My experience of Venice rather enlightening in some aspect than history and romance which most of the tourist seek over there. I realized in a manmade artificial habitat if we overlook the basic human needs, how much painful the life can be.
Before coming to Italy my knowledge about Venice was very limited, it is an ancient prosperous city, the closest memory of Venice word was ‘Merchant of Venice’ from Shakespeare’s literature, never heard about gondola. After coming Italy I learned more about the city on the water , from my Fiat colleagues. The prosperous business community of that area move towards sea to save their wealth and lifestyle from barbarians, and build the city on water which is more difficult to concur than a city on main land. The location was also facilitated to practice their merchandise through the water channel. But for today’s Venice dueler normal life is full of hardships, its very difficult, expensive and time consuming to get connected with basic facilities like shopping, hospitals, schools etc. Tourism is the primary source of economy, which still kept the city alive. So living in Venice today is not that romantic as the impression normal tourist brings back home from their Venice tour.
When I was in Italy, I always tried to make use of the week ends to see the place. I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to explore the country just by taking rest in Hotel after a hard week of work. So when I learned that, some of my colleagues from FIAT, India, who were there in Italy that time, planning to visit to Venice, it didn’t took much time to decide to join with them. This was a nicely planned and well informed trip no surprises was expected. On Saturday early morning we take our frequently used bus trip to Porta Nuova Station. Purchase a train ticket to Venice via Milan. We have to change the train at Milan junction. I had an interest to visit Milan too, which didn’t happen. But this Venice trip, gave me an opportunity to touch the soil of Milano.
In a short while next train leaves Milan and start marching toward Venezia. As people says : “It is a city with the world’s most artistic masterpieces per square kilo meter” . When the train left the main land to reach to the city over the water, travelling through that bridge reminds me the Chembur bridge, which connect New Bombay and claimed land city Bombay.
After reaching Venice, we first knocked the tourist information center door, though we mostly knew what we are going to do. And we have very limited time in hand, as we didn’t have any expensive overnight stay plan, we have to go back to hotel at Turin. So we all jumped into our plan, our first trip will be take a boat which will travel through Canal Grande and take us to St. Mark’s square. But soon after boat started moving and the recorded voice of tourist guide started explaining all historical land marks and building and structures and the architectural marvels, I realize, I desperately need to go to toilet. We didn’t take an expensive boat with all facilities, it was a cheap one, didn’t has a toilet on board. So the very attraction of Venice, a city on water, appeared as a curse to me. If it would be on land on utter desperation, I could use some place behind a bush. But it’s a busy canal full of tourist boats no place to a silly thing being unnoticed.
I remember the famous line of the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink". But is sounded me like this : “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to release”
So when the boat finally dropped us at St. Mark’s square, I rushed to find a toilet, after little bit searching around with very very uncomfortable situation, when almost decided to use a lonely corner of an architectural landmark, I found a pay and use one, just standing behind couple of tourists. And what a long wait it appeared to me, finally with cost of 500 lire I earned my relief. After this the amount of appreciation I have for St. Mark’s square, not many people, who have seen it, could carry that much in their memory.
After spending some time at St. Mark’s square we took the return boat to take us same place we started, this time it explains the structures of the other side of canal. Then we took a small gondola ride into some inner cannels. As we all heard in Venice roads are replaced by canals. Surrounding every block there are narrow canals which finally get connected to bigger canals, just like at our neighborhood roads link us with highway. Most of the canals have pavements going parallel to it and after some distance small bridges are put to go from one side of canal to other side. In narrow canals you have to duck your head when passing under the bridge. If you take only the gondola ride experience, it was not much different from the small boat ride, or raft made out of banana tree trunk ride, we usually take in the pond and canals at my native place in my childhood. But when you imagine you are travelling trough the centuries old canals and the building walls standing right from the water, are rich with historical events and architectural marvel, then you can sense the real treasure of the city. Architecturally all buildings are great but if take out the factor it is built on water, such building are not very uncommon in may other cities of Italy and other European countries. Best part of my gondola ride was the opportunity to touch the Marco Polo’s house.
Then rest of the day we just walked around the city crossing the bridges over the canals walking through the pavements. I think, this is the best way to touch the spirit of the city. Though it was summer time, it was overly crowded with tourists, other than building and architectures not much was original to the city. People says “Venice is best when caught between acts, after the day trippers rush off to beat afternoon traffic, and before cruise ships dump dazed newcomers off in Piazza San Marco with three hours to see all of Venice before lunch. Those visitors may never get to see Venice in its precious downtime, when gondoliers warm up their vocal chords with scorching espresso on their way to work, and mosaic artisans converge at the bar for tesserae shoptalk over a spritz (prosecco-based drink).”
I was one among those poor visitors, just used my imagination to understand how the city would be when it was in her golden age, how those bridges canals would feel like at that time. We had interest to take a trip at Murano glass factory to see how the glass art-crafts are made in front of eyes, but we didn’t have enough time left to catch our returning train, so bid a good bye to Venice and a special thanks to Piazza San Marco.