Once in a Lifetime

#1 Every town has a Madonna altar on the side of the road leading into town. Usually just Mary behind glass or grill for good fortune. This one was a touch over the top. Maybe angling for more.
#2 Frank and Carolyn Schwarz met in me in Venezia on their mission to deliver a Sefer Torah to Lev Chadash in Milan.
#3 My bunk room at the mega hostel in Venezia. Six in this room. Some eight, some four. Old, young, mixed gender, shared bathroom, any Europe, maybe Moroccan North African, pick a language. $21-$33 a night for this. It rained off and on for five days in Venezia.
#3,4 Common kitchen. Cook anything you’d like, just clean up. With Lilly and Minodi my roommates from Japan.
#5 Abundant ristorantes. Did you know gnocchi are dough balls in sauce?
#6 King size Nutella pumper. I’d eat more of it if it weren’t so much like dessert.
#7 I had to get us cheap sunglasses despite the weather.
#8 My companion here is a fixture in town, works nights.
#9,#10 These are imbedded outside the doorways of the houses of deported Jews and others. The fate of those souls is noted. They are called stolperstein in German which means stumbling stones.
#11 What one such doorway looks like today.
#12, #13 Venetian ghetto square where Jews were forced to live in the fifteen hundreds. This is the place where the English word ghetto originated. Fairly interesting causes and conditions about this place. And a memorial from Venezia toward those there, come and gone.Read more