Venice is crazy awesome (if not the people)

VENICE, ITALY

Oh wow. This place rocks. I have a lot of work as far as myself goes, but even acknowledging that, there's no denying the ridiculous, overwhelming beauty of this city and its life. Paris is gorgeous, more romantic, but its different. It's odd. Perhaps it's because of the people I saw each city with, but Paris is more charming. Venice is ridiculous. Everything, every rio, every amazing view, every spectacular alleyway, every sunset is equally gorgeous, so that after twenty minutes, though you can't deny the beauty, it's cheapened by its extreme and common nature. Still, damn this place is great.

When I got here, all I could think about was holy shit; I'm in Italy. Everybody is speaking this beautiful language. Everybody looks Italian. I'm in the land of my ancestors. The food. The history. The Romans. The Renaissance architecture. The fashion. The women. My god I love Italy. I want to spend all two months and a million euros here. I want to get my citizenship. If they had French bread, I would truly have found heaven.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Of course, you have to know about the people I found, and the drama that ensued. Of course.

Just an aside: nothing stabilizes your mind like some Wilco. I only just discovered this, but god bless the fact that I did.

Ok, so it was actually pretty awesome. I'm running to the train station in Ljubljana, and I get there one minute before the train is scheduled to arrive. As I'm reflecting on my luck that the train is ten minutes late, I here American English. I am happy.

I turn towards the voice and say, panting, "well, looks like I made the train, eh?" In front of me is one cute blond, who later will remind me a whole hell of alot of Jen Goss, a damn cute blond who is just a smidge out of my league, and two cool-looking guys. They all look my age, though later I'll find out they're all between 20 and 23, and like they've been on the trail for a while. We all hit it off pretty well, and grab seats on the train when it arrives a few minutes later.

The train ride is fantastic.

Quick aside, while I'm thinking about it. I'm not sure if I miss her exactly, but god dammit I really miss the sense of security, confidence and love that Shayne brought me. I was never alone when I was with her. No matter what happened, I had her. Now what? My friends don't text fast enough. God damn I question my sanity.

Anyway. Sorry about that. But yeah, the train ride to Venice at 2.22 am, I was expecting to read, listen to music, and sleep, but instead we stated up until five am, chatting and laughing. There was am old Slovenian drunk on board who, while initially a creepy old man, came alive once he managed to open the stuck bathroom door. With the Jen Goss-alike inside. It was hilarious. Before she had gone inside, we could not open the door, and had given up. Then, this man who had seconds ago been smoking and mumbling in his sleep for us to shut up simply arises, walks to the door, kicks it, it opens like magic, he pronounces, "Open!", and he sits and closes his eyes. It was marvelous.

Anyway, after my friend got locked in the bathroom and Mr. Drunk repeated his trick, he became much more entertaining. He passed around a bottle of disgusting schnapps (which my friends loved for some reason), and we all steadly became tipsy-to-drunk. Mr. Drunk began hitting on a few of us, but after we made it clear that was not acceptable, he moved on to an admittedly gorgeous blond Italian. He got slapped, we laughed, and as things calmed down, Jennice laid her head on my shoulder, and we all fell asleep.

I woke up and sea was all around the train. We were on this huge land bridge connecting Venice and the mainland, with cars on one side and boats on the other. I didn't realize this, but Venice is actually a bunch of offshore islands, for a long time only accessible by boat.As we passed, you
could see the wild islands that dot the sea off Venice.

We got off, and stepped into the train station to try to figure out exactly where we were staying. You see, unlike me, these people had booked a hostel the night before. The problem was, they had decided to go to Venice on a drunken spur-of-the-moment, so apparently they hadn't written down the name of the hostel, or where it was, or any way to contact them. We managed to scrounge up one scrawled note, which apparently last night constituted "the directions": San Marco. AKA Saint Mark's Square, only the biggest landmark in Venice. It's like putting down "The Colosseum" for your Roman hostel; it's completely useless.

Anyway, while we're figuring out what to do, one of my companions steps outside, comes back in and says, "Have you seen this shit?"

I look out for the first time, and shout, "There's water in the streets!"

"Well yeah, I was talking about the architecture, but that's pretty awesome too."

Venice is gorgeous. The water adds a sparkling backdrop to some of the most beautiful buildings in Europe. Again, just look at the pictures. There's no way I can do justice to this place, except to rely on hackneyed, yet accurate phrases. This place has a certain magic to it, every tiny gesture is infused with romance and passion and beauty. It's the kind of place that inspires you to actually stand and watch the sun rise for half an hour, and have the whole experience feel electric.

The coolest thing about Venice: no cars. The road into town leads to a massive car park, and after that it is all ancient alleys and canals. Major transport is done exclusively by boat, with little carts specially designed to navigate the alleyways and bridges and steps of Venice. This place operates entirely at a walking pace; it's like you've been transported back a hundred and fifty years. As such, there isn't a single wide thouroughfare in the city. Venice is one enormous maze of alleys and bridges, with an occasional square appearing around a corner. It's fantasic, spectacular, stunning.

But back to reality. After wandering around Venice for an hour or so, following the seemingly random signs pointing us towards St. Mark's square, (and having the most wonderful croissent), we eventually made it. We just had no clue where to go after that. We had managed to find a wifi connection, and so we had the confirmation email pointing us to the Art Deco Hostel on St. Marco Street. Where that was we had no idea. I eventually just went into a hotel and put myself at the concierge's mercy. I came out with directions, and we made it there within 15 minutes.

I don't know how they managed to do it, but this place was luxury. Two beds, two full baths, towels, silk sheets, soap (!), breakfast delivered by room service (!!!) - we were kings for a day. I immediately took a shower, knowing it will be the most luxurious shower I will have for the next four months, and took a five hour nap. It was lovely.

I wish I could tell you more about St. Mark's Square, but my friends didn't want to stay. This was probably my first sign that these guys weren't my kind of people. They didn't care one bit for the square. While I thought it was stunning, and wanted to see the museums, they thought it was gaudy, and didn't do museums. Instead, we wandered around some more. All day in fact. We probably covered a good half of the city in one day. I didn't mind, exactly, but after a while I did want to, you know, do something.

We nearly took a gondola ride, but at 20 euro each, some of the others simply balked. It's expensive, but exactly how often are you in Venice? Oh well, next time.

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Ok. So, this is where the drama begins. It's getting late, and we're looking for a supermarket to grab a picnic dinner. We've been cracking inappropriate jokes all day - depression jokes, dead baby jokes, etc. So when Gossifer starts ragging on hot blonde for not liking almonds, of all things. I join in, "Oh my goodness! You should just go kill yourself. Right now. No, I'm serious." I play on this theme for a bit until it wears itself out.

Thirty seconds later, I hear the American girl who reminds me of Jen Goss (not in this aspect) say, "I can't take this anymore," and go running off down an alleyway, with one of my companions following her. Now, I had progressively been getting the sense throughout the day of being the fifth wheel: they had been telling more inside jokes, more awkward moments, etc. But now, I felt vilified. Apparently, she had tried to commit suicide three days earlier.

Initially I was horrified, and felt like shit. But pretty soon I began to just feel mean. I mean, if they all knew about this, why did no one shut me up? Why did they allow me to keep going? Why would no one at least offer me the solace of a "It's ok, you didn't know, just give her some space"? Instead, I now felt like a complete outcast. When we did get to the supermarket, I bought myself a bottle of wine. When we got back to the hostel, I drank it all.

They all snacked on what they had bought for each other, and I ate my pre-packaged meal. I had wanted to grab an authentic Italian pizza, but instead we were eating cheese with no bread (the bakeries were closed). After drinking my bottle of wine, I was pretty damn sloshed, so when they left to get more booze, I shouted fuck you down the stairwell at them. It wasn't my proudest moment.

I thought they'd be gone half an hour at most, so I decided I'd rather sit down and sober up. Finally three hours later, they arrive with a bottle of wine. I passively flipped them the bird, expressing how pissed I had become. Seriously, just ditching me like that? I realise they didn't think much of me at that point, but to not even let me know. Well fuck you, you know?

At any rate, they took it much more seriously than I had intended. I expected a laugh, a joke about "well hello to you too, WTF mate?" and a chance to explain what was pissing me off. Instead they all went into the next room, from the snippets of conversation I could hear through the wall deeply offended. ("The bloody finger? What the hell? What the fuck did we do?")

Then they all file out, sit down around me, and rip me to shreds. Apparently, they were taken aback by my very presence in their group. They were all friends before Ljubljana (though only for a few days), and as such thought it was odd that I had inserted myself back at the train station. That I had sat down in their group of four without asking. That when we'd gotten to Venice, I had just presumed that I was invited to join their suite.

Of course, this was the first I'd heard of any of this. I might have forgotten to specifically say, may I split your suite, and if so, my bad, but wouldn't the proper thing to do have simply been to simply ask me to find another place to stay? To simply have said I'm not so sure back when I had proposed the idea at the train station?

Thouroughly humiliated, I didn't know what to do. Clearly I was not wanted. Certainly I did not want to be there that night. They said they didn't hate me, that they had just been talking it over at the bar, and thought since they had been travelling for much longer than I, that maybe it would do me some good to learn some travel etiquette. All I could think was well fuck you too, condecending pricks. The whole thing really hurt me, as I had thought these people were my friends, and to have that suddenly be blown away was both shocking and made me question myself in ways I really didn't want to.

They had decided to leave me to myself in the central room, while they went off into a side bedroom to drink and laugh and talk. All loudly, so sleep was not an option. My paranoia was setting in, and it seemed like they were talking about me, me, me, I couldn't take it anymore, I had to get out of there. I told them I would head down to the 24 hour reception next door and use their wifi. We agreed that since they'd be
going out for more wine soon, they'd hang on to the key, and they'd drop it off at reception. Whoever wanted to come back first would pick up the key, and let the other in later.

Well, it turns out the reception area was locked tight. At three in the morning, if you rang the buzzer, an angry Italian man sleeply opened the window and, assuming you were a bum, told you there was nothing he could do about the cold. So, I went back to the building with the rooms and tried to get inside. That door was locked. I tried ringing the buzzer, but there were five of them, each unlabeled, and I had no idea whether I was waking some unfortunate couple up. At any rate, nobody answered.

At that point my only option was to wait for them to come looking for more booze, and grab the key from them. So, without a jacket, in 35-40 degree weather, wind blowing and everything, I settled down in an ATM's recessed spot, and curled up with Obama's book, expecting to wait maybe half an hour or so.

After two hours I was freezing, and preparing myself to spend the night out on the streets.

Finally one of them came out at 3:30, hoping to snag a bottle off reception. I came back to the room, charged up my iPhone, and decided that despite the fact I had already paid 25 euro for the room, I'd rather wait at the train station for the next train to Milan. From there I could decide whether to go on to Rome, or see a friendly face in Paris. In fact, at the time I was nearly certain I'd much rather see Levin. So I packed up my things and left.

So Venice was, well, a learning experience. It got much better, though. Next post I'll fill you in.