Europe 2009 Part 5: Venice

25 September - 1 October

"Venice used to be the center of the world. Now it's like Disneyland," Mighty Mike said after I got back. I'd seen a few pictures but I really didn't know what to expect. That most of the passengers on the train were speaking English with American accents was the first indication that this part of the trip was going to be a little different.

We bought 36-hour tickets for the vaporetto. Picture bus-sized ferries that buzz about the Grand Canal like flies, stopping every couple of minutes first on one side of the canal then the other, making their way down one side of the island or the other, or over to Murano or the Lido. Taking a vaporetto is the cheapest way to get around in Venice, and cheap is a good thing because everything else -- everything -- is outrageously expensive.

Our hotel was a few minutes' walk from a vaporetto stop. From the moment we stepped on land we were surrounded by glass. Even the light fixture in our hotel room was hand-blown glass.


The hotel clerk gave us directions to a few places and instructions on how to get to Murano, where all the glassblowing workshops are. "All you need in Venice is a good pair of shoes." There are no cars, no bikes, and no motorcycles because everywhere are stairways over little canal channels.

After finding lunch around the corner we looked into the shops on our way back to the hotel. I was looking for Venetian beads, of course, but I wasn't going to buy anything until after seeing Murano.

I taught the hotel clerk, who was multilingual already, a new phrase in English: "I'm like a pig in shit." She said she might not be able to use that one.

We took the vaporetto to Murano. First we went into the Glass Museum to learn some history of glass here and around the world.

Then we wandered into some workshops. One had a quick demonstration of glass-blowing, but it wasn't anything I hadn't seen before. It was basic and touristy, but that's what we expected.

The workshop stores were something else. Multi-storied and packed to the gills with glass, each had its own take on what clearly was a formula for tourist dollars. On the ground floor would be the cheaper stuff: the rearing horses, tiny figurines, vases, and pendant jewelry. Upstairs would be the chandeliers, tall light fixtures, giant vases, and large sculptures of various animals. Escaping the eyes of clerks wasn't easy. They'd follow us around. It was difficult to tell if this was to prevent us from smashing the inventory, stealing it, or walking out without a sale.

I'd made a rule: no more "stuff" in the house. No more useless things, no matter how pretty. The bead room is full, the rest of the house full of books, dust, and other small works of art made by friends or bought before the new rule went into effect. Besides, our house faces north and is surrounded by trees. A colorful vase would dull in a window, get lost among the clutter on the coffee table, be demolished by a rampaging cat.

If I were to buy something made in Murano it would have to have some practical use. I could put a glass clock in the bead room. A small vase I could use during the summer when I bring home flowers from the farm, but the small vases were still too expensive and not nearly as intriguing as the bigger ones. So in a smaller workshop store I evaded the clerk long enough to snap a few pictures; this way I could look at all the glass for as long as I wanted to without taking up any space but that on the hard drive.


OK, the vase I really like is on the bottom right, in the corner. I picked that one up and almost started to rationalize spending nearly $150 on it. But I didn't. I took the picture instead:

This chandelier is just too cool:


Over-the-top:

I did find some beads, though, in a tiny store near a vaporetto stop. The clerk saw me contemplating a necklace. I was trying to figure out what the per-bead cost would be if I took it home and took it apart. I asked if she spoke English and then if she had individual beads for sale. She did. She kept them in an organizer by the register, where she strung necklaces to sell to the tourists. At 4.50 Euros each these beads were still expensive, but they were bigger than most I'd seen so far. After looking in a dozen stores since landing in Venice, I decided to take what I could get.

Then we waited for the vaporetto as the sun started to set. Not once during our Venice trip did we see blue sky. It was always hazy and humid, like a Philly summer day, only not quite as hot.



Around the corner from our hotel was the creepiest store I'd seen since that chandelier supply place in Richmond. I had to take some photos with my cell phone and send them off to Dale right away.

Masquerade balls used to be a big deal in Venice, so the masks I can understand. But the rest of it...



Sticking to the European style of eating dinner at 8 p.m. or later, we found a restaurant that seemed almost affordable. When we walked in at 8:40 the waiter looked disdainfully at his watch. We were, apparently, scuttling their plans to close shop by 9 and go home. But the food was good. I had what I'd been eating since Turin: pasta alla pomodoro. Jack got pasta with octopus cooked in squid ink. It stank. And turned his mouth black. He tried to sop it off his tongue with bread.

We thought we'd look at the public garden the next day. Venice isn't very big so we could walk anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. I had to stop in every glass store, though, in search of beads. I found a few here and there from shopkeepers who were stringing necklaces. One guy kept his supply in shoe boxes in a cabinet. Another woman had a large bowl full of singles and rejects that the two of us pawed through for half an hour (poor Jack). Slowly I was accumulating some good Venetian beads, but the search was intensely frustrating. Anything good would be on a necklace, one or two beads at most, strung amid crap, and selling for 75 Euros (about $125).

Here is some more unobtainable Murano glass beauty:


Forget what I said about that little vase on Murano. I want this one:

Oh, hell, if I'm going to get one I might as well get them both.

Anyway, the trip to the garden. Here's a view across the canal to a church:

This is the Via Garabaldi, where our literary friends Kevin and Brycchan fantasized about living. They call themselves members of the Via Garabaldi Wishful Thinking Society. They wanted me to get a picture of Jack under the street sign so he cold join the club.


They liked the neighborhood because it looked to them like real people lived there. The apartments above street level didn't look to be in very good condition.

I have no pictures of the garden because we couldn't get in. There was a citywide art exhibition going on, and much of it was in the park. As a result a normally free park now cost something to enter.

So we went back to Murano instead, where a clerk from the day before recognized us on the street, pulled us back into his store (we were trying to be polite) and trailed us again as I tried to wriggle free. The visit cost me 20 Euro for a glass clock, but I like it, and it's prettier than anything I'd seen or would see on Venice. (It lives on my beading table now so that I can keep track of the time when I get heavy into a project and leave Jack waiting for lights-out for an hour past bedtime.)

We took the vaporetto to a different part of Venice, to see the Ghetto, where people had built dwellings so compact they'd sometimes take up half the height of a normal apartment, stacked on top of each other, a model for tenaments worldwide that came to be known as ghettos (small "g") themselves.

On our way in a friendly little black cat played with us. Jack found a piece of plastic ribbon and I got out my camera.







After we walked away the kitty posed in a doorway for us.

A glass shop in the Ghetto specialized in Judaica. In the window was a blown glass chess set:

As we waited for a vaporetto to take us back to Saint Mark's square (our hotel was nearby), the sun was setting:



The boat took us past the Rialto Bridge, one of only a few that cross the Grand Canal.


At night (well past 8 again) as we waited for a table at a restaurant, I took some pictures of a feeder canal.

In reality it was much darker out than this, but the camera decided to make some corrections. The result is an eerie doorway glow and a haunting plaster face on the left side wall.

My throat felt scratchy at dinner. I thought it might be allergies but it didn't get any better. By the next morning I knew I was sick.

We went to Saint Mark's Square, which looked like it had just finished draining from a high tide. The line for the cathedral was huge. We went next door to the Doge's Palace instead. The square has a handful of museums, and you can spend a healthy sum to buy an all-encompassing ticket. Jack thought it over and we decided it wasn't worth it. We bought cheaper ones that let us into a few places but not Saint Mark's. Oh well. We went into the palace, the library museum, and the Correr museum instead. More Medieval art, Madonnas, and baby Jesuses, plus some manuscripts from the Venetian architect Palladio. My nose was running and I was pretty sure I had a small fever. This was going to put a dent in my plan to ride a century two days from now.

We got across the canal by bridge to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, full of modern art. Finally, pictures that made no sense at all. For a while we sat outside at the front of the museum, on the Grand Canal, watching boats and gondolas go by. There was a multi-man-powered gondola race, too, with a dozen colored boats and men screaming as they sped past.

Then we started thinking about the Buskin and Batteau song, "Death in Venice." We could only remember some of the words. But, lucky for you, because neither the lyrics nor the song are online, we have an old LP (gasp!) with printed lyrics.

Some words of warning first, though: It helps if you've read Death in Venice, but it's not necessary; and there are some really bad puns in here.

Poor Gus, never saw the Eiffel Tower
Poor Gus, never saw the London Bridge
Poor Gus, cut down in his finest flower
Getting stiffer by the hour
Stuffed inside the hotel fridge

'Cause
Death in Venice
He just ran out of breath in Venice
And now they're gonna pole
An old gondola draped in black
He came to Venice wan and sickly
But who could tell that he'd pass in Itly
The natives thought it was grotesque, oh,
An al fresco cardiac

When Sal and Guido
Dragged him off across the Lido
He was dead meat, oh
No treat, oh
Nohow
He'd been a great musician
Who finally learned decomposition
No need to requisition
A physician
Not now

Deceased in Venice
Not even time to call a priest in Venice
That's some vacation, he just coughed
And shuffled off without a prayer
His escapade erratic
Raised eyebrows up and and down the Adriatic
And if he weren't null and void
He'd have destroyed his welcome there

His secret passion
Was un poco out of fashion
He had a lot of weird irrational
Trash on his mind
The boy was under twenty
Young and pretty, and al dente
A boy with plenty
To drive a Venetian blind

(Drive a Venetian blind?
Sure. He was too young to rent a car.)

So death in Venice
And now they're cleaning up the meth in Venith
They've even called in Al from Parma
The embalmer
And a pal

And if anyone can make him look
Decent for burial
It's Al
Al can make him look sensational
Al can make him look terriffic
Al can make him come out Grand
Can Al

(Music by David Buskin; Words by David Buskin and Abra Bigham; copyright 1984, Poso Music)

We wandered back across the bridge to yet another museum, where we saw a modern glass exhibit. There was some interesting work; the dead pigeons caught my attention. But I wasn't the only one fixated on the chandeliers that hung above the exhibit, not part of it, but better.



For Chris in Boston, here's some neon art:


In a fevery snot-daze I shuffled back to the hotel, but I wanted to stop first in a store we'd passed earlier in the day. Everything in it was fifty percent off; I might have a shot at snagging some cheaper beads in a necklace. The place was mobbed with tourists. I had plenty of time to finger a dozen necklaces and choose the best ones for destruction while I was standing in line. Then the credit card connection broke and all sales became cash-only. I had to put back half of what I was holding, but I'm glad I did. And for the 45 minutes I was in there scrutinizing necklaces I completely forgot about my fever. I came away with some reasonably good stuff at less than one Euro per bead.

We went back to the hotel, picked up our bags, took a vaporetto to the train station, and boarded a bus for the airport. As we neared the airport, about twenty minutes into the ride, Jack saw our hotel, so we jumped off the bus and dragged our bags half a mile back to the hotel. That saved us some cab fare since we were low on cash anyway.

Our flight was for 7 a.m. the next morning, which meant getting to the airport by 5:30. Jack was figuring we'd just have to deal with not getting enough sleep, but I was conked out by 9:30. I awoke in the wee hours with an excruciating headache. I stumbled into the bathroom, found my naproxen, downed it, and fell back into bed. Within minutes the headache was gone. I felt the fever break. When we got up a few hours later I felt fine. We boarded the plane for London.