My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary - Chapter 12: Obersalzberg and Munich

[After World War I] mighty forces were adrift, the void was open, and into that void after a pause there strode a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast—Corporal Hitler.

                                      ― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm: The Second World War, Volume 1

                                                              - / - / - / - / - / -

Notwithstanding the lighthearted spirit of our trip up to this point, as we approached West Germany there were subtle reminders that WWII had ended only 21 years before.  Innsbruck and Salzburg had both been occupied by the Nazis, and the specter of the Nazi presence in Austria pervades the story of The Sound of Music.  

That specter became more real when we took a side trip to Obersalzberg, West Germany, only 20 miles from Salzburg, where during the war Hitler had one of his Alpine retreats.

This destination was on our itinerary because my father served in Germany in WWII, and one of the very few things he ever said about the war was that he had gone to Obersalzberg after the war to see and vandalize Hitler's Bavarian house before returning home.  For me, it was a pilgrimage to honor my father and partake of the remains of his war in some small way.

I don't recall seeing any signs directing us to the location, and Hitler's residence (the Berghof) had been burned and looted when Allied troops arrived; the shell was demolished by the Bavarian government in 1952.  But we did find the remains of the barracks adjacent to where the Berghof had stood which had housed a large contingent of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler -- the 1st SS Panzer Division that served as Hitler's personal bodyguard unit, responsible for guarding the Führer's person, offices, and residences.  Here's what it looked like 21 years after the war:

The only other building in the area was the Gästehaus, which was mainly used as administrative offices for Reichsleiter Martin Bormann's staff, and for special guests of Bormann.  Bormann was Hitler's personal secretary and head of the Nazi Party apparatus.  He traveled with Hitler everywhere and controlled information and access to Hitler.

Here's what it looked like during WWII:

Image courtesy of Geoff Walden, "Third Reich in Ruins"

After Obersalzberg and Salzburg, we drove to Munich, a short (90-mile) trip.  We spent most of our time in Marienplatz (Mary's Square), the central square of the city since 1158.  The building that caught my attention was the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall), designed in neo-Gothic/Gothic Revival style.

Construction proceeded in three phases, the first from 1867 to 1874.  When it became clear that the new building could not accommodate all the city government offices, a second section was added from 1889 to 1892.  A third section and the tower were added between 1898 and 1905.

Not far from Marienplatz and the Neues Rathaus was one of Munich's oldest beer halls, the Hofbräuhaus, built in 1589.

Thanks in part to American soldiers stationed in Munich after WWII bringing home beer mugs with the "HB" logo, the Hofbräuhaus quickly became a major tourist attraction in Munich.  And in West Germany in 1966, anyone 16 or older could purchase and drink beer in public without parental supervision.  So we pestered our adult chaperones to take us so we teenagers could try the beer (which we couldn't legally drink in the U.S.).

Needless to say, our young palates weren't accustomed to adult beverages, so we didn't drink much.  Sitting on the periphery of the giant hall, with its long communal wooden tables and live oompah music, we were again reminded that we weren't in Oklahoma anymore, Toto.

And as we sat innocently sipping beer and watching the carousing crowd, the ghost of Adolf Hitler still hovered -- for it was at the Hofbräuhaus that Hitler, as propaganda chief, had announced the official program of the Nazi Party to a meeting of around 2,000 people on February 24, 1920, barely eight months after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I.  Seventeen months later, on July 29, 1921, he was elected Führer of the Nazi Party . . . during a meeting at the Hofbräuhaus.

My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary - Chapter 11: Salzburg

 

View of Salzburg from the Hohensalzburg Fortress (see also photo below)

Our next (and last) stop in Austria was Salzburg, most notable as the city where Mozart was born in 1756.

Salzburg was founded in 696 CE.  Situated on the Salzach River, the town's main sources of revenue in medieval times were salt extraction, gold mining, and tolls on commerce along the river.  Like Innsbruck and most of Austria, over the centuries into the 20th century Salzburg was a geo-political and religious "football."

The most prominent landmark is the Hohensalzburg fortress, a medieval fort that was begun in 1077 and expanded and reinforced many times during the next 800 years.  It towers 269 feet above the city.  It was retired as a military outpost in 1861 and was refurbished to become a major tourist attraction in the late 1800s.  The fortress is the building on the mountain over my left shoulder in the photo below.

The city has a long, rich cultural, religious, musical, and architectural history, and the Old Town became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996.  Notwithstanding those cultural riches, however, my interest was driven (as it was in Innsbruck) by a more contemporary phenomenon:  the 1965 movie The Sound of Music, much of which was filmed in Salzburg.

Today there are many tour companies offering Sound of Music location tours in and around Salzburg. 

But in 1966, I had to roll my own . . . from memory.  Here are a couple of the locations in the movie and my photos of them.

The Horse Fountain

Salzburg's most famous horse fountain is the Pferdeschwemme (Horse Pond) on Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz (which wasn't that name when we were there), a historic 17th-century Baroque pool where the prince-archbishops' parade horses were washed.

Scene from the movie
(Julie Andrews and children walking R to L in front of the horse statue)

St. Peter's Cemetery

At the foot of the mountain on which the Hohensalzburg fortress is situated is St. Peter's Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Salzburg, dating from the 700s.  The oldest grave marker is dated 1288.  Among other city notables, Mozart's older sister, Maria Anna, is buried in the cemetery (1829).

In the movie, the von Trapp family hides in the cemetery as they make their escape from Austria.

Scene from the movie

Ironically, 20th Century Fox could not get permission to film in the cemetery, so they built an exact replica in a Hollywood soundstage where they shot the scene shown above.

The Do-Re-Mi Steps (Mirabell Gardens at the Mirabell Palace)

The Mirabell Palace was built in 1606-07 (when the British were settling Jamestown in North America), and the gardens were laid out 80 years later.  The Palace's current neoclassical appearance dates from around 1818, when the Palace was restored after a fire.

Interesting fact:  three days before D-Day (June 6, 1944) Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Martin Borman attended the wedding of Eva Braun's sister to Himmler's liaison officer on Hitler's staff at the Mirabell Palace.

Mirabell Gardens
with the Hohensalzburg Fortress in the distance

In the movie, the final 52 seconds of the production number of the song "Do-Re-Mi" occur in the Mirabell Gardens, adjacent to the Palace.

You can watch the 3-minute finale here.  If you don't want to watch the whole thing, just scrub to 2:08 for the garden sequence -- it's fun.

Enjoy!

My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary - Chapter 10: Innsbruck

 

After visiting Oberammergau and Linderhof Palace, we retraced our route back into Austria for a stop in Innsbruck.

The city is the capital of the Austrian state of Tyrol, and its history goes way back to the Middle Ages.  It was a strategic crossing point for the Inn River on the trade route from northern Italy (Verona) to Germany (Augsburg) over the Brenner Pass . . . the route we took from Venice.  

Tyrol, including Innsbruck, has been a geo-political football for centuries.  It became part of Bavaria during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, but was restored to Austria in 1814.  Then in 1938 Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and the Nazis established two subcamps of the Dachau concentration camp (outside of Munich - about which, more in a later post) in Innsbruck to house high-profile political prisoners and their families from 16 countries as hostages during  WWII.  Between 1943 and April 1945, Innsbruck experienced twenty-two air raids and suffered heavy damage.

Many of the city's historic buildings survived the Allied bombing, including the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof), considered the city's most famous symbol, which was completed in 1500 and decorated with 2,657 fire-gilded copper tiles to commemorate the third marriage of Emperor Maximilian I which occurred in 1494:

 . . . and right across the street, the Helblinghaus, built in the 1400s with Rococo stucco decorations added in the early 1700s:

The Stadtturm (City Tower), built in 1450:

. . . and the St. Anne's Column, built in 1706 to commemorate the withdrawal of Bavarian troops from the Tyrol region during the War of the Spanish Succession -- another one of those geo-political football periods for Tyrol and Innsbruck:

Uppermost in my mind, however, were not the architectural landmarks nor the geo-political history.  For me, the attraction was the Winter Olympics held in Innsbruck two years earlier.  They were the third Winter Olympics to be televised internationally, and being a child of the Golden Age of Television, I was culturally conditioned to ascribe value to things depicted on TV:  if something -- or some place -- had been on TV or in the movies, then it must be important.

So I was most interested in the structures and symbols of the Innsbruck Olympics, the most dramatic of which was the Olympic cauldron at the Bergisel ski jump stadium, where the Olympic flame burned throughout the games.

Here's the stadium and ski jump itself:

And here's what the skier sees when he/she leaps from the take-off table at the end of the ramp into the air going 60 mph:

Pretty awesome view, eh?  But what you might not notice is what's visible just beyond the stadium, here:

If you look closely, you can see it's a cemetery next to a cathedral!

I think I'd rather go for a run.

My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary - Chapter 9: Oberammergau and Linderhof Palace

 

From Venice, we doubled back west then turned north to Trento and Bolzano heading for Innsbruck, Austria.  This route took us from sea level in Venice, then through the Italian Alps over the Brenner Pass (elevation 4,490 ft.), and we hoped that our recently-repaired Morris minivan would make it.  It did, without incident.

We had plotted a little side trip to visit two interesting places in southeast West Germany (Bavaria) -- Oberammergau and Linderhof Palace --  about 50 miles north of Innsbruck, so we had to go through Innsbruck to get there.  I'll talk about Innsbruck in my next post; here I talk about our side trip destinations.

Oberammergau

Being good -- but young, naive -- Christians at the time, we wanted to visit the site of the decennial Oberammergau Passion Play depicting events from the life of Jesus.  Our interest was also partially motivated by the fact that in the Wichita Mountains near Lawton, Oklahoma (Bill's and my home town) an annual passion play (known as the "Easter Pageant") has been performed every Easter by local cast and crew at the Holy City of the Wichitas.  Begun in 1926, it's the longest continuously performed passion play in North America.

Holy City of the Wichitas
Photo by Larry Smith via Wikimedia Commons

The Oberammergau Passion Play began much earlier . . . in 1634.  Legend has it -- but history doesn't actually confirm -- that after half of the town's population died from the bubonic plague, the remaining townspeople asked God to spare them from the plague and vowed to perform a passion play every ten years depicting the life and death of Jesus.  Again according to legend, after that vow, no townspeople died from the plague.

The play was performed every ten years from 1634 to 1674, and thereafter every decadal year since 1680.  Throughout the centuries, there have been several cancellations (primarily due to European wars and, most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic) and a few off-cycle performances to commemorate the 300th and 350th anniversaries of the play.

When we visited Oberammergau, we were naively unaware of the antisemitic elements of the play, which, after the defeat of Germany in World War II, came under increasing pressure from American Jews.  In 1950, playwright Arthur Miller and composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein led a petition to cancel the play, but the townspeople restaged the 1934 (300th anniversary) version of the play which Hitler had attended.  Controversy and revisions to rid the play of anti-Jewish tropes continue to this day.

The theater we visited in 1966 was built in the 1890s and hosted its first performance of the play in 1900.  You can't tell from the photo below, but the theater is huge!  It can accommodate 4,700 people in the audience and hundreds on stage.

To give you a better sense of the scale, here's what it looks like with an audience:

Photo: Andreas Praefcke
via Wikimedia Commons

After touring the theater, I lagged behind the group to get the first photograph above and got locked in -- a classic photographer move!  It took a few minutes before they noticed I was missing and unlocked the exit to liberate me.

Linderhof Palace and the Mysterious Death of King Ludwig II of Bavaria

About 15 miles from Oberammergau is Linderhof Palace, the smallest of three palaces built in the late 1800s by King Ludwig II of Bavaria.  Outside Germany Ludwig II is sometimes referred to as the Mad King, a term we had heard, but we didn't know why he was called that.  It's due to the circumstances of his deposition and mysterious death -- about which, more below.

In Bavaria during his lifetime, however, he was known as the Swan King or the Fairy Tale King, due to his extravagant devotion to music, theatre, and palaces.  Linderhof was the only castle that was actually completed in his lifetime.  He lived in it from 1876 until his death in 1886 at age 40.

The most famous of Ludwig's three palaces is, of course, the iconic Neuschwanstein Castle, which appears in travel posters for Germany, as well as on German currency and postage stamps, and it served as the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty castle.  Neuschwanstein was a bit too far out of our itinerary, so we had to settle for Linderhof.

Neuschwanstein Castle
Photo by Thomas Wolf
via Wikimedia Commons

When you hear the term "the Mad King," you may imagine some 18th century king with a powdered white wig, waving his hands and yelling at people . . . something like this:

But Ludwig II of Bavaria was a young, late 19th century monarch, who stood 6' 4" and looked like this:

Photo by Joseph Albert
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Photographer unknown

He ascended to the throne in 1864, when he was 18.  Two years later, Bavaria and its allies came under Prussian hegemony when they were defeated in the Austro-Prussian war, and in 1871 Bavaria became part of the German Empire.  Ludwig increasingly withdrew from day-to-day affairs of state, in favor of extravagant artistic and architectural projects (e.g., Linderhof, Neuschwanstein, and others).

Ludwig was also an enthusiastic patron of composer Richard Wagner.  Wagner had a notorious reputation as a political radical and philanderer who was constantly on the run from creditors.  Ludwig was likely the savior of Wagner's career; without Ludwig, Wagner's later operas are unlikely to have been composed, much less premiered at the prestigious Munich Royal Court Theatre, which went on to become the Bavarian State Opera.

At the time of our visit to Linderhof, we knew a little about Ludwig's connections to Wagner.  But we didn't know anything of his sexuality; he was probably gay.  He had close male friends as an adolescent, and other close male relationships as an adult.  On becoming king, he was under pressure to produce an heir and in 1867 became engaged to his 19-year-old cousin.  Nine months later, after multiple postponements of the wedding, he cancelled the engagement.  According to the biography in Wikipedia, 

Ludwig never married nor had any known mistresses. His diary, private letters, and other documents reveal his strong homosexual desires, which he struggled to suppress to remain true to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

We toured the grounds and interior of the palace, but I only took two pictures of the exterior.  The day we were there, there was a boys choir that performed on the steps.

Ludwig spent all his own private royal revenues (although not state funds as is commonly thought) on Linderhof and other projects.  But he borrowed extensively and defied all attempts by his ministers to restrain him.  When his castle-building caused the virtual bankruptcy of the Bavarian state, his ministers accused him of insanity, deposed him on grounds of mental illness -- hence, "the Mad King" -- and had him committed to custody at Lake Starnberg castle, about 50 miles away from Linderhof and closer to Munich. 

The day after his imprisonment, Ludwig disappeared while out for a walk with his physician.  His corpse was discovered a few hours later, along with the corpse of his physician.  The death was officially declared to be suicide by drowning, but the circumstances of his death remain open to question.  Ludwig was a strong swimmer; the water was less than waist-deep where his body was found; and there was no water found in his lungs at the autopsy.  Nor does the suicide theory explain the mysterious death of his physician the same day. 

Shortly after his death, Ludwig's castles were opened to the public as museums. Today, Ludwig II's architectural and artistic legacy includes many of Bavaria's most important tourist attractions.  Linderhof Palace is one of them.

Next post:  Innsbruck

My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary - Chapter 8: La Serenissima

 

                                                                              Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
                                                                When a new planet swims into his ken;
                                                                Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
                                                                He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
                                                                Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
                                                                Silent, upon a peak in Darien.   

                                                                                       -- John Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"

The evening of the orchestra concert, we didn't venture beyond the Piazza San Marco.  But the next day we spent exploring the city.

There were plenty of people around -- it was high tourist season (late July) -- but, thankfully, back then there were no floating hotels disgorging 5,000 passengers into the Piazza every day.  

Through the Campers' Association, we had arranged a tour of the Basilica San Marco at the east end of the Piazza . . .

 . . . and got a great view of the entire Piazza from the balcony above the main entrance.

Construction of the current basilica began in 1063, a hundred years before construction of Notre-Dame de Paris began (1163) and 323 years before construction of the Duomo in Milan (1386).  Like most cathedrals in Europe, the basilica went through multiple phases of construction over hundreds of years.

Venice began as a small settlement of refugees from the mainland in the 5th century CE to escape barbarian invasions, especially by Atilla the Hun in 452 CE.  For almost a thousand years (810 - 1797!), Venice was the capital of The Most Serene Republic of Venice ("La Serenissma" for short), a major financial and maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto (when the navy of the European "Holy League" defeated the navy of the Ottoman Empire in 1571).

Thanks to its geographic location, Venice became an important center of commerce -- especially silk, grain, and spice from Asia and Africa -- and of art from the 13th century to the end of the 17th century.  Venice is considered to have been the first real international financial center, emerging in the 9th century and reaching its greatest prominence in the 14th century.  This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history.

None of that, however, was on my mind as we made our way through the city's labyrinthine streets, passageways, and bridges.  The pedestrian experience of Venice was (and still is), in effect, a series of physical and psychological epiphanies.  Hence the lines from Keats at the top of this post.

Away from the vast open space of the Piazza San Marco, you walk in narrow corridors that are open to the sky, but deeply shadowed except at mid-day due to the high walls of the buildings on either side.  Then you turn a corner to emerge into a small, bright courtyard or square, from which there are usually multiple exits, or an occasional dead end.

Street (or alley) names are painted on the walls of buildings, but streets/alleys change names frequently, so it's easy to get lost, which can be very discomfiting if you are trying to reach a specific destination.  Fortunately, there are no minotaurs in Venice.  (But I have to say that the geography of Venice is used to very creepy effect in the 1973 film, Don't Look Now, in which a serial killer is on the loose leading to a very unpleasant epiphany.)

So we wandered through the city, headed (somewhat randomly) for the Rialto bridge, the oldest of four bridges across the Grand Canal.  It was built between 1588 and 1591, and mentioned in Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice, soon afterwards (1598).

The bridge is huge -- 75 feet wide, spanning 104 feet across the canal -- and features built-in retail arcades where tourists can buy high-end souvenirs at high-end tourist prices.

This shopping area is not on the Rialto bridge itself, but is at one end of it.

At some point, we stopped for lunch at a little open-air restaurant away from the Piazza.  Being a thoughtless, 16-year-old American, I asked the waiter, "Do you speak English?".  He answered, in perfect English, "No, but I speak very good Italian."  Zing!

After lunch we continued our random walk and eventually found our way back to the Piazza.  My friend, Bill, and I sat down at one of the outdoor restaurants in the Piazza and ordered some American refreshment:  Coca-Cola.  (If you look closely at the table, you'll see the familiar bottles.)

We knew things in Europe were more expensive than in the U.S., but  we were still surprised to learn the Cokes were 50 cents each.  At home they were a dime!  Now a Coke in Venice probably costs $5 -- or maybe more!

There was one more mission to accomplish in Venice:  a gondola ride.  Docked at the waterside entrance to the Piazza, there are dozens of gondolas (and hundreds of pigeons) . . .

We weren't quite ready to take a ride, but we were curious how much it would cost.  So we approached a gondolier and asked.  "12,000 lira" he said.  (In 1966 this was about $20 US; there were four of us interested in a ride.)

We said, OK, thanks very much, turned around and walked away.  We hadn't gone 50 feet when the gondolier hustled up saying, "Hello Americans!  I take you for 10,000 lira."  We said thanks but not right now, and walked away again.  And again the gondolier pursued us, offering a lower price.  We waved him off and kept walking.  Still he persisted, this time giving us the story of his wife and children and mother and how he had to make a living to support them.

Only then did we realize that this was a negotiation.  His final offer:  4,000 lira (about $6.50) for four of us.  Feeling abashed at our naivete, we said OK and took the ride.

The Bridge of Sighs,
built in 1602, connects the Doge's Palace to a prison

I learned a very important lesson from that experience.  To be successful in a negotiation, you have to be able to walk away.

Next post:  On to Innsbruck, Austria, with a side trip to Oberammergau and Linderhof Palace in West Germany (yes, it was  West Germany in 1966).

My Excellent European Adventure 60th Anniversary - Chapter 7: Milan to Venice

 

                                                     There are good days, and there are bad days.  This is one of them.

                                                                                                -- Lawrence Welk

We left Milan and picked up the Autostrada A4 (now also known as E70), anticipating a 3- or 4-hour drive to Venice in our Morris minivan.  The plan was to arrive in Venice around noon; park the van and take a vaporetto to the youth hostel we had booked on the island of Giudecca to drop our stuff.  Then we would take another vaporetto across to the Piazza San Marco for the afternoon and evening.  But the Universe had other plans for us.

Just east of Padua, about 30 miles from Venice, we were rolling along at about 50 mph  -- about as fast as the minivan would go with nine people in it -- while car after car went whizzing by in the fast lane with apparently no speed limits.  And then . . . the oil pressure gauge on the dashboard started dropping into the danger zone, so we pulled off the highway.

What do we do now?  No cell phones.  No AAA.  So we waited.

I don't remember how it happened, but eventually a tow truck appeared and in broken Italian and English Tom explained the apparent problem.  The tow operator hooked us up, and Tom and maybe a couple of others (not me) rode in the truck with the driver while the rest of us hung on for dear life in the minivan.  

Next Stop:  Dolo

The tow truck took us to a little town called Dolo, barely 15 miles from Venice.  So close, and yet so far!

After unhooking us from the truck, the truck driver and a couple of strapping young Italian men pushed the minivan through a narrow passage into a courtyard, where they began to look in the engine compartment and under the van, talking in typical Italian style -- lots of gestures, but earnestly, not conspiratorially.

Eventually, they concluded that the oil pan drain plug had come off and drained all the oil.  If we hadn't pulled off the road when we did, it would have caused serious damage to the engine.  This was a simple problem to diagnose, but a much harder problem to fix:  Where do you get a plug of the right diameter, thread size and pitch for a non-Italian vehicle?

While all this was going on, seemingly out of nowhere (but undoubtedly from one of the buildings surrounding the courtyard) a fiery young woman (think "Carmen") came running toward the men standing near the minivan, screaming and brandishing a large cast-iron skillet.  Instantly, one of the men bolted and, after a brief chase around the courtyard, two others disarmed (dis-skilleted?) her and pulled her, literally kicking and screaming, back into a building.

The whole episode probably only lasted a minute, but we were stunned . . . speechless.  Once again, we realized we were definitely not in Oklahoma anymore, Toto.

After a while -- I have no recollection of how long it was -- the oil pan plug was replaced and the oil refilled.  They fired up the engine and the oil pressure came up and seemed stable.  Tom paid them somehow -- I think with American Express checks -- and we got back on the road to Venice.

Next Stop:  Venice

By this time it was very late in the afternoon, so our plan of a casual afternoon in Venice had drained away with the engine oil.  We parked the minivan outside of town (I think at the railroad station), took a vaporetto ferry to the hostel on Giudecca, and ate dinner there.  But we were determined to make the most of our time, so after dinner we caught a vaporetto across to the Piazza San Marco.

The light was fading fast . . .

. . . and by the time we reached the main island, it was almost dark.

The vaporetto dock was over here . . .

. . . and to get to the Piazza San Marco, we had to walk about a hundred yards from the dock to the waterside entry to the Piazza:

As we approached, I heard music . . . orchestral music, live three-dimensional music, not two-dimensional music blasting from loudspeakers.  We rounded the corner into the vast open space of the Piazza, and there was a small orchestra, with 15, maybe 20, players with violins, cellos, horns, and woodwinds!  And overhead and surrounding the orchestra were strings of lights suspended on poles, with bulbs one or two feet apart.  With the music, the lights, the magnificent Piazza . . . I was transported.  I watched and listened, and time seemed to vanish.  It was truly magical!

As I recall, the orchestra was located about here, with players facing the southern side of the Piazza (on the left in this photo).

So here's the thing:

If we had been able to follow our original plan, and had not had vehicle trouble, we would probably never have seen the orchestra.  We would have arrived in time to spend the afternoon, then we would have headed back to the hostel on Giudecca for dinner and called it a day.  The Universe works in mysterious, and sometimes wonderful, ways.

One more post about my experience in Venice will follow this one.