“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.” ― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities ―
When I was little, I thought that by the ripe-old-age of 23, I’d have a house, a full-time career, a book published, and a Maserati or two to spare.
Instead, much to the chagrin of my poor, bewildered parents, I decided to plunder my life-savings and move myself and my half-finished manuscripts to Italy for a year, to study and write.
As luck would have it, I’ve ended up in the most beautiful sinking city in the world. And, as ever, my disdain for social media has led me back to the most literary form of it – blogging.
Hopefully my not-so-witty reflections will help brighten up your morning commute, or evening scroll – either way, please come along with me as I stumble over the metaphorical (and literal) cobblestones of life in Venice.
Summer came and went, and soon enough, I had returned to Venice for the second semester of Uni. I had a new apartment, new friends and new routines for the last half of the year. Or, so I thought…
There are many pleasures to living on the island proper of Venice.
The novelty of running for the boat instead of the bus does not get old, watching the ochre sunsets seep darkly into the waves of the navy lagoon is truly a thing of beauty, and the delight in finding hidden a hidden pasticceria around the knobbly corners of labyrinthine streets is second to none.
However.
There has always been a darkly mythic quality to this city. Whether you have seen it glittering in a film, visited it through the pages of a novel, or actually trudged through the winding streets yourself — you will know that there is a Stygian edge to Venice herself.
Tales of death, of disease, of violence, of murder, of theft, of lost love and lust — they abound in fiction and history books alike. This is a city alive with pain, alive with pleasure. This is a city that has been wronged.
On the morning of Monday 11th November, sirens resounded across the island. These were not the clinical electronic warnings we have in Australia — these were eerie notes that wafted out of speakers installed for this very purpose; to signal the forthcoming acqua alta — the high water to come. They rise in pitch, like a macabre musical exercise. They are the same notes Venetian civilians heard back in 1945, when Allied aircraft bombed their harbour. My Italian professor recounts a tale in which her grandmother heard the sirens for the first time since the bombings — how her elderly relative shivered and wept at the sounds that had once promised death.
The water began to rise at 9.00am. My apartment, on the ground floor, next to a canal, was secured — metal shields, reinforced with rubber guards, to the height of 90cm, were screwed to the front and back doorsteps by my landlady some months before. These are common in Venice, and are put up before big storms or high tides. The forecast had said to expect 100cm of water above sea level – which would reached a height of about 10cm on the ground closest to canals.
Outside the front door
The water began to seep under both doors, and for four hours, I trudged back and forth between them with a mop and bucket – pouring litres of salty brown canal water down the drains.
I called the property manager, and asked him to come and inspect the metal shields. When the water receded, he arrived, and pronounced the rubber to be old. He promised someone would come to fix it – perhaps on Thursday or Friday. Everyone has the same problem, he said. I vowed to keep mopping, to put towels across the threshold, I worried about property damage and my deposit out loud — he simply shrugged, and told me to place bricks under the legs of the couch and table — his nonchalance alarming me somewhat. I reminded myself of the cavalier Venetian attitude to life, love, patience and business, and continued about my exciting day of homework, laundry and reading in bed.
Struggling with persistent bronchitis and a clinging month-old fever, I went to sleep early. I woke up, reaching for my phone to view the forecast for the day. 145cm at 11.00pm. Sighing and resigning myself to a day of mopping, I opened my bedroom door, crossed the apartment, and saw this:
The water entered under both doors in glassy sheets, and had begun to crawl into the hallway, threatening the my bedroom, the bathroom and the kitchen. I began to clean immediately – rain, wind and 9 degrees outside; me in shorts, a singlet and wellies inside. Hours passed, and finally the tide receded – 1.00pm to 6.00pm where I showered, ate, worked and sent apologetic emails to my professors for that day’s absences.
7.00pm saw me back in bed; tired, sick, headachy and ready to return to normal life. I had placed towels at each door, weighted down with bricks and plastic sheeting. I knew that the water would be high around 11.00pm, so I napped intermittently, understanding that I could be sluicing water from the house long into the night. I woke up every 15 minutes or so — my heart racing, ears craning — sweaty with a fever. Sometimes the sirens woke me up, sometimes an overly large wave slapping against the stone walls outside. I checked the forecast at each interval, hoping desperately that it would go down — that I could succumb to sleep instead of stress.
At 9.30pm, I received a text message from the property manager:
‘Go in hotel immediately! The meteorologic forecast is ‘orribile. Half a meter of water! Best.’
At that point, the sirens wailed again — like some sort of sadistic pan-piper was trying to charm Venice out of watery ruin. Just a bit of water, I thought. Italians are so dramatic, I pronounced, sniffling and throwing yet another revolting tissue into the bin beside my bed.
I checked my phone. The forecast had risen to 160cm. I groaned, pushing it away from me, rolling out of bed, preparing myself for another bout of mopping, when I heard buzzing. My landlady was calling from Moscow:
‘Darling, how are you? Such terrible news about the water – we are watching the forecast.’
I assured her that I had cleaned all day, that I had secured the doors as best I could. We chatted for a while about Russia, about Milan, about travelling. I was drawn from her small talk by an odd sound coming from outside my bedroom door. An acquatic, slapping sound. Inside the house. Faintly, I heard her say:
‘At least the bed is dry, darling. You get some rest, stay in the bedroom, and we’ll talk in the morning.’
I agreed, and stood, hanging up, and listening at the door to the rushing noise outside. Wind, I thought. Some water in the house, maybe. Best keep the door closed and wait till morning, like she said. I climbed back in bed and opened my book.
At 10.00pm, I heard a trickling sound, looked up from my novel, and saw the water wriggling in under my door. I stared at it for a few seconds, a part of me not quite comprehending. The towel I placed had darkened with saturation, and the brick began to edge forwards. I crawled to the end of the bed, grabbed my wellies and put them on over my owl-patterned pyjamas; staring somewhat wistfully at ‘sleepy owl’ on my left quad. I stood, watching the water like some sort of nautical voyeur, and considered my options.
The water climbed quickly, and the slapping sounds outside had shifted to a gushing sound. My curiosity got the better of me, and I opened my bedroom door.
More water rushed in. Ankle-height water in the house. I uttered a few expletives. I turned and sloshed to the front door, and grasped blindly for the phone in my pocket. The water was pouring through the hinges of the door, the height level with the metal shield. The street outside had been subsumed with over a metre of water, and the trees swayed violently in the rough winds.
10.15pm. I checked the forecast. 172cm of water. Water in the house approaching my calf.
I eyed my low-lying belongings, deciding to move some things on top of the bed. I decided to change out of my owl pyjamas. Not good for my street cred if I am to be seen wading down the street. Tricky getting into jeans when you can’t touch the floor or a bed.
10.20pm. The water looked to be getting higher. The sirens sounded again. 177cm of water. Mid-calf.
10.30pm. I called my landlady. That is not a phone call you want to make, or receive.
‘Hi, look, there’s quite a bit of water in the house – it’s coming in really quickly – do you think I should try and head for a hotel? You’ve seen this before, right?’
She hadn’t. She sounded panicked, and began to babble. I started thinking. I made the decision to leave.
As she talked, sometimes in English, in Italian, in Russian, I waded around the house, collecting my passports, my laptop, jewelry, chargers, spare essentials, etc. As I went to collect a necklace I left on the edge of the bathroom sink, the power cut out, and I was left in darkness — outside more illuminated than inside. Through the glass and metal door, I could see a palm tree swaying so violently that large fronds were ripped from it, splashing into the burgeoning canal below. I wondered which hotel I should aim for.
The water was climbing to the top of my calf. Furniture began to float, and I bumped into chairs, a rogue cushion and almost tripped on a rug that had been weighed down. I put my phone torch on, my phone between my teeth, looking for clothing or belongings I hadn’t thought to collect, shoving them in my large suitcase and placing it as high as I could in the wardrobe.
The water had begun to climb up the sides of the bed, and as I edged through the house, it threatened to come over the tops of my gumboots. I placed my small suitcase with my valuables on the heavy metal desk beside the door and glared at the street outside.
‘Give me a minute, I’m going to open the door and head for a hotel.’
I said, and pushed the key into the door, turning it. The key stuck slightly, and I put my phone down my shirt, trying to keep the torch trained on the keyhole whilst wiggling the handle — trying not to drop my phone into the water below.
‘I’ll call you back in a second, let me get outside.’
The rain looked heavy and cold. The wind sounded angry outside — less whimsical whistling and more furious screaming. I vaguely remembered some piece of advice that warned against stepping into floodwaters. I glanced at the sodden couch behind me, at the water pouring through the door in front of me. I tried the key again.
The lock turned this time and I felt some small wave of relief. I took a deep breath and pulled the door handle toward me.
Nothing.
I jerked the handle again. Still nothing. I wrapped all my fingers around the handle, leaned my body weight back and yanked several times. Didn’t budge an inch.
I looked at the windows around me. Curtains, glass, handles, me-sized — with wrought-iron bars artistically caged around them. On every window. The back door led to a small patio over a large canal. In other words, into the canal itself, as it was now hip-height underwater.
At this point, I began to panic. I tried the door, again and again, until my breath started to come in short, shallow breaths, and my constant movement brought cold water trickling into my boots.
I reached for my phone and called the emergency services number given to international students by my university. Two people were assigned to me quickly, asking if they should call the police, or if there was anywhere I could go, if I could go out a window, out the other door.
My landlady called again:
‘Darling, the wat–‘
‘I can’t get the door open.’ I cut her off.
‘Where do I go if I can’t get the goddamn door open.’ I asked, my sentence punctuated by the strain in my voice as I rocked back and forth, pulling at the handle still, my nails breaking and the black polish chipping as I clawed at the hinge.
She switched to Russian, talking rapidly to her husband.
‘I’ll call you back.’
The emergency personnel were looking at contacts in Venice, to see if they could get a boat to me, a person to me. The water was knocking books off shelves, wobbling end-tables. The wind rattled the windows and pushed a moaning sound through the flat. More water poured into my boots. The landlady called again.
‘The neighbours upstairs will take you in. Go to them.’
My throat felt thick, and everything was too loud. I started again; pleaded with this inanimate object, my breathing hitching in my chest, blisters forming on my palms as I pulled again and again and again when finally — something gave.
The heavy metal door swung open, letting in a domestic tsunami of icy canal water, planks of wood, rubbish and foliage. I grabbed my suitcase, phone, keys, and lifted one leg carefully over the metal shield, through the water, and onto the street.
The water soaked through my jeans, settling at my hips. Lifting the other leg over, I then placed the suitcase on my head. I did battle with the door again, this time fighting to keep my balance, keep my eyes open against the wind and rain — to pull it shut against the force of the waves.
Eventually, and at the loss of yet more nails, the door swung shut, and keeping one hand on the wall, and one on my small suitcase atop my head, I waded through the water to the neighboring door at the end of the street.
I banged on the metal door, rang the doorbell, shouted their names, and soon the door swung open. The entire first floor was covered in waist deep water, and I climbed the stairs to their second floor apartment.
Having been married 60 + years, nothing much phased G and L. As I sat on their top stair, L took my case and she wheeled it into their hall. My hands were shaking so much I couldn’t get my boots off, so G, in all his 80 something year glory, bless him, helped me pull them off, and didn’t bat an eyelid at the litre he poured out of them.
I didn’t realise I was crying until L started dabbing at my face with tissues, pushing a packet into my hand and ushering me into the shower, all the while murmuring to herself in Venetian dialect about the state of the world – a language that is quite, quite different to Italian.
I wrestled with my uncooperative hands and wet jeans, showered, and L pushed a towel, some trackpants and a sweater through the door. Thankfully, G is quite tall for an Italian, and I emerged in his army camouflage pants, a blue woolen sweater and his purple velvet slippers.
As the British turn to tea for comfort, so too do the Italians with coffee, and soon I was sat at a table, with an espresso pushed into my hand as L spooned three sugars into it.
‘Bevi, cara, e non ti preoccupare.’
‘Drink’, she said, dear, ‘and don’t worry yourself.’ — Italian our only common tongue.
At 11.00pm, she showed me to their spare room and sent me to bed. I then made a phone call to my mother that may have taken years off her life. My deepest apologies, mother mine. I think she then did the same to my long-suffering father, as not long after I received a similarly panicked phone call from him. Once again, my apologies.
I couldn’t sleep that night. Traditional news had not yet grasped the situation in Venice, and I was instead glued to an instagram account that documents city, resident and student life: venezia_non_e_disneyland.
Footage poured in — boats stranded on main streets, floating down alleys, sinking in the lagoon, rats clinging to walls, people fighting for their homes, their shops, their livelihoods, walls swept away, bricks piled up on bridges. St. Marks square drowned – the church itself flooded.
The sirens floated across the wind periodically all night, and didn’t stop till late the next day. I joined G and L in front of the television for the morning period, watching the news roll in, as the water was still thigh-height. Two people had died in the floods. Businesses had been lost, homes gutted with water damage. Schools were closed. University was closed.
Still in G’s army gear, I made phone calls, contacted my supervisor and tried to think of my next move. I couldn’t get into the apartment until the water receded, which wasn’t due to happen till 2.00pm. I wasn’t sure where I would be sleeping that night.
So, obviously, as is the great European tradition, if someone is in crisis, they need to be…yes, that’s right, fed.
L made mushroom risotto, caprese salad, fresh bread, a fruit platter, then arranged biscuits and truffles on the table and popped prosecco; insisting I eat everything in front of me. No, I did not know the Italian for ‘thank you so much, but if I eat anymore, I will vomit from your kindness, you lovely soul.’
She showed me photos of her children, her grandchildren and her nieces — told me stories about their successes. I asked her what the secret of her 60+ year long marriage was to G, and they both laughed.
‘I say something nice to her everyday.’ G said, in dialect.
‘I laugh with him everyday.’ L responded in Italian, and he kissed the top of her head, before bidding me goodbye and venturing out in his fly-fishing waders to check on his friends.
House-proud, I wasn’t even allowed to help L with the dishes, but was waved off to make more phone calls. My landlady said she’d be on the next plane from Moscow.
2.00pm rolled around, and the water had receded enough for me to go outside. I bounded down the stairs in my soaking wellies, which L was not best pleased about, muttering something about me catching my death, and G helped me unscrew the metal shields on the doors.
He made me stand back as he opened the metal doors, front and back, and I watched as rubbish, some of my clothes and some furnishings floated out onto the street and into the canal.
I ventured inside to see that what once was my home, filled with happy memories, friends and comfort,
had come to this:
The house was wrecked. The bed was soaked through, the couches too, chairs upended with broken legs, the fridge filled with canal water, the washing machine broken, wall plaster cracking off from water damage, and the sewage system had backed up through the bathroom and into the hall.
I lost around 15% of my belongings – nothing insurance won’t be able to fix – but some clothes and items with sentimental value. Nothing compared to the homes and businesses damaged by the floods.
I grabbed what I could, called my valiant friend M, thanked G and L profusely, and M helped me shift my life through the sodden, broken streets of Venice into a hotel in Mestre, where the mainland connects to Venice. Cercavo un mare calmo, e ho trovato te — grazie caro x.
The city looked broken as we sailed through; bits of debris and carnage from the night before strewn about. The highest flooding since 1966, the water had reached 187cm in the city and caused millions of euro worth of damage. It was later classed as a cyclone, as the winds were blowing at 100kms/hr.
Over the next few days, teams of students and volunteers roamed the streets, helping residents and business owners clean and vacate premises, making sure everyone was alright, that rubbish was disposed of, and that life could resume. Corrosive saltwater was scrubbed from apartments, historical archives dried with hairdryers, debris collected and sorted. Politicians made promises on television, made excuses for the corruption, lies and scandals that have gone on in Venice over the past thirty years — and did less than the bands of twenty-somethings roving through the streets. For shame, sirs, for shame.
Thanks to insurers, I spent the next fortnight in a hotel as I searched for a new apartment. I spent four hours detailing lost items for insurance, and tallied up about $5K worth of damage/loss. My property manager has skulked off into the shadows and has not seen fit to return my calls for two weeks, and discussions with my landlady about the return of my rather steep deposit have been tense. I’ll be in an Airbnb for my last two months, which I’m incredibly grateful for.
If ever you have found yourself in Venice, wondering at its beauty and its heritage, perhaps you might find it within yourself to make a small donation toward its salvation. Link here: https://www.comune.venezia.it/donazioni
Life has gone on in this strange city, apart from a brief pause in studies and normality. It seems that – though damp and perhaps a bit broken – the Venetians have shrugged off this 10 day affair as a fleeting disturbance, returning to their 6.00pm espressos and 10.00am Aperol spritzes with another story under their belt, another shrug to give, another exasperated ‘Madonna!’ to issue at the governing bodies of their country. Perhaps it is time to follow suit.
Once we had recovered from our (self-inflicted) Roman onslaught, K and I were off to Berlin. A quick flight later, we dropped our bags off at the hotel, and we went off to explore the surrounding area; popping into vintage haunts and passing some…unique…creations:
A few hours later, over a cheeky schnitzel and ice-cold beer, we discussed what we’d be visiting over the coming week, along with how many carbalicious treats we’d be sampling:
‘Salad’ and schnitzel
On the way back to the hotel, we lingered on a street drenched in colourful art, and in a museum dedicated to local street artists:
Now, six months of pizza and pasta is all very well and good, but I had been dreaming of sushi for weeks, so, with the cravings of a pregnant woman fueling me, I dragged K to the closest sushi bar — which also happened to be the most OTT sushi restaurant I’d ever been to:
Sticks’n’Sushi Berlin, where the sushi photographs better than you do…
After I gorged myself on the best sushi of my life, K wheeled me to a venue I was a little apprehensive about — especially having just consumed 6 thousand kilos of raw fish and rice — the Liquidrom.
For those of you not in the know, the Liquidrom is essentially a bathhouse; a huge pool under a cupola, where ‘soothing’ music plays under the water, and light shows spin above you on the concrete roof as you float around in silence, having a minor existential crisis, considering what lead you to pay 20 euro to hang desperately onto a pool noodle bumping into other half-naked people in an overly large warm bath. Or maybe that was just me.
It was then time to get nude with a bunch of strangers — a process my British heritage was not overly keen on — as clothing was not allowed in the sauna area. The saunas were formulated with a variety of new-age bullshit healing practices, like Himalayan salt blocks, herbs, crystals, etc. I suppose they were meant to cancel out the bad juju accumulated from seeing naked and sweaty old men *shudders*. Once I’d learnt to keep my gaze to strictly neck level (you only need to learn that lesson once, let me tell you), it was actually quite relaxing – moving from gaspingly hot saunas, to showers, to cold pools, and finally, wrapped in fluffy robes, on lounge chairs in the open air, looking up at the night sky, and enjoying the warm breeze.
Four hours passed, it hit midnight, and, feeling oddly at ease with the world, K and I ambled towards our hotel, strolling peacefully, taking our time on our half-hour journey.
We reached the home stretch, a kilometer-long street leading up to the hotel entrance, when we passed a rather short older gentleman. He stopped, touching both our arms, and commented on our heights. Rubbing our shirt sleeves, he continued to speak in German, asking us where we were from, what we were doing in Berlin, gesturing to a bar across the street, offering to buy us both drinks. This man could have been either of our fathers – excepting that he was about 5’6, and we’re 6’1 and 6’2. I politely declined, saying something about an early morning flight, and tugging our arms from his lingering grasp, we left quickly.
We’d not walked twenty meters when a black car pulled up alongside us, and a man began shouting at us from the driver’s seat, motioning for us to get in, idling his engine so as to keep to our walking pace for a few uncomfortable minutes. After we both shook our heads repeatedly, and shouted ‘nein’ several times, he took the hint, and drove off.
This happened a few times more, with cars and groups of men on the street. Now, K and I get a fair amount of unwanted male attention in Europe — we’re taller than your average…well, anybody — and we’re women alone, which seems to make us targets for charming gestures, rude stares and catcalling. But this was different; it felt predatory, and it had never been this aggressive before. We were now power-walking down this street, a little concerned, phones out, when I looked across the other side of the road, where all kinds of women were standing in amongst parked cars in their lingerie; soliciting, with men sitting in the shadows behind them — sex workers and pimps. Safe to say, we took Ubers at night for the rest of our trip.
The next morning, determined to ignore last night’s episode, we went in search of breakfast; a suitably calorific affair:
Over the next few days, we traipsed through the U and S Bahns, climbing our way through hundreds of museum stairs, and millennia of human civilization:
The Berliner Dom – we climbed all the way to the top!Inside the domeAlte NationalgalerieParis in Berlin…The Bode MuseumNeues Museum
Good god, I thought the British were bad with stealing things — but the Germans really take the cake with this one. We saw entire tombs lifted from Egypt and the Middle East, facades, and an entire gate-fortification from the city of Ishtar in Babylon:
K’s face when she realised the Germans had disassembled this gate, shipped it to Berlin as bricks, and reconstructed it…
Having ticked off all five museums/galleries, the cathedral, the wall and the Gestapo base in three days, we decided to take a break from the theft, death and trauma. So we went to the zoo.
Our final night approached, and we decided to attempt to get into the Berghain. Described by the New York Times as the best club in the world, it’s notoriously difficult to get into, as the bouncer decides who ‘fits the vibe’ of the night at the door, with a simple nod or shake of his head. We got to the warehouse at about midnight, lined up, and were (astonishingly) waved in. Six hours and several absinthes later, we emerged: sweaty, victorious and vindicated – and promptly passed out in our beds for a quick three hour nap.
Seal of approval
After a restorative visit to the markets, a walk by the river in the German sunshine and a final lap of the Liquidrom — we hopped on a 1am sleeper train from hell to Amsterdam. But that’s a story for another time!
Having said a fond farewell to my beautiful apartment,
and to my even more beautiful friends,
I left Venice at the end of May, travelled to Rome, and awaited the arrival of my sister from another mister, K.
As you can see, after 26 hours on a plane, she was quite happy to completely destroy any semblance of cleanliness and/or order in our hotel room:
Our month long adventure began intensely, with several long, hot, 30km days in Rome. We saw everything:
Piazza Navona,
Largo de Torres Argentina,
The Pantheon,
The monument to Vittorio Emanuele II,
The Forum,
The big round thing, etc.
May have stopped in at the cat sanctuary, you know, just to scope out what my romantic future looks like…
Purrfect
On the first night, forgoing the €100 tour, I took K on my very own street-food adventure through Trastevere.
We ate hot, crunchy cacio e pepe supplì (big arancini balls),
Chocolate gelato infused with lapsang-souchong tea,
The most gorgeous triangle of crispy focaccia and silky tomato-braised eggplant,
Delicate slabs of porchetta nestled in beautifully baked Italian bread rolls,
all washed down with glasses of cool, crisp Italian wine.
When we recovered the next morning, we were at it again, drinking freshly squeezed pomegranate juice and drooling over cheeses in the market of Campo Dei Fiori,
clambering over the Spanish Steps, ducking into John Keats’ Roman residence, popping into Babbington’s for a spot of afternoon tea, and finally throwing the requisite coins into the Trevi.
After a necessary nap, and a ridiculously large portion of truffles at dinner,
we decided to do the young person thing — to venture out clubbing on this Saturday night.
I had not come unprepared; I had researched which places were suitably Roman-chic enough to warrant a visit, and, thus armed, we ventured out to one of Rome’s most exclusive techno haunts.
Well-past midnight (sorry Cinders), we arrived at the street where Google had specified the general location of said club. There were some people milling about, and though I couldn’t find the exact number of the clubfront in the dark, I heard distinct ‘doof-doof’ music, and followed my ears.
Now, to those of you who, like me, in their drunkenness over-excitement, may throw detail-oriented caution to the wind, let this be a warning to you.
When we opened the door to the club, we passed by the coat-check area. The woman at reception notified us that a 15 euro charge was necessary – a little steep for women entering a club, I thought – but nevertheless, we paid.
She then asked for ID — might be looking a bit young tonight, I supposed, internally justifying the hideously expensive moisturizer I had bought a few months prior — so we passed them over.
Finally, she slid two clipboards over the desk, and asked for our signatures — I assumed it was some sort of filming release form, relatively standard — and as K began to sign, I quickly scanned the Italian paragraphs.
As I speed read down the page, I began to realise that we had made a grave error. Being somewhat alarmed, I whisper-hissed at my partner-in-crime. The dialogue went something like this:
‘K!’
‘What?’
‘I don’t think this is the club we were looking for.’
‘So?’
‘Well, it’s a little more liberal than we were expecting, a little less…’
‘Spit it out.’
‘K, it’s a goddamn swingers’ club.’
And, with that, K threw her head back and laughed, sliding her form over.
‘Just sign it, it’ll be funny.’
So, I followed suit, and, my god, funny it was. I shall leave the decor, set-up and activities to your own imagination — I will only say, there was a hot tub. Ick.
Due to the rather disturbing age gap between us and the other patrons, K and I spent most of the time pretending to be Sapphicly inclined towards one another, in an attempt to rebuff overly eager gentlemen. I think it may have had the opposite effect to that which we intended…
Giggling our way through the club, we eventually got up on the empty dancefloor and had a boogie, until it was too crowded to properly move, at which point we ran out of the building, and ended up crying with laughter on the side of the street at our wayward adventure.
When the tears had subsided, we noticed a distinct line of people moving down the street, a line of people who led us to the club we had initially sought, and we danced the night away in the basement of a pizza restaurant – a converted Roman cellar.
Ah Rome, how I love you, you strange, strange city…
There are some periods of your life that are unremarkable. You work, you study, you attend to duties, you have a routine that keeps you sane and vaguely productive — because you have to. You have to earn money, to pay bills, to feed yourself, to travel, to fund the things you enjoy in life. There are momentary distractions, sure. Friends, movies, love, sport, music, food, drinks, sex, shopping, travel, art, drugs, books, parties — curated experiences to distract you from the daily grind.
I’ve often wondered if that was it, for life. If that never-ending balancing act between work and pleasure would be the sum total of any average individual’s existence; if it actually makes you happy, or if you end up having an affair and buying a convertible at age 50 to compensate for a lifetime’s worth of…’have-to’.
Strangely, I don’t have the answer to that light-hearted question just yet.
But I’ve learnt that there are these moments; these crystallised fragments of time so far removed from the mundanity of everyday existence that they make you feel deliriously punch-drunk on the power of your own happiness. Where your face hurts from grinning, where you almost can’t breathe from laughing, where, just for a second, you can’t believe that this is your life.
Exchange is different for everyone. People react diversely because we’re all at disparate stages in our lives, and there’s no shame in that.
Some people hate it here: they refuse to eat the local food, to let themselves be vulnerable in making new friends, to converse with anyone and everyone, to go outside of their comfort zones, and, consequentially, they’re isolated by their own hand — sat in a dark room watching Netflix by themselves.
Others are braver: they’re the people who dance the craziest at midnight in our local Campo, looking demented in their silent disco headphones. They’re the people who befriend solitary travellers in line for tequila, who’ll strip off with you on freezing beaches at 2am, who are not afraid to be passionate and vocal and interesting, who’ll dive into art and music and history on a whim with you, who’ll sing and salsa in the backroom of a pizzeria, not caring who sees.
I think location has a great deal to do with this sort of vivacity. In a city like Venice, especially right now, during the Biennale, this future-Atlantis is bedecked in nonchalant beauty. You can be walking down the street on your way to pick up your 137th box of pasta from the grocery store, when a sign advertising an exhibition entices you to visit. Next thing you know, you’ve lost two hours walking around a meditation on time, sex and the human condition. Pasta seems somewhat arbitrary, after that.
I’ve been lucky enough to venture into quite a few different countries’ pavilions: Seychelles, Kiribati, Cuba, Taiwan, Azerbaijan, China, Bangladesh, Iran, America, France, and more.
Sleeping has also seemed somewhat passe, the past few weeks. J and I ventured to La Fenice; Venice’s Opera House, and, on a whim, slept three hours, then travelled across the city at 4.00am to go and watch the sunrise in San Marco. Blissfully tourist free.
Over the past few weeks I’ve lived through adventures I’ll never forget — waking up on a friend’s couch to find sand, 12 prosecco bottles, and my wet clothes from a 2am swim in the lagoon scattered around the house, sitting on rooftops till 4am looking at churches, dancing like a loon at beach parties till the early hours of the morning, lounging along the Grand Canal on a quiet pontoon in the Italian sunshine — it’s been so much fun.
All sadness aside, with Summer around the corner, it’s time for new adventures — a month’s jaunt around Europe with my very tall and equally impatient friend K, visiting friends in the UK and Italy, time in Greece with the family — it promises to be a busy season!
Ah, Venice, that quaint, quiet jewel of the Adriatic…well, folks, it’s proven to be a little more rowdy than previously thought.
Uni has been quite demanding of late, what with exams, research projects back home and upcoming assignments. My friends and I have found our favourite spot in the library, with a direct view of a canal, so when you’re absentmindedly chewing on a pencil and staring out the window, the passing gondolas remind you to get back to work.
After each day in the library, when I’m in study-mode, it’s nice to come home to a routine: cooking dinner, exercise, shower, reading in bed, etc. At least, it has been nice, up until the last week, as I seem to have recently acquired new neighbours.
Picture this: after a long day slogging through complicated literary theory, I come home and perform my evening routine as usual. I make dinner – tofu and vegetable stir fry, nothing fancy – I go for a run and do some yoga, I shower, and I climb into bed, settling in with my book.
About five pages in, I begin to hear a strange sound coming from the ether of the apartment complex. Now, I live in a converted flour mill from the 19th century; justifiably there are strange noises inside the building all the time, not to mention the revving boat engines or war-cries of overly large seagulls outside. So I don’t think much of it, and I return to reading.
But the sound continues, and increases, and by my tenth page, I’ve established that there is no conversational context so interesting in this world as to justify the overly emphatic agreement coming from the female on the other side of my wall.
So, dragging my duvet with me, I head to the couch with my book, and shut the door behind me. After half an hour, I deem it safe to return, and I crawl under the covers, staunchly ignoring the giggles I can still hear.
The next day, after another confounding eight-hour foray into the world of palimpsestic literature, I come home, and go about my usual activities. At the end of the night, I cautiously return to my book, my ears pricking up at each odd sound. As I’m drifting off at 12.30am, eyemask on, no doubt attractive strings of drool forming at the corners of my mouth, I begin to hear a faint vibrating noise, giggling, and a collection of sounds I do not really have any desire to describe to you. I sit bolt upright in bed, and, once again, grab the duvet and head for the couch.
The morning after, I am, somewhat understandably, a little cranky. Sleep, good, live sex show, bad. This particular Wednesday is Italy’s Festa del Lavoro, or Labour day, as it’s known to us Australians, and the library is closed. In fact, the library has been closed a day a week for the past three weeks – these Venetians sure do love a public holiday. So I’m working from home, and around 7.30pm I stop to make dinner. I’m lying on my bed replying to emails, waiting for my pasta water to boil, when I hear those bloody sounds coming through my wall again.
I roll my eyes and begin to get up from the bed, when I suddenly feel a modicum of outrage, and I think to myself, no, I am twenty fucking three years old and I will not be banished from my room by the overly embellished sounds of one woman faking an orgasm. I refuse. So, instead, I decide to have a little fun with the situation.
I connect my phone to my portable speaker, and out pour the lyrical sounds of Lily Allen’s ‘Not Fair’, blasting in my room, and, no doubt, into the apartment next door. If you’re not familiar with the song, look the lyrics up. The noises stop rather suddenly.
To make sure my point has gotten across, I queue up a variety of tasteful tunes to be played, including Trey Songz’ delightful ‘Neighbours Know My Name’, Big Sean’s calming ‘I Don’t Fuck With You’, Missy Elliott’s poignant ‘One Minute Man’ and, towards the end, Nicole Millar’s ‘Gimme a Break’. My fun lasts about forty minutes, and I turn my speaker off when I hear the front door of the neighbouring apartment slam. Win, win.
I plan on repeating this deterrent as often as needed – – song suggestions welcome.
My exams finally finished a few days later, and thus began the self-induced alcohol poisoning that the student lifestyle demands. Walking along the Zattere promenade at 3.30am in the pouring rain through a collection of outdoor modern art, having to have people drag me away from puddles I wanted to jump into may give you an indication of just how inebriated I was. I think there was prosecco? I know there was tequila.
A day later, once my friends and I had resurfaced from our collective hangover hell, it was time for some exploration.
It started out just like any other Friday adventure. J and I visited San Simeone Piccolo; your average Italian church.
We had a look around at your standard frescoes, shrines, etc:
Prayers and thanks written in all sorts of different languages, on scrap paper!
When, out of the corner of my eye, I saw an unassuming sign which read ‘crypts’. When in Rome, I thought. So J and I approached, and the caretaker gestured for us to hold out our hands. He lit some candles, placed them into little pots, handed them to us, and we were sent on our way.
The first indicator that we had made a grave error was this next sign:
I swear I’ve seen this horror movie…
As we walked through the doorway, we entered the pitch-black darkness of a 9th century cemetery. Frescoes lined the walls, showing various types of religious misery (Christ being crucified, women crying, etc). It didn’t help that J and I were alone, in the darkness, with the flagstones echoing through the crypt every time we stepped on a wobbly one.
If you look closely, you can see the blood smeared on the cross. Nice.Spot the gondola.Cheery.
We got to the final chamber, and I made the mistake of rounding the corner, holding my candle up, and seeing this:
Nope.
There may have been some shaking and/or muffled screams on our part.
When we came back up into the light, the handsy Italian caretaker asked us if we wanted to see something interesting. He ushered us into a private room with a shrine for the priests. We ooh-ed and ahh-ed for a few minutes, at which point he asked us if we would like to ring the bells.
We looked at each other incredulously and nodded, as he led us to the rickety wooden ladder. He sort of just disappeared after that, so J and I navigated the steep, splintering planks, which looked/felt like artifacts themselves. We got to the top, and in amongst the piles of carelessly stacked paintings with golden frames, marble crosses and dust, we pulled the ropes and listened to the bells ring out across the lagoon.
Those are the bells!
Once we ran out of the church, giggling at our luck, we headed to the Rialto markets, for a calming glass of wine and some cicchetti:
Soave, Prosciutto,Truffle, Tuna, Mortadella. I swear we were not double parked.Prosciutto and truffle cheese.
Afterwards, we journeyed to the Libreria Acqua Alta, a bookshop that has tackled Venice’s frequent flooding with an innovative idea:
The books are in gondolas and bathtubs!This rather dapper proprietor was sitting at the register
We sat next to stacks of ruined books, reading whatever we could get our hands on, in whatever languages we could understand:
We only had time for a quick gelato in the Italian sunshine before the next bout of drinking began.
Salted hazelnut and pistachio crema — think Nutella but made from pistachios
It is a sad state of affairs when your alcohol consumption does not fit into one blog post. Nevertheless, it is a team effort — me and my hangover shall persevere.
Coming from a country
where Spring only lasts about a week, before we’re blasted with those lovely 35+
degree days, the novelty of this storybook season is not lost on me.
Italy is ridiculous in this regard – the birds chirp charmingly, daisies and violets pepper the greenest, lushest grass, the sky is a clear, brilliant blue and the sun doesn’t feel like it’s actively trying to give you minor skin cancers. All in all, it’s a bit magical.
You’d think that a city like Venice, which was quite literally built on a swamp, wouldn’t have a lot of green spaces. And, to certain extent, you’d be right. But the city makes up for it in gorgeous ways – windowsills are heaving with brightly coloured blooms, the cherry and apple blossoms are luminous, and the gardens are bursting with new life.
One particular spring day, I was leaving my flat and walking to my boat/bus stop, when something white and fluffy flew past my eye. I thought it might have been a feather, so I kept walking. Suddenly, several other tufts of white came floating down from the sky. It was relatively cold that day, and bless my naïve Australian heart, my mind immediately jumped to snow. When my brain decided to kick in, I wondered who was torturing pigeons on the rooftops, and where all the feathers could possibly come from. On closer inspection, the white bits floating around in the air looked exactly like the seeds from the head of a dandelion. A sudden gust of wind came from the open lagoon, and suddenly these seeds were everywhere, like fluffy snowflakes on a sunny day.
I was astounded. I wondered where the stash of dandelions were, and why the Venetians planted them on the roof. A cultural divide, I assured myself. A nuance I don’t understand, I said. I explained what I had seen to my classmates, and now I know what it’s like to be viewed as clinically insane. Until, a few days later, the streets had begun to fill with these cotton-like wafts, like the confetti had done a month earlier during Carnevale. I jumped around and pointed to them, finally vindicated. Did not help the social situation, I assure you.
I can now confirm that these seeds actually come from profligate trees, and they apparently fill the city every Spring. Who knew?
Once my mental stability had been confirmed, J and I ventured down to the Biennale gardens, next to the exhibition space for the upcoming art experience. We ventured into a converted greenhouse for coffee, and indulged our very cool interest in nurseries.
Afterward, we walked around the gardens, then around the suburb of Castello, observing the more lively residents.
Everywhere we looked, things were springing to life (ha ha),
There were gorgeous scents and sights all around, and we may have gotten a little carried away:
Well, one of us, anyway.
Down here, away from the too-trodden tourist trails of St. Marks, it feels like you’ve journeyed to a different city.
There’s a lushness down there; a verdant escape in a city that, too often, can feel claustrophobically and darkly labyrinthine.
There are wide paths, green strips, tall trees, spaces to sit by the water. It’s a place for dawdling families, for the many dogs that live here, for giggling children, for groaning sports fans, for bibliophiles, for quiet artists:
Poetry is plastered to the walls of the broad streets, and life seems slower down here: less frustrated, less full of locals muttering choice adjectives at bumbling newcomers:
After all that walking, we may have had to stop to refresh ourselves with the local stalwart, the good old Aperol Spritz – it’d be rude not to?
But, as ever, the alcohol leads to thinking, and so I shall leave the fragments here. In a way, it’s strange to see the seasons change in the city that rises from the sea; strange to see the ocean devour parts of it every time the tide gets too high. You don’t expect this stony city to be so vibrant, so natural, after mankind took it, dipped it in gold, and sold it to millions of tourists.
But this second Carnevale, this luminescent Spring, it’s more interesting and more ancient than the traditions of any man-made festival, and, I think, more beautiful.
Venetian winters have their charms – there is no doubt about that. The light begins to fade around 3.00pm and soon the whole sky is thickly swathed in ochre-orange twilight. The night captures Venice around 6.00pm and sprinkles it with stars, which makes late-night walking a pleasure.
However, the Antipodean in me had a longing for a return to nature, so when a few friends of mine asked me if I wanted to tag along with them for a weekend in Florence, I couldn’t resist. Florence promised to put on a good show for us; it was forecasted to be a perfect Spring weekend, full of sunny blue skies and temperate breezes.
We caught the train out of Venice, and within two hours, we had arrived. I played tour guide, as this was my third time in Firenze, and I tempted the tired and hungry travellers with lavish descriptions of creamy truffle dips, verdurous produce and more parmesan than you could poke a stick at.
We headed to the second floor of the market to sample the goods of the providers in an effort to appease our collective hunger.
La vera carbonara alla romana!
Unfortunately we were so preoccupied with our very late breakfast, that we forgot that the stalls below closed at 3.00pm. Cue terse silence on my part. It was a dark moment for me. I’d rather not talk about it.
It was one of our party’s birthday, and it was mutually agreed that we should throw a little soirée in our Airbnb that night. Another had the bright idea of making pizza, so off we traipsed around Florence, in search of the essentials: cake, wine, olive oil and bread. All stations to carb central, thank you very much.
Pasqua (Easter) is just around the corner!
So off we went, traipsing and giggling among the backstreets of Florence on our quest for necessities. Along the way, we accumulated three bottles of excellent wine, two baguettes, a gorgeous vintage Burberry coat, two birthday cakes, pizza ingredients and Sicilian oranges. An odd mix, but it worked.
We returned to the Airbnb, pumped up the music, poured the wine, and began our pyjama-pizza-Prosecco party. Try saying that three times fast. I started on the dough, and taught the birthday girl how to knead, but it might have been better if the chef wasn’t four glasses deep. Whoops.
Several kilos of pizza, an inebriated fashion show and a few Venetian guests later, we retired in the early hours of the morning; full, happy and sloshed.
The next morning, half our party went to a Korean film lecture, and the other journeyed to the Uffizi. R and I spent 5 hours in amongst the exhibitions, which contain some of my favourite pieces of art ever.
My third time at the Uffizi was perhaps the worst – I’m not sure, if in the epoch of the smartphone, people have become more obnoxious and facile than ever, or if I was just particularly sensitive to it, but I was quite honestly ready to deck a few American tourists who thought that invading my personal space/sticking their phone an inch from my face in order to take a photo was appropriate.
And I know I’m coming off as a particularly insufferable cross between Miss Manners and a pedant, but I just cannot fathom the point of paying to enter a gallery like the Uffizi, in order to spend five seconds in front of the most well-known pictures, to take your own photo of them, so that you can torment your friends with photos/never look at it.
Aristotle said that ‘the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.’, and even though he was a relatively misogynistic classist (who wasn’t, or isn’t, I suppose), I couldn’t agree more with him. Art, in whatever form, in whatever school, exists to comment on our manner of living, exists to evoke or soothe human emotion. To wait to be attributed meaning, in whatever minutiae possible; to be seen — truly seen — to look at you from whatever pedestal it’s on and ask you, the consumer, how it connects to you and your plastic-filled, tech-obsessed, apathetic 21st century life.
It could be the worst thing you’ve ever seen, the best, or simply inconsequential. But if you don’t even consider it, if you look at a painted piece of canvas that has existed for 400 years through the camera lens of your phone and walk away with no connection, no opinion except the one written on the wall next to it, tell me, what was the point? Was it simply a bullet point on the to-do list of your life?
Rant over, in the interests of touristic safety, I spent most of my time away from the shoving and phone/face contact, sitting in the hallways and admiring the ceilings. Painted by Alessandro Allori in the Mannerist style in the 16th century – it’s essentially a big pagan party up above. Littered with mythological creatures, references to then contemporary Florentine finds and seriously weird demons – – it’s easy to get a kink in your neck from admiring the airy art up above.
Saturday night we indulged in the Florentine classic, bistecca alla fiorentina,which, as you can see, was practically served mooing.
Most tourists having absconded, we walked around the Duomo for a few hours, enjoying the peace and marvelling at the stonework in the warm evening.
Me, R, J and H after a few bottles of Chianti…
Sunday dawned bright and balmy; the perfect temperature for our adventure to come. I had booked a day’s riding through the olive groves and vineyards of Tuscany, and I couldn’t be more excited. We walked to the pickup point, met our guide Marco (of course), and were driven to the stables to meet our noble steeds. Soon, we were off!
We stopped for olive oil tasting,
wine tastings and cellar tours,
threw in a quick Villa tour, and had a lovely lunch in the Tuscan sunshine. With more wine. Obviously. I also may have bought some. Shh.
Just a little Villa…The view from the top..
Exhausted and tipsy, we only had time for a quick gelato on our return to Florence. Or two.
If the thoughts of rampaging selfie-stick wielding tourists, underwhelming cultural displays and overpriced living conditions appeal to you, then you’ve come to the right festival.
Personally, though, being elbowed into submission by crowds of raging day-trippers didn’t do much for me.
Photo credits to M, our resident paparazzo
When it first occurred to me that I would be in Venice for Carnevale, I was ecstatic. Here was a festival I could get behind — steeped in history and tradition, that embodied cultural acts from yesteryear. A city alive with celebration, art, music and movement — so different from my own.
Instead, I found my prior assumptions and expectations to be terribly, completely, wrong. Before I dive into the reasons behind my disappointment, let’s quickly delve into an abridged history.
Different sources give us a range of dates for when ‘Carnevale’ as we know it actually started. The word itself was first used in official documents to describe a series of festivities in 1094, by the then Doge, Vitale Falier.
Actually, to say that they were festivities is a bit of a misnomer. They were more a subsidiary of the Roman pane et circenses — i.e. a thrown bone to the poor, used to pacify and distract them from how disgustingly loaded the rich were. Public amusements would have been staged — nothing too groundbreaking.
Around this time, the practice of covering one’s face took hold. No one knows exactly why this tradition began. Some theorize that it was most likely in defiant response to one of the most exacting class hierarchies in Europe — if your face was masked, and you were in costume, no one could tell if you were a pauper or a nobleman.
Others suppose that it was a way to avoid the consequences of the law. The Venetian authorities prohibited a whole range of exciting activities (gambling, whoring, throwing eggs) ((seriously)), so masked young men had the perfect accessory to hide their identities when committing these heinous crimes.
In seems only fitting that in light of recent Australian political events (#eggboy go you good thing go), I should include this rather hilarious fact I stumbled upon during my Carnevale experience.
If a young Venetian man fancied a young woman during the 14th century, he could partake of the ovi odoriferi – – literally the scented eggs — which, legend has it, was introduced by explorer Marco Polo after his jaunt to China.
These young men would fill the eggshells with rosewater or perfume, and lob them at the subject of their desire. 14th century flirting, everyone.
As with most cultural practices undertaken by young men, this seemingly sweet idea degenerated rather quickly.
They would fill eggs with all sorts of horrific things, including ink, and street waste, which is when the law began to get involved. The local police in San Marco built nets around the Piazza, to shelter the nobles from flying eggs!
Luckily, this practice stopped a long time ago, and now, the only thing people throw during Carnevale is confetti. Usually at you, which is exactly what you want when you, your friends, and your hangovers are stumbling your way to the nearest pizzeria. Thank you so much, random stranger.
Carried this with me to the pizzeria, the bar, my apartment and my shower.
I don’t mean to posit that the entire Carnevale experience is shite, because, well, it’s not. There are parties every night, which can lead to you having a confetti fight with your inebriated friends at 3.00am in an empty San Marco’s Square.
J & M in all their glory
People all over the city dress up in ornate costumes, which makes the entire city feel like it’s a masked ball.
And there are some smaller festivities on the minor islands – Lido, Burano and Murano – that seem to be more celebrated by locals, and less invaded by moaning tourists.
Lido’s Carnevale Parade
Every international student I’ve spoken to here seems to come to a general consensus – – the parades are interesting, but we were all expecting more. More events, more planning, more parades, more everything. Some elements were quaint and exciting, like the evening parade on the water:
Local craftspeople and performers worked on a steampunk/Renaissance style parade.Not overly sure where the fish merges with this theme but it was pretty!
Whilst others, like the Volo dell’angelo, the flight of the angel, was really not worth getting out of bed for – – a costumed woman on a zipline floating in the air for a minute to Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ does not a cultural event make, in my humble opinion:
Wow.
The Venetian Carnevale has been so hyped-up and so over-inflated that I think we, as a global community, forget that Venice is a simply a small town (53,000 residents as of January 2019) hosting celebrations for approximately three million visitors over the period of Carnevale. Venice can’t adapt, or build new infrastructure, to accommodate such a huge volume of travelers – the city doesn’t work that way – – and so this huge influx leads to mobility problems, and concerns for public safety, which rather places a dampener on things.
So celebrate Carnevale for what it is, not what it’s perceived to be – – otherwise you’ll leave feeling short-changed. It’s an opportunity for local artists and craftspeople to showcase their work to the world, whilst continuing an eggcellent tradition that (technically), only dates back to 1979.
The theme of the 2019 Carnevale? Blame it on the moon. (Clue: I did.)
Anyone who knows me knows that I get way too excited about food. I love the stories that originate from the producers and growers, the hustle and bustle of a market, the history and traditions that emanate from culturally significant products, the sights and smells of artisan delicacies.
So one day, my best friend and I are talking over the second third glass bottle of wine, and I let slip that I’ve started to dabble in recipe writing. I, foolish and naive being that I am, begin to babble some nonsense about how easy it would be to put together a cookbook.
She, having consumed the same amount of fermented grape juice that I had, very foolishly proffers how simple it would be to become the graphic designer, the artist, and the photographer behind said cookbook.
Turns out, it’s a little harder than we thought it would be to put together a cookbook. Who’d have thought it. Thank god my ridiculously talented friend KI stuck around to take these beautiful photos.
Hopefully in a year, or two, there will be some more photos and recipes to share!
Somewhere over Turkey? (Geography is really not my strong suit)
Well, I made it! After a very teary goodbye at the Departures gate, I met up with my companion for Venice, M, and we made our way to the boarding area, in preparation for spending 26 hours in a tin can.
The flights went smoothly, apart from a small passport incident at Bangkok airport at 3.00am. Let’s just say M and his passport are inseparable nowadays.
The Italian stereotypes started once we hit the Venetian tarmac. We endured enjoyed a leisurely two-hour ride from the airport to our vaporetto stop, and then another forty minutes deciphering the Airbnb’s description of how to access our apartment, before finally settling in at around 5.00pm.
After mutually agreeing that a small nap was in order as to recover from the aforementioned tin-can ordeal, we both set alarms for 7.00pm, so that we could adjust quickly to Italian time, and enjoy a quick dinner.
Despite our best-laid plans, M slept till 8.30pm, and then quickly dressed and tried to rouse me by knocking on my door and calling my name. I am apparently a heavy sleeper, as I have absolutely no recollection of this whatsoever.
After three separate attempts, he gave up, and went back to bed.
Much to my chagrin, I awoke the next morning at 7.00am, and, somewhat apologetically, went in search of breakfast on this rather stunning winter’s day.
The lagoon, as seen from the Biennale gardens.
Over the next three days, we each racked up 60kms of walking, as we scoured the city for SIMs, travel cards and permanent accommodation – – a somewhat difficult task as the city is full of artists working towards this year’s Biennale, and students finishing off their academic year.
Unfortunately, the stereotype of the disinterested Italian worker is very much brought to life in the Venetian lagoon – – a stereotype which seems to be concentrated in the real-estate agency.
Two-hour lunches and haphazard approaches to returning emails aside, as the end of my first fortnight approaches, I have finally found my permanent residence. If anyone needs an extra kidney, let me know – I may need to let one go in order to pay for rent.
My island home: Giudecca!
The international community here is lovely – I met so many wonderful people at the university-hosted welcome drinks, just casually held in a converted marble palazzo off the Grand Canal. Just, you know, your everyday, run-of-the-mill, garden-variety palazzo.
Ca’ Foscari University, Main Building
Last weekend, we had some heavy rainfall, which, in most major cities, is not really a problem.
In Venice, however, things begin to get a little sodden.
St. Mark’s Square
Suddenly, every street vendor is selling gumboots and plastic shoe-covers, and wooden walkways emerge from nowhere.
The fog begins to creep in, and Venice is suddenly enshrouded and lathed with all forms of water. Which would be wondrously mystical, if your feet weren’t so bloody wet.
Though the snow on the mountains has yet to make an appearance on the island.
The snow-capped Dolomites.
With Carnevale just around the corner, the city is beginning to bustle and groan with tourists, which makes getting anywhere on time…well, worse than usual.
This hindrance is compensated for by the vast array of striking masks and sweet delicacies that pop-up around every corner.
Frittelle veneziane – – doughnut-like pastries traditionally filled with pine-nuts and raisins
Everywhere you go these doughy delights are being enjoyed by the locals – – whether they’re filled with cream, nutella or ricotta.
Fritella alla zabaglione
But, alas, when Carnevale is over, these beauties will disappear, until next year’s festivities.
In the meantime, M and I are slowly sorting out our new lives — adjusting to the Italian style of life where everything takes that little bit longer, and where the buses are aquatic.
With views like these, I don’t think it’ll take us very long!
All sadness aside, with Summer around the corner, it’s time for new adventures — a month’s jaunt around Europe with my very tall and equally impatient friend K, visiting friends in the UK and Italy, time in Greece with the family — it promises to be a busy season!
The BFG Abroad 