I’ll call your Trump and raise you the Brexit

“So how often do you get Trump questions?” “Every damn day.” If you are an American backpacker in 2016 the shared bond between all of us is the steady refrain of being asked about Donald Trump. I’ve been asked about Trump by men, women and children, Swedes, French, and Czechs. People speaking great English and…

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Barcelona by Bike

This obviously is out of chronological order by I finally stopped procrastinating and edited this GoPro video riding through Barcelona by bike.   Barcelona by Bike from Nathan Bickell on Vimeo.

Riding Solo

I’m all alone! For the first 10 days of my trip I was literally shuttled around Israel. All I had to do was show up in the morning marginally awake and not obviously hungover and the rest was taken care of. The next four days I was staying with one of the Israeli’s on my…

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The Politics of Birthright

I don’t think there is any conflict in the world that is more complicated, and with more moral grey area than Israel-Palestine. And maddeningly it’s a topic that is frequently painted in black and white terms. Basically on one side if you are not a self-loathing Jew you should support Israel, and supporting Israel means…

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Sipping on the Mayanot Birthright Kool-Aid

Believe the hype… My Birthright trip, or “Mayanot 138!” as I heard 1,000 times, gathered together 37 young professional, college educated, Jews. Not the type of people to immediately buy in to corny talk like “having your life changed” “making friends forever” and “becoming a mishpacha” (Hebrew for family). Yet by the end of the…

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1 a.m. Somewhere Over the Atlantic

Coming to you live (two days wi-fi delayed) from somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean this is the inaugural entry in Travels by Bickell. This blog will hopefully be regular entries about what happens to me after I quit my job as a video journalist in Dallas, TX to go travel the world. Well as a…

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