Schnee!

Dateline: Munich.

First, let me just say that I hate public internet terminals, especially as the last person to use Blogger on here seems to have been Korean, or perhaps Japanese, and I'm now relying on the color-coding of buttons more than ever. I'll also be happy to be done with European keyboards. The Italian ones were especially annoying; the German isn't too bad, except that it's a "qwertz," rather than qwerty, and some punctuation is especiallz difficult to track down.

Not to temporally dislocate the travel narrative too much, but I was watching CNN in English last night (yay, English news, but boo CNN rather than BBC), and on the international weather segment, they noted with surprise that it was snowing in Bavaria. K and I also noted this with surprise, as we made our way into the town center last night wearing every piece of clothing in our suitcases. (Earlier that day, a mere four-hour train ride away, in Bolzano, we were able to get away with T-shirts when the sun came out.) It was also a little weird to board the train in the Italian Alps, in Europe, and exit a few hours later in the U.S., but more on that later. Suffice it to say that 21st-century Bayern has enough family resemblance to a nonspecific American zeitgeist to trigger reverse culture shock for both of us, which we weren't anticipating.

Today was also my first bagel in over a year (!), properly toasted mit schmear, and...well, I'm ready to start apartment-hunting.