Venice : La Serenissima

When I heard Venice was known as “La Serenissima”, I marked out a weekend in early May on the calendar as the construction vehicles continued to churn away next door and metal pounded metal. What a great place to spend a few days in peace and serenity before the big trip home in June! I looked it up and Wikipedia told me that, originally bearing its name due to its “title as one of the “Most Serene Republics”, the state existing for a millennia based out of Venice, La Serenissima Repubblica diVenezia, or the Most Serene Republic of Venice, in modern times has a reputation “widely based on its preference for economic supremacy over military might, despite its long history of war and conquest.” Hmmm, not exactly what I was thinking when I saw the moniker, but close enough I supposed. La Serenissima in the 21^st century surely spoke to the longing of so many of us to get away from it all to this city of connected islands, to listen to Vivaldi, cruise down the canals slowly with our white and black stripe-shirted Gondolier rowing away, crooning operatically, while we sipped champagne and looked into each other’s eyes…and plus, not too many battles had been happening there lately and how could Venice’s “economic supremacy” hinder our dream of a few days in paradise? I reserved our seats on the train.

         It is true that I heard that Venice plays host to quite a few visitors in May (and June, July, August, September, October….), but I didn’t really worry about that too much. Here was a city with canals instead of streets, “streets of water!” as we explained it to Nikolai in getting him psyched for the trip as he was recovering from a cold a week before we left. When the morning came to walk to the train station he appeared to have completely recovered, the sun was shining, and we could certainly handle the crowds. We’d been in Italy ten months, we could deal with a little jostling in line.        

         We were greeted with swarms of tourists who, like ourselves, were hoping to taste some of the Venetian magic (and many of whom, unlike ourselves, poured by the thousands off cruise ships that would make the Titanic look like a bath toy). As we rolled our suitcase and pushed Niko in his stroller and lugged them both up and down all of the bridges over the canals, making our way from the train station to our apartment rental in Canereggio, we had to be careful about stopping too long to heft a suitcase up or to bend over to hear what Niko was saying (“I have to go pee!”) so as to avoid getting plowed into by the steady stream of pedestrian traffic flowing without abatement down Strada Nuova into the heart of the city. And yes, everything did cost a pretty euro. It’s also true that this vacation proved similar to almost all this past year in that we had to find a pharmacy and get Niko some Tachiprina to make him more comfortable after he complained and rebelled all day Saturday as a fever came and heated him up like a convection oven does a potato (our little baked potato slept a four hour nap Saturday afternoon and stayed in the oven a good twelve hours that night. Once out the next morning, he gradually cooled down throughout Sunday and was soon back to normal). There was Sunday night,

 when a small group of Americans and Brits made up for paucity in numbers with boisterous bravado, overstaying their welcome on the terrace at a restaurant across the canal from our apartment, drinking far too much and talking (when they weren’t yelling) far too loudly. Their fun woke us up at midnight and kept us up for another hour. One gentleman found it appropriate to imitate the New Zealand rugby team’s pre-game war chants designed to intimidate opponents and show their strength. His lone, drunken rendition would’ve been comical had I been alert and ready for cheap entertainment. But eventually the fatigue of another day in La Serenissima conquered all and sleep pulled me relentlessly into its grasp.

         That was about the worst of it, and there was plenty not to groan about, too. Ready for a sentence about the rest, a long sentence, run-on (and on), breathless? Here it is.

         Walking down the banks on the fondamente alongside canals whose water slowly lapped along, pushing against the small boats moored next to old houses crammed together with organico—compostable material—waiting in small plastic bags attached to hooks off the ground for the trash person who wheels his cart—one I saw was blue and named Bertha—clunking up and down the steps  of the canal bridges, as children accompanied by mamma headed to school and a man in a suit strode 

alone to work, shop owners were beginning to pull out awnings, open doors, the morning quiet but not still, tourists on vacation and sleeping in while everyday life for Venetians continued on, a day like any other, jobs to get to, groceries to find, clothes to be washed and hung out to dry, friends to talk with, or running through the streets early, too, every fifty meters a choice, my route’s continuation hidden by twists and turns, alleys, courtyards, immense churches, and I pass them all, sometimes ending up with nowhere to go but back to the previous option not taken and follow that one, thinking naively relative position was safely in mind, that once ready to start making a loop and knowing where the starting point was that merely heading  in that direction would bring feet back home but being ensnared by the twisty 'S'

of the Canal Grande, dizzied by all of the turns and previous trips on vaporettos, these water busses finally the only solution to get bearings back, slow but trustworthy and steadily heading forward, permitting thoughts of how luxurious it is to be able to get lost for awhile and explore, following my nose to another discovery, a bakery just opening and permitting a cache of warm pastries and rolls for wife, daughter and son, such a cliché of American vacation to Europe but isn’t there some truth to these notions we repeat, a trip to a vegetable stand off a side street, talking with the vendor and letting him select what I need according to when it would be eaten, the draw of taking pictures of the fruit markets, these displays of color, this atmosphere of particular sounds and smells we wish to capture or soak up, this life seemingly lived so vividly, talking with the men who know the tomatoes or melons or squid so well, this contact we crave that in so many places has been reduced by

mass scale and do-it-yourself service, or watching dapper waiters in white coat and tie bring out the silver platters of ten euro tea to one table among dozens in Piazza San Marco while a trio plays appropriate music for the atmosphere and cigars are pulled out, cigarettes smoked, the trails of white lazily rising up but soon dissipating, far before reaching the observation deck of the Campanile, San Marco’s bell tower, the wind whipping around up there sending a chill through those who have no jacket so that they soon wait for the elevator to return them one hundred meters below, taking in the entire city and surrounding bays and sea when ear-shatteringly the six o’clock hour is struck by one bell just eight feet above, then another, and a third, and a fourth, understanding now why they can

be heard for so many kilometers from here, returning to the maze of streets with no cars, streets with no cars, with no cars, no cars, and walking past designer shops advertising a pair of sandals for seven hundred euros with matching purse for one thousand six hundred euros and the contrast with the young person maybe twenty years old sitting on a main tourist corridor, hair cut close with electric clippers,

hair also incongruously growing out of one side of her face around her eye to cheek and chin, seeing her stricken by this freak show-like anomaly and begging for money, walking past without talking to her or looking directly at her, a watery-eyed lady seeing us unfold a map back in Canereggio and commenting, “It isn’t easy, is it?” and exercising our Italian with her, learning some of her suggestions, hearing her say, when I explain how Niko and I each have a ‘k’ in our names that she thinks very highly of the ‘k’, or eating at a “cheap” touristy pizzeria where Italian is seldom spoken but persisting

 with our waiter in his language, learning he has a brother in CT, answering his questions about us and seeing him snapped out of his usual schtick, being the first tourist on the island of Burano after a forty minute ride out early Monday morning, traveling with commuters, the only one on the outdoor section of the boat, snapping pictures like crazy of the sun hitting the snowy tops of the Dolomites while buoys and boats passed between us, keeping camera out on a walk through this island of three thousand known for lace-making and its colorful assortment of houses, talking with a man who occasionally takes a break to peak around the corner to say good morning to this dog or that cat and at times to a person, too, or asking the slow and dignified senior who has just wheeled himself out to a deserted courtyard for a morning cigarette if I may take his photo, wondering about the story behind that face, heading back to the mainland as the first boatload of tourists arrives, and finally stopping to give some change to a man sitting and begging for money, a man who we’ve passed so many times before like the thousands of others who’ve done the same walking on without even looking and getting up the courage to ask him for his photo and seeing him seemingly glad for the request and attention, thanking

me after the picture, touching him on his arm and he doing the same to me after, being invited inside the tent to sit down with two workers camping out in the center of the large piazza outside the train station after talking with them awhile about why they’re out there, these two workers (and forty others like them) with fifteen or twenty years experience tending to passengers and their every need on the sleeper cars between Venice and Paris now without a job due to Trenitalia’s cost-saving measures, two ladies in head scarves coming up to us and asking us to fish their camera out of the river, serving as the interpreter between them (speaking in English) and the two unemployed workers saying, all smiles, to tell them they are railroad workers, not fisherman, but then watching as they find a long pole and head off to try to fish out the camera while the ladies lead them to the spot saying it’s not the camera, it’s the memory card, it’s the memories they cannot lose, it’s the memories.

            I guess Paradise as it’s popularly conceived would be pretty boring, and Venice is thankfully no such place to me, but for variety and challenges of its own, surprises along with a taste of magic and wonder, La Serenissima is one place I highly recommend you visit. Just be prepared for anything, leave your expectations at home and allow yourself to get lost.