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It was my first visit to France as a preacher. In my youth I regularly visited France on a student exchange program and explored all the famous landmarks of Paris. In those days I could quite fluently speak French - now, fifty years later it was rather rusty...
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After visiting the temple in Wroclaw/Poland over 5 days and conducting a number of enlivening programs - some house programs, a Holy Name Day on Saturday and the Sunday program - I traveled by train to New Shantipur, a nice rural project
To create a culture of bhakti in our home is a challenge! This book gives insights and guidelines related to very practical aspects of life - how to adjust and transform our family life so it is an ashram, a suitable place to facilitate our spiritual growth and development.
It was my first visit to Poland as a preacher. I remember dropping into the temple in Warsaw around thirty years ago when traveling with my former husband from Riga to Germany to visit my parents. In those days the temple room was in an old building - meanwhile beautiful Gaur Nitai moved to a new temple building with a good size temple room. The property has a nice vegetable- and flower garden with fruit trees and bushes. There are only a handful of devotees living in the temple, with some of them being from Ukraine. But there is a good size congregation with local Polish devotees and also Indian and Russian speaking devotees.
Shortly after returning to Europe from the US, I flew to Vilnius in Lithuania to attend the Baltic Summer Festival which is always a nectarean event. This year it was graced by the presence of HH Bhakti Caitanya Swami, HH Dhira Shanta Gosvami, HH Ananda Vardhana Swami, Madhavananda and his wife and Narayani Mataji as main guest speakers, and Agnidev, Sistakrit and Ojasvi Prabhus as main kirtaneers. Over 6 days more than 700 devotees attended, swimming in the nectarean ocean of bliss while absorbing themselves in various kathas during the day and diving into blissful kirtans in the evenings.
My last destination on my tour around the US was New York. I stayed in the Brooklyn temple with beautiful Radha Govinda and had a wonderful time giving a number of programs there and also at the Bhakti Center. The facilities are great - a huge building in a good location. On the rooftop the devotees not only keep Tulasi Devi but also grow flowers and even vegetables and herbs in buckets and crates - my favorite place for chanting japa in the early morning....
On the short flight from Portland to Boise I had a window seat and was observing the change of climate and vegetation as we came closer to Boise - the only sight-seeing I am engaging in: looking out the window from the plane. It gives me some idea what my new environment is like. It was very obvious: Boise is in the desert-like state of Idaho. Outside the city there are no trees unless one goes up into the mountains. And Boise is one of the most remote urban areas within the US - in the middle of nowhere...
My next destination was Portland in Oregon - in the far North of the US, near the Canadian border. I had a window seat on the plane and saw gigantic mountain tops covered with snow. The vegetation reminds indeed of Canada - dense forests and mountains...
New Dwaraka in Los Angeles is one of our prominent and historic projects in ISKCON - Srila Prabhupada was very fond of this temple and often glorified the gorgeous standard of Deity worship. It is also the headquarters of the North American BBT, and Prabhupada had stayed here for a longer period of time, with his rooms now being maintained as a museum.
On the 7th of June I arrived in San Diego in South California. Surprisingly, the weather was cool - not what you would expect...
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Devaki Devi Dasi's Travel DiaryDevaki Devi Dasi is sharing her realizations and adventures in her Traveling Diary.Welcome to relish this nectar! Archives
December 2022
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