Ciao everybody,

Hi from the city that used to be referred to as La Serenissima (the most serene). I know some of you have been here, but this is the first time for me; second for Robin, but her first visit was on a high-school band and orchestra tour. (Oh, the city was much younger then...) My impressions will again be naïve compared to what some of you already know. But for those of us who are new to this city, here we go. And for those who already know it, perhaps this will remind you of your first trip here when you too were a virgin of Venice.

A singular city

Venice is a city of close quarters and unexpected open spaces. Tight stone streets that open suddenly onto public piazzas. Narrow canals which never see direct sunlight, passing under one arched footbridge after another before pouring out into the expanses of Grand Canal and Adriatic lagoon. Not a single hill or even an incline, precious few trees and no need for a lawn mower. Not a car or motorized land traffic of any kind. I glimpsed a yellow boat marked "Ambulance" speeding under a bridge the other day. The city is generally quite quiet, especially after Istanbul, and as far as I know totally unique. I went out for an early morning walk on our first full day here (early is a relative term; it was 7 a.m., but almost no one was about) and was charmed by the green water, milky air, domed churches, and helter-skelter streets.

Serene though it may be, Venice is a city on the move. Not in a hurry by any means, but people on foot, gondoliers feathering their craft past one another in the canals, and vaporetti (water buses) plowing through the water: they all just keep meandering or pushing along. It's a city nearly bereft of places to simply sit down without paying for the privilege. Park benches are extremely rare, signs tell you not to sit on the steps of churches, and what tables and chairs you do find in the piazzas are part of somebody's restaurant. You also pay an extra charge to sit at a table in simple eateries. Many people just stand at the counter while they chat and eat. Quite a friendly, sociable town--especially if you speak Italian (which we don't, really, sad to say).

As singular as it is, Venice doesn't seem as "foreign" as Istanbul. Still I do feel more out of touch here, almost in a state of limbo. There's no handy internet access where we're staying, so I can't just open my laptop in the morning and check up on events or download email. And I have yet to find a copy of the International Herald Tribune or any other English-language newspaper. [Correction from two days later: I did find one place to get the IHT. Now, if I could just find my way back there...] I have no idea what's going on at home. We haven't attacked Iran or mooned the rest of the world again, have we? It's also harder here than in Turkey to get along without a good working knowledge of the language--sometimes I think I should stop trying to speak Italian and just speak Spanish--and I find my first impulse is to respond to people in Turkish anyway.

Our little pensione--near the Rialto Bridge, for those of you to whom that means something--is apparently as popular with Italians and French as with Americans. Different languages plied the air in the breakfast room our first morning here. Strangely, the first snippet I overheard in English went like this:

something something something "... cheese curds."

"Why?"

"I don't know. They just eat them..." You can go half-way 'round the world, but you're still just a table away from Wisconsin.

Backtracking

Our final day in Istanbul left me a bit ornery. A friend had told me that if I needed to ship anything home that his friend, whom he'd introduced me to, was the one to work with. So I called him, found out "you're in luck," the shipping shop he uses wasn't closed because of the pope's visit (it was just outside the police barricade that brought so much to a standstill so Benedict could go to Haghia Sophia and the Blue Mosque), so I should meet him there. I still don't know his relationship to the shipping company I used, but he had the run of the backroom, where he repacked everything with the help of the workers there, and then after it was all over, gave me his "very good price"--over $100. I was stunned. In retrospect I wonder if this was one of those situations where I was expected to bargain with him, like the cabbie in Kas, but it didn't occur to me at the time and he'd already packed my stuff, so I didn't feel like I had an option. (Repeated lesson: In Turkey, agree on a price first.) At that rate, I hope everything, including some glassware, gets home safe. I'd been warned that it's expensive to ship things from Turkey, but I just hadn't imagined.

As I mentioned before, there were no cabs to be had leaving our part of town on the morning Robin and I left, but my landlady had arranged for a 6 a.m. service for our 10 o'clock flight. The dawn azan was just sounding as we walked out the door. It seemed a fitting sendoff. Here in Venice we've exchanged "Allahu akbar" for the clanging of old church bells. Not exactly the same thing--not at all, really--but it's another rhythm of the ancients calmly co-existing with the jerky syncopations of this new century.

As we lifted off and Istanbul disappeared beneath the cloud cover below, sadness sat heavy in me. I will miss that old, proud, schizophrenic city. Parts of it really wore on me, but it also crawled under my skin like a cat seeking warmth with you beneath your naptime quilt. I feel quite tenderly toward Istanbul, even a bit defensive for it, as hard as that city can be.

Whether the odd scheduling of our flight had anything to do with going from Istanbul to Rome on the same day as the pope I don't know - Atatürk airport was to be closed down for a few hours in midday; I don't know about Rome's - but Robin and I had a 6-hour layover in Athens, enough time to store our carry-ons and hop the metro for the long ride into town. Another first: neither Robin nor I had been to Athens. So where do you go when you only have time to go to one place in Athens? The Acropolis, of course. I continue to be stunned by the scale on which some things are built - Aphrodisias, Ephesus, Haghia Sophia, the Acropolis, the piazza of San Marco - some proportions are stunningly grand while also leaving you feeling they're also just right. Makes you proud to be a human being, (a feeling we all need sometimes). Such foresight, such imagination, such a timeless claim on these plots of earth. What's the phrase from the Psalms? [We are] "fearfully and wonderfully made," I think.

Art and politics

Over and over again, these travels leave me feeling like a freshman in an introductory history course. I remember leaving the initial lecture in one of my first college classes filled with the enthusiasm of glimpsing new horizons of knowledge, a world that had not been opened to me before. I feel the same on this trip. I never studied Islamic history in school (don't even think it was offered), and my European history classes focused on Britain, France, and Germany--without even touching on the 700 years of Moorish Spain. The whole sweep of Islamic civilization remained hidden from me. Also the role of Venice. It's a good pairing with Constantinople. One example: After the first three Crusades "to wrest the Holy Land from the hands of infidels," as it were, the doge of Venice (same as a duke) bargained with the kings and bishops of Europe to provide transport to I-forget-how-many Crusaders on their next attempt at retaking Jerusalem. When those on the other side of the deal couldn't come up with the money they'd promised, the doge said in effect, "No problem. Just stop off and do one little errand for me." The errand was the sacking of Constantinople, which was still the seat of the Byzantine (and thus Christian) empire. Much of Constantinople's riches are now to be found in the Basilica San Marco here in Venice. (St. Mark--as in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--is supposedly buried here. The Venetians freely say they stole his body from where it was buried in Alexandria (Egypt). Legend has it that he was shipwrecked here sometime in the first century and had a vision telling him this is where his body would eventually find its rest. It also served the Venetians' interests to have Mark as their patron saint because a) he replaced a Greek patron saint who symbolically subjugated them to the Byzantines and b) Mark was a figure independent of Rome and thus of the pope.)

Now that we're in Venice, I'm also catching glimpses of the other side of the historical polemic between Islam and what many Muslims (including my friend Alper in Istanbul) still call "the Christian world." In the Accademia museum here there's a painting of St. Mark getting dragged through the streets of Alexandria. Maybe that's how he died. Anyway, the person who commissioned the painting specified that he wanted the painting to show "the infidel Turks" [his phrase] doing the dragging. Not only a total anachronism but also a recasting of the Venetians' enemy of the time as those who abused their patron saint a millennium and a half earlier. Talk about whipping up hatred. Of course, that kind of thing doesn't happen anymore...

Artists, canals, and being transported

The first day here Robin and I went to the Guggenheim Collection of modern art--some wonderful pieces there. Nice size collection, not too overwhelming. One favorite was a delightfully child-like, simple-bliss statue of the naked man on a brutish-looking horse, his arms outstretched, face pointing up to the sky, and his little groin sausage trying to do the same. The statue is outside the museum, facing the Grand Canal. Peggy Guggenheim used to unscrew the man's penis whenever she was warned that dignitaries were to go chugging by on the canal. One too many complaints, I guess. Then the screw-in attachment kept getting stolen. Another guess: Ms. Guggenheim hosted too many wild parties. Now it's welded in.

The next day we went to the Accademia and a palazzo that's housing an exhibit of Picasso works from 1946-49, a decidedly cheery time in Picasso's life. At both the Guggenheim and the Picasso exhibit I found myself getting lost in the works, then occasionally absentmindedly gazing out the window and seeing the Grand Canal. Amazing 1) to forget that you're in Venice in the first place and 2) to suddenly be reminded that you really are here.

I've also generally forgotten that it's almost Christmas. Part of having spent so much time in an Islamic country, I suppose, but this fall-like weather keeps throwing me, too. I'm still not used to it getting dark so early when the temperature is still in the 40s or 50s. But Robin and I did go to an Anglican church for a lessons and carols service (led by a vicar who was eccentric as only the British can be). It was really quite lovely as well as a bit curious, and again I was moved to the verge of tears.

Yesterday Robin explored Venice (including taking in a Vivaldi concert) as I took a side trip to Ravenna. Ravenna has some remarkably colorful mosaics from the 6th century, especially in a church built just a decade before Haghia Sophia and under the direction of the same Byzantine emperor. Makes me wonder what Haghia Sophia looked like originally. Could it have been as colorful as this one? The greens and blues especially in the mosaics of Ravenna's San Vitale are still stunning. Definitely worth the 6-hour round-trip train ride. Another thing that makes them so striking is that the church itself is so unprepossessing from the outside. It seems fairly large, all brick. On the inside, though, it's remarkably tall, and the colors of the mosaics (and the 18th century tromp-d'oeuil painting in the dome, which doesn't go with the mosaics at all) make the interior other-worldly.

It was also a tonic to get out of touristy Venice for a day and into a low-key small city where you can still get a light meal for under 2 euros. Robin and I spent over 35 the other night for a meal of samplers that included sea creatures we just couldn't bring ourselves to eat, though I think I did try at least a tiny nibble of everything on the plate. Our pensione is just a few steps from the fish market, where we later discovered that the ugliest of the creatures were some kind of cuttlefish, which is an inky slimy squidlike critter. Really gross, both in the raw and on the plate.

A butcher shop on the edge of the Rialto markets also has roosters hanging in the window, by the feet (still intact and menacing-looking), plucked except for their heads and black tail feathers. Quite a sight.

Far corners and loose ends

Enough for now, I'm sure.

Happy Advent, everybody,