!!*V*E*N*I*C*E*!!

A review on Venice

Written on: 6-Feb-2001

Pros: Beauuuuuutiful. ... ! ! 

Cons: Unpredictable fog can sometimes play spoilsport - avoid Nov-Mar. 

Intel couldn't have designed a better USP to launch their Pentium II series in late '97(?). They were the very same words that popped in my mind when I came out of the railway station in Venice. 

Take your wildest imagination. Multiply it by 2.

The build-up of excitement in the days leading to our Venice trip was dizzying, to say the least. We were five of the now-familiar Innsbruck (the first stop in our itinerary) gang of six wide-eyed, nervously giggling boys-n-girls. We were going to !!*V*E*N*I*C*E*!! The acme of any serious world-tourists' life. The city of canals and gondolas - unique in the whole world. The most prized possession of one of the most sophisticated and fashion-conscious people in the world. The home-town of Marco Polo and Casanova. The ... (I run out of superlatives here.) 

Right out of the railway station, we step not onto a road lined with buses and cars, as it would be in any other place in the world, but into a CANAL!! Lined with *boats* and *gondolas*. It's the Grand Canal - their M.G.Road. To go to the Youth Hostel, we take *boat* no. 82 or *boat* no. 41. To go to your address (if you have a few million liras to burn - just loose change really), you go to the counter marked TAXI and then you get into a *boat!* 

On the way, you hear the police siren, and a *boat* whizzes past! You see garbage being collected from garbage bins using the huge mechanical arms on a *boat. * The bourgeois goes to office, shopping, school, etc. on a *boat. * The hospital is lined outside with *boats* having flashing emergency lights. The Youth Hostel is hardly a mile away from San Marco, but you don't walk (unless you're Jesus 8-), but you take a *boat. * Parking space is difficult to be found downtown - the taxis take 'em before you swing your *boat* into 'em. (BTW, parallel-parking must be a breeze!) 

Steps lead down from the main doors of every house RIGHT INTO THE CANAL! (No, it's not a trap set up for mother-in-law.) Four storeyed apartment buildings spring right out of the water! (And no, it's not that darned basement pipe leaking again.) If you've got the money, then you have not a private driveway but a private BRIDGE!!! Do they have 'street sharks' and 'alley alligators' instead of 'street dogs' and 'alley cats?' Do they have after-dinner swims? (I've seen a wildly excited dog being taken for a stroll - you guessed it, on a *boat. *) 

It's a different life altogether. Beautifully different. The people. Sophisticate. Suave. Svelte. Immaculate. Just some of the words Ashima (a colleague) and I dallied about. (Cool. Hep. In. Dandy. These are not the words one uses in the power-house of world fashion.) 

Murano is an island a half-hour drive away form Venice. Venetian glass is born and bred here. The furnace room, the highly skilled glassblowers, their coordination, the heat - centuries old technology, attracting world-wide tourists and buyers in the twenty-first. Needless to say, the weak-hearted among us succumbed to a bargain or two. Venetian glass is beyond description in any language known. 

The next island is Burano, famous for laces. Sheets, table-cloths, wall-hangings, even umbrellas - all made of lace. The most delicate of laces I've ever seen. Known to easily entrap the unwary in its web of complex patterns. 

Which trip in Italy is complete without a pizza dinner? We just roam around in the main archipelago of 118 islands (all connected by bridges) till we are sure we're hopelessly lost and then barge into the nearest pizzeria. Regarding the pizzas, well, Italy is not the Land of Pizzas for nothing, you know! After dinner, returning back to San Marco was the fastest thing we did in Venice (we walked at normal walking speed, you see), because the curfew time at the Youth Hostel was fast approaching! 

In Venice, no one is ever disappointed. Life is just one continuous celebration of, well, life. The shops open and close "about" xyz o'clock. The boat comes "approximately" every xyz minutes. The hostel cufew begins "anytime" between 11 and 1130. See you "around" 5 o'clock "somewhere" near Ferruzia. To get to San Zaccharia, walk "generally" towards the harbour. Shops are "usually" closed in the afternoon for "siesta." What a contrast to the cold, high-strung ways of the German world we live in here! (I lived in Vienna then.) I miss Mysore. 

And lastly, the gondola ride. "Just 200,000 liras," we mentally add 'approximately,' "for about 35-40 minutes." "We only have about 180,000. Will that do?" "What's the difference? Jump right in." Thus began the best half-hour ever of our entire European sojourn. 

Gondolas are long thin boats painted black according to a 400-or-so year old law. It seats four or five people in the centre in red-velvet chairs. The gondolier stands behind with a long yellow oar and, sometimes, sings. But we were so full of questions that he never really got a chance. He could only get comments like "This is Marco Polo's house," "That is Casanova's house," edgewise. We found out things like how were the buildings built? How is the driving licence test like? How's the weather like yearlong? How does the drainage system work? 

Getting away from !!*V*E*N*I*C*E*!! was hardest. The city, the people, the spots. Everything, unlike Innsbruck, man-made. Every inch a result of man's creativity, ingenuity and industriousness. Imagine, all the 118 islands and their buildings are secured against oceanic erosion by huge logs driven deep into the ground. It requires centuries of hard work. Venice is truly a celebration of man himself. Venice is a place man built to relax in after the hard work of bUilding it. In terms of just the sheer human effort spent in building a city, Venice is perhaps the New York of the pre-industrial age. 

Venice shall always remain with us as a kaleidoscope of spectacular, yet simple, vignettes. The roadside artist with his paintings. The friendly pigeons in San Marco. The Romanesque style of architecture. (Vienna's Baroque is positively distasteful now.) The pigeons inside McDonald's. (At this rate, very soon they'll add McPigeon to the menu.) The houses on Murano. The people outside the church on Burano .... 

Ideal time to visit: March-May 

Nature of your travel: Weekend travel 

Would you recommend the place to your friend?: Yes