The author’s travel starts with university books. After an intense student career, he realizes it is time to gain first-hand knowledge of that controversial Land, walk in its streets, talk its language so distant and unfamiliar to Nicola's background. What is a country that still has not delineated his own borders like? How can people live among tensions and violent contrasts?

Questions like these pushed the author to leave his beloved Mitteleuropa, without a clearly defined project. The discovery begins with Tel-Aviv, where East does not seem to be present, and West seems to dominate...