Back from Brazil

No I haven’t been in Brazil but things have been a little stressful in Raji’s world of late finding myself at one point simultaneously homeless and jobless as well as having a little crisis of confidence resulted in me taking myself out of the blogosphere for a time while I got my shit together but rest assured that having sorted a few things I’m back with my little dispatches from the front line of Italian life.

Before the summer I was planning to give up my small town life and head into the bright lights of a big city.  Rome looked like the big contender – there were sniffs of jobs and share accommodation was plentiful.  As much as I love Rome on my last fact finding mission I realised that I didn’t feel it and I began to ask myself why after a year of hard work establishing myself in Treviso finally getting to the point of knowing and feeling comfortable in the place, having made great friendships am I leaving?  There was also the heartbreak that leaving Venice would bring.  I have to say that even after a year and a half countless visits and hundreds of hours in the place I’m still as in love with it as I always was (why I can’t fall in love with a place that has cheaper real estate I don’t know.)

I came to realise that I was planning to move for no other reason than habit and let’s admit the ample distraction a move would provide from the larger things in life that I really need to start thinking about.  So after a mounted campaign by my Trevisan/Venetian friends I decided to give up the idea of a move a stick with the Veneto for a little longer but as a nod to my ever present urge to bolt I would try to find a place to live on the lagoon. 

Now I understood that renting in Venice is a very different prospect to renting in Treviso.  For the cost of my apartment in Treviso I knew I would be looking at renting a room in Venice.  What I didn’t realise was that that room would be an overpriced poky little place with broken furniture.  Given that I wasn’t prepared to share a room, share with anyone under the age of 30 and I have reasonable expectations of hygiene my search proved much harder than I had anticipated.  All friends, acquaintances and general random strangers were enlisted to the cause of finding me a home.  After a month of searching and viewing countless apartments and being truly shocked at the places people are prepared to pay to live in I had still come up with nothing (worth living in.)  As much as I dream of living in Venice living in a hole would just be depressing.  So staring imminent homelessness in the face I gave up on the Venice dream and decided to look once more in Treviso.  The upside of this being I can continue to live alone, which is more than a small consolation.

Being just two days away from being on the streets my search was a little urgent to say the least and by rights I should have taken anything I was offered be it tiny, run down, in an annoying part of town etc.  So given the precariousness of my predicament I really don’t deserve the apartment that I'm now writing from.  Just as panic was setting in I was taken to view a spacious place slap bang in the centre of Treviso.  The main square is two minutes behind it, the fish market is two minutes in front of it and disastrously for my liver it’s between five or six of our regular bars.  I instantly knew that I had to have this place (and not just simply because I really had to take a place.) Excitedly phoning J and D as I was drawing out the deposit I breathlessly told them about the size, the five floor to ceiling windows, the huge marble bathroom, the acres of wardrobe space, a dining table big enough to host ten people and excitement on excitement my very own dishwasher.  Oh and I nearly forgot there’s a centuries old fresco in the bedroom.

With all the stress of the last few weeks I've barely noticed that the summer has ended.  The temperatures are dropping, the mornings are getting misty and the boots and coats are out in force.  Treviso has erupted in mushroom stalls, radicchio is back in season and best of all the roast chestnut sellers are back.  While it’s not Venice (by a long way) I very happy in my palace of an apartment and I'm looking forward to the dinner parties I'm going to throw but I’m also aware that over the next few months I have to make some big decisions about my life, home and the general all round big picture.  At present I'm a mass of confusion and wonder if I’ll ever find an answer but I’ll keep you posted.