Munchin in Munich...

I arrived in Munich yesterday. On the 14th, I headed to Lido, the beach by Venice, and it downpoured. It was my 'relax' day, and I spent all this time going to the beach to have it rain. It was about a 45 minute ride from Pl. De Roma in Vencie. Oh well. Since the goal was to relax, I headed back to the hostel and took a nap and read during the afternoon, and then in the evening, I got a roomate for the night, and she was really cool. Her name is Beth, 22,and she was from England, also recently graduated, but in speech therapy. We immediately got along famously, and talked non-stop for like 4 hours, through dinner, and after dinner, we sat downstairs with other people and hung out. There were a lot of people traveling alone that night too. There was Lindsey from CA, Inga from Canada, and another girl and guy from England whose names I can´t remember. we had a blast just chatting it up late into the evening.

In the morning, I checked out and went into town and got my ticket for Munich for 1:30, dropped my bags in luggage check at the station, and went to the Jewish Ghetto AGAIN. Because it had been a holiday for the past few days, everything has been closed, and so finally, I was able to take a tour of the old Ghetto. There were 5 small shuls in the ghetto, three of which I was able to see. Interestingly enough, the layout was similar to a church in that the pulpit was higher than the rest of the synagogue, making the person reading the Torah higher than the ark holding the Torahs, which is not a common thing found in Judaism. Turns out, jews were only allowed specific professions in the ghetto: money lenders, physicians, or second hand clothes sellers. They could not be craftsmen or artists, so christains actualy built all of the synagogues. After touring the Ghetto, I made my way back to the train station for the trip to Munich. Within the ride, a man from Sicily sat near me and we talked for a bit, though he struggled a lot with English, and we all know how much Italian I know ;-) Later, as we approached Innsbruck, a peculiar man entered my "cabin" on the train after seeing my copy of "The Da Vinci Code" on the seat next to me. We talked for a bit, and he asked me about why I thought Dan Brown would write the book, etc. etc., and then he left. Strange.

on another note,

Have you ever looked down the toilet on a train bathroom? I know you're not supposed to go when the train is in the station, but today I looked down, and realized that when you flush, it just goes on the track...interesting...