For many Americans few, if any cities, capture the romantic spirit better than Venice, Italy. The images are indelible: pigeons in Saint Mark's Square, gondoliers plying the Grand Canal, the Santa Maria Della Salute. Perhaps America's love affair with Venice springs from their opposition to one another: for while America symbolizes, in many respects, a never ending push for progress, Venice is a perfectly preserved relic of the past. But my Venice is a much different place. Despite the highly romanticized prints of Venice that help adorn one wall of my home, I can't help but shudder every time I think of that city.
When I was twenty-one, newly graduated from college, I strapped on a backpack (about twenty-five pounds too heavy as I was to find out) and set off on a four month tour of Western Europe. Armed with my rail pass and enough enthusiasm for an army, I flew out of Baltimore in August. At this point, Venice was still two months away. First, I traveled by rail and foot through the U.K., France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland. In Switzerland, I stayed with my cousin in Neuchatel, about forty minutes northeast of Geneva. When I arrived at my cousin's, I called ahead to Venice, my next stop, to secure accommodations. "No problem," I was told. "Plenty of room." I was set to leave Switzerland on a Friday evening and arrive in Venice at 7 AM on Saturday morning.
Unfortunately, some intestinal bug I picked up from river water in the Swiss Alps had set in and laid me out. It would be Tuesday morning before I was well enough to leave. By the time I arrived in Venice - by way of Geneva, Lausanne, and Milan - it was 6 PM Tuesday evening. The hostel that I called four days earlier was my first destination. Bad news awaited me: No vacancies. What a difference a few days make.
My guidebook suggested another hostel across town. I set off, vaguely aware that I was traversing the very Venice so many Americans, including myself, dreamt about. Crossing over narrow canal bridges, I could see gondolas streaming past in the dusky darkness below. Navigating cramped cobblestone alleys, I came out to Saint Mark's, where happy travelers - presumably with accommodation - licked gelato and strolled hand in hand. Unfazed, and promising myself that I would enjoy all of timeless Venice once my forty-pound pack was stowed away in my eventual room, I pressed on to the second hostel.
No vacancies.
Fatigued and exasperated, I tried three other listings in my guidebook, each more expensive than the last, each more than I wanted to pay, but I was getting desperate. The results were the same: no beds. I began to panic. I decided to get something to eat and weigh my options. While waiting an hour for a plate of cold tortellini that tasted precisely like a salt lick dipped in marinara sauce, I mulled over the prospect of passing the night in the train station. But having tried that in Marseilles and almost parting with my possessions if not for the good timing of the local gendarme, I soured to that idea. I decided to ask my surly waiter if he knew of any open beds in town.
"No," he snapped. "Marathon."
"Marathon?"
"Si." He walked off in a huff without refilling my water glass.
Apparently, an annual marathon is run in Venice. It attracts runners from all over the world. And attracted it had. No hostel beds, no pensions, no luxury suites. Everything was booked solid.
Suddenly, Venice - that sparkling Adriatic jewel - began to slip away from me. Despite the fact that I was sitting smack dab on the Grand Canal, watching the swirl of activity, pedestrian and marine, in a great dance, Venice was as far away from me then as it had been when I was still in Baltimore. And further Venice would become.
Just before midnight, I boarded a train to Austria - the last train to leave before the ubiquitous Italian train strike. By a circuitous route, I arrived in Vienna at 12:30 PM, some thirty hours after I left Neuchatel. Somewhere in the hazy between, there was Venice.
So now, when visitors in my home see my prints of Venice scattered among shots of other cities I have visited, they inevitably ask if I've been there.
"Yes," I sheepishly respond, feeling as if I'm lying.
"Wow. I'd love to see Venice," they often reply.
"So would I," I answer. "So would I."
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