SNOW!

It is SNOWING big puffy white flakes that are drifting down to the earth. I realize most of you are getting over winter and are happy for spring, but I haven't seen snow in two years, and I love it.

The four Israelis traveling I am with are probably freaking out right now, thinking the world is going to end.

Munich so far has been great wandering around. I must admit, it has been a bit frustrating, slowing down to the pace of my friends. I am the kinda person who grabs sandwiches and eats them walking run so we can see just one more site, so it sometimes has felt like we have wasted hours wandering around deciding not to eat lunch in restaurants.

I loved the palace of the Bavarian Kings called the Reidenz. The gilding just went on and on and on. We spent two hours, barely stopping moving, though one insanely ornate room after another. I don't understand why Ludwig II had to build other castles. Wasn't this one decadent enough?

I also say in another palace, the king's thirty-odd portraits of beautiful women called the Gallery of Beauties. Like 19th century pin-ups. They ranged in rank from princesses down to the daughter of a shoe maker. I could have spent all day sitting there and wondering about each of them, who they really were and what happened to them. Wikipedia supplied a glimpse of one of them, Jane Elizabeth Digby, who loved every cliché of romance novels heros. She married a Count, then and Earl, had an affair with a King, at some point two of her lovers dueled. Then there was a Greek tycoon and last but not least, a twenty eight year marriage to a Sheik in Damascus where she spent the rest of her life.

Yesterday we went to Dachau which is only 20 minutes by train on the public transport from the city. Ehud initially joked that he wasn't sure he wanted to go to Dachau...on a train. All I could do was let out a horrified giggle. In the end all of us went.

My friends warned me that their macabre humor might come out, but no one peeped a joke until we were back on the bus heading back to the city. It was intense and silent. There was even a soccer team of Canadian, grade 9 boys and they were quiet too. Everyone visits the place in shock and horror because the exhibits and movies really don't hold back on the truth. It is funny, I have now been to some of the holiest places on earth, and yet Dachau was the one where people in their entirety behaved the most respectfully.