Non So Lost in Translation

ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT ARE WORDS.

How they sound, how they form, how they're managed by the brain and the tongue.  Last post I wrote how my new language was like a large wad of gum in my mouth, desperate to get out but terrified to do so. In the past few days, I've asked directions and given them, postponed a hair appointment, read a children's book in Italian and enjoyed it,  and laughed at the televised soap opera, translated from Americanspeak to Italianrapido.  The best is that I found myself laughing at the show, without having to translate each word to English. So I've begun to think in Italian, and when I read I'm reading and thinking Italian, not reading, translating, thinking English.  It's very exciting.  Now the words are coming up like bubbles, boiling slowly as my pasta in the pot.  Eventually they'll be coming thick and fast, and it'll be just like, oh yea, the language is on full boil, but for now, I'm ecstatic about every bubble that rises, bringing with it a new, properly pronounced WORD.  Snippets of eavesdropped conversations that three weeks ago would have been a garble, now float down onto my shoulders, making sense. 

I CAN READ!  Does this mean I won't get lost any more?  I hope I will.  Because adventures await down new alleyways.  

TONGUE TIED

FOR WEEKS before I arrived in Venice, I'd been learning words, words and more words. When I arrived, my vocabulary was 600 and climbing daily.  I annoyed everyone by showing off the words for everything from plate to loudly and because I'd done 5 years school Latin,  I thought I'd be fluent by the first weekend.

Well, ha bloody ha.  Ten days in, I can certainly understand A LOT.  Sentences, phrases, clauses and isolated words that last week would have just been a mangled agglomeration of syllables totally beyond my comprehension are now beginning to separate into vaguely recognisable language. I can read!  I can understand signs, menus:  I even set up my new phone in Italian!  Apart from a big mistake, a huge mistake when I received a generic sms offering me 2 months of something free if I just followed the link.  I thought it was free toothpaste, but soon discovered that calcio is football.  I can understand directions, and I can even hear the words in the Italian songs well enough to make me cry on cue.

All my life my most troubled times have been represented in dreams by a mouth stuffed with bubble gum that no matter how much I pull out, how big the gobstopper, how many teeth come with it, my mouth is still stuffed with bubble gum.  I feel like this with Italian.  It's like knowing you are genetically a fabulous singer but your throat hasn't been told this, and when you open your mouth for an aria, a croak bleats out.  Inside my head, I've formed beautiful sentences.  Try to spit them out and I sound as if I'm being throttled by my own hand.  The skook on my shoulder looks on incredulously, saying Mamma Mia, Cosa? C'e?  You didn't practice this all the way to school and back?

I can get those words out like Pavarotti when I'm reading.  But on my own!  Every word is stuck to a piece of that enormous gobstopper of gum, every word stacked on top of another and what comes out astonishes even me.  I have become mute.  I am so petrified of spitting out a word that nobody will recognise that I have become the queen of silly grins, but this time because my bocca is stuck to my labbia, which is stuck to my lingua, which is stuck to my epiglottissimo.  I am now deep in lingua longer,  fruitlessly trying to remove the plug that will sblocco my flow of language.  In my dreams.

Like the morning we had to talk about our parents in School.  I composed what I thought was a short, succinct version of my strange childhood, mentioning the word Parents, whenever I could. This word I'd practiced a lot.  But I couldn't understand why my teacher, so patient and understanding, spent my few minutes suffocating a laugh behind her manicured hands.  Genitalia!  Genitalia!  The word for parents is genitori.  I had called them genitalia.  

Or that I had been bitten by a gypsy, and wanted to talk to some mosquitoes who were camping near their caravan.  It took me a day to get my tongue around the word for earring - occiale, and more for teaspoon - cucciaio, and next thing I knew I was eating with an earring and wearing a teaspoon.

Figures.

Instead: some photographs of water.  That flows as easily as I would like my l'addotiva lingua to do.  The light here is a beautiful cliche.  In the absence of words, let my trigger finger do the talking.

WET IN VENICE

It has begun raining in Venice. 

A quiet, dark, dappling, echoing rain, where I can hear every drop off the basil, dripping onto the cobbles, leaking from drainpipes, dribbling down walls, resting on sills, gathering into silver puddles, pooling on stone, bubbling on railings.  Flotillas of umbrellas float by, dense with drops.  People keep their heads down, jump over shining puddles, try not to splash.  Venice is quiet.  The tourists seem to have disappeared, huddled in their hotels, afraid of a truly exquisite experience.  I heard thunder, loud and important and determined.  Because the tourists are hiding, I'm spared their loud voices and when I look out of my window I don't see crumpled maps and coupled arguments, but Venetians going determinedly o  n their way, polite, respectful.  Venetians give way to each other in the calli:  tourists storm like herds of antelope, imagining every one else invisible in their quest for more.

I signed up for sms notifications of l'acqua alta.  High water.  I'm going to buy some yellow wading boots and get out there when the canals are flooded. The locals hate it, but it's a way of life.  They don't think it's romantic, or comfortable, or even photogenic. They don't like the aroma of mould and seaweed.  They bring out the sandbags, and hunker indoors.  But this is all new to me, and I'm going to stuff my senses.

So many tourists walk with their noses in guide books and maps.  Throw them away, I say. Get lost! Wander at will.  You'll never disappear, vanish into a canal, be kidnapped by a mad person who wants to make perfume out of your skin.  Discover the dark spots, the hidden corners, the surprising trees, the merry windowsills. Look Up.  Look Sideways.  Definitely look down ... for their are too many hidden smelly surprises dropped by ill mannered dogs not to heed this warning.  Put your cameras away for every second shot and just absorb Venice.

And in this raining, grey, silvery, soft, quiet light, it's even more beautiful.  After school today, my camera and I are going for a walk.

SAVANNA'S ROUGH GUIDE TO VENICE

After three days of near hysterical negotiations with the shipper in Sydney, the chief operating officer of Thai airways, Luda the on call saviour, Alitalia Rome and Venice, my luggage of beads turned up. Well not really turned up, just found sheepishly waiting where they'd been for days.  Something about an incorrect telephone number on the forms so I couldn't be contacted.  I'd been put in a language class above my ability, so happily deferred school till the following week to find and collect my beads.

Local transport stop, San Toma.

The wheels of Italy turn like bullock carts. Slow. Broken down. Stuck in mud. Lost in Translation. Patience is not a virtue.  It's a philosophy. A way of life. A methodology of slowing down, to appreciate the journey to get where you're needed. To talk to people along the way.  Why not find a new basil recipe while chatting to the woman in the passport queue ahead of you? Admire a handbag of a passenger as the guard helps a mother and baby board a boat?  

My cases were found at Cargo at Marco Polo aiport. Ah, but there's a transport strike on! Never mind, back on the Alilaguna speedboat, pay E17 for a 3 km taxi ride from the airport to cargo, fill out five lots of forms and go to three different departments, and no I don't have any contraband or Chinese carnevale masks or skinned lizards or shoe samples. Another taxi, another speedboat, and this time, a gondola ride in brilliant sunshine, the light dazzling off the facades of the palazzos, goggle eyed tourists hanging off vaporettos, the white marble Rialto bridge crowded to capacity, and me, grinning stupidly, landing with luggage at the San Tomo berth.  Fifty cents for the cross canal gondola, while the gondolier grumbled and complained and fussed that how come he's only busy on a strike day, every other day he struggles to make a living. This muttered in Italian.  Then a trundle through the narrow cool lanes and ECO! Marco Polo! my beads are safe.  I frisked them and fondled them and introduced them to their new workspace.  I unpacked my summer clothes, and immediately thought - what garbage clothes, I should have saved the shipping money and bought everything here.

I was lost every few minutes during the first few days.  The supermarket is just a block away, but my first shopping experience, my arms breaking with produce, took me an hour to get home because I think I went via Padua.  Initially the calli all looked the same, but now I can tell the difference, by the colours on the walls, the broken bricks, the little frescoes and tiny shops and window boxes.  The beggars all have their own posts too, setting up around eight in the morning: I pass them on my way to school.

I can find my way to the Rialto blindfolded - not that I would because the walk along the ponte past the restaurants has to be the most soul uplifting walk in any city.  I've become liberal in giving English directions. I've learned the hard way that when buying flowers, the seller is not being generous when wrapping them in beautiful cellophane and white paper with ribbons - you're charged for this service - and that most flowers are bought by stalk, not bunch.  I've learned that if I call a glove of garlic an olive, a little old lady will quickly correct me.  That a tea light candle for the oil burner I bought is not called il forno (a mini oven), but a candela.

I've also become very territorial about my adopted city.  The trillions of tourists throng through the calli like herds of buffalo, crashing into us locals, dropping gelati on our shoes, burning us with cigarettes, tripping us up when we're in a hurry.  I've learned the back ways to focal points avoiding the throngs and enjoying the cool alleys and surprising canals.  The walk to school is a visual feast of bridges, water, washing festooning the walls, small boats, barges delivering food and removing garbage, postmen struggling to move their trolleys through tiny lanes, traders selling fruit and vegetables, fish and newspapers in stony squares.  I'm still pinching myself at my good fortune in being here. I have a developed a permanently stupid grin on my face .. but I see it's contagious - so many other non locals are wearing it.

Institute di Venezia - my school

School is four hours a day; a grammatical slog, but necessary.  One teacher is a riot, the other hard work as few of us know what she's talking about - every aspect of schooling is in Italian. I think they call it immersive, but it's subversive. I dream I'm drowning, but I wake every day with more tortured words on my tongue.  Scarafaggio. Cockroach.  Cafuno - donkey - but used to abuse bad drivers.  L-orrecchini - earrings.   I'm surprised at how quickly I'm learning, and understanding.  Verbs are doing my head in. I'm reading and comprehending with ease but my tongue still mangles mightily.  Some days we do excursions - into the old Jewish ghetto, a miserable place with high walls, little charm and big echoes, where the Jews were forced to live from the 13thC. It's an architectural anomaly, with its high walls and tall buildings because there was no where else to go in that confined space except up.

A few days after arriving, Venice celebrated its annual Regatta Storica - the historical race between gondolieri of various classes. The weather had been divine all week, hot and bright, with white skies after 11am, but on this day, and this day only, when, armed with camera and a hat and water, I spent hours trying to find the best vantage point to photograph, the heavens opened upon all our hot tourist heads.

Regata Storica a Rialto

I had wedged myself between a sharp wrought iron balustrade, on the edge of the fondamenta at the Rialto, and throngs of tourists with umbrellas. Gondolas laden with fruit and vegetables, with modern day incarnations of the doge, with models of Atlantis and Venus, with clans of Chinese in medieval dress churned up the canal in the race to reach the Rialto first.  Nobody cared about their sodden clothes as they watched and cheered the decorated gondole streaking past.

The boats are enormous; watching the congestion on the canals it's impossible to believe that there aren't any collisions; but learning to pilot one of these beautiful boats is a lifetime art - the oarsmen barely make a splash.

So!  What did I do this first fortnight? Walked probably about 100 k - easily walking 10k a day.  Learned how to hang my washing out of the third floor window and yank the washing line until it squeaks and arrives at my window, so my lace undies drip on the passersby below.  Peg them well or rush downstairs to claim them before someone else does. Learned that if I don't take my pots of basil off the windowsill when I close the shutters at night to deafen the noises of amorous locals in the laneways, there is a chance someone could be decapitated.  Discovered that a bidet is the greatest invention for aching feet anywhere in the world.  Learned that if I open my windows on Sunday at 8am stark naked, to the cacophony of pealing bells,  there is a good chance that the man right across the calle - we can pick each other's basil, will be opening his windows, stark naked, at the same time.  Now he waits for me, but he's wearing a white vest, and I'm wearing a red silk cami.

Learned that the most efficient way of skyping friends is to sit on a window ledge, precariously above the heads of tourists, to get the best signal.  Learned that if I put a bottle of cold water in the same bag as my mobile, my mobile will drown, gasp, gurgle and die, and that I will need a new one, pronto.  Learned that if I buy a new mobile phone in Italy, it costs as little as lunch for two on a canal in the sun.  And that if I get the phone, and a prepay, I can also get a dongle which means that I don't have to hang out the window waiting for a connection but that I can go and sit in a cafe and do my verbs there.

When I'd found my luggage, I took Giorgio and Sylvia out to dinner to celebrate my total arrival. They in turn treated me to a wander around the back streets of the Rialto, where they introduced me to the wonderful bookshop L'Acqua Alta - High Water.  When the canals flood in November, the city is besieged by its own water and most of the ground floors are inundated.  As L'acqua Alta opens to a canal, Luigi, who owns the bookshop which is crammed to the ceilings with a trillion second hand books, has all of them stacked in old gondolieri and boats and barques and on platforms.  I asked him for a book on Casanova. Why, he replied, "do you want a book on Casanova? I am Casanova!  I can tell you all there is about amore in Venice!  If all the women in Venice are flowers, you Senora", he winked over his enormous, besplattered frame, breathing heavily towards my black floral dress, "you are a Bouquet!  Let me take you for dinner and the books are free." "Ma Grazie, Senor," I countered, "how about you give me a discount and I try to come back and visit you".  "Senora," he panted, "you are making my heart beat faster. I see there is a fire in you!".  "Just the sconti, Senor! Arrivederci!".

I returned with Marina, whom I'd befriended at school, after I'd told her about this amorous exchange. We found the bookshop by sheer chance, at the back of the Teatro Malibran on our way to a wrong-night ticketed Le Barbiere di Sevielle.  "Senor," I said, as I waltzed in, in another gorgeous dress. "Remember me? I am your bouquet!"  "HUH?" he said, face a total blank.  "Senor!  Miscusi!  You don't remember? I came in with Giorgio and Sylvia, we had wine, I bought the book on Casanova!"  His face fogged over, he scratched his portly belly.   Marina was holding onto the side of a boat of books, top of which was a book on giant boobs, trying not to fall over laughing.  Luigi waddled over, dusted the top of another book, and said "This one you will like, it has big penises inside!"  Indeed.  They were conversation stoppers.  Right next to the big book of gigantissimo penises was a large bowl of Casanova condoms.  "Take!" said Luigi!  "Take three each!"  One had an image of Casanova wearing a condom on his head.  Another of Cananova buried between the thighs of two buxom fishnet stockinged legs, and the third had the lion of Venice giving his lioness a mighty thrashing.  On the way out, Luigi grabbed my arm.  "You are a bouquet!" he said. "Will you let me take you for dinner tomorrow night?"  "Certo!" I laughed .... "but you won't remember me once I have turned the corner!"

I've learned a bit of Italian;  I needed to after getting bitten mightily by the vagrant mosquitoes. I needed some bite cream, not spray.  "Mi scusi, senora, dove la crema per il pelle per anti zanzare?"  Fair enough, I'd practised it all the way into the supermarket.  Where is the skin cream against mosquitoes?  Her response:  " Non vedi che sono impegnato, sicuramente si dovrebbe sapere dove si trova ormai, è passato il basilico, in basso a sinistra oltre il cereali per la colazione, non a destra al shampoo, un momento, signore, devo frequentare a questo cliente perduto, dove ero io oh le creme non sono dove il formaggio è meraviglioso, ma passato che non posso credere che non si riesce a trovarlo mi dispiace, non posso alzarmi da qui dovrete zero."  "WHERE?"  Instead, I went to a chemist. A little bit of knowledge is dangerous!

I Musici Veneziani

The school gives fantastic discounts on theatre tickets: Marina and I chose the Barbiere but there was a mixup with the tickets and she had to leave for Holland the following day.  At a loose end, we drank a glass of vino in the lane, sitting on a wine barrel, eating a wedge of pizza. Across the way was a Baroque Opera Concert - I musici Veneziani, in full Baroque costume in the grandly ornate Scuola Grande di San Teodoro, into which we rushed after skulking into the Max Mara shop, and ogling the La Perla undies.  Dawn was here for a few days before moving onto Rome.  We watched Venice turn to night on the rooftop of the Hilton Stucky, with views across the whole island, and a soft drink that cost E12, then took the long vaporetto back to Piazza San Marco, where we lingered around the Danieli hoping to spot a celebrity, sheltering from the sweltering sticky camera happy grubby tourists who only recognise good shoes when they fall over them ... mine!

I have a communicable disease. I don't think it's curable. It's called non pausa borsa.  A literal translation would be obsessive handbag purchases. Every time someone sees me with a new leather handbag, they also have to have one.  I have my favourite handbag shops, and I now have eight handbags and counting.  I take the victim in there, and presto!  They've caught my disease. Ditto shoes.  That's called Havetohava scarpe.  I've never been so well co-ordinated in my life.  And why not, when a leather bag costs as much as a bowl of pasta vongole?  Who wants to worry about starving children in Somalia when I can help the Chinese economy in a more positive way!

At Hilton Stucky on Guidecca

Dawn had wanted to come to the Opera Le Barbiere, but tickets were for students only, so when Marina wasn't able to use it, Dawn was delighted to come.  She caught buses and vaporettos and we joined the coiffed and perfumed throngs for the delightful, splendid, opera, then spent her last evening having seafood at the edge of the canal on the Rialto.  Another evening we'd wandered into a tiny restaurant overlooking a canal, where the waiter had placed a table for us almost on the window ledge; a hot, still night ... magic in Venice.

Dawn and I ate here

Dawn was staying in an apartment in the Cannareggio area - beautifully renovated, with an enormous window right onto the canal where we offered the gondolieri cichetti (little topless sandwiches characteristic of Venice) as they glide past.  Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, near a garden, quiet, loads of restaurants frequented by locals celebrating birth of babies, arriving by boat, drinking camparis.  The owner has agreed to let me have it for my November-February stint.  I'm thrilled, it's gorgeous.

My current home is in San Polo, near the San Toma vaporetto stop, and the traghetto to San Samuel, very central, two minutes from the vaporetto, Billa the supermarket, not even a spit from Giorgio and Sylvia, the gondale, walking to Ferrovia, Piazza La Roma etc.  It's a private, very very old home so I have the security of having the owners upstairs like when my toilet "blocco"  .... a terrible consequence, considering this is a city of canals and drains! I can hear 24 hour conversations in the lane, and if I need a new bag, I just look out of my window, choose the one I want from the display downstairs, lower my credit card on a piece of string to the blonde from Moldovia who told me she loves me, and in an instant I have another matching outfit.  (Just kidding! About the string bit, the rest is true) However, I can't have friends here, so it'll be great to spend time exploring new areas.  When MrM is here we'll walk and shop and cook;  I'm hoping M&N&Luda, & S&S will come too. 

Peggy Guggenheim shop

Accademia shop, opposite Guggenheim

"Guggenheim Canal"  - my name for dove non lo so.

S&G have wanted me to have a shop near the Guggenheim complex - truly a fantastic location and I've been making jewellery every afternoon. But we've hit a legislation snag - immigration/tax etc - so it doesn't look as if it's going to happen. I'm not really all that disappointed as I wanted to spend time enjoying the 

city and my friends when they come. As it is, I have school every day till 2ish;  I make jewellery in the afternoon, I do my homework, I do the blog, I take photographs, I walk everywhere. I have no idea how I would find any more time.   So when the notary said, Basta! Not possible I breathed a big sigh of relief which I kept to myself because I knew that S&G have been hoping this would be possible. But I don't want to spend time handcuffed in Casanova's cell!

Venetians eat very simply;  lots of small, tasty dishes.  S&G took Dawn and I to a private luncheon in an old villa with garden and ancient olive trees. The owners prepare typical Venetian fare for very small parties;  everything, from the linguine to the olives and oil and breads and cheeses - are prepared by themselves. In winter, the guests sit in la sala da pranza, in front of the fire.

My favourite book since I've been here?  Venice is a fish.   It's an ode to this magnificent, magical city.  I do think about the starving children in Somalia, occasionally.  There still lurks a conscience beneath my amorously beating heart.

MORE WINDOWS FLYING OPEN

I am in heaven.  

In case you're wondering.

 

Mario e Elisa, the couple in whose apartment I'm staying, took me to the Rialto this morning. I'd woken early, 5am - and wanted to walk the stony calle and watch the sun rise over my new home.  

But I was too nervous to leave until they appeared, as I was concerned the huge green ancient door with its multiple locks wouldn't let me in once I returned.  I was also very apprehensive that I would never-ever- ever find this tiny street, the width of a vein, again. Instead I bonded with my space: I extended the large wooden table, and I put post it notes of Italian nouns on many items in the rooms, and I moved some antique Murano glass bowls around, knowing they would soon be filled with flowers.  I called customs, fruitlessly, to find my luggage, still lost between Rome and Venice, and now, apparently, coming via Alitalia, not Thai airways - on "maybe Monday". 

And melting in the heat, the dripping, tutto umido caldo, padding around barefoot. Very often I leaned out the windows to watch the passing parades of people, shopping, hurrying, talking on their phones, or lugging trolleys of vegetables.

Sylvia/Giorgio's shop windows for my jewellery

The Rialto is the most famous bridge of Venice. It's always clogged with tourists, buying souvenirs in the shops that were built on the bridge to stabilise the foundations.  Stand either side and the view is always Venice's carnival, with boats  and ferries and water taxis and gondolas churning the water.   

The Rialto is where all the locals shop for their produce: the freshest of fish from the Adriatic, Oceanic, and Mediterranean.  Scallops, mussels, swordfish, oysters, squid, so fresh it's jumping.  Covered in ice and parsley.  Vegetables grown in market gardens outside Venice, fruit from the countryside.  The vendors are Croatian, Sri Lankan, Russian, Umbrian. I bought apples, plump, split figs and a hand of bananas from my man from Bangladesh.   A bag of leaves from the French woman.  Though I carried the basket Sylvia had given me,  everything went into Mario and Elisa's wheelie trolley, which they said I could borrow whenever I needed to.  I bought a huge bunch of liliums for Giorgio and Sylvia, and some yellow roses and white liscianthus for Mario and Elisa.  Figs, plump, split and sexy.  Pears to go with my blue cheese.    

Mario e Elisa

Don't worry, you'll be fine, my new friends assure, when I ask for directions. Paralysed like a goat trying to cross five lanes of traffic, Elisa led me to Sylvia's and Giorgio's shop, not even two minutes from my apartment.  Big hugs and kisses all around. "I was so worried about you", laughed Sylvia as I gave her the flowers and Giorgio his Acubras which he immediately plonked onto his head to to make him look even more debonair.  He gave me a damp bunch of fresh basil, smiled and said Lunch! One o clock. There - pointing to a dead end.

Dripping sweat in my wintery clothes, I bought a white voile shirt and white leather sandals from the shop I see from my window - run by two young Moldovian and Korean women.  Lunch in a local taverna with my new hosts didn't disappoint: a languid two hours spent sipping Lambrusco, ruminating on the heady aromas of clam pasta, small fried fish with pickled onions, skinny pizza with  just a breath of tomato and garlic, acqua frizzante and chocolate cake and tira misu that melted in our mouths. As a sublime backdrop, gondolas paddled indolently past our table, as two wrinkled, tandoori coloured old women with glittering turquoise eyelids and fuschia lips winked drunkenly at Fabio, the 5 foot nothing restauranteur, who deflected their advances by kissing my hand.      

I am so happy I think my heart is going to jump out of my chest.  

Rialto fish market

Venice is quite - remarkable.  You'll never be the same, in the same way.  The city sets your heart on fire. Everything sets your senses on high alert.  Every pore in your body is filled with awe.  It's so sexy you want to make love to everyone, all the time.  Coffee is served as if it is the blood of doges, collected especially for you.   Siesta - in this lazy soft heat - was invented so that the locals can rid themselves of their excesses of the morning, and renew for evening.

I have a bidet.  Not that there's a logical correlation between this and the above. Somewhere to wash my delicates, for now, the lace kind.

So, suitably imbibed and appetite sated, we get down to talking. "What do you want to do while you're here?" ask Giorgio and Sylvie.  Learn Italian, I assert. "No, no, no, that will happen anyway.  What about the beads?"  I'd shown them a piece I'd made in Sydney;  they nodded complicitly then told me they want me to exhibit in the space of a friend of theirs in the Guggenheim villa.  A wonderful space for you, such exposure, they smile. You should be there for in time for Biennale.  But that's two years away, I laugh. Si, so?  You will come and live here, we will help you with the documentare. We will phone friends.  Giorgio says I should also work on Murano. He's going to take me there next week, to lie on our stomachs on the jetty and look for antique beads in the water.   

I know I'm in love with Venice.  I don't think I have ever been this happy in my entire life:  it's all encompassing.    Who cares about time for sleeping? Nobody else does.

It's melting hot, the sky is white,  and everyone is now having siesta.  The roller doors of the shops clang closed.  The green shutters of my la camera da letto are closed.  I slink guiltily onto my bed, and am lost in peace and quiet for two hours.  I wake at sunset. The silence from no traffic is blissful.  I heard party revellers returning last night, almost until sunrise, heels tapping on the cobbles.

I'm going to read about Casanova, and paint my toes aubergine, and hope to sleep later than 4am as I'm still jetlagged.  The only time this city stops is between 5am and 7am.  I hear people laughing all night.  And still my luggage hides, somewhere.  Beads, beads, I need my beads!

GRAZIE. GRAZIE. GRAZIE MILLE.

I HAVE A NEW MANTRA.  IT IS GRAZIE. GRAZIE. GRAZIE.

I had a wonderful, happy time in Perth with family and friends.  My daughter and I had warm emotional reunions, and we chose her wedding gown together.  I baked, cooked and pottered, then all too soon, the final dinner was done, the bags were packed, my new party frocks folded and I was on my way to Venice.  

Gone were the backpack and baggy travelling pants of previous journeys.  Landing in Italy need a different dress code than Nepal. I dressed in my lime cashmere and pearls.  I wore black ballet slippers and spritzed with my Coco Chanel parfum.  Naturally, I was upgraded to Business Class on Emirates. Grazie!   I sat up there in the perfumed air, on an airborne throne, as I winged my way to Mad Adventure Part two.  I sipped my icy Verve Cliquot, and toasted my good fortune.  I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. Grazie.   I dined on lightly grilled salmon with mustard mashed potatoes, Arabian Mezze, Belgian chocolates and ground coffee.  I slept like a baby.  Grazie. Grazie. Grazie tutto.

My luggage on trolley

And then, Venice, and Piazza S. Marco and its steeple below. And the green dome of Santa Maria della Salute. And so much shimmering water and ancient buildings.  I was trembling with joy and excitement when I arrived in this excrucuiatingly beautiful city that was going to be my new home for a while.  A small, typically Italian, glitch is that the excess baggage, containing my beads, which should have arrived ieri (yesterday) will arrive domani - tomorrow - which means I have to return to Marco Polo aeroporto to collect them.

Speechless in Venice

But when returning to the airport means a 40 minute speedboat ride across the sea and into the canals, where 17th century Doge palaces dip their dowager toes in the water, past the old 18th Century glass furnaces, between tanned Italians out for the day on the water, who gives a toss?  I didn't even care when the woman at the information counter for lost luggage started yelling at me, because hey, look where I am, and I am giving thanks left, right, up down and all the in betweens.  I helped some Americans use the money machines.  I gave an Arab couple a euro for their luggage trolley.  I passed my trolley onto some passengers struggling with their luggage. I was a tour guide to a group of Canadians on the boat.  Pay it forward, man - how could one not, in this blessed city.

Giorgio, telling Sylvia I've arrived

Giorgio met me at San Angelo porte. Grazie - how happy I was to see his smiling face.  It's a steamy time of year: the air is languid, and smells like fish.  It's the first time in months that I have sweated. I thought I'd forgotten how.  Between us we dragged my protesting cases (pesante - heavy) with beads, a few Akubras for Giorgio at his request, and some Australiana for Sylvia - and all my WINTER clothes)  along the cobbles, to "my" apartment, where I met Elisa, the landlady, for the first time.  She was so delighted to see me, she was radiating.  She speaks less English than I speak Italian, so I know we're going to be best friends.  Apparently she works at the market on the Rialto - I am going to ask her if I can go with her, one day.   

The apartment is more lovely than I remembered.  Light fills the rooms.  The fig tree is as green, but larger. The bookshelves are lined with fragile, beautiful works of Murano glass.  The furniture is made of old walnut and carved mahogany, with huge squishy cushions to curl up on. The window ledge is wider than I remember, and looks onto a wild patch of greenery which is a luxury here. I'll be able to sit on it, catching the morning sun, blogging or having breakfast. Or just pinching myself again, that I'm here. 

I had imagined that I'd be nervous.  Intimidated by lack of language. A bit scared of being all those things that many people said I would be.  But as we swooshed down those canals, making a creamy cappucino wake behind us, and I looked up to the window boxes  cascading with petunias, and noticed the remains of peeling murals, and washing flapping between windows, and indolent gondoliers giving the five times over assessment of every woman, and blissed tourists, I felt as if I was coming home.  Elisa pointed to fridge, key, window, towels, shower.  I'm going to put my language notes up to speed along vocabulary.  I start school on Monday, by which time I hope to have my summer clothes from cargo. 

Speedboat to San Angelo porte from airport

As I unpacked, someone upstairs was practising Mozart on their violin.  There's a bag and shoe shop right across the lane, and the happy voices of tourists passing underneath my window float up to me like a different kind of music.  My hair hangs in damp tendrils.  I'm walking around barefoot, in a red silk cami, because all my summer clothes are somewhere between Rome and Venice.  

Savanna, Savanna, Savanna, I hear from my window.  Like all good Italians, I lean out to see who could possibly have the same name as me.  Sylvia is standing downstairs, her arms and shopping trolley laden with gifts. Lambrusco. Extra Virgin Olive oil. A Whole Box of l'uova. (grapes)   Three different types of pasta. Tins of piselli.  (peas).  Bread. Bottles of pomodoro sauce. A bag of zucchini.  A bag of plump, aromatic, firm tomatoes.  Apple juice. For you she says, because you must be hungry.  Sleep, she says, and we'll see you domani.  You look younger, she says.  And I say, because I am very very happy to be here.  She leaves, but from the street she shouts up - Savanna -( I look down )- You must put the Vino in the frigoriferio.   Cuerto, I shout down, si, cuerto.  Grazie mille. Grazie. Grazie, grazie, grazie.

I made myself a tuna salad with bits and pieces.  There's another knock at the door.  It's Elisa, bearing gifts.  Of a hand woven, leather handled straw basket of plums and tomatoes that she has grown herself.  A tub of mozzarella.  Pane de casa.  And a tub of basilico for my window sill, the ultimate welcome gift. The basket is beautiful; I will use it everywhere.

The internet works.  I have a tv, except it speaks only Italian, but I'll made friends with that too, shortly.

Church bells peal.  The city darkens.  The streets quieten.  I have a fridge of food, baskets of fruit, enough space to dance, create, cook.   And two more friends in my Italian world.  Five more Italian words. And I've only been here three hours.

I am completely overwhelmed by the limitless generosity of my new family.  I have a lightness of being. How lucky am I, how lucky am I. Grazie, from the bottom and breadth of my heart.  I feel truly blessed.

This is going to be a life changing experience.  I know it already.  Oh, grazie.