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Travelogues
In Love with
Venice
by Satis Shroff
 It
was a bright sunny morning when Claudia, Giacomo, Silvana I headed for
Italy from Freiburg. The first Swiss town we went through was Basel,
which is known for its university and chemical firms near the
Swiss-German border.
The sky was a cobalt-blue as we sped through the Arisdorf tunnel. In
Switzerland you have to go through a lot of tunnels. The Swiss have
introduced a vignette system whereby every car has to have a sticker
pasted on its windscreen at a cost of 30 Swiss francs annually. The
Swiss autobahn (highway) was surrounded by breath-taking scenery, with
green pastures and rounded hillocks. In the distance you could see the
Alps. As you speed along the well-maintained highway you see picturesque
tiny towns and hamlets with their cute church-tops. There are extremely
romantic settings ahead as you watch the mountains reaching out to the
lake. You see the mountains right in front of your nose with their pine
forests and snows tops. You drive past the Seelisberger lake and view a
magnificent mountain scenery.
There are pretty petite Swiss huts on the lush green slopes of the hills
with pine trees and jagged peaks, which have often served as backgrounds
for scores of Bollywood films. With Lata Mangeshkar’s touching and sad
version of ‘Kabhi khushi, kabhi gham’ blaring from the car’s
stereo CD player, we certainly felt like Bollywood stars. I was a
Nepalese from the middle mountains of Nepal and Claudia was from
Germany’s Black Forest and we’d met at a ballroom and Latin dancing
class at the university town of Freiburg. Giacomo was from Brescia, a
town in northern Italy and Silvana was from Sicily, and had, as
expected, a lot of jovial, southern temperament.
Near Luzern, the Alps appear suddenly in their majesty. When we went
past the Sempucher lake I was reminded of the equally beautiful Phewa
lake at Pokhara. Then came a series of tunnels. Every time you came out
of a tunnel you were rewarded with a panoramic view of the Swiss Alps.
Near the Vierwaldstätter lake in Luzern we went past the William Tell
chapel. Tell, it might be noted, has become something of a Swiss
institution ever since he shot the apple from his son’s head.
The Gottard tunnel turned out to be a feat of engineering but also 17
kilometers of exhaust gas inhalation. It certainly was good for the
environment and local scenery but bad for the traveler's lungs. The air
was thick. There were SOS- telephones and video-cameras at regular
intervals in the well-lit tunnel. And finally we arrived in Lugano: an
extremely stylish and elegant city with a waterfront – the lake Lugano.
A board with the notice ‘Funiculare angiole’ cropped up. Lugano and
Tessin are the Italian-speaking parts of Switzerland, in addition to
north Tirol in Italy. In south Tirol the Italians of German descent,
like the climber Reinhold Messner, prefer to speak German and are proud
of their Teutonic traditions. A pretty blonde Swiss policewoman was
busily distributing tickets for wrong parking. I had the impression that
she did it with a sadistic delight.
The Italian highway is called the autostrada. It read Milano 64 km, and
after Milano came Chiasso, the border town and then the San Nicolao
tunnel. In Italy we had to pay an autobahn tax. ‘I love traveling to
Germany by car,’ Giacomo had said once. It was only now that I
understood why. In Germany there was no road tax for the autobahns,
except for heavy-duty lorries, and you could drive non-stop from one
part of Germany to the other without being stopped. A lot of Swiss
Ferrari-owners test their newly bought cars along the route, because one
is not allowed to drive so fast in Switzerland.
Milano had mostly brown or ochre colored houses with bed-sheets and
other clothes hanging out of the windows, like in Naples. That’s Bella
Italia, I thought. There was a traffic-jam along the Milano road at 4:30
pm (rush hour) with commuters impatient to get home. We drove past the
not-too-picturesque river Adda and an area with big factories coughing
up a lot of smoke. There was a lot of smog in the vicinity of Milano.
Suddenly, you could see the Italian Alps in the distance to the right.
Bergamo turned out to be a city on top of a hill and heavily cemented
like a citadel, with its pompous church-spire. You could see the marble
blocks stacked together in front of a marble-quarry. A series of
hillocks appeared to the right with small fortified towns on their
summits and a vista of the Alps in the background. And we arrived in
Brescia, the Nepalese base-camp, for further excursions in Italy.
It was already dark when Giacomo suggested that we drive to a small hill
overlooking the town of Brescia or Brixia, as the Romans used to call it
in the old days. There were myriads of gaudy lights winking at you. One
couldn’t help thinking about Kathmandu, as seen from the temple of
Swayambhu. After a typical rustic Italian dinner we descended to
Brescia.
The next day we went with Giacomo, our young amiable, bearded Italian
friend, to see the Roman ruins of Brixia which proved to be very
interesting. There was a Roman theatre with reconstructed pillars and
tombstones. I had the impression that they were still excavating the
ruins. Giacomo said that old Roman city of Brixia lay at least four
metres deep under the present-day Brescia.
The town-council and theatre buildings were imposing. There was a
bustling vegetable and fruit market in the middle of the city and it was
fun to watch the gesticulations and mimics of the Italians haggling with
each other. It was like the market scene at Asan Tole in Kathmandu,
except that there were no cows roaming about and the women wore skirts
and showed their legs and shoulders, and were not draped in colorful
saris.
Giacomo suggested we try out a typical Brixian lunch at Sovenigo which
was some 50 km away. It was a homely restaurant and it began with a soup
with tortelli. The polenta proved to be a thick yellowish dish made of
maize-flour. ‘It’s the staple diet in the north,’ explained
Giacomo. And went on to explain that the word ‘polentona’ is regarded as
a terrible insult when people from the north are confronted with this
word by those from the south. The northerners retort with: ‘terroni’,
which means something like a country-hick who’s bound to the terrain. It
was akin to the eternal problems between the madhisays and paharis, the
flatlanders and the highlanders in Nepal. A mixed-grill dish appeared
next with roasted fowls, pork, canines and small birds. And all this was
consumed with Tura and Valpollicella wines.
After the sumptuous lunch we headed for Verona.
Verona was a beautiful city, with old houses and a pompous amphitheatre
in Roman-style. The alleys were crowded, it being Sunday, and the
Veronese were wearing their Sunday-best and the women were dressed to
kill, if one might say so, looking elegant, proud and
oh-so-self-conscious. Embroidered net-stockings, black lack shoes and
scarlet lips were in.
Who hasn’t heard of Romeo and Julia? But few people know that the
Venetian writer Luigi Da Ponte created in 1500 the tragic
Romeo-and-Juliet story. And William Shakespeare made the eternal drama
out of it. Every year you see tourists on their way to Julia’s memorial,
to the famous balcony of Julia and to Julia’s grave.
You still see the buildings from the Roman times in Verona such as: the
Roman theatre, the Borsari gate, the Porta dei Leoni, the arch of Gava.
And the bridge that was frequently destroyed and repaired: the Ponte
Pietra and naturally the arena. The big amphitheatre with its 72
arcades, which functions today as a summer stage for world-renowned
operas and ballet, was built in the first century. During the Roman
times, it was the arena where ferocious animals and gladiators fought.
Today, the streets approaching this arena are packed with
camera-wielding tourists and strolling Italians.
Outside the city, you still see the ancient city-wall, which was
constructed for defence purposes. At this stage their car had developed
thirst and started snorting and fuming. It had to be cool down and
watered. We stopped near a sprout and admired the pedestrians and the
buildings and then drove on towards Venice.
There was an impressive castle to the left with walls that conjured up
images of the Great Wall of China. Castles cropped up every 20
kilometers. There were miles and miles of vineyards. In the Monti area
we went through at least three tunnels. We had to pay another
highway-tax up to Chiogga. There were dry patches of land along the way
which normally get soaked up by the sea during the tide. The waterway
was marked with wooden poles painted red and white.
Chiogga is a picturesque and romantic fishing-town in the southern part
of the lagoon. It dates back to the Roman times. The main attraction is
the Corso del Popolo, where the most important buildings are located:
the Barock church St. Andrea, the gothic granary. The St. Martino church
is an excellent example of brick-gothic architecture.
Chiogga is connected with Sottomarina by a dam, which in turn is an
Adriatic bathing resort with a beautiful beach. At the entrance of the
Adriatic harbor in Chiogga, where we intended to spend the night with
some Italians friends, we had to go past a check-post. I naively asked
the purpose of the check-post, to which Giacomo replied, ‘Oh, from here
it is possible to take a boat to Yugoslavia.’ Our charming and garrulous
guide talked the Italian police over and we drove past in no time. I
wondered how Ludmilla Tüting would have faired with her Polaroid-number
at the Italian check-post, because she mentioned in one of her Nepal
guide-books that it helps to have a Polaroid camera when one goes to the
Nepalese countryside. ‘The Nepalese just love to see themselves in
instant photographs,’ was her explanation two decades ago. It’s digital
pictures now.
We were given a warm welcome by the skipper Luigi, who ran a 5-boat
sailing school, and his German-speaking wife in their beautiful cozy
house with a fire-place that was already crackling. We had, what the
Germans call Schollen (plaice), tasty self-made Italian bread with
butter, cheese and noodles with parmesan cheese and a birthday cake too.
Giacomo, who turned out to be an excellent troubador, played Luigi’s
guitar and we sang English and Italian songs late into the night.
We slept in one of the school’s boats, a moderate affair with six
sleeping berths. I slept very well in spite of the fact that it was a
bit chilly. There was a strange toilette on board where you had to use a
handle to pump the water. The tap had to be pumped with a foot-pedal,
like in one of the French trains..
The next day we went to Chiogga, which has three parallel canals cutting
through the town. There were pretty arched bridges, and nearby there
were Italian vendors with stalls displaying Mediterranean fruits,
vegetables and fish. It was a bright day, and we could feel the bustle
of this small sea-town as we went about our errands. There were
fishermen drying out their nets and Italians talking animatedly. I took
a photograph from the bridge and a burly mustachioed Italian in a
two-piece suit who came in the way and said, ‘ I’m sorry’ with a smile
and touched the tip of his hat and walked away, like in a Fellini film.
As we took a walk through the town’s main street, we noticed the
Italians talking in small groups. Most of them were men. A macho
society, one is likely to say. The women were probably in the kitchen or
in the church or with their children. You see old, dilapidated houses,
people staring at each other from windows and balconies. We noticed,
however, that there was life there. The noise coming from the street,
the children playing and emitting screams of delight. In the narrow
lanes you saw the ubiquitous clothes-lines stretching from one house to
another, a sight that’s unusual in German towns, except during the
carnival celebrations (Fasnet) when the houses are decorated with
colorful flags, like the ones during the Buddhist Losar celebrations.
We changed money at the local bank in Chiogga and learned to our dismay
that it was dead slow with its service and pretty crowded too. The Nepal
Rastriya Bank isn’t fast either, I thought. From Chiogga we headed for
Mestre, a colorful harbor town on our way to Venice.
Masks and Costumes
‘Jetzt sind wir bald in Venezia,’ said Giacomo, after all we were out to
enjoy life in Venice, as we went past the Guarda di Finanza building.
"Bella Venezia!" shouted Silvana, stretching her hands in the process. I
remembered the time I’d come to Venice in a bus from Rottweil. Most of
the passengers had spoken with heavy Swabian accents. The Swabians are a
jolly folk with business acumen, and they’d laughed and cracked jokes
and poked fun at all and sundry. The British would have looked stuffy in
their presence, I had thought.
I read aloud, "Linea direta autostrada" written on a big sign-board. It
always fascinated me to read boards written in foreign languages. In
Italy you still have to pay toll on different parts of the highway
because they are owned by private persons. We went past Mailand, known
for its Theatre Scala, the Verdi museum and one of the biggest railway
junctions in Europe. There were endless rows of factories to be seen en
route, and then we were relieved by the sight of the snow-capped
mountains of the Italian Alps against a blue sky.
We were excited about the carnival in Venice. Unlike the noisy carnival
in Germany and Switzerland, in Venice it is serene and this ancient,
historical town in the lagoon with its many bridges, palaces and
buildings, waterways, gondolas becomes a magnificent background for the
festival of costumes and masks. As Shakespeare said in "As You Like It":
All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. Venice
at carnival-time suddenly becomes a stage with performers from all over
the world, each playing his or her role with dignity and cool, in exotic
and extravagant costumes. Nonchalance is the order of the day.
Venice has always had a special meaning for everyone. For Nietzche it
was another word for music. When you see all those costumed and masked
people from Italy and other parts of Europe, you are inclined to ask: do
they hide their daily lies and lives behind them? Even the ugly become
beautiful during the carnival, adorning themselves with finery in
brocade, chiffon and yards of silk, and the beautiful wear hideous
masks. The ghastlier the better.
As our car approached Venice and went past the graveyard of St. Michael,
Claudia and Silvana said that they smelt the sea. A huge Campari ad
appeared to the left as we sped along the bridge to Venice. There were
seagulls circling around hoping for tit-bits from the tourists. A series
of rusty cranes appeared and right near the harbor was a turquoise
colored boat, loaded with kegs of red wine. The cost of the ferry to
Venice was 10,000 lire, before the Euro was introduced.
We drove through Mestre, which was rather polluted and had a number of
dilapidated and unfinished buildings. That's because the Italians haggle
while constructing their houses. The more you haggle the more it takes
time, and the lesser the costs? Giacomo said, ‘They try to press the
price of cement, wood and building materials.’
The lagoon to Venice was closed and the Venetians were breeding mussels
and clams. The color of the water reminded me of the Bagmati and
Vishnumati rivers of Kathmandu valley. There were a few ships and
containers at the ferry harbor, which was connected by train and road.
We put up at the Sheraton in Padua, because it was rather difficult to
get rooms in Venice itself during the carnival. In the evening we went
to do the sights of Padova, as it is called in Italian. The huge dome of
the Basilika was impressive. In front of the Basilika were scores of
pigeons and the tourists were photographing them. There were pretty
cafes and restaurants around the Basilika. We entered a building and saw
a huge congregation of Italians attending the mass. There were priests
at every corner and the pious catholic Italians were doing their
confessions with earnest faces. It being a university town, like
Freiburg, there were many young students in the streets.
We then left Padua and drove past the blue snow-capped mountains of the
Monte Crappa. Typical Italians houses fleeted by and industrial
complexes appeared and all the while we had canned music: Eros
Ramazotti`s scratchy, passionate Latin-lover voice. In Germany his fans
call him "Ramazottel".
We left our cars and headed for Venice. It was an enticing, ravishing
Venice full of fantasy, illusions and excitement. At the Piazza San
Marco there were extravagantly clothed people with and without masks to
be seen. Faces and costumes that conjured up images of the times when
Venice was flourishing and was a world power. There were sheikhs with a
row of beautiful harem ladies, children dressed in the fashion of
Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor", Gieshas, Robotcops, Batman and Robin,
Spiderman, Mr. Incredible and his whole family, Swiss and German
tourists dressed as baroque noblemen and ladies with powdered faces and
a lot of silk. There were at least a dozen people dressed as the Doge,
bearing masks and dark clothes with cloak. It was the Doge who ordered
all the gondolas to be painted black in 1562.
We crossed the Bridge of Sighs and there was laughter as the passengers
emitted feigned sighs. The unique Venetian atmosphere had captivated
them. We headed for the Piazzo San Marco and further in the direction of
the Piazza Academia through wind-swept alleys and crossed a good many
bridges.
You have to slow down your pace in this lagoon-city to take in the
optical fare spread for your delight. Every now and again you come
across people in breathtaking costumes from another century, and you
look at them deep in their eyes. The pair of eyes behind the mask stare
at you. You feel it. And in a moment the magical contact disappears.
Thoughts swerve in the air. You realize you need more than a pair of
eyes to take in the ancient backdrop of Venetian palaces, houses,
bridges and captivating canals of Venice.
Claudia, Giacomo, Silvana and I walked along the Academia corner,
crossed the Canale Grande and admired the many Venetian art galleries
and the Guggenheimer collections with works of: Picasso, Matisse,
Mondrian, Kandinsky, Klee, Miro, Moore and Pollock to name a few.
After all that we were a bit tired of walking around and entered an
Italian cafe and discovered that there were a lot of American tourists.
Some thick-set Venetian fishermen dropped in and the atmosphere became
lively. It was interesting to watch the Italians talking and discussing.
The gesticulating hands, the facial contortions and the pitch of the
voices rising in crescendo along with the consumption of grappa and wine
was amusing. Even if they have nothing of relevance to say it sounds
important and passionate. The coffee, chocolate and sandwiches and
grappa (Italian raksi) were excellent.
We strolled towards the Piazza San Marco. Dusk was falling and the
Italian monuments took on a new golden hue. Every few steps you could
see costumed people walking by leisurely. We couldn't care less that we
had cold feet. Gusts of icy wind blew in every alley. We were out to
celebrate, and be a part of the Venetian carnival, and nothing was going
to stop us. Ah, Venice, where Thomas Mann wrote his ‘Death in Venice’ in
1911 and now a Donna Leon writes fiction about murders in the canals of
Venice.
At the Piazza San Marco, which is the saloon of Venice, there was a
great deal of tumult, and a sea of humanity was gathered there. Costumed
figures were posing elegantly in front of the historical buildings. As
soon as someone started posing, a swarm of professional and amateur
photographs would swoop down on him or her with their digital and
auto-focus cameras, camcorders and throw-away ones. The costumed and
masked figures would change their positions slowly and gracefully,
moving their upper extremities with controlled gestures.
The Venetians have worn their classical costumes from the times of the
Serenissima and the Doges. The entire court was present. And the
tourists came from another epoch. There were younger tourists who were
having a good time disguised as dollar-coins, scarlet plastic shampoos,
or ecology-conscious ones carrying garbage bags draped around their
torsos.
Later, Giacomo said at the Sheraton, "If I were a Venetian I would run
away from this revelry and artificial merry-making." He hails from
Brescia and shuns the tourists. When the Karneval tourists come, the
Venetians make for the open spaces, especially the Alps to do a bit of
skiing. Far away from the maddening crowds. Venice receives 12 million
tourists per year.
Some German tourists were rather rude, as they jostled for better camera
angles like the paparazzis running after prominent people, but the
costumed figures were kind, patient and graceful as they posed near the
Venetian fountains and pillars. It was so wonderful to discover the
various alleys and water-lanes with their cute little shops. There were
gondolieros waiting for passengers and hotel guests with immaculately
dressed bell-hops, waiting for the water-taxi to arrive. A gondoliero
earns 75 euros for 25 minutes, and 1000 euros per day. Venice’s canals
are rather congested with its 20,000 boats. And there’s a speed limit of
11 kmph in the lagoon, and the water-police are always around the corner
with their laser speed checks. However, the biggest waves in the lagoon
are caused by the police themselves.
In Venice you try to take in the visual feast that is spread in front of
you with your all-seeing-eyes. You look at the masked ladies and
gentlemen dressed in the clothes of the Doge and Marco Polo and the
Middle Ages, and if you look deep enough you might see the blue, brown
or green eyes flash back, or twinkle at you. This flirting and
coquetting is done in Venice with dignity and a certain nonchalance.
Claudia danced with an elegantly dressed Doge and I danced the fox-trot
with a masked lady to Frank Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York.’ After the
danced was over I thanked her for the dance and asked her if she was a
Venetian lady. She replied in English with a heavy Bavarian accent, ‘I’m
sorry to disappoint you, but I’m from Munich’. I told her Claudia and I
were from Freiburg and we had a good laugh. One meets tourists, and not
Venetians, in Venice.
There is no chance of getting lost in Venice because there are yellow
signs pointing to the Piazza San Marco, the Rialto Bridge or the other
sights at all important junctions and corners. But at night it is a
different matter. It's dark and you might get the creeps, with all those
long shadows thrown in the alleys of Venice.
Venice sleeps at night.
April 21,
2007
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