And it's only going to get colder

 As much as I have been in denial the evidence is now irrefutable.  I’m not sure what it was exactly that led to the admission.  Was it the overnight 12 degree drop in temperature? Was it the first appearance of vin brulee in Treviso? Was it witnessing the first of the Christmas lights being installed?  Or was it having to flee Venice at siren sound to avoid the 1.4 meter high water? Whatever it was there’s no doubt about it winter is here and given the time and severity of the temperature drop it looks like it’s going to be a long and very cold one. 

I find it depressing to think of having to get through the next four months of cold wet weather.  I’m not one for winter sports – unless sitting under a blanket with a pot of tea and a good book can be classed a sport  - and at times like these I begin to think of my home in Melbourne and the fact that they are heating up for the summer.  When I talk to Trevesians about the winter months they happily inform me what a mild winter is was last year sending me into heart palpitations.  I mean I know how cold it was last year – there was a temperature gauge outside my building and for two straight weeks it didn’t get above zero and I can’t conceive of any way you could describe that as mild.

This year I’m determined not to be caught short in the warm clothes department – given that I’m now in possession of six coats (can’t believe I own six coats and it would have been seven were it not for the fact I gifted one away) this year I’m stocking up on winter woollies – hats, jumpers, socks you name it and most pressing of all a good set of gloves, I can’t believe I got through the last winter without adequate hand coverage.  The other important thing for the cause of getting Raji through the winter is a good stack of reading material for the hibernation – any recommendations?

Not that winter is all bad – there are the roast chestnuts and warm spicy wine, Christmas markets in picture postcard towns, misty mornings in Venice and warm inviting bars.  As lovely as that is I can’t pretend that I’m not waiting for the day when I can return the hated puffy yet warm coat back to its home in the forgotten part of the wardrobe (next to the clothes that don’t fit after a year in the vicinity of awesome gelato.)

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.     

Tales of two capitals

There is a novel set in London called Neverwhere. The London of neverwhere is much the same as ours but different – the Angel Islington is an angel called Islington, Baron’s court is a royal court.  The effect is to make you take a second look at something that is quite familiar.  You begin to wonder just why it is the way it is and question whether you know the place at all.  I had the same experience recently when I returned to London.  For someone used to the London of “what do you want?  There you go.  Now fuck off,”  Stepping off a plane and being offered help with directions, watching people fall over themselves to assist a new visitor trying to fathom the intricacies of the ticket machine instead of huffing disapproval and being told by a railway employee a cheaper way to navigate the London transport system was a paradigm shift, this looked like London, smelt like London but sure didn’t feel like London and yet it was – it was London in post Olympic glow and hell was it a nice place to be.  This not the first time I have experienced the Olympic effect (I was in Sydney for the 2000 games where like London pre Olympic cynicism gave way to enthusiasm, good humour and general all round helpfulness) and as cynical as I am about major corporate let’s make money fests disguised as we’re a friendly and socially conscious company there was no escaping the fact that the games had brought a lot of cheer to the city.  There was the pride in putting on a good show (and avoiding any fuck ups,) welcoming people from around the world who were intent on having a good time and the joy being able to watch amazing feats of human endeavour on your doorstep.  In these times of austerity it was good to see London getting it’s monies worth from the outlay on flags and bunting being able to use them for the Royal wedding, Golden Jubilee and the Olympics. 

    

It’s not just the Olympic afterglow that’s changed the UK’s capital, London is very different to the city that I lived in for three years.  There are cosmetic differences – the city is cleaner than it used to be (thanks to an IRA ceasefire meaning we can now have public bins) and there are lots of new shiny buildings (the shard being the newest.)  The city has been gentrified – the old warehouses that 20 years ago were beginning to be developed and were as likely to house artists as city elite are now million pound apartments with fancy coffee shops and restaurants below.  Bricklane which used to be just cheap Indian restaurants, ethnic fabric and yummy Indian sweet shops as well as the cheap as chips 24 hour begel bakery has changed.  Yes there is still ridiculously affordable sub continental cuisine but now we are in a world of self conscious retro clothing stores, young designers waiting for their big break and trendy coffee shops that let’s face it can’t do coffee.  Now I don’t want to be a London (or England) basher but we need to face up to reality.  The English can boast many accomplishments – penicillin, the theory of relativity, the works of Shakespeare – but making coffee is not one of them, I’m not sure why but they just can’t do it. Over the course of my week I began to resent an addiction that lead me to pay two pound plus for a bitter hot beverage, drowned in pints of overheated yet badly frothed milk.  Coffee culture is something that’s exploded in London – you could always get a (badly made) cappuccino in Soho and the Edgeware road was the place for the super strong tar like Turkish variety but London is now packed to the gunnels with trendy coffee shops that my daggy self finds too much hard work to be in – by trendy cafes I mean the type that think it’s post modern irony to display pictures of the latest reality TV celebrity next to an artfully thumbed copy of Rimbaud.  The staff are usually well tattooed and trained to sneer at you if you order the wrong coffee before heading outside for a rollie.   

Edinburgh - check out the cloud coming in.

After a week in the sunny, friendly and not quite London London I realised that as fun as it was I couldn’t afford to be in it and headed to another of the UK’s capitals Edinburgh.  Like London Edinburgh was also full to the brim – the Edinburgh international Arts festival being in full swing.  As well as the international visitors milling around the city was full of every type of artist, writers, comedians, actors, film makers, circus performers the list goes on.  Walking down Princes Street I was asked to spare a pound by a poor dishevelled looking person, I wasn’t quite sure if he was homeless or an artist.  Edinburgh is much more a Raji kind of city (aside from the temperature) it’s small, beautiful and very atmospheric.  The people are lovely and thanks to mid century migration from Italy(I had such a head spin when a man named Gino said “what can I get for ya lassie” in the broadest of broad Scottish accents) is a place that knows how to make coffee and in contrast to where I had just left understand cafe culture comes from it evolving spontaneously rather than deciding that now it’s the alternative and cosmopolitan thing to do.  I had come to Edinburgh to catch up with S my old flatmate from Melbourne and her boyfriend H.  S and H are taking a sabbatical in the Scottish capital.  After a long overnight coach journey (I can’t afford British trains) it was a fill up for the soul to be with faces not seen in far too long a time.   Catching up on events and people from home made me very wistful for the easy conviviality of Australia and long to be with dear friends again.  S and H are both, like me, book fiends and over longs nights drinking pint cans of cheap beer we waxed lyrical over our favourite authors and books.  This was all too much for me and realising that I needed to get a bit of book time in me and spent a huge part of my time at the book festival.    

A wee dram

It’s been a while since I delved into the world of books but it’s nice to see that book audiences are the same the world over.  They’re super polite, will laugh at anything – including the lamest of jokes, during the q and a session someone will invariably stand up and start with “As a writer myself” and then proceed to ask the most irrelevant question.  As silly as it all is – I mean books by their nature are solitary endeavours to create and consume so more often than not the poor author resembles a startled bunny in the face of an audience of 100 people but it was fun to share book talk with like minded people and pick up a couple of books to see me through the next few months.

Scotland is famous for so many things – tartan, haggis, deep fried mars bars, heart disease and of course whiskey.  For my “things Scottish” indulgence it just had to be whiskey.  Sipping  a warming glass of the golden liquid in a cosy pub was the best way to warm me in the Scottish summer (I kid you not) and the best was to spend our last night together –it was just a little silly to add beer and prosecco to the occasion.  After too brief a time it was time to leave this gracious city and my dear friends.  With sore heads and promises to see each other soon it was time to say goodbye and once again make tracks.  I hope it’s not too long before I can visit the place again.

Writing Venice

Once again I found myself killing time in an Airport, given that I can’t afford an overpriced and let’s face it gaudy Burberry or Louis Vuitton bag or a Bulgari necklace I, as I always do, retreated to the bookstore.  There amongst the airport editions of the latest bestseller (is it me or should 50 shades of grey always have been a softback?) were a good number and by no means comprehensive display of Venice books.  I began to wonder if Venice is the most written about place in the world.  Do the books on Rome, London, Paris or New York even compare to the Venetian cannon?     

As well as travel guides there are; history books, sumptuous art books, architecture books, the expat replanted or fish out of water books, the come to Venice and fall in love books (which I stay away from being a cynic when it comes to romance,) cookbooks and novels set in Venice.  Very few of these books, certainly of the ones available in English, are written by Venetians.  Obviously there are more books in Italian and I am beginning to get to the point where I can start to read parts of them but the amount of English speaking Venitophiles are astounding.  There has always been Anglo Venitophiles, Brits, Americans etc who came to Venice and added their jottings to the literary story of the city.  People like Byron and Shelly for whom the decay and faded glory of the once great republic provided ample inspiration.  Or the venerable John Ruskin whose work documenting the beauty and uniqueness of Venetian architecture kick started the endeavour to preserve the city that continues to this day.  Ruskin was one of those people (a bit like myself) who was captivated by the place and famously spent his honeymoon in the city largely abandoning his wife to spend his days drawing and documenting city’s buildings.  The resulting “Stones of Venice” has become one of the classics of Venetian writing and something I can’t get through it.  I’ve tried a couple of times but so dry and humourless does Ruskin seem that he just comes across as a bit of an insufferable bore.

Today the process of foreigners writing about Venice continues and I wonder if the likes of Byron and Ruskin began a process of intellectually taking Venice away from the Venetians and turning the place into a museum.  So much has been written about the place that I wonder if you really need to get on a plane, and pay inflated hotel rates to experience it.  When you do make it there will your romantic expectations leave you disappointed with the reality of crowded streets and tourist menus.  People who set pen to paper tend to do so out of love or curiosity so there is a tendency to over romanticise the city.  Maybe that is what the public wants – the fantasy of gondolas, glass and masks.  Perhaps that’s why there aren’t or we don’t read so many local voices. 

The reality of Venice is much more fascinating than the romanticised version and I find that the city has a host of delights and pleasures that no writer that I have as yet read has captured that.  I would love to read something that explores the mundane and even the sheer bloody annoyances of the place but maybe that’s not what we want maybe we need Venice to be our fantasy.

That August feeling

Living in Treviso if you weren’t possessed of a calendar or the kind of mobile phone that is increasingly organising your life you would still know when it was the first of August.  As soon as the date ticks over from July 31st into August a small army of dormant road workers rouse themselves from their hibernation and rip the hell out of the Treviso streets.   The usually peaceful city erupts in the noise of jack hammers and diggers and driving becomes an adventure as you wonder if you will ever make it past the endless detours and actually get out of the city.  August is the designated road work and general housekeeping month due to the fact that it also coincides with the annual mass exodus from Treviso.    

Unlike anything I have experienced in my non student life Italy has a very marked holiday day period.  The heat and the incredible humidity makes life in the city a bit of a trial meaning that residents take the opportunity to get out of town to more pleasant environments.  Over the last few weeks my students conversation has turned to their plans for August which either involves going to their house in the mountains, going to their place at the beach or going to Sardinia.   As soon as August hits the exodus starts the city begins to feel empty – this weekend the mass departure will happen leaving a ghost city behind.  Many of the businesses close as well, causing much consternation to those of us who are still here and are unused to businesses shutting their doors for one day at Christmas let alone a two or three week period.  With the stifling heat and the ghost like quality my over active imagination can’t help but think that in this period Treviso feels like a place where the some kind of nuclear disaster has cleansed it of its human population leaving the buildings as monuments to their former occupants.  Occasionally you may spot the odd post apocalypse survivor scuttling between shadows – well I did say I have an overactive imagination. 

For those of us without a holiday home in fresher climbs these few weeks are frustrating.  Your favourite bars are closed and there’s no one about to drink with anyway.  In Venice the problem is exacerbated with many of the good bars closed and the spike in tourist numbers resulting in a higher concentration of tourists in fewer venues.  Any relief from the heat and humidity that a museum visit would bring (although I do visit galleries and museums to see the exhibits one can’t deny that they often have awesome air conditioning) is negated by the sheer number of sweaty people disturbing your contemplation. 

What to do in this period given that your work has dried up and there’s not much to do in the city and there aren’t people to do it with?  Well make like the locals and get out of town is a good bet.  While I’d love to go down south to Sicily or Puglia the fact that they will be packed and I resent paying high season prices puts me off.  There is also the not so small matter of me having to find a job and a home meaning that relaxing on a beach is a bit of an unaffordable luxury at the moment.  In a couple of weeks the holiday period will be over Treviso will start to populate again and thoughts will turn to the end of summer and the coming Autumn – I hope that I’ll have worked out a few things by then.       

Goodbye casa del mago

When locals ask me where I live and I explain that I’m in that cute little palazzo near the university the standard response is – “La casa del mago?”  My little building is famous in Treviso for once being home to a TV magician and no one can quite believe that the mago has given way to this little hobo. As well as being the former abode of a minor celebrity the little palazzo is also the most picturesque residence in Treviso – the downside of which is regularly opening your front door to find tourists photographing your building (not the best of surprises on a Sunday morning when you’re just nipping out for milk.)   Small as my apartment is it has a bucket load of character but tonight my apartment doesn’t feel like home – more like an empty shell.  My clothes are packed, the fridge almost empty and I’ve donated the contents of my lovingly collected spice cupboard to T and E.  After 16 months I’ve come to the end of my time in this little place.  

   

When I took the apartment last year I really didn’t give much thought to how long I would be here – I just needed to get out of where I was staying and took the cheapest central place I could find. It was also a bit of a bonus to find the other apartments in the building empty – I really had the place to myself.  I’d never lived alone before and was curious to try it in what was a new and exciting place.  Prior to this place I’d been moving pretty constantly for a few years so I really didn’t imagine staying in one spot so long.  There have been so many delights to solo living; setting up the kitchen just the way I like it, not having to worry about disturbing other people, knowing that when I come home and shut the door the place is mine and of course not having to worry about my state of dress. 

Naturally there have been times when I’ve missed having a flatmate – someone to make you a cup of tea when you come home tired, to watch a movie with, to talk you down from a frustrating day and to nurse you when you’re sick (have a hangover.) But these things aside living alone has much to recommend it. 

Despite my best efforts over the year I seem to have amassed a crap load of stuff.  When I arrived in Italy I came with two suitcases (admittedly they were heavy enough to blow the Qantas baggage allowance.)  During these last few days of packing I seem to find endless things to pack.  More than once I’ve cursed my book habit and now vow to go digital in the near future.  Looking at the stuff I have to move tires me and I almost convince myself to stay out of sheer laziness.  In the immediate future I’m going to couch surf with friends and then – well who knows.

Farewell my little home

When I look back and peaceful nights at home, the meals I’ve cooked and the friends I’ve hosted I realise that I’ve been really happy here.  For a time it really was a home and I'm going to miss this place.  I'm not however going to miss nearly getting killed by a car speeding round the blind corner every time I walk out of the gate.  My only regret is that I never got round to having that aperitivo in the front yard that I was always planning.   I’m going to miss the soothing sound of the canals on either side of the building, having a kitchen to myself, and not having to worry about my state of dress.  As I write this I have no idea of where I’m ultimately going I only hope it will be as good to me as this place has been.   

Night thoughts on coffee

This week I seem to be going through one of my intermittent bouts of insomnia.  It’s something that I get from time to time for no discernible reason and after having it for a few days I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.  Many friends and acquaintances on hearing of my sleep deprivation are quick to offer impromptu counselling sessions – what’s on your mind, any problems, changes in diet- in an attempt to get to the bottom of the problem.  I prefer to not worry about it figuring that I have to sleep at some point and you know I can use the extra hours to do something useful like write an overdue blog entry.    My only worry about these little episodes is just how much coffee I am going to get through and what is this going to do for my already significant addiction?

I’ve been a coffee drinker since I was a child – family have reminded me countless times of me ordering a coffee as a five year old when all my siblings were drinking hot chocolate.  For as long as I can remember my morning ritual has been to wake up drag myself out of bed, make a moka (a stove top coffee maker) of coffee before attending to anything else.  So great is my love for the buzzy black liquid that I would give up every other beverage (yes including all alcohol) before I would give up coffee.  After so many years of consumption I have to admit that I’m am addict.  If I don’t get my hit in the morning I become listless, get a raging headache and was once horrified to note an employee warning others that it’s evil Raji on a day that I had failed to get my morning shot.

I sometimes think that my leaving the UK really was just a journey to find good coffee – the English really can’t do coffee (I say English as from my experience the coffee in Scotland is pretty darn good.)  My youth was a nightmare of freeze dried instant horror that whatever it is cannot be called coffee.  More recently the country has exploded in Starbucks and the like which is uniformly horrid, over roasted, bitter and watery.  

My adopted home prides itself on its coffee but when I mention Aussie coffee culture to the Italians they look at me as if I’ve been sipping flat whites on the Moon.  The difference as I see it is this:  like Australia coffee in Italy is a lifestyle.  It seems as if everyone begins and punctuates the day with one but what it isn’t is a status symbol.  Aussie cities are renowned for the types of coffee they drink – Melbourne is a flat white town, Sydney the latte while Brisbane is the frivolous cappuccino – oh you drink a tall espresso? Well you’re an inner Melbourne hipster then – and heaven forbid you order the wrong type in the more effete urban centres.  The only coffee faux pas you could make here is to ask for a cappuccino past breakfast.  Baristas have been elevated to a status once reserved for celebrity chefs with anger management issues.  The modern trend has been for the increasing scientification (yes made up word but I can’t think of the real one) of coffee – the Italians go nuts when I describe cold filter or syphon coffee and they really lose it when I tell them about places in Melbourne who will analyse your palate and recommend a single source coffee that matches your taste profile – yes that’s you sensory lab – no wonder Starbucks was a dismal failure.

Here, as the Italians tell me coffee is just coffee, like everything else the Italians consume the emphasis is on quality but it’s not over thought.  You may always buy your favourite brand at the supermarket but on the street you’re not going to avoid a bar because it serves Lavazza and not Illy.  What I’m enjoying about Italian coffee culture is the whole new array of ways to mainline caffeine.  In addition to all the regular cappuccinos (served without chocolate of course,) espressos, macchiatos, etc the Italians have a host of other serving methods – of late given the temperatures I’ve been enjoying cafe freddo (iced espresso,) coffee granitas, coffee gelato but my current discovery and obsession is cafe affogatto – a shot of espresso serves over a ball of vanilla ice cream – it sounds so very wrong but trust me it’s a winner.  The only coffee item I have turned my nose up at is coffee yogurt which really is foul.    

When I came to Italy I had got my addiction down to one a day (admittedly that one was a pint) but over the course of the year my consumption has steadily increased.  There’s my morning coffee, the mid morning between lessons one, the meeting a friend one, the it’s six o’clock and I’ve another three hours of lessons to go one and now there’s the I’m really tired but need to stay awake ones.  If I mentioned my coffee consumption to a doctor in Australia I’m sure the reaction would be – are you crazy? But here six or seven shots a day don’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary – makes you wonder if health advice has more to do with national characteristics than scientific research.  As I write this in my fourth night of interrupted sleep I hope it’s not too long before sleep reasserts itself and I can get my coffee consumption back under control.

Ironically this is being written on tea – made in a pot of course.