The Consequence of Water
Who doesn´t have an impression of
Venice garnered from film or television? Or better yet, our own images
taken from novels, be they romantic
works or classics of the gothic genre?
Few places possess its allure or are as photogenic. The city alludes to romance or mystery. Death in Venice mist rises as we stroll
narrow streets bordering canals or as we imagine Don Juan illicitly meeting his
lover. Venice is where Woody Allen
filmed part of a musical and the two young men in Brideshead Revisited
consolidated their love while touring the city.
And looking forward to
romance I travelled with my boyfriend on
a no frills airline from Barcelona, giving the experience the feel of bus
travel rather than the important bustle of a big city airport. We arrived in
Italy at a tiny military airport with only one runway with Venice nowhere in
sight.
Finally arriving by bus
to the edge of the city, we got on a vaporetto, the loud drone of the engine
blocking out everything except the presence of water. I hadn´t expected the Grand Canal to be so
big. I was rapidly discovering that
there was altogether too much water. Somehow I´d always believed that being a
water sign in astrology gave me a special affinity to the sea though I have to
admit I don´t swim well and I´m afraid of sailing. Too much water and too many people and this
wasn´t even the height of tourist season.
It was true. Tourists were everywhere. I can´t say I
hadn´t been warned but I took it as a given.
For any kind of travel in Europe, one expects to see tourists but not
that many and not the type I found here. Here they appeared to be the ¨If this
is Tuesday we must be in Luxembourg¨ type who moved in large groups and from
the bits of conversation I caught, were very concerned about regular
mealtimes.
We walked along the narrow streets
on the canals to encounter the masses at each turn. At one bridge they were getting onto gondolas
docked there waiting for passengers. The
crowd paused, snapping away(or whirring with digital cameras) at three heavy
set African-American women squeezed onto a gondola. For added value, the gondolier belted out O
Solo Mio. I tried to look away but was fascinated
by this strange play on what constitutes a tourist attraction.
We arrived at The
Rialto bridge, and found more people at another spot with gondolas. As a gondolier waited for customers, he was
leafing through a racing car magazine.
He like I was dreaming of terra firma. I couldn’t bring myself to get in
a gondola, not even the ones Venetians use to get across the Canal, standing of
course, so as to never appear like tourists. It made me feel pure, that
although I was visiting the city, I had set my own limits. Fortunately for the
gondoliers it didn´t seem like anyone else felt that way and they adeptly
manoeuvred their boats passing each other in the narrowest of canals.
In the evening with the departure of
the day trippers, the city settled into an eerie calm. A vaporous film rose
from the canals. Venice has no night life to speak of and it is quite pricey so
it excludes lager lout and teenage tourism. There are plenty of stylish
restaurants and some bars looking as if they´d been conserved intact from the
16th century. Other than
that, the city is its own entertainment.
My boyfriend claimed he had a good
sense of direction as we wandered in the back streets of San Marcos looking for
our hotel for what seemed to be an eternity. A walk led to circles, following
the roundabout directions of the canals.
There are no straight lines in the city. Maps were of no help but the walks were
pleasant with no sense of concern. There is no crime to speak of since a
criminal wouldn´t be able to get out of Venice without being caught. The only way out is by water. You weren´t the only one lost as there were
the inevitable others looking for San Marcos as a reference point to get back
to their hotel or to find a particular restaurant.
Having a nose for the
authentic, on the second day I finally found a real neighborhood. At dusk Venetians were filling the cafes and
shops, sitting on benches, their children shrieking at play. Everyone looked happy and why not? They inhabit a beautiful space with no cars,
tranquillity, and once they get away from the crowds, their own private world.
I didn´t want to invade their space, considering they´d given up quite enough
of their city so I just sat and observed. It was a scene reminiscent of
television ads which try to create a happy neighborhood setting except that in
this case it was real.
Prices were about half
of what they were anywhere else in the city.
The bars were filled with men like in many parts of Italy. I entered anyway and had a macchiato. There was the unmistakable feeling of clearly
being an outsider. There is no way to disguise it like you could in a Parisian
café by sitting with your head bowed over a French paper. Often there are no
women anywhere in sight so as a woman you could only be a foreigner. Perhaps
they are too busy for such indulgences.
But there was no sense of discomfort like on my first visit to Italy
over thirty years ago when I had the impression women stayed at home and you
were fair game if you set foot in a bar at night.
These wonderful places are also self contained. Your history would be everyone´s; there are
few secrets in a city with no escape route. So a city that was once an empire
can be as provincial as a small town in America.
I made the mandatory
visit to the Academy where Venice is its own star, serving as the backdrop of
painting after painting. The city looks virtually unchanged though there were
new churches constructed since the 1700´s that altered the city´s ever present
outline of domes and gondolas half shrouded in mist.
Then onward to Peggy Guggenheim´s
palace converted into a museum. She was
buried in a corner of the property along with her dogs. That made me stop short. There was an
unmistakable sensation of isolation here; this heiress famous for living the
high life, inhabited a remote corner of Europe and amassed art. How often did
visitors come? What could the Venetians
have thought of her? Is it ever possible
to become a part of a place that is so obviously not yours? Perhaps her money
worked its magic and erased all those boundaries. But the visit left me sad.
Churches shimmered in
the distance on their separate isles though once water equalled sickness and
plagues. Santa Maria de la Salute was built on an island dedicated to the
Virgin who saved Venice from yet another plague in the 1600´s. It´s hard to believe that the places we
revere were once insalubrious and remained so for centuries. Even beaches didn´t become desirable places
until the last century when Coco Chanel first sported a tan.
We made our way north
past the headstone shops and quays where I had a cherry ice cream, its sweet
flavor immediately transporting me back to the ice cream stand in the local
dairy of my childhood. Italy was the
first place I learned to love food. At
nineteen I visited Florence and discovered the delights of pastas and sauces,
simpler then in those days but nonetheless leaving their impression. I still remember white grapes bought from a
street market so intense each one tasted like wine. And even now I can marvel
over salads and meats eaten in Rome on a winter visit. In one family restaurant the owner presented
me with a gift she gave her customers for New Year´s, a wooden cutting
board. And Venice doesn´t disappoint
either with its seafood.
From the docks we took a boat to
Burano. It´s the same one that stops in
Murano, leading to inevitable confusion as tourists mispronounce the two
Murano, Burano, where are we going? An
Italian woman on board passed her bag of tomatoes to her companion to smell the
perfume, as she called it in Italian, so much more romantic sounding than
saying, smell this. It was an intimate
gesture, offering the scent of tomatoes warm from the sun.
The Burano boat on
its northern trajectory passed the gated cemetery isle which explained all the
gravestone shops. I shivered even in the
heat of the sun bouncing off the flat expanse of water all around. I couldn´t
distinguish between water and sky, both were absolutely blue and still. I
breathed deeply, almost frightened by this stillness all around me. Tourists
got off at Murano to visit the glass factories to buy more glass as if the
shops in the city didn´t contain enough.
We stayed on for Burano with its multicoloured houses and lace.
And the hot trip by
boat recalled so many others. There was
what we called the pirate ship in Pie de la Cuesta near Acapulco,where sweaty
day visitors were taken all around the lagoon and given lunch on a hot beach.
Then there was the ferry to Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay. I grew suspicious when I discovered no one on
board was a repeat visitor but I am lured into yet one more trip. I never
remember the discomforts.
Burano has charm but once again, it is a
tourist destination par excellence.
There seemed to be even more tourists per square meter than even in
Venice. And it was much hotter. Even in
March the sun burnt without reprieve.
The houses are painted in bright discordant tones of turquoises, reds,
and oranges but the bright sunlight lessens the impact. Lace abounds in the large number of shops in
all the squares though one wonders how many of the inhabitants are dedicated to
producing it these days. As an added
attraction the bell tower of San Martino leans.
Not only does water
surround Venice but it also rises.
When I saw the platforms all around the city I assumed they had to do
with Carnival which had taken place just a few weeks before. Most visitors put
them to good use by using them to sit and rest or to have a snack. In fact they are to walk on when the aqua
alta or high tide floods the city. The level of water rises so high that the
squares flood. Newsstands sell pictures of the Piazza San Marcos with gondolas
and tourists with their pants rolled up to their knees trying to make their way
across. This was beyond comprehension for me. Already the dampness of the
canals had penetrated my body on sunny
days ; in an aqua alta I would be writhing in arthritic pain.
Nowadays tourists
complain that Europe is converted into a kind of Disneyland where scenes of
real life become harder and harder to uncover.
In Barcelona where I reside, I see the tourists are relegated to certain
areas they rarely penetrate beyond. This
arrangement suits everyone though there are inevitable complaints about the
crowds on certain bus lines that go past certain attractions. When
I returned from Venice it was with a slight sense of disappointment;
perhaps I´d been just a tourist like the ones I had such disdain for at home. But Venice surprised me.
At night I dreamt I
couldn´t get to my bed without crossing a body of water like the many canals
I´d seen. Venice had directly penetrated
my unconscious leaving me with the notion that this will be the future that
awaits us, one in which we are immersed in water.
