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Wednesday, September 4th – Venice – Day 2
We meet Lee Ling in the hostile cafeteria at 8 am. We are served our daily eviction notices along with our stale bread and jam and watered down coffee. We plan to be out or here well before the 10 am deadline. The hostel can afford to treat their patrons this way as it is the largest and most publicized one in the city. It is always full, populated by train-hopping youths who normally save on accommodation by sleeping on over-night trains, but in Venice they stay for two of three days to take it all in so they need a place to stay. If the hostile was not closed from 10 am to 6 pm, it would likely have been full by early afternoon and we would have had to look for some place more expensive.
Within half an hour of meeting Ling Lee last night, Jochen and I assumed, without discussing it, that she would be spending the next couple days with us. She isn’t that presumptuous but she welcomes our company. I suspect she is as lonely as any other single traveler and I do enjoy the seeing Jochen’s unexpected pleasure at having a woman’s company. I imagine he will be a devoted, loving companion to some woman when he settles down. It is a pleasure to see this side of him.
We set out to do the tourist thing, our maps and guide books in hand. This is the last official week of summer before school resumes and the streets and restaurants are full of tourists. Many of them are obese, with checkered shorts, striped shirts and sandals, their socks pulled up to their shins and wearing loafers. I hear them bickering with their spouses and children over what attraction to see next. Having a nice vacation? I imagine asking them.
We check out the gondolas, thinking it would be lovely to take Lee Ling on romantic fairy book ride, but it costs US$60 per kilometre, either that or a pint of blood I suppose. That extinguishes the romance of the idea quickly. We agree on a cheaper motor launch to the Piazza di San Marco with its famous campanile and basilica. The ride there in the motor launch full of tourists is very slow. The driver explains that he is not allowed to go more than 10 km/hr to minimize the damage to the building from waves. Everything in Venice moves as a snail’s pace, compared to any other city. It is just something one must plan for and get used to.
The motor launch discharges its cargo of passengers at the dock in San Marco. They move en masse towards the piazza. We follow at a slower pace soaking in the sights on all sides. The square is swarming with pigeons and tourists. It is hard to take a photo without being jostled. Perhaps it would have been better to come here at a quieter time of year, but at least the temperature is perfect now.
We pay admission and queue up to climb the stately Campanile, the tallest tower in Venice. After a lengthy wait, we are allowed to enter. I get some amazing shots when I get an opportunity to get by the window sill at the top. When we get back down we take more photos from the ground level. We are surrounded by treasures as magical as Venice’s setting itself, but I am feeling tired and troubled. When Lee Ling and Jochen want to visit the basilica, I tell them I will wait for them at a café nearby.
I am sitting here, on the first day of the second half of my trip, sipping $7 coffee and watching Venice sink under the unbearable load of overweight tourists and their camera equipment. In the time it takes to drink my drink, I watch a thousand others take photos of the same sights that I have just taken. This would be comical on another day but at the moment I feel this is too surreal. Is this what it is all about? Is this what I have come to do, I question myself. What happens to all these photographs and slides these people are taking, tens of thousands of them each day of the same attractions? I imagine they are building up in people’s basements around the world and will be the cause of numerous earthquakes over time.
It realize what is happening to me. I am suffering my worst bout ever of a travelers’ disease known as AFC, which stands for “Another Fucking Cathedral”, or alternately, depending on the situation, “Another Fucking Castle” or “Another Fucking Chateau”. If I could discover this amazing place on a day when it was deserted I would be transported away in awe and ecstasy, but today I wish I had a high-powered water cannon to clean away the insanity of it all.
At the next moment I decide where I will go after Venice. I will head for Slovenia. I am tired of playing the tourist. I want to be somewhere there is some other purpose than visiting tourist attractions. Besides, there are not many youth hostels or small pension hotels in Italy as in other countries I have visited so far, and the few hostels are all set to close on September 15, leaving me no option but to stay in sterile, expensive business hotels.
There won’t be many tourists in Slovenia, if any. Yugoslavia teeters on the brink of war, as it has been doing all summer. I have been following the situation closely. I have always wanted to visit Yugoslavia, especially Slovenia and the Dalmatian Coast, but I gave up on the idea two months ago as the situation became increasingly volatile. There have been sixteen truces signed and broken, often broken the same day as they were signed, but the conflict seems confined to back hills areas of Croatia away from the coast. When Slovenia declared independence in late spring, the Yugoslav army invaded but then finally pulled out without any deaths. It seems that at least that province will be allowed to separate without war. I will decide once I am there if it is safe to enter Croatia.
My decision is both significant and sobering. It makes sense to change the course I am on, or at least to try something different, but it is too onerous to share with Jochen and Lee Ling just yet. I will let it incubate over the next day. I may still change my mind or maybe I won’t even tell anyone if I do go there so that they don’t worry about me.
Lee Ling and Jochen return full of delight over what they saw inside the Basilica di San Marco. I listen and then tell them how much I enjoyed sitting here. I lied of course. We agree to walk around the neighbourhood behind the basilica, following narrow streets to the shops that line the many-staired Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal. They are crawling with tourists. We leave the crowds and save money by walking back to the hostel along the Strada Nova.
I want to lie down but of course there is no entry to the hostel for a couple more hours. We seek out the most obscure passageways on the north end of the island in a district of the city called Cannaregio. We find a quiet street seemingly free of tourists. The only language we here is Italian. What a relief! I only regret that I can’t speak it.
After dinner and a short, constantly interrupted nap in the dorm, Jochen, Lee Ling and I set out to find that same area again. This time we find a bar where the locals hang out. It is all candle light, Italian music and local laughter in the pleasant evening air. I find the courage to disclose to Jochen and Lee Ling that I plan to head for Slovenia the day after tomorrow. My decision is clear now. Are you sure that is wise, Jochen asks me. No, I admit, but I can’t bear being a tourist in Italy any longer. I relate all my concerns and considerations but he isn’t convinced. He has the grace not to question me about it for the rest of the evening. I wish now I had waited until tomorrow to tell them as the news has put a dampener on our festivities. At 10 pm we head back to the our respective dorm rooms to think about it some more.
PHOTO 1: Doges Palace
PHOTO 2: Jochen and Ling Lee in motor launch
PHOTO 3: Piazza di San Marco with the Campanile tower
PHOTO 4: the Campanile from the piazza
PHOTO 5: horses above the square
PHOTO 6: view of the Piazza from the top of the Campanile
PHOTO 7: coming out of the Campanile
PHOTO 8: along the side of the Piazza di San Marco
PHOTO 9: pigeons on the facade of the Basilica di San Marco
PHOTO 10: another shot of the Campanile
PHOTO 11: Torre dell Orologio (Clock Tower) in the piazza
PHOTO 12: the Rialto Bridge
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