Yes, another one of my terrific travelling reports ^.^
As a surprise (birthday?) present, my parents invited me to accompany them for a weekend in Venice.
Luckily I am already in the age where it again isn't embarrassing to go on a holiday with your parents, and anyhow I would not have cared even if I were. I really Really needed a vacation, the last one having been anthrocon more than a year back. In German there is the very descriptive term that "einem die Decke auf den Schädel fällt" literally " that the ceiling hits your head", meaning that you just go stircrazy in your own four walls and just *need to escape for a while. Especially after this October (those of you who know me closer know what I mean) So... I thought since Venice might be a bit more "exotic" for most of you than Philadelphia, I will include some background info too. Venice is about a 600 km/ 400 mile drive away from Vienna. So still local enough to get there without too much hassle, but exotic enough to be real fun.
Venice was founded by remnants of the Roman Republic when the local settlers fled before the marauding Langobards who invaded northern italy in the 5th century onto the islands on the local lagoon. They still maintained close connections to the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzanz, which is also quite noticeable in most of the early art in the churches, which are very Greekorthodox looking despite being Catholic. Venice saw it's heyday in the late medieval /early rennaisance when it had practically the run of the whole eastern mediterranean sea. Therefor it has a HUGE share of the worlds art despite it's tiny size. As you will see when you get there, you can hardly take two steps without falling into a church full of terribly important pictures ^.^
Between 1797 and 1918 it was part of the AustroHungarian Empire ( Napoleon handed it to us) so in some way it is visiting home too ;) Heh,well, a lot of central Europe is that way for me ^.^
Anyhow it was.. different from how I imagined it. For example I always thought that it was just built on the coast and extending into the sea but it really is completely out at sea, about 3 miles from the coast. And it was.. somehow a lot less enchanted and glittery than I thought but on the other hand a *lot more impressive. Like, you really get to see what an accomplishment it is to build and maintain a city practically on water, with the waves constantly beating on the foundations. ven if it *is the reason why Northern italy has no forests :p ( venice is built mostly on pylons)

And going in November has the BIG advantage that there is only a tiny fraction of the tourists that there usually are. Today venice has a mere 60.000 inhabitants ( it had 150.000 in its prime) and over 9 million tourists every year. >.< that means 150 tourists per person living there :P And about 90% of those are in the summer months or the Carneval, so you can imagine that it gets.. packed. Not so in late autumn. If you ever go there definitely go in november/december. Anyhow, even tho it is, as said less magical than I had pictured it it is really totally nifty.

Public transport is by cool streetcarequivalent boats called Vaporetto (lit. : little steamboat). DONT take the 82! 82 is italian meaning "and other routes" so it lands you *SOMEplace. not where you meant to go tho ;p For those of you familiar with the London subway, it is about like the green line. can end you up in a dozen different places.
So, the first day mostly consisted of.. churches. LOTS of churches. Tell the truth so did the other two :) But it really isn't boring at all! it is totally impressive. Well, once you reach a certain age i guess. I don't claim it is what everyone needs but well.. I was impressed :)

The Basilica San Marco, Venices main church is butt ugly and weird from the outside, because it has been erected over a long *LONG time ( basically from 800 till the late 17th century) and legend has it that every ships capitain that went abroad was required to bring some contribution to the basilica. That means that no two columns, capitals, panels or whatever are the same. Looks very cool up close, totally missmatched and gauche from a bit further away. Mark Twain said it looks like a "titanic, wartcovered stinkbug" and Czech writer Karel Capek thought it looks like " a giant barrelorgan, where you just look for a slit to drop a coin in and the whole arrangement starts playing " Oh Venecia" It really does too ^.^ But on the inside it is *really pretty. Italians charge you for pretty much every detail you want to look at but it is totally worth it in my opinion. And if you go late in the year, as I said you even get to *see all the murals and mosaics and pictures without ten billion people standing in your way.

In the evening there was really spiffy food too. Original italian, loads of seafood and pasta and.. hmm... Eating out in Italy rules, evn tho it is dreadfully expensive, partially because you cannot order just one course but are expected at the *LEAST to order some pasta followed by a second, main course. Better yet if you have some antipasti first and some dolci, dessert afterwards. c.c; the main exception is pizza, which is why pizza is popular with students. There it is okay to just order the pizza, and it is affordable too. But as long as you have parents who invite you... ;) What *is hard to get is fruit juices. You get wine, mineral water and *maybe coke. no fruit juices :p

The night was kinda dreadful because the mosquito screens must have had some holes so I was kept awake most of the night battling a foe of superior numbers and vampirosity. :P

The next morning was a.. surprise. because although venice's streets are canals there usually *are pedestrian walkways. Usually. when we woke up and looked out of the window they were already a foot underwater. "Acqua Alta" High Water is an increasing problem that venice faces. At the turn of last century there were 4 to 5 flood days in the year, by now there are aroudn 60, and getting worse. Also the general sealevel rises about half a foot in 50 years, so.. it is in trouble. But for us it was kinda nifty ^^ My dad was a hero and went out barefoot to buy rubber boots for us all, so now i got big nifty hip waders, which is usefull for a biologist anyhow, cause we always creep around in lakes and such ^.^ Venice had installed elevated walkways at the more important touristic routes, but it was a *lot more fun to be able to walk around everywhere, especially watching all the cluelesstourists being caged on those narrow walkways and us just leisurely strolling by in 20 to 50 cm deep water.

I guess I will use this spot to compliment my parents some. They are really cool in that regard, not the dried up boring kind but the kind that goes for the off road tourism, backroads, taking such things like a sudden flood as a fun adventure, not something ruining their shopping trip ^.^ They rule!

Even so they *did take the saturday morning off for shopping so I set out on my own, and got a great demonstration of what "normal" tourists of their age are like. One of the three bridges crossing the Canale Grande, the biggest canal running through Venice is the famous Rialto bridge, which is lined with shops ( in the original design even, it was the center of the merchant's district) and one of the BIG tourist attractions. After going there I wanted to go on to the piazza san marco because I missed the Doge's Palace on friday. The next vaporetto station was 20 meters beside the rialto bridge. line 82. :p well, but still it was going the right direction. So I stood there in line ( read "in horde" ) and waited. After the first one filled up too soon and the second one that arrived instead *unloaded everyone and drove away empty.. well, that basically meant that there were two boatloads of people waiting and the next that would arrive would be pretty full too.. so i decided to just walk, and .. 20 meters further on was *another vaporetto station, of the line 1 ( which was going the same way anyhow) with maybe 3 people waiting, all of them locals. so i waited 2 minutes, got on the first one and rode in a totally empty ship while all the stupid tourists are probably still waiting today. people are *such sheep :D

Even so I did not get to see the Doge's Palace , because instead I was intrigued by the Academia building on the way, got off the boat and wanted to go in ( world famous art collection) Sadly on just that day they closed early though :/ So I just strolled around there and looked at some more churches before meeting up with my parents again.

So.. basically a great day if it had not been for.. You see, wearing hip waders is great when the streets are flooded, but wearing them all day is not exactly the nicest thing for your feet >.< So by afternoon my soles consisted mainly of blisters and then, when we wanted to go back to our hotel we made the mistake of taking the 82... On the way we found a store that was still open, me and my mom got off there to get some food for an afternoon snack, dad went ahead cause his feet were aching too. Then my mom decided to walk the way back to the hotel and sent me ahead with the boat. Instead of delivering me a 300 meter stroll from our hotel tho that STUPID line went instead to another of venice's islands and dropped me off there >.< So i had to take the next one back, and walk about a kilometer on foot *after all, carrying all the food and drink and on feet that were still just alive enough to hurt >.< that was kinda crappy. Especially when I had to cut the blisters open. The human body could use some improvement. or maybe it is the hip waders that should be improved..

Ah well, I was still well enough to put in another evening stroll which featured a really weird Deja Vu because.. one of the mental pictures that comprised my idea of venice was that years ago i dreamed of venice and there was one setting with an collonade and a bridge. And I found the exact same spot in real venice, only slightly more run down. but it *was the same one. what makes it a tad weirder than most deja vues was that it wasn't that i remembered it as soon as seeing it but that i was actually expecting it all the time since I arrived already. Strange.. Only the woman dressed in red ( kinda like Carmen Sandiego, complete with that hat) that played some part in the dream ( what exactly i forgot) wasn't there.

Well, the next day the high water had ebbed off so at least I could wear normal shoes again even tho it was still painful to walk. And of course to avoid placing weight on the sore parts i was walking on the *side of my feet with the effect that by evening I had blisters there too :p As of writing ( two days later) I can walk again tho :)

So, on sunday morning we went out to San Michele, which is Venice's Cementry. It is a seperate little island that is *just a cementary plus the church that tends to it, and was founded by Napoleon. It's really quite interesting to see how a city that is built on ocean solves the problem of it's cementary. I guess I should explain here for a moment why I include a cementary in my sightseeing... No it isn't my morbid streak, or at least i do not think so ( though in all my online quizzes i always get the result that I am goth and I really love those clothes) But the real reason is that I believe that you can learn a *lot about a people by looking at how they deal with death and how they treat their dead. So whenever I go to a froreign country I always include a cementary in the trip. The *freaky part about that, which i only found out on this trip is that my parents do just the same but neither of us had known it about the other.. maybe we *are morbid. After all being morbid *is practically a basic requirement for anyone Viennese, and my mom used to take me to cementaries a lot when she was pushing me around in my baby carriage. But it makes total sense, because cementaries are usually nice quiet green places, a very easy and serene athmosphere to take your baby..

Well, anyhow San Michele was very.. interesting. They have several sections on the cementary, one greek orthodox, one protestant ( which for some reason is almost exclusively foreigners, quite interesting to go to an italian cementary and find all the tombstones with german, english and dutch text... And the biggest section which is of course italian and which is *really weird because they have like.. concrete filing shelf like arrangements. so it is basically walls after walls, all filled with dead people, with a faceplate telling who lies there and a little flowerpot in front. It makes sense because there is no way to expand the cementary and also I am not certain I want to put a dead relative into ground that gets swamped by the sea every other day, but even so it is pretty damn weird. Not all of the italian cementary is like that, most of it is in fact pretty standard european cementary, but.. strange c.c;

Afterwards we went to Torcello, which is another of Venice's islands, the former seat of Venice's bishop before he moved to the Isola de San Pietro. Two more impressive churches there with a huge mosaic depicting the Last Judgement, and the island itself was very interesting because hardly anyone lives there anymore so nature is starting to reclaim it, lots of marshlands and saltflats. Very interesting for a biologist but sadly you cannot get on most of it cause there still are fences everywhere :p The only pity that day was that my dad was bitten ( lightly) in the hand by a dog there. It was an accident, because he was playing fetch with him, but still his own fault, my mom and me always tell him that he shouldn't play with strange dogs :p Ah well, he got his shots when we got back home, so no worries there, still put a slight crimp in the day tho. Hm.. that about wraps it up, the drive home was mostly uneventfull really. Whoever wants more details can ask :)