Right now I'm sitting on the ground on the floor of a rickety train that's lurching its way from the Irish countryside into Dublin. We're five hours late--our first train died fifteen minutes into our 110 minute journey, and a train from Limerick was forced to push our heaping carcass of steel into the next station. We were then loaded on an already full train, where I've ended up on the damp, muddy floor beside the toilet.

I'm on my way back from the country, where I celebrated the birth of Christ. I decided not to go to Poland for the holidays, as the risk of getting put in a camp and being made into soap seemed too great. So I went to the Irish countryside instead, with stern warnings from my host that the place was a bog-hole, but was pleasantly surprised to find myself on a historic estate filled with cows, chickens, and rosy-cheeked Irish children.

We had a traditional Christmas, a sort of mix of Irish and English conventions. I even went to church in the hopes that it might help me escape the fiery inferno that was to be my inevitable future. It was only my second time in such a place, and I actually had to put my fist in my mouth to stop myself from laughing. It was like watching Monty Python, live. Heaven, here I come. A few hours later, I got a text message from the DFP: "You could have saved yourself the trouble--we don't let half-Jews into heaven anyway."

There were mincemeat pies and a flaming Christmas pudding, and even though it wasn't my family I got a number of rather pleasing gifts. Funnily enough, although the maternal figure in the family had never met me before, she seemed equally as able to find appropriate presents for me as my own family. Always going to someone elses house for holidays might be the way to go. Contact with my family was limited to a three minute crackling phone call, and as I was the guest, the only nagging and insults that were directed at me were coming from my own psyche.