Venice Realized

In an earlier post, I wrote about how traveling is important to me as a way to learn about myself and from where I come. As de Botton writes in The Art of Travel, “It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.” As a place for self-exploration, I found that Venice was incredibly powerful. De Botton also mentions the difficulty of escaping what a traveler leaves behind to truly enjoy the moment and the current location. Something about Venice enables this separation from the rest of the world in a way that I have never experienced, allowing travelers to separate themselves from their past, allowing them to become whoever they are in that moment.

            Venice plays with time and space in an unusual way. In Venice, there is a sense that all that exists is the city with its winding streets and elaborate churches and calm canals. But it also feels as if different time periods are combined into one. As I mentioned in an earlier reflection, Venice is like a functional museum in which people live, a place that allows one to travel through time as well as space. The rejection of modernity has allowed Venice to become a place that connects people to the past unlike any other. The ancient splendor of Venice casts a shadow on the rest of the world, and I found that I rarely worried about my responsibilities at home or about the work waiting for me at Purdue. To a degree that I have never experienced, I immersed myself in the city and forgot about the rest of the world.

            I found certain places in Venice to be most conducive to separation from the outside world. These places were typically ones in which the fewest tourists were located. The Piazza San Marco, for example, was glorious at night. I felt very much rooted in Venice when I would pass through the piazza after sundown. In the day, however, the hoards of people, nearly all of them tourists, made it nearly impossible to forget the outside world.  Despite the beauty of the Basilica San Marco and the incredible history of the Doge’s Palace, I felt less connected to Venice when I was in the Piazza San Marco during the day than if I was in some lesser known location. I find that the intimacy of enjoying a new experience in a foreign place is diluted when shared with too many visitors.

Two experiences come to mind when I most felt the magic of isolation in Venice. The first was on the island Guidecca at midmorning. Everyone was Italian. Middle aged and elderly women were pulling small carts to stop at one of the many fruit stands or butcher shops, and friends were enjoying a drink at one of the various Osterias. The waterfront street was busy, despite the lack of tourists. And among the residential buildings, there was the Redentore, Palladio’s masterpiece. Walking along the water, rough with waves that did not exist in the canals, surrounded by the sounds of Italian, I felt as if I had discovered some secret of Venice.

The second experience was the morning of my last day in Venice. On a walk from Fondamente Nove to the Piazza San Marco to meet friends, I stopped at a pastry shop outside of the Ospedale. I ordered a macchiato and a brioche, and I stood at the counter enjoying my morning snack. The employees of the shop were being playful, flicking water at each other and joking in Italian, occasionally making a comment to me in accented English about how crazy they were. Most of my interactions with Venetians involved their reserved, even if friendly, demeanor towards strangers. In that moment in the pastry shop, standing and sipping on my delicious espresso while the Italians laughed loudly, I felt that I was having a rare experience, and I felt utterly in Venice as a part of a secret moment.

The beauty of Venice, of being completely immersed in a novel environment and surrounded by unknown people, is that a person can reevaluate himself or herself. Able to step away from routine and shed old mindsets and worries, it is interesting to see what aspect of a person linger and what aspects are new or altered. In a place unaffected by expectations, habit, or reminders of typical daily life, one can find a very organic form of the self. In a place rich with history, a person can learn from the stories with which he or she identifies. In a place rich with art, a person might find a connection to some abstract concept such as spirituality, purpose, or passion.