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Month: May 2007

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Ciao Venezia, Ciao, Ciao, Ciao

Venetians may be dwindling in number. But those who remain seem to be a happy lot. And when Venetians are happy, they sing. You hear it early in the morning as they wheel their souvenir carts into the tourist zone. You hear it from maids cleaning rooms. You hear it on the back lanes in the wee hours when you’re trying to sleep and voices travel twice as far.

But the gondoliers — who sing for a price — annoy me. They’re one big, wannabe rat pack who flip-flopped suave and schmaltz. Convoys of gondolas — each heavy with tourists — follow the leader who sings “Ciao Venezia, Ciao Venezia, Ciao Venezia, ciao, ciao, ciao.” And the accordionist is an enabler.

Prices in Venice have become outrageous. When I comment to hoteliers, the standard reply is, “People pay it.” As Las Vegas tries to recreate Venice, the reverse is happening as well. Demand for hotels is driving locals onto the mainland, so their vacated apartments can be made into boutique hotels. (I slept in one, under an enchanting barcode of medieval beams.) Looking for something non-touristy here is more and more like looking for a restaurant filled with locals at Disneyland.

That’s my rant. I get down as I realize that, in some cases, my ideal “back door” Europe is — in truth — wishful thinking. But I still love Venice.

A real community survives in Venice. The guy who runs the elevator at the bell tower of San Giorgio Maggiore — that wet Palladian dream floating just beyond the Doges’ Palace — told me he travels 10 kilometers (6 miles) a day up and down.

There are real energy concerns. Here, as all over Italy, restaurants are trading away a little ambience for harsh-yet-energy-efficient fluorescents. As is often the case in Europe, the government shows a kind of tough love — even if it’s bad for business and uncomfortable for citizens. Homes and hotels stop heating before they are allowed to start cooling. In the case of Venice, heat is generally turned off by mid-April and air-conditioning is only activated in mid-May. (Odd weather during that no-heat-no-air-conditioning window causes many American tourists to complain. When it comes to energy conservation, they get no sympathy from me.)

Leaving Venice for Padua the other day, I marveled at how easy it is for experienced travelers to transfer. (And the rewards awaiting the rookie who is a quick study.) Heidi, my Italy-specialist assistant, and I went from hotel to hotel in 70 minutes for €14 ($20).

At our Venice hotel — 100 yards behind the high-rent strip of hotels facing the lagoon, next to the Doges’ Palace — the guy at the desk told us we just had time to catch boat 42; it’s leaving at 6:46. We paid €6 each for tickets and hoped on the fast boat. I munched a dinner sandwich while enjoying the views and scoffing at the horrible location of the vast, new Venice Hilton Hotel.

Twenty-four minutes later, we were at the train station. In the station, we looked at the departure board — a fast train was leaving for Milan (stopping in Padua) in five minutes from track 8. Heidi (who’s better at this than me) zipped over to the now omnipresent ticket machines, typed in Padua, tapped the departure time, two people, second class, put in her credit card to pay €5 each and out popped our tickets. Two minutes later, we joined three Italian kids in a compartment on the express train. The kids packed up and left, making us feel like we had bad breath. I surveyed the photos Heidi took on today’s research swing through the Lagoon (from Igor Stravinsky’s tomb in Venice’s island cemetery to the old lady with the huge ears who still makes lace in Burano) and 25 minutes later we were in Padua. Hoping in a taxi, €6 and five minutes later we checked into our hotel.

After five days in Venice, I was a little shocked by modern buildings and all the rude cars. Recalling the story of the old women who spent her entire life in Venice and finally went to the mainland — and got run over — I reminded myself to cross streets with care.

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Doctor, Doctor, You’re Still Just an A-Hole.

I’m in Padua (just half an hour from Venice, but a world away). I didn’t see a soul all day with my guidebook. (Kind of depressing after so many in Florence and Venice.) But if nobody’s here, I can’t let my coverage slide. I really like this town and I want my chapter to be worthy.

Galileo called his 18 years on the faculty in Padua the best of his life. The university seems to dominate the town and since its 60,000 students can graduate whenever they defend their thesis, I’ve never been here without little graduation parties erupting on the street all day long.

Graduates are given a green laurel wreath. Then formal group and family photos are taken. It’s a sweet, multi-generational scene with family love and pride busting out all over. Then, grandma goes home and the craziness takes over. Sober clothing is replaced by raunchy wear as gangs of friends gather around the new grad in the street in front of the university and the roast begins.

A giant butcher paper poster with a generally obscene caricature of the student and a litany of This Is Your Life photos and stories is presented to the new grad who, with various embarrassing pranks being pulled, reads the funny statement out loud. The poster is then taped to the university wall for all to see (and allowed to stay there for 24 hours).

During the roast, the friends sing the catchy but obscene local university anthem, reminding their newly esteemed friend to keep his or her feet on the ground: “Dottore, dottore, Dottore del buso del cul. Vaffancul, vaffancul.”

Very loosely translated it means: Doctor, doctor. You’re just a Doctor of the a-hole…go f-off, go f-off. (Sorry…G-rated blog.) Once I hear this song (it starts like an Olympic games fanfare and finishes like a German cartoon: oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah) and see all the good-natured fun, I just can’t stop singing it.

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In Italy, God Is a DJ

I was in Siena the other day. To me, it’s a capital of humanism. The Sienese are so self-assured. They remember their centuries-old accomplishments as if they reflect well on them today.

In this “land of a thousand bell towers,” they have the tallest and they seem the proudest. But my hunch is that it’s probably just an inferiority complex showing because their rival Florence is synonymous with the Renaissance, Michelangelo, and Leonardo. Say “Siena,” and you think panforte (fruitcake), a donkey race where there are no rules, and a Crayola color.

Siena does have my vote for the finest square in all of Europe. (Okay, blog-travelers, I’m curious — what’s your favorite square, and why?) Il Campo is a clamshell-shaped “square” of red brick where people hang out as if at the beach. It slopes gradually down to a grand building — not a church with a spire, but a crenellated city hall with a bell tower — the tallest in Tuscany. It stands like an exclamation point proclaiming that as a community, Siena comes together and makes life better for all.

Savoring a solitary moment here with a glass of vin santo (desert wine — borrowed from the restaurant) when the twilight sky is the same brightness as the rustic stones of Il Campo is a ritual for me.

Inside that city hall is a famous fresco called The Effects of Good Government. It’s 12.6 meters wide. Exactly 6.3 meters is devoted to the city, and 6.3 meters to the country — symbolizing how both need and help each other equally. (My hunch is that it was 14th-century propaganda to con the country folks into thinking they were respected by the urbanites who ruled them.)

If it’s true a society builds it tallest towers to its greatest gods (the architectural equivalent of “where your treasure is, there also you’ll find your heart”), then Siena worships secular effectiveness more than it trusts in God.

But Siena has a fine church, too. My guide took me in. When entering a church with me, my European friends normally sense I’m a Christian by my respect for the people and building and art. And this month, it seems every guide I’ve had (even in famously un-churched Italy) has touched the holy water and respectfully crossed themselves when we enter. On this day, though, my guide went on a little rant. She said, “We young Italians no longer go to church. We refuse to hear some old man telling us what we cannot do from that pulpit.”

Then we walked to the votives, where locals hang tokens of thanks to God for prayers answered. Next to the baby shoes, photos of healed people, and silver plaques with body parts pounded into them, was a corner that looked like a big hat rack at a race track. There, hanging obediently, were twenty bright and aerodynamic motorcycle helmets. I guess even young people who don’t like being told what they cannot do need to thank someone when they survive a motorcycle wreck.

Stepping outside, I saw a young Italian wearing a T-shirt declaring, “God is a DJ.”