11-5

Day 13

I'm home now (a few days later), and it'll be work to catch up on my blog.  Luckily, today is one of those days with nothing scheduled, so I should be able to get a day or two done.  Even so, this post will probably be mostly photos.

We took the bus to the Stuttgart train station, waited for a train to take us to Munich, and then got out there, waiting for the night train to Venice.  There are different qualities and features of every station I visit (and indeed, every train or bus I ride), and the big difference with Munich's is that it was entirely outdoors.  That may make for an enjoyable stay in June or August, but in November, it was pretty rough.  

We had hours to wait for our train, and there were so many people there that we had to wait for someone to get up to catch their train so we could take their seat.  We found Jeff one first, since his foot is increasingly painful (he's getting surgery on the Monday after I leave, which he's actually looking forward to, so it must really hurt all the time), and eventually, we found three seats together.  There were some young people there, drinking and being loud, and one of them dropped their beer bottle and it shattered on the cement.  The drunk kids laughed about it and got the heck out of there, leaving broken glass and a mess under their seats . . . as well as one of their bags they had somehow forgotten.  Me being me, I thought I should take the bag to the Lost & Found, but Emily said to leave it, in case they came back.

Eventually, our train came, and we boarded, and it was very unusual, with compartments with sliding doors and a single aisle running alongside.  Each car had a bathroom on each side, as well as a smaller, toilet-free bathroom with just a sink and a mirror, ostensibly for tooth-brushing and shaving (at least that's what I used it for).  There were a bunch of students on the train with us, including a group of girls also going to Venice, which would be exciting.*  

The ride was several hours long, and both Jeff and Emily wanted to sleep as soon as they could (it was already long past their bedtime at this point), so they laid out their single sheet, rough army blanket, and wafer-thin pillow, to go to sleep.  My sleeping accommodations were similar, but way up top, in an overhead compartment, which I began to suspect was intended for children, or worse, just for luggage.  It included a bar you could raise so the child could not roll out, but was up so high, it was accessible only by a long metal ladder, which dug into my socked feet as I tried to get up there.  Either I've put on a few pounds, or it was indeed intended for little kids or nubile young people, because once I climbed up there, and Emily turned out the light, I couldn't get back down.  

Emily and me (looking a lot like my own grandmother now).

I did fall asleep, but it hurt my back, and by the time the sun started to rise, I was ready to get down from there.

It's hard to get a picture of the sunrise from a moving train, apparently.

In the morning, the line for the bathroom went halfway down the hall (and the line for the second bathroom did the same), so I just used the toilet-less bathroom to comb my hair and brush my teeth, and held it the rest of the time.  Not long after the sun came up, we reached the outskirts of . . . well, Italy, I suppose (I'd gotten an alert on my phone when we left Germany and entered Austria, and again once we crossed over the Italian border), and hit the ocean.  The train went across the water, and then, islands started to appear, little islands that were entirely built upon, not the tropical islands that I'm used to seeing in movies.  

There were also many, many boats, large and small, and then, we reached the biggest of the islands, which was Venice.  You know, I hadn't realized that that's what Venice was, with hotels and businesses and churches built right on the water, and canals of ocean water going right through them.  I think I'd just assumed it was freshwater, or weirder, that the canals were man-made.  Instead, it's a city entirely built on an island that is accessible ONLY by boat and foot.*

It was early in the morning, and very few vendors were already set up to hock their wares, but there were already plenty of tourists and locals and a disturbing number of nuns walking around, and we'd been there approximately three minutes when an elderly lady fell onto the cobblestones in front of us.  And I don't know if I mentioned this in my hours and hours of blogging, but I saw a number of people fall down on this trip, more than I usually do in an entire year.  Emily ran over to help the woman up, and I thought that was pretty cool, since nobody else would.

Venice is unlike anywhere I've ever been, and I'm very glad I got to go there.  I wish I had brought my laptop, because it turned out, I had time to blog after all, once Jeff and Emily were snoring away, and I couldn't sleep.  But ah well.  There were many vendors selling shirts and hats and all sorts of souveniers, but the two biggest-sellers were masks and blown glass.  The masks were, at least according to legend, because in the old days, everyone knew everybody else, and you couldn't sneak out and have affairs without being recognized.  So, they took to wearing masks when they went out to carouse and slap bottoms, and it's become a tradition ever since.  In fact, there were a couple of shoppes that only sold high-end masks, made of papier mache, and Jeff has one on his wall he got on his first trip to Venice.  I saw some cool ones, such as a frog and a crocodile, but they were all too expensive for me.***

Everything was unusual, everything in every direction was eye-catching and exotic.

There were spider webs in every single one of these rail decorations, and I took five or six pictures of them, but you could only see them in Emily's single shot.

The glass blowing industry originated from the island of Murano, where they have factories and teach students how to do it.  They have tours every single day, and nearly every shop on the main island, and the smaller ones around it, have blown glass to sell.  They shape the glass into every conceivable design and animal, and the prices range from really cheap--they say a lot of it comes from China, and is passed off as authentic--to horrifically expensive (I saw a big block of glass with a blown-glass jellyfish inside it selling for 1500 Euros).

There were also Gelaterias, or ice cream shoppes, all over every island.  It was mind-boggling how every street would have one, a lot of them with the ice cream made right there on the premises.  That meant that each shop had a different assortment of flavors, and the prices ranged from fairly affordable to a little too expensive.  Jeff did not care.  He got gelatos twice the first day, and four times the second day (I'd often just have to decline, since I not only couldn't eat as much ice cream as him, but I was slow in eating mine, and he was always eager to move on to the next thing (I may have mentioned how I reverted to being a child on this trip, depending on Jeff and Emily as my parent-figures to communicate for me and tell me where to go, but there were also moments where Jeff would call my name and tell me to come on, like I was a child who lagged behind and was always on the verge of getting lost).

The island of Burano is famous for the houses being painted in bright colors, like something out of a children's story.

I like this picture because the lighthouse had turned on its forcefield right before I took it.

They have these water barges that take you from island to island, or just one spot of Venice to another, and people pile inside them, filling up all the seats and then standing when you can't sit.  I experienced these over and over again (and much less frequently, the water taxis and gondolas that you see in the movies), but never really got seasick (they told me that you get less motion sick if you face forward rather than facing back, and that must have worked).  One of the islands right next to Venice had lines of trees inside its walls, and that turned out to be the cemetery, an entire island dedicated to graves and crypts, and I was, of course, curious.  There was a stop there, and I wanted to get out and check it out, but Jeff wanted us to go to two islands, Murano and Burano, and we'd come back if there was still time.  He's really the organizer of this whole business, so I defer to him most of the time.

My understanding of Italian is much better than my understanding of French, which is better than my non-understanding of German, but it didn't really come in handy, except that I could say the numbers.  But a lot of folks spoke English, and tourism is the very backbone of Venice, so it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, understanding-wise.  

Rule of thumb: if it's a picture with vibrant colors, it was taken with Emily's camera.

The thing that's unique about Burano Island, is that all of their houses are painted in garish, bright colors.  According to the tour guides, that's because there is lots of fog there, and the inhabitants got into the tradition of painting their buildings in easily-recognizable colors, and it just stuck.  It seems to be something they keep up for appearances, and only rarely were there any buildings with faded paint or unpainted sections.  The last time Jeff's family was there, there had indeed been a bank of fog covering everything, whereas it was mostly cloudy and sunny the two days we were there.

There are no rails on the sidewalks keeping tourists from falling into the water, and though I did see a poor lady fall on her face from the cobblestones (Emily ran to help her up), I didn't see anyone go into the canal.

There is so much more drinking in Europe than I'm accustomed to, but I didn't really see any drunks or loud assholes (guess there were the guys who broke the bottle in Munich, but I'm not counting them).

I guess you know this already, but so many more people smoke in Europe than back home (especially in France and Italy), but I wonder if one of the reasons we stand out as Americans is by the fact that we're a) fatter and b) not holding cigarettes.

We rode these canal barges so much, we could feel the sway of the water even when we were on dry land.

Emily and I tried to get a photo of the sunset, but by the time we got to a good vantage point, the sun was gone.  However, the next day would more than make up for it.

Once the sun went down, it didn't really get cold.  And what's more, the activity didn't slow down: there were still thousands of tourists walking around, the stores (for the most part) were still open, and the boats kept going along the canals.

This was my photo from a bridge, looking at the buildings and full moon...

And this was Emily's photo from the exact same vantage point.

We checked into our hotel, got rid of our bags, and then went out for dinner, a few souvenirs, and another gelato.  These dudes selling sweatshirts ran around like crazy for me, trying to find the sizes I needed for my sister and mom, and it occurred to me that every one of these vendors were selling the exact same stuff (but still, they threw in two refrigerator magnets, that I'll give my sister and mom, so it was cool to feel appreciated).

*My cousin's oldest daughter is sixteen now, and I really ought to urge her to visit Europe while she's young and unattached, so she could go over and hook up with dudes who speak Italian and French.  It would be an adventure you'd look back on for the rest of your life, I'm sure. 

**Obviously, there's a train station to get to the island, but on the island itself, there are no motorized vehicles allowed, no cars, motorcycles, bicycles, or even e-scooters.  I didn't realize this until Jeff pointed it out, but it also makes sense--imagine the congestion and danger if people were doing something other than walking through these narrow passageways and alongside the un-railed docks.

***There were also Guy Fawkes masks, which was only notable because it was the Fifth of November, something I was reminded of every time I saw his face.