Octorber 25, Monday
Venice
They told you Venice is gorgeous. They sold you perfectly packaged postcard pictures of this “romantic city.” It’s all there in your head already — montages of fluttering hearts, the summer sun dancing on the sparkling canals, honeymooners holding hands in gondola rides by the moonlight, gushing seranaders, blushing serenadees. All this set to syrupy-sweet, cloying violin tunes that makes everything seem more whimsical than it could have been.
This was the show-reel of Venice in my head too as we sat on the Eurail, a one hour journey from Milano to Venezia. All too excited to spot these all-too-familiar clichés.
But nothing prepared us for rain-soaked Venezia. That one day, the drenched city decided to take the whole list of carefully-established-over-centuries clichés, make a neat little paper boat of it and set it to sail in the The Canal Grande. Just for us.
As we walked out of the station, following the sound of heavy rain pouring on cobbled streets, Venezia greeted us, not with those comforting postcard pictures we have in our minds, but with cold, unforgiving rain, coupled with the kind of wind that slaps you on your face. Yes, it was undoubtedly beautiful. But one can hardly expect two, tired and always-hungry backpackers to find the idea of trudging along in bad weather romantic. Plus unprepared travellers that we were, we had only one umbrella between us. So, after buying a violently orange umbrella for two euros, after haggling it down from five, from the omnipresent Bangladeshi hawker , we stepped out to brave this not-of-our-dreams Venice.
Deeply, darkly beautiful... |
We walked till we discovered a new Venezia. Our very own clichéless version, the one no one told you about. We lazily walked past the tourists traps selling Venetian dreams made of glass and porcelain. Down the cobbled streets, across quaint glass blowers’ stores, past those mysterious Venetian masks that bring with visions of ancient carnivals and magical masquerade balls. We followed the old yellow boards on the many, winding alleys, that kept promising us that Piazza San Marco was right around the corner, only to turn into more twisting alleys with more yellow boards. Stopping only to admire some exquisite trinkets through glass window displays or to click pictures of pretty window sills with potted plants.
A window-shaped poem |
Our candy-coloured saviour |
We measured the breadth of the tiny, tiny alleys with our outstretched hands. We laughed and posed for pictures by the blue-green waters. And all the while it rained. It poured so hard that the chill seeped into our shoes, socks and bones. But we didn’t care. The wind turned our poor umbrellas upside down, but we walked on. We lost ourselves in those little alleys only to find ourselves again. Rain-washed, bright orange blossoms begged to be the background of our pictures, the obscurest of streets led us to the prettiest of churches with imposing bell towers that looked more ominous against the overcast skies.
Rainwashed perspectives |
Feeling strange pangs of sorrow-struck happiness in this city of love, we trudged along, braving the harsh winds to find a cosy, warm Italian café and two mugs of hot chocolate. We sat there, watching the Venetian sunset — the sky turned the Prussian Blue of paintings, reflecting itself on the blue waters, lined up with blue boats. It was this mood-altering blue that forced us out of that warmth, back into the rain. We had a train to catch to Rome. So, we decided to take a ‘bus’ back to the station. A bus that runs on water of course, like everything else in Venezia.
The blue of dreams... |
The blue of melancholy... |
-- P