Sunday, June 7th (Day 15)

It is hard to leave Rom when there is so much to see, but Venice is calling and today is our travel day. We took a train (about a 4.5 hour ride) to Venice today. I got to ride in first class, which was pretty nice. Mainly it meant a bigger seat. The trip was uneventful except for the part where I got off at the wrong Venice station. I didn't realize there were two stations and Abel and I didn't sit together. After I got off and couldn't find Abel, I found out that I should have waited 10 minutes to exit the train. I had to hop on another short shuttle to get me to the other station. No harm done - just a half hour delay and a good laugh for Abel. Apparently he saw me out the train window as it was leaving the station, so he knew to wait for me to arrive at the next stop.

You walk out of the train station and you find yourself in the heart of Venice. Canals, ships, mobs of tourists. This is a hopping place! We didn't know where our hostel was located and after some research we discovered it was a ways away and we would have to take a boat (E6.50 each way) to get there and also take a boat any time we wanted to sight-see. We anticipated spending about 40 Euros each on boat rides, so we questioned whether staying in Venice was a good idea. Things like Internet access and phone calls were quite expensive, but food and hotel rooms (a cheap one for 70 Euros/night) weren't too bad.

After some deliberation and Abel's strong opinion, we decided it would be best to take an overnight train to Munich. So we cancelled our hostel reservations and got a ticket. Before leaving, we had time to walk around the city to get a flavor of Venice. I also took a boat ride through the Grand Canal and listened to Rick Steves' audio tour. That was very good! We left town about 11pm, so we had a good 8 hours in Venice - enough to say we've been there!
The train ride was grueling! We had regular seats (they wanted to charge me E105 or E45 for a bed) that didn't recline, six people in a small room with three facing the other three. It wasn't easy to sleep. I also had an incident with a very overzealous ticket man who fined me E50 for not writing the date on my rail pass. This is something you are supposed to do, but up until now nobody seemed to care. This guy cared deeply! He reprimanded me several times, to the point where I thought I was going to spend the night in a German prison camp. I paid my E50 and tried to act respectful, though I must admit that when he said "Do you think I am stupid?" I was tempted to say "I'm going to assume that is a rhetorical question."

Abel was in the cabin next door and the ticket monster hadn't gotten there yet, so after he was done with me, I went over and warned Abel to put the date on his ticket. Of course, Mr. Crabby Ticket Man saw me do that and I got another lecture. However, it paid off because Abel got his date recorded and didn't get fined.

Abel had interesting conversation in his cabin with a guy from Nigeria and some other college age folks about everything from politics to religion. They ended up talking almost all night. We drove through the Alps in Austria (Innsbruck) around 4am. They were spectacular! That's were we intend to stay Tuesday and Wednesday night - about two hours by train from Munich.
We arrived back in Munich at 6:30 am.