A Special Guest

Recently I’ve had the absolute joy of a visit from my dear friend K.  Introduced by a mutual friend while in Melbourne K and I quickly became fast friends with a shared love of travel, museums, words, fabrics, op shopping and cocktails.  As ever when I get a visitor a Raji tour of Venice is a must and seeing as K is a blogger herself she has written this piece describing a little of Raji’s Venice.

 

K my guest blogger

Friday night, and the Hotel San Gallo had been located just off St Marks Square, after about an hour negotiating maze of streets, canals and tourist-crammed walkways. (K was on her own here hence the hour – arriving after work I took 20 mins to get from the train station to hotel)

Our first action in Venice was to go out for coffee in San Marco. Coffee  punctuated our time here, as did aperol spritz and prosecco, the Italian bubbly. I could liken the weekend to a 3 day pub crawl, but I won’t—because having entered the Rajisphere, it’s more accurate to liken it to a personalised historical tour—with beverages. (really people I don’t drink that much-*fighting the tide of perception*)

After returning to our bright & comfy room with pressed metal ceiling and glass chandelier, we got a bit dolled up and hit the town. Rather than give you the blow by blow (or drink by drink) account, here’s an overview of what our evening included:

A quick giro (tour) through the basilica of San Marco, resplendent in gold Byzantine style mosaics and elegant marbled surfaces, with one pulpit for the priest, and another specially for the Doge, being the important person that he was.

Looking a little serious? or just thinking about the next bar?

 A bar Raji had recently spotted from the other side of the Grand Canal. The view of the Rialto Bridge from its own jetty was very nice. Not many establishments would have this view and still charge single figure prices for refreshments.

A fabulous little shop where I bought Venetian-made boots (who else has a tour guide with a built-in knowledge of one’s taste in footwear?!) (we aim to please!)

 A detour to see Marco Polo’s house. Here I learnt that the small piazza where it is located has the word ‘million’ in its name because of Snr Polo’s post-travel tendency to say ‘Oh I saw millions of those in (insert exotic discovered destination)

A visit to MiTi cocktail bar, acclaimed venue for a certain person’s recent Indian cuisine night, which was such a success she is being asked to give up her day job. (very kind of you to say but am a long way from giving up working for a living.)

Dinner at a place called (if translated into English) Paradise Lost, situated on a long canal in – ok let’s try this – Miseriacordia? (In Cannaregio on Fondamenta de la Miseriacordia but kudos on the spelling)  In the most northern segment of the main Venetian isles anyway.  Raji had phoned to book but the woman on the other end snapped ‘give me a name I can understand’. Hence we arrived to find our table for two booking for ‘Roberta’. Here we indulged in a fabulous seafood starter and some rather good pastas, while our neighbouring table had a huge cheese wheeled to the table (on a trolley, not by itself) by the chef who then ladled out  their pasta sauce from its molten interior. (I have never seen a cheese become its own serving vessel before. )

The night wouldn’t be over without a sambucca or three at the bar owned by Raji’s ‘Venetian Dad’ – a cheeky imp of an old dude who told us about dealing with the Acqua Alta (the once yearly spring tide that floods Venice) and who declared proudly that he was born there and so he’d die there.

Thank goodness I had brought a packet of NZ-made homeopathic hangover remedy Drink Ease, as we each knocked one back before going to bed at 2am. After waking with a reasonable clear head, I continue to swear by these.  (anyone else visiting from the Antipodes please bring additional supplies)

Our Saturday contained much wandering and crossing of bridges, and excessive photo-taking myself.

At the Rialto Market we rummaged happily though trash and treasures, alongside the fish & produce market that has been operating since the tenth century and is in danger of closing down due to ‘progress’. (danger thankfully now averted)

The Peggy Guggenheim Museum via the Accademia Bridge. I had never made it during my last visit to Venice n 1997, so it was delightful to experience it at last. It’s a small yet wonderful gallery, displaying not only Peggy’s collection, but photos of this radical lady in these rooms when they were her residence. I was moved to see her final resting place in the sculpture courtyard, where w also wrote a wish and impaled it on Yoko Ono’s ‘Wishing Tree.’

I wanted to take to the water in some form, and having already experienced a gondolier ride back in ’97 (albeit packed with a roudy Contiki group), we took an evening vaporetto ride. This is essentially a “bus” that travels the Grand Canal with numerous stops enroute. A ride after dark enabled us to view the mansions’(palazzi) piano nobile. No not a noble piano, but a floor or room of displayed grandeur. The lights are left on and the curtains drawn back to display a room’s gorgeous chandelier, paintings etc. My tour guide informed me that money is (was) poured into the presentation of these rooms, while the rest of the residence might be quite shabby.

Sunday morning coffee - Camera did a strange thing with
perspective here, I'm not THAT small

Sunday started with much-needed coffee in the sun, people-watching at the Rialto market. Then we just had to browse the stalls again, this time taking in the antiques in the fish market area. We followed this with a journey on foot to the Castello district. If you look at a map of Venice, you’ll see a green area out at the eastern tip. This was once home to the military and is now the site of the Venice Biennale (which is due to start soon) It is also home to many Venetians, being the quieter and more residential, not  so frequented by tourists. One aspect that was present was laundry drying on lines strung high across the narrow streets. From table-cloths to jumpers to undies, silhouetted against the sky or reflected in the canals. Naturally the residents’ smalls became content for our photo albums.

On our walk through the Castello, we were also stopped by some striking photos in a window—including the ‘Muppet orchestra’ that was noted recently in this very blog.(they've not yet made it to these pages) Inside we went, where we chatted to a Ukraine-born Jew who now had his workshop based here, where he skillfully added pop culture icons to historical uniformed portraits. We also loved an image of Yoda in Japanese army uniform. The photographer’s studio floor was covered in photos of the last ‘baby’ born in Chernobyl—now a young woman, standing in a decrepit room looking at the rusting cot she was born in. The photographer told us he is taking part in a project to artistically document the decomposing Chernobyl, and showed us a clip of his photos set to music – a vivid depiction of how a place decays once devoid of humans. Books had fallen to floors and become a strange curling carpet. Dust and soil had become so thick on exterior window sills that trees had taken root there. It was very moving .Here's a link to those haunting images

A peaceful Castello

I was also moved when we reached the furtherest point in the Castello that we could go. A quiet space in front of a church, with grass, a bridge, the gentle creak of many moorings, the open sea just beyond, and very few people.  A woman threw crumbs to a gull from a jetty that lead straight from her back door. It was very peaceful, and I understood Raji’s love for this city and its incredible history. During the weekend she imparted a whole lot of this to me and made my stay about 100% more interesting than visiting on my own.   Thanks Raji!

It was time to say goodbye to the gondoliers in their stripey jumpers, boater hats and leathery faces, the magnificent San Marco square with its population of tourists and pigeons, and the several thousand shops devoted to selling carnival masks. I feel so lucky to have had a glimpse beneath that touristy surface, thanks to yours truly who has all this just under an hour away. Our stay ended with a final stop at MiTi (we’d probably popped in here about 4 or 5 times over the weekend) and a vaporetto ride to the railway station.  Did I mention we also had bee-yootiful blue skies the whole time?  The icing on the cake.

It was a joy to share such a wonderful place with a good friend.  K left Italy yesterday and I already have the post visit blues.  I often wish Australia was geographically closer. It’s hard having the things you love most so far apart.  Thank you K for your visit and for a lovely weekend in Venice.

Opposites and extremes

Just before we all headed our separate ways for Christmas a bunch of us were having goodbye drinks in Treviso.  A passerby – who looked much like an extra from This is England stopped and said a few words to T. “Who’s that?” I asked to which T replied “Oh just a fascist.”  The strangest thing was that I didn’t bat an eyelid, by now I had seen enough fascists for it not to register with me.  In my recent experience  and being a bit of a lefty when a person is described as a fascist it is usually a jokey reference to voting for the Conservatives in the UK or supporting Tony Abbott in Aus but here fascist means fascist.  Italian politics is a seemingly impenetrable world of alliances and factions that one is exhausted just looking at it let alone trying to understand it.  One of the strangest things to me is the fact that factions and ideologies that the rest of the world has consigned to the past are still political forces here today.

 

Of course every country has their bone headed (Nick Griffin or Pauline Hanson anyone) extremist elements it’s just that I’m not used to people being so open about being pig ignorant.  It was not long into my working life here when a student happily told me he was fascist and I’m a little ashamed to say that I was so taken aback that I didn’t challenge his opinions.  Yesterday Treviso was in full St Patrick’s day celebration (go figure) and the place seemed full of skin heads and I mean full drainpipe jean and bomber jacket wearing skinheads.  Now most people here in Treviso are perfectly lovely, progressive thinkers but there is no denying that this far right element is tolerated.  I once asked an Italian acquaintance about this and his theory was that after the fall of fascism in Italy instead of going through a process similar to the denazification of Germany the Italian fascist parties simply changed their name and carried on in Politics.  Political discourse here in Italy at times has shocking levels of overt racism – I can’t think of another country where the leader of a political party could get away with calling people from Africa “bingo-bongos.”

The Communist club Venice

At the opposite side of the political spectrum is Venice which is staunchly left.  Maybe it is because as a port city Venice over the many hundreds of years got used to the mixing of different peoples or if they are just pragmatic enough to take money from anyone.  Many of my Venetian friends are proudly communist and abhor the proto fascist parties that Berlusconi legitimised by bringing into government.  Those that aren’t communist are most definitely to the left of the divide.  Recently a date attempted to “show” me around Venice only to be disappointed when I knew the place almost as well as he did.  After dinner he said he wanted to introduce me to a true Venetian character an old died in the wool communist – sadly this was yet another fail on his part as the died in the wool communist is my old friend L who I met on my first day on Venice 3 years ago.  Stepping into the back room of L’s bar leaves you in no doubt as to the political affiliation.  The walls are covered in flags and pictures from a lifetime of activism. 

     

I find it so amazing that two places that I know so well can be so politically different but then again having most recently lived in countries where the left and the right have so blurred as to become effectively the same party it is strange to come across such a pronounced divide.  

Spiceageddon - the mobile curry service hits Venice and I turn one

Having said goodbye to sister last week my focus immediately turned to the next week’s adventure.  If this was going to work it needed a plan so meticulous it would make the D day landings look like a last minute rush job.  I had agreed, volunteered, said yes before thinking, had one prosecco too many (will circle the applicable when I have decided which one it is) to cater for an evening of Indian food at a bar in Venice.  I’ve known F and H since my Venetian stint of 09 and their bar is a regular haunt whenever I visit the lagoon.  Not only do they have a good stock of tea but have a talent for making rather wonderful cocktails at quite unvenetian prices.  When the idea for a evening of Indian food came up the whole endeavour seemed a doddle – cook a whole lot of food, serve it to eager faces and have a couple of drinks, the fact that the chosen evening fell on the one year anniversary of the beginning of my Italian adventure made the whole thing seem perfect. 

Cumin, fennel, fenugreek, mustard and nigella seeds ready for the dal 

Interest was almost instant both among my friends and regulars at the bar.  As good as it was to know that I wouldn’t be cooking for nothing I do prefer to operate without expectation – I figure it’s easy not to disappoint when there’s no expectation.  Deciding what to cook was no problem – no need to reinvent the wheel on this one only tried and trusted dishes made the cut.  What I didn’t really think about was the logistical details.  Cooking for 30+ is a little different to cooking for the two or three I’m used to and having to balance all with long working hours meant that if I was going to pull this off I would have to forget all else for the duration.   The week became a blur shopping, chopping and cooking with every spare moment between lessons taken with some kind of food related task.  My kitchen was rearranged with all non Indian foodstuffs put away and the workspaces neatly divided by task – Ingredients-prep-cook and pack.  Thursday was the big day with an unbroken 6 hours of cooking which resulted four completed curries (Keralan beef curry, Burmese chicken curry, lentil dal with five spices and chickpeas done according to my mother’s recipe) and a small mountain of washing up to do before heading off to work.  That night after prepping the last dish and cracking my job done beer I felt quite proud not just for the amount of cooking I’d got through together with a day’s work but for the fact I’d managed to get it all in my tiny fridge – yes I am now a zen master in the art of fridge tectonics.  All that was left to do was Friday’s task of making a small mountain of rice.        

Flavourings of the feast

Friday was the big day, my one year in Italy birthday, Indian night and of course the day of J and I’s weekly trip to the mineral powder company.  As soon as I’d made it home from what I’ve affectionately termed the armpit of the Veneto it was straight into the rice making.  Two hours later and finally all was done and with the help of P and F we carted the mountain of food to Venice.  At the bar deep in preparation for the night I didn’t notice the arrivals.  I looked up to suddenly find the bar full of expectant faces.  And not just full of friends and acquaintances but real people as well!  Blimey – Indian food a popular draw it seems.  The next hour was a frenzy of heating and serving all fuelled by margarita.  The food went down spectacularly well, my ego was suitably boosted, the bar had a great night and most importantly of all people enjoyed themselves.  By the end of the night I was utterly spent but proud that all had gone well.  While the cooking hadn’t been a stress balancing it with working was a small handful and now that that stress was over the margaritas tasted good – way too good for someone who had six hours of teaching the next day.

Curry and cocktails 

It’s so hard to believe that a year has gone by since I said goodbye to Melbourne and made my way across the world to a small place in Italy.  In all the rush and activity I haven't had a chance to look back and contemplate my Italian year. Perhaps it’s best to simply enjoy the moment and leave contemplation for another day.