Milan 1
Trip Start
Nov 14, 2008
1
53
102
Trip End
Feb 26, 2009
Milan,
Italy
Monday, January 5, 2009
I started the morning farewelling Tow - who is heading to London for 2 days then back to Sydney, and Deutsch - heading to Thailand to have the shit beaten out of him, for 6 weeks of muay thai martial arts training.
Brad, our roommate, headed with me to the Jewish Ghetto, the world's oldest, where we took a 40-minute tour by an unenthusiastic lady who assumed everybody knew every Hebrew and Yiddish slang term she'd slip in. The community now is tiny, numbering only a few hundred, but there are still 6 Synagogues, whose use gets rotated between the festivals. The nicest one was the Spanish Synagogue which, like the nice one in Budapest, was designed to look more like a church. The gift shop was pretty nice, filled with Murano glass Jewish stuff, I bought a nice glass mezuzah.
Bumping into friends from Sydney
In the middle of the ghetto tour, I bumped into Yossi & Rivky Shuchat, 2 friends from Sydney (& the South Head youth leaders), even though I had no idea they were even away! Though they couldn't talk Brad into doing so, after he left I put on tefillin to maintain my once-per-year record. It was a big coincidence meeting them, we took a few photos together in the ghetto and hung out for about half an hour before I had to leave for my train.
On the train to Milan, I forgot to mark the date on my Eurail pass, and didn't think much of it as the conductor practically always marks it on himself without a fuss. But this Italian conductor was anal, telling me I had to pay a 50 Euro fine!! Eventually he lowered it to 20 Euro, which makes me think he was pocketing it himself. I found a cool hostel in Milan for a good price but a bit out of town, chilling with the Oklahoma twins in my room (who also say "Y'all" a lot), and booking a 10-day tour of Turkey for later this week. EVERY person I know who's been to Turkey has raved about it, while Milan's apparently a giant hole, I'm only here because I found a $90 flight from Milan to Istanbul, with some no-name airline called MyAir, it's a pretty good deal if I actually survive the flight.
