On 29 April, we landed in Venice. But landed may be a wrong word for Venice. We came out of the airport simply in order to catch the vaporetto. The water-bus took us to our hotel.
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The same evening, I was standing outside a supermarket close to our hotel. The supermarket was located on a river-bank. I watched the Venetians, young and old, carrying colourful two-feet high trolley bags that they wheeled in and out of the store. A plump lady came out carrying three huge cloth-bags. Her young son followed her. She somehow dragged the bags ahead, and stood at the bank, facing the Adriatic Sea. Her shopping bags had no wheels. And her son was too young. How were they going to carry those bags home?
For a while, both she and her son did nothing but to look at the water. She then looked at her watch, and said something to her son. Her son, probably ten years old, threw his hands in air and shook his head. She adjusted her bags, and both continued to look at the sea. Suddenly, from the right, a small boat appeared. It manoeuvred its way adroitly, and stopped in front of them. The tall Italian man driving the boat smiled, took the bags, then his wife and son in. The family boat sped away.
***
Venice allows no cars. Or any other vehicles with wheels- not even rollerblades. You can only travel on water, or if on land a piedi. Venice is a maze of 117 islands, surrounded by 177 canals, and the land mass is connected by 455 bridges. You may be a great walker, but you also need to be a great step-climber. A walk of few meters is invariably followed by a bridge. Come to Venice only if you know how to travel light. Your suitcase may have wheels, but at every bridge you have to stop, climb the steps with the suitcase and carry it down on the other side. I saw young mothers trying to go across a bridge with prams. That’s a circus act. To make sure the child doesn’t fall out, the mother must hold the pram parallel to the ground on the steps. This requires muscular strength, a sense of balance and immense patience. (The bridges could be one reason why Venice’s population declines, while the rest of Italy’s grows. The historic old city of Venice has shrunk from 120,000 people in 1980 to only 60,000 today.)
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When I say Venice is a maze, I use the word technically. The city is made of thousands of narrow lanes – so narrow that sometimes a maximum of two people can pass together. Bridges are more or less standardised. While aesthetically speaking, all this was great; for a geographic moron like me finding my way back to the hotel became a daily pastime. I tried a few maps. Venice is akin to the cardiovascular system in human body – with innumerable veins, arteries and capillaries. So the maps are cluttered and use the smallest available print. On the streets, the names are seldom visible. And when they do exist, they are somewhere up – often painted on building walls. (Because in winters, Venice gets flooded). The streets are full of people frustratingly studying maps and trying to make sense out of them. The city is divided into six districts, and houses have four digit numbers. The address often has the house number, followed by the district, but no street! Now go to the district, and try looking for a particular number. For a whole week, I tried to figure out the logic behind the numbers, and gave up. I remembered George Mikes (how to become an alien fame) mentioning in some book the way houses were numbered in a German town – chronologically! Every time a house was built anywhere in the town, it was given the next available number. Venice may not be that bad, but is very close to it.
***
For a middle-aged man like me, using Venice maps was a struggle. I should have carried a compass as well.
To add to the mess, a street has hundred odd synonyms. While everywhere else in Italy a street is called a via, here it is called a calle. I had learnt that a square in Italian is piazza, but in Venice it is called campo. Canale is Italian for canals, but here they are rio. A street beside a canal is a fondamenta. A smaller street is ruga or rughetta, and the oldest streets are salizzada. Ramo is a tiny side lane, and corte denotes a dead-end street. As if this wasn’t enough, a street passing under a building is sotoportego.
To find my way through the tourist foe-ly mapping, I often used the Indian system. In India, only foreigners use maps, Indians ask the address to strangers. With my limited knowledge of Italian, (in the four months that I studied the language, I had managed to learn only the past and present tenses, no future. Whenever I spoke to Italians, I tried to divert the conversation to my past), I would ask directions.
That was when I first understood how Venetians were a different race. In other places, you ask for directions, and if the person knows them he tells you. Here, everyone I asked started moving their hands wildly, talking in rapid Italian and then walking the talk. Where the address was close-by they walked with me all the way. Despite their having to go in the opposite direction. It’s possibly because they understand how difficult it is to find an address in Venice. But also because they are Italians, warm-hearted, talkative and helpful.
***
How many languages does Italy have? I warn you it’s a trick question.
The answer is two. Italian and.... body language. You may have heard the joke about an Italian walking on the street carrying two giant watermelons under his arms. Someone stops him, and asks for an address.
“Could you please hold the watermelons?” The Italian asks the person asking for the address. That person obliges.
Released of the watermelons, the Italian throws his hands in the air and says, “I don’t know.”
Italians speak with their hands. The gestures are excessive. On a street, simply by observing the hands, you can tell who is an Italian and who is not. (Just like in the Soviet Union, one could tell from the dress who was a Russian and who was a foreigner).
This civilisation has toiled for centuries to create a whole new dictionary of hand gestures. You can learn some of them in those two short video clips. Also note in the second clip the different ways in which one can express “you are crazy.”
But in the clips, you see the gestures in slow motion. In reality, the movements are rapid and dramatic. This nation is a theatre.
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Italians are warm-hearted. And it is an open nation. They dry their washed linen in public. Not as easy to do as it looks. In the picture where you see the jeans on top, the person living on the left side has to keep cordial relations with the neighbour living across him (in the building on the right). They have to agree on who is drying which clothes, how to bring some symmetry into it, and with clever pulling and pushing, to transfer all clothes on the rope. Venice has many such courtyards. And Naples has lanes after lanes full of hanging clothes.
***
The Italian sense of humour is mischievous. Child-like. In Naples, they manufacture t-shirts with a seat belt design over the front. The drivers wear them while driving and never get caught.
Andrea (from Roma) was a friend of mine. We worked together at a voluntary camp in Austria – way back in 1987. He visited me in Bombay as well as Moscow. The letters I received from him were unique – well, not the letters themselves but the stamps posted on them. Andrea drew well. He would take a used postage stamp, turn it on its blank white side, and draw a picture on the stamp. He claimed that the post offices didn’t recognise his forgery. I can confirm that I did receive letters with stamps drawn by Andrea affixed on them.
In Moscow, when he stayed at my house, he started collecting the five kopeck coins.
“What will you do with so many?” I asked when I saw his rucksack full of five-kopeck coins.
“This is my hobby.” Andrea said. “I measure the coins from different countries. Many of them are similar, if not identical, in size. Then you can try to use them in automats. Use the coins from a cheap country in an expensive one. Now, these Russian coins I will use in German metros. The beauty is that you drop a Russian coin, and the automat will give change in Deutsch marks. This hobby can be quite profitable.”
Another Andrea story typifies Italian humour.
Andrea would pick up the telephone directory and select a number at random. He would call that number up.
“Is Roberto at home?” He asked.
“Sorry, there is no Roberto here. Wrong number.”
“Please tell Roberto,” Andrea would continue, undeterred, “that his grandmother died this morning.”
After another two weeks, Andrea would call that number again.
“May I speak to Roberto please?”
“No Roberto lives here. You’ve got...”
“I have a message for Roberto. Please tell him that he should come to Milan on the 15th. His school classmates will be waiting for him.”
And these calls would continue, week after week, for a few months. After that Andrea would call the same number again. When the phone was picked up, Andrea would say,
“Hello, this is Roberto speaking. Do you have any messages for me?”
Ravi
As always, eagerly awaited and a wonderful read.
ReplyDeleteHave a good afternoon, my friend, and see you soon!
A good laugh!
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed reading this Ravi. Please keep them coming.
ReplyDeleteAs always pleasure to read, look forward to more.
ReplyDeleteI remember struggling with maps in Venice, as well. Divya and I reached in the afternoon, couldnt find our apartment for three hours. We found a lodging with space for us- a 5 min walk away from the pay phone- that took us another two hours to find. Frustrating, but adds to the Venetian charm.
ReplyDeleteChinmay
My daughter and two sisters visit Venice again at the end of October - we have secured return flights for £26! Only three nights but your 'street' listings will be of great help to us. Know what you mean about the bridges.
ReplyDeleteAndrea is a very naughty boy!