Trying to resist your Jewish grandma doling you an extra helping of chicken soup is not easy. Likewise, trying to give you the Jewish flavour of my interailing train tour ‘round Europe in one article is a difficult task. So I will share with you what I recommend if you ever find yourself in our neck of the woods, and will tell you why it was a more Jewish journey than I had first imagined.

By the end of the month's travel, my five friends and I had davened (prayed) at a 320-year-old cathedral-sized Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam, a tiny thirteenth century Ashkenazi synagogue in Prague, and made to feel very welcome by the bustling Viennese community in their Central Synagogue in Austria.

We kept coming across Jewish people and Jewish references wherever we went; whether we were eating Israeli falafel in Amsterdam, meeting people who knew our families from the UK in Prague or seeing kosher cat food on sale in Hungary (I am not making that up...we took photos). It made us proud of our Jewish identity and more aware of our interconnection as a Jewish people—even if the Jewish people we met were from different countries and spoke different languages.  

On a tram in Amsterdam we bumped into a Dutch lesbian Jewish Studies student in her twenties with whom we made friends. In Paris, our walking-tour guide was a Jewish woman from America, and in Budapest we chatted with a group of French Jewish tourists while swimming around in a natural hot springs.

Most European capital cities have a Jewish Museum and one or more Holocaust memorials. By far the most famous Jewish Museum is in Berlin; in fact it is the most popular attraction in the city. Opened in 2001 and designed by Daniel Libeskind, it is truly a remarkable and daunting place. The architecture of the building and layout of the exhibitions affect you emotionally. When you are reading about peoples' Holocaust experiences, the walls slant inward to make you feel claustrophobic, like you are viewing a glimpse of the pain and bewilderment Jews suffered in Nazi Germany.

The museum also guides the tourists through the history of German Jewry from two thousand years ago to today. My advice is that this goes on for a lot longer than you think, so don't try to read everything because “museum fatigue” will set in before you reach the section on post-war German Judaism.

Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, is a beautiful city; small, quiet medieval cobblestone streets lead into the old town square in the city centre. The views across the Vltava River to Prague Castle are breathtaking. We spent five days there and the whole city was heaving with tourists in the summer sun eager to see the historical sites.

Here are my recommendations:

Anyone who goes to Prague should catch a concert in one of the large churches. Although slightly pricey for Eastern Europe, the 10 Euros were well spent. Even though my friends aren't the most musical bunch of people, hearing classics by an opera singer, trumpeter and organist playing on the organ Mozart once practised on in a beautifully decorated church was a once in a lifetime experience. Also climb the tower of St. Vitus Cathedral for wonderful views of the city.

Essential to any visit to Prague is a tour of the Jewish quarter. If the Berlin Jewish Museum was the most impressive in a modern way, the Prague Jewish quarter and collection of synagogues were the most historically striking.

Like visiting the Jewish Museum in Berlin, most tourists do “the tour” of the old Jewish area. It has been slightly commercialised, bustling with American, Israeli, European and Japanese tourists. It now takes a bit of imagination to see it as the heart of a thriving Jewish community of 90,000, as it was just one hundred years ago.  

I would recommend going on the tour of the six extremely old and charming synagogues, and seeing the cemetery where the Maharal Rabbi is buried. What was really wonderful and special for us was a welcoming Shabbat lunch with other members of the Tribe in the heart of Jewish Prague. It really showed us that Prague's Judaism is alive and well, despite the atrocities of the Holocaust, and the subsequent mass aliyah of Czech Jewry to Israel.

It is still very much possible to be Jewish in Europe today. Sitting down for a kosher Shabbat lunch with complete strangers truly made us feel proud and grateful that we are Jewish. Starved of meat for two weeks (because we keep kosher), it was a relief to eat some hot chicken cholent, kugel and cold meats. Sharing Shabbat with kind and hospitable Jewish people, far away from our homes, was a wonderful highlight of my holiday.

Vienna and Amsterdam have fact-filled and interactive modern Jewish Museums, but on this trip we didn't have time to see them. Neither—I am ashamed to add—did we have time to visit the largest synagogue in Europe, located in Budapest with a capacity for 3,000 worshippers; we just ran out of time. If you want to learn about the history of European Jewry then it would be well worth a visit.  

Whatever you're told in the United States about anti-Semitism and Muslim extremism here, Judaism really is alive and well in Europe. Like that extra helping of chicken soup, come and enjoy the distinct Jewish flavour of so many European cities. You won't regret it.  

Shana Tova!

Check Out These Websites Before You Visit

The Jewish Museum Berlin: www.juedisches-museum-berlin.de/

The Jewish Museum Amsterdam: www.jhm.nl/

The Jewish Museum Vienna: www.jmw.at/en/index.html

For hospitality or kosher food in Europe: www.chabad.org/centers/