Venice~Venezia~Venedig...

I won't lie, Venice is not my favorite city or even on the top 10. However, I'm glad to have been and the 3 days we had there provided ample time to see all that we wanted to see.
Of course, we went to Piazza San Marco and the Ponte Rialto. We also went to the Cemetery Island, which doesn't get as many tourists (probably because photography is not allowed), and Murano, island of the Venetian glass-blowing workshops, which caters exclusively to tourists.

Venice is pretty, but disintegrating and deteriorating. The city was almost palpably crumbling before my eyes (The bricks of one building actually did start falling into chips when I touched them).
Little kiosks selling the same glass objects, masquerade masks, and Italia t-shirts are everywhere. All the stores sell the same things. Gondoliers stood by the bridges, smoking and calling out "Gondola" whenever a group of tourists would walk by. Whenever I sat down at a restaurant, I heard at least 4 different languages being spoken. A can of soda that I could buy at the grocery near our hotel for 50 centimes was 4 or 5 euros at the restaurants.

I don't really know what I was expecting from Venice. Magic, maybe. Or an old-Europe atmosphere.

Some parts of Venezia were enjoyable. My favorite parts were usually when I separated from our group of 6 and walked alone down dark, narrow passages. These places were ignored by tourists. There were no over-priced shops here or expensive restaurants selling pizza, pasta, and salad. Only the occasional Venetian signora, hanging her laundry on the line. Or a pile of trash, abandoned by all except the seagulls, pigeons and sparrows fighting over any remnants of food they could find. Here I could stop and admire the green water of the canals, and the sunlight which somehow found its way into these alleys.

My other favorite part of Venice was seeing the old Jewish Ghetto. We've learned a something of European ghettos in our Holocaust Lit. course, and I looked for Jewish images and designated areas in Zagreb and now Venice.

The Jewish Ghetto was a little hard to find. I found a placard with Hebrew and followed the arrow. It led me to a passageway and eventually through some more narrow streets, to the actual ghetto. It's mostly gone, by now, of course. All that's left is the old synagogue, as well as a wall with the barbed wire left intact. There were a few placards with images of the ghetto and Jews in WWII. There was also part of a poem, if I remember correctly (I took pictures, but on my friend's camera, since it takes much better pictures). The Ghetto was a quiet memorial, not many tourists were there, and the people there were mostly observant Jews (as evident by the yarmulkes).

After the ghetto, we walked by a guildhall with a Lithuanian exhibit and decided to go inside because it was free to enter. A large section of the guildhall (which was a brick cathedral-like room with large columns) had been covered with sheets of metal. Even the walls and columns were covered. When we walked in, the room was quiet, except for a guide giving a tour (in German) to a group of elderly people. However, in English signs on the ground it said: Touch Me, Hear Me, and (some other sensory phrase that I can't remember). So, we did. At first, it was tentative, one at a time. Soon, the room became noisy with our metallic stomping. We walked (played might be a better word, it felt childish and amazing) all around in the room full of aluminum sheets. The docents came to watch us, and smiled because I think we were interacting the way the artist(s) had envisioned. The elderly people saw how much fun we were having and started to step onto the metal as well. I'm glad we stopped there.

Overall, I was glad to see Venice, especially if it one day decides to slip back into the Adriatic Sea. [Re: Mom: According to Wikipedia, the city started sinking due to artesian wells, but since these were outlawed in the 1960s, studies have shown that Venice might not be sinking any more. It was still mostly un-submerged as of last weekend :)] I can check it off my list of famous European cities. It was beautiful, and the weather was gorgeous. It was a nice break from Vienna, but I'm glad to be back in Austria, hearing the now-familiar German all around me, instead of Italian.

Speaking of Italian, I was happily surprised to hear that often parodied or exaggerated Italian cadence. I thought maybe it wasn't accurate, or had been exaggerated out of recognition. But no, some Italians really do speak like that. It's just something that caught my attention.

However, I still much prefer (Austrian) German: Tchuss!