhausted. Finally found like annie that was pretty irregular for us to work with, and she came to the area of the house and helped with for a few mornings. I can train, keep my podcast, just do different things. But I don't know, it's like I didn't know anyone in the Netherlands, I didn't know any neighbor in that neighborhood. It was like a residential area in the Netherlands, in the outskirts. It was a Jewish neighborhood, by the way. Very Jewish. People had uh Mezusa's and Israeli flags, literally, all around the businesses and houses there. There was a big synagogue. Um I can say the neighborhood, I don't care anymore because um it's even in the Instagram. I think uh well, it was a Jewish neighborhood in in Amsterdam. I didn't know it was Jewish, but I just when I moved in. But I didn't met any Jewish person, like it was an area where you know it was summer, it was like empty, people were not there, I don't know. Like I felt so alone, so isolated. Um yeah, the house was one month, but still I didn't believe it was you know my house or I could relax half half. Half half. Um I was still a bit in chaos to be honest. More restoration came after more chaos when I left the house in that area of Amsterdam with this with the chaplet ended. We went back to hotels and then we went to the city of the Ak one month, and I'm gonna explain it in the second episode a bit more what happened there, and I will I will connect it with my legal journey in Israel as well. So you see, there's like all the exile in the Netherlands, it's connected again with my legal journey continuity with Israel. But uh the experience in like when I fully relaxed or started restoring and experienced more peace and more ease was in the end of my experience in the Netherlands when we supplied another house there where I truly started to relax, truly started to feel more safe. But in our first rental in the summer, even if it was a beautiful house, beautiful, I would give anything to be now in that house. It was a very nice house, really. Really, really was a very it was an amazing deal for the Netherlands, was not even expensive, although Netherlands is very expensive in the rental area. Um but the house was like truly a sweet deal, yeah. It was like almost a gift, to be honest. I was it was an amazing house, huge house, beautiful, uh modern, amazing, and yet I was so unable to enjoy and be fully present in that house because of what I was enduring in that moment of my life in the exile. So if you've listened to Zepito, thank you for listening. I hope you have gained some insights about what exile truly means and how I and my kids have experienced it during our birth in the Netherlands. This has been though only the first part. I'm gonna record and publish a second part in the next episode. But for now, those are the main things we went through, and also I'm gonna explain also how it um parallelly played out all the legal case, all the legal journey, so to say, referring to my uh connected to my kid and the father that is Israeli and our family situation with the law and the system and everything, how it played out and uh parallelly run while we were um and still are in exile now in Spain before in the Netherlands. And that's it. Uh, if you feel uh if you've enjoyed and getting insight, just drop a slide in from whichever platform you are listening from, whether it's uh Spotify or Apple Podcasts, drop a comment, share with a friend, and see you in the next episode part two.