Carnevale

Lan­guages, lan­guages. Is there any­thing more sat­is­fy­ing than arriv­ing in a for­eign land, hear­ing famil­iar but strange words flow­ing all around, and reach­ing into your brain, back to the past when you could speak those words your­self, and find­ing a way to express your­self? I sim­ply love it.

When I was 21 or so, I spent a sum­mer in Flo­rence try­ing to become an artist, learn­ing to appre­ci­ate real food for the first time in my life, and begin­ning a life­long love affair with the Ital­ian lan­guage. Sadly, I was told in no uncer­tain terms by my var­i­ous art teach­ers that I had absolutely no tal­ent what­so­ever at mak­ing any­thing. I tried sculp­ture, I tried print­mak­ing, I tried draw­ing. My print­ing teacher was no less a lumi­nary than Leonard Baskin, amaz­ingly, and while he was very, very nice to me, I will never for­get his dis­be­lief at my lack of abil­ity. “Until I met you, Kris­ten, I would have said that I could teach any­one to make a decent print.” Just awful. But I did turn out to have a tal­ent for appre­ci­at­ing what other peo­ple made, and explain­ing it. My ambi­tion to teach art his­tory raised its tiny head, and many happy years were spent doing just that.

Even more last­ing, though, were my new love of food — tortellini alla panna, mille­foglie con cioc­co­lato, you name it, I ate it — and my absorp­tion of the Ital­ian lan­guage. To be able to fit in, to pro­duce whole sen­tences in a proper accent, to slide under the sur­face of a for­eign cul­ture, to bridge the gap between the local and the vis­i­tor… it’s addic­tive for me. If I weren’t so inher­ently lazy, I’d be a seri­ous lin­guist and actu­ally accom­plish some­thing with my tiny tal­ent at pick­ing up lan­guages. As it is, I just get a kick out of arriv­ing in Venice, reach­ing into the shad­owy cor­ners of my brain where all those words are sleep­ing, and wak­ing them up, for three days.

We arrived on Tues­day after­noon at lunchtime, and jumped onto a vaporetto, a water­way bus, along with all the other vis­i­tors for the last day of Carnevale. We’d packed very lightly, so the short walk from the Ca’ d’Oro “bus stop” to our hotel was a total plea­sure, and we were the Com­pleat Tourists, our heads cocked at that unmis­tak­able tourist angle, look­ing up, up, and around. And the hotel! The Ca’ Ven­dramin, for­mer palazzo home of a 16th cen­tury art col­lec­tor, Gabriele Ven­dramin, whose art­works are now in the Accad­e­mia, the British Museum, all over the world.

We were com­pletely silenced by our arrival at the hotel, across a tiny stone bridge from the main street of the neigh­bor­hood, the Strada Nuove. The mag­nif­i­cence of the ornate door­way, the vast stone wind­ing stair­case to the first floor, the mar­ble ter­razzo floors! Our room had a soar­ing trompe l’oeil ceil­ing, enor­mous win­dows open­ing out onto small bal­conies over­look­ing the tiny canal “street” below, gor­geous tapes­try bed hang­ings. And not out­ra­geously expen­sive! In fact, the price dropped on the sec­ond and third nights because Carnevale had ended. A lovely, lovely place. Avery and I fell in love par­tic­u­larly withe the green glass door­knobs, and the tiny but beau­ti­ful bath­room, for­ever toasty with its heated towel rack.

We uncer­e­mo­ni­ously dumped our bags, grabbed my Ital­ian dic­tio­nary and the guide­book, and headed out. “Let’s buy some meat and cheese and bread and have a pic­nic lunch,” John sug­gested, which seemed bril­liant. Why wan­der around look­ing for a restau­rant when we could plop down by the Grand Canal with an assort­ment of mouth­wa­ter­ing Ital­ian delicacies?

We dropped into the local, totally ordi­nary and there­fore fas­ci­nat­ing super­mar­ket, and picked up salami alla erbe (salami with herbs), an amaz­ing cheese, Camoscio d’oro, and a packet of all the com­po­nents for a per­fect carpac­cio salad: slices of ten­der raw beef fil­let, shav­ings of Parmi­giano Reg­giano, and a scat­ter­ing of incom­pa­ra­ble Ital­ian rucola: you know me and my obses­sion with rocket! And the Ital­ian ver­sion, bought and eaten in Italy, puts to shame the imported bags we get in London.

With a lit­tle focac­cia, some senape clas­sico (just plain mus­tard, but it tasted bet­ter in Ital­ian) and a bot­tle of olives, we were in busi­ness. “Posso accettare una forchetta?” I some­how man­aged to ask, thrilled at pro­duc­ing a whole sen­tence! But no, I could not buy a fork, they had sold all their forks. We crouched down on a pier by the Grand Canal, sur­rounded by other per­fectly happy tourists (lots of teenagers in love), and had our picnic.

From there were wan­dered over to Piazza San Marco, to see all the Carnevale-goers, so many of them dressed up extrav­a­gantly! Full 18th cen­tury cos­tumes, one group of four ladies not only dressed, but with their faces AND hair painted gold, sit­ting at a cafe table, inclin­ing their gilded heads to all the gap­ing onlook­ers. “Com­pli­menti, com­pli­menti,” the Ital­ians would say to them, and the ladies would say, “Gra­zie, gra­zie,” com­pla­cently.

We were vir­tu­ally the only Amer­i­cans in Venice, it seemed: almost every­one was Ital­ian, although there was one Russ­ian man shout­ing into his mobile phone in a par­tic­u­larly serene campo. Where were all our fel­low coun­try­men? And very few Eng­lish peo­ple. Which made for a very for­eign atmos­phere, and moti­vated me to pro­duce my Ital­ian for Avery and John, who were grat­i­fy­ingly impressed. But as always hap­pens to me, I’m much bet­ter at speak­ing than at hear­ing, so I found myself ask­ing com­plex ques­tions very ade­quately, and then stand­ing there open-mouthed as a com­pletely incom­pre­hen­si­ble answer flowed toward me!

We wan­dered around San Marco, admir­ing the masks and finally buy­ing one for Avery, cov­ered with musi­cal notes. How pretty she looked! We bought a bag of con­fetti and pelted her with it, as the sun set.

Back to the hotel for a cock­tail and to put our feet up. The sound of boats, of waves splash­ing against the hotel, the shouts of Carnevale rev­ellers — “va bene, ciao, ciao,” and ter­ri­ble 1980s music from a nearby disco, “Y-M-C-A…” Lovely Fed­er­ica behind the wel­come desk had made a reser­va­tion for us at a local and per­fectly for­get­table restau­rant, Hos­te­ria Al Vecio Bragosso, where Avery had spaghetti car­bonara and French fries! I had a carpac­cio of tuna and rucola, John had a nice veal chop. It was our first expe­ri­ence with what seems to be a uni­ver­sal phe­nom­e­non in Venice: ade­quate, but not mem­o­rable restau­rant food. I hated to admit it: ade­quate. Now we’ve come home, every­one we know who’s been to Venice raves about all the things we loved too, and then we say, “The food? Not so much.” Cater­ing to tourists means just that, I sup­pose. Next time per­haps we could find the hid­den, local treasures.

A quite per­fect first day in what’s now become one of our favorite cities in the world. Day Two? Even bet­ter. Watch this space.