Roots

While I was blogging about art deco and architecture, Reno was unearthing my roots.   In more ways than one.   He began with trying to find a copy of a book that my father, writing under the pen name of Walter Storm (where I got my Susan Storm from) and my mother wrote under Beryl Storm, as Harry and Beryl Bloom (Jewish) had an entirely different, and dangerous, connotation considering the place and time.

On the net, Reno found 2 pro communist books written by my father - The Crisis in Czechoslovakia, written in 1948 by Walter Storm, on Amazon, which we had  delivered to my brother Steve who we'll be visiting in London next week. Then we found The People's Victory in Czechoslovakia on Ebay, also written in 1948.  What we couldn't - and still can't - find is a copy of We Meet the Czechoslovaks, about life in the country at the same time, and written by my parents. My brother Steve has one copy, probably the only one in existence.  My mother was pregnant with me at the time, and I was born just as the book was published, but her pregnancy is not mentioned at all. Which means neither am I, which is par for the course, and which is why it's so important that I find out if I really happened, or if I am just a figment of my own imagination.

In reality though, my mother had had 7 miscarriages, one baby who died at 6 weeks, and another miscarriage before I was born.  She also was confined to a Czech maternity hospital for several months prior to my birth so she wouldn't lose me.  It would have been difficult to bond with anything if you had constant evidence it wouldn't survive.  So I didn't hear stories about Prague and have always had a sense of lost identity and geography.


The discovery of my father's books didn't happen as easily as one paragraph. We trawled so many dusty bookshops in twisting lanes. We walked into old and crusty bookshops where crumbling books were stacked halfway to the ceiling, asking crinkled dusty men and young intellectuals if they'd heard of the books.  The books were published in English because I would imagine they were contraband here.  One helpful seller found "What happened in Czechoslovakia" in a German translation, on line. So we searched for this on the internet,  and to our surprise and excitement found the English copy on Ebay, which we bought immediately as it is probably the only copy in captivity.

I asked the seller if he knew anything about this book. He replied: "Hi Susan. This is my favorite part of doing what I do. I am thrilled that this will reach hands that can best appreciate it. The little that I can add to this is that I bought a collection of communist booklets and pamphlets and union material from a a gentleman at a local flea market here in Oregon. He in turn had acquired the materials from the estate of a union organizer (a stevedore) out of Coos Bay, Oregon."

In the bookshop trawling process, we went into Palace of Books, five floors of everything you can imagine half way up Wenceslas Square.  There were books by JK Rowlingova, ad Colleen McCulloghova, and a copy of Henry Miller's hand written and illustrated literary jottings of his lust and desire for a young Japanese prostitute, which we bought for $10.

On the way up to Prague Castle, battling bitter winds and biting cold, we ducked into a tiny bookshop with cracked and faded titles, run by a man with one blind eye and one roving eye, who hadn't heard of my father's books,  but we found a book of a play which we thought was called  "Slovnik",  illustrated with erotic etchings from 1864 and an Ergon Schiele's splayed naked woman on the cover.  It was in Czech, so we thought we'd ask our hotel concierge to translate it for us, as the characters seemed very colourful and complicated.  Underneath their names in bold font were their small italicised parts, and they appeared in alphabetical order:  Kokarda, Kokota, Priazet, Prirozena Radost, Pririrodni, Prijimat pod oboji, Promiskuita, Prostitutka.  But hold on, these sounded vaguely sexy.

The drawings were quite fabulous and raunchy for their time, and incredibly anatomically sexually detailed.  When I realised the characters only appeared once, I looked up the word "Slovnik".  Well, whadda know, it means Dictionary.  We had bought an erotic dictionary.  We had a hilarious couple of hours using the translation device on Reno's phone and reading it as if it was a play.

The search for my parentage continued. Prague is beautiful beyond belief but it's a city that I can't comprehend.  We walked for 5-6 hours a day, and while Reno looked up at the gargoyles and gutterings, I needed to focus my camera down, to the cobbles, shadows, textures and designs under my feet.  I felt lost and anxious, alienated and detached. We visited the Jewish quarter, where Reno innocently proclaimed that my father would have been a frequent visitor here.  "He was a communist," I snapped irritably, "not a religious Jew".  Quietly, in his "that wasn't a necessary reaction", mode, Reno bought a hand crocheted yarmulke from the woman behind the counter, to wear at my daughter's Jewish do's.  I felt as if Prague was drowning me, suffocating me.  It had been very cold for days, the light was heavy and bleak.  We'd had fun and been to concerts, and explored, but Prague hung over my head, unknown.  I wanted to leave the city, go into the country, see some green and feel some space.

We still had a week to go, and I still didn't know about my parentage or more answers to my early days.  I'd withdrawn a bit from Reno, battling my roots and become quite cranky with Prague and its refusal to let me understand it.

Then the sun came out, the temperature rose 20 degrees and we unpacked t-shirts and exposed our skin for the first time in months.  We went to the controversial building, Dancing House, the fabulously off beat building constructed in the 1960's, in a hole left by WW2bombing.  The building is astonishing and electrifying and exciting, so we paid seniors tickets (we cheated) for the modern art exhibition it houses.  Which were so modern it was a graffitti ridden three floors of splattered paint and electrical wires that resembled a construction site.  We were the only visitors.

Traffic noise and trams, tourists and touts thrusting leaflets in our hands,  were getting to both of us.  I was over Prague.  Reno was close to being over me because I was fed up with the iphone attached to his hand, and he couldn't understand why I had to read my 3 d interactive monument map and stop at the passing monuments, when he had it all in his iPhone in a straight blue line.  We had a tiff about him being interested in the destination, while I was interested in the journey.
I felt fragile and lost and detached, quiet and introverted. He was being his usual warm and wondrous self, but I was in another, isolated, zone. Prague was so ... tall. Art Deco was everywhere, but 50 feet up.

He took my hand and sans either means of navigation we found the bagel and coffee shop of our first frosty morning, where we sat in the same leather armchairs and talked.  I could see he was perturbed that I'd withdrawn from him.  I told him that I was having difficulty being close to him in this city, perhaps because my mother hadn't held me much as a baby, that I'd always managed on my own, that I was feeling suffocated by Prague and angry with my parents. He wanted to know why knowing about my parents so was important, because wasn't I who I am because of what I've done and where I've been? Without parents?   I started to cry, and said I have a right to be acknowledged by my parents, a right to be educated by them, a right to know what I was like when small. The waitress brought the bagels and coffee and watched us from a distance as Reno dried my tears with his fingertips.  I cried from a very deep place, bringing my childhood abandonment wounds to the surface, and my closeness issues. Reno held my hand, and wiped some cappuccino froth from my mouth, and dried my tears with a Pilsener beer napkin.  Sun struggled through the windows, and Reno listened like his life depended on it.

“Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.” 
― Milan Kundera

I want to buy some of Milan Kundera's books, I said, looking to the green Gothic spires and gargoyles and art deco embellishments. I want to know why this place is familiar but forbidding.  I want to understand this city, like I understand Venice. I want to know the incredible lightness of being.

Let's go back to the Palace of Books, said Reno, taking my hand and leaving the gps in his pocket, and let's buy some Milan Kundera, (who wrote about the Prague Spring of '65.)


(I started this blog by saying that Reno was helping me get back to my roots in more ways that one. In Italy, I'd realised I needed to put a colour in my hair. He'd searched supermarkets with me, and we'd finally found a non permanent in a farmacia. Back at our apartment, he was back on google, translating the ingredients for me.  They contain ammonia, he said, you can't use this, and returned with me to the farmacia to get a refund. In Prague, the hair colour situation had become critically orange, and after a two hour hunt we eventually found a department store, well hidden in the heritage buildings, which contained every hair colour, lotion, potion and cream you could desire.  I couldn't find my particular L'Oreal amongst the hundreds of different kinds, in Czech. So Reno stood there, using his iPhone to translate ingredients from Czech to English, then googling the English to see if they'd damage my hair. He would have inspected 25 different boxes.

I was resigning myself to spending the next three months with increasingly orange hair and in the later stages, a turban as I was too terrified to try something that looked like it meant fried Titan pig on a spit with a bit of Zlotnik mixed in.  Then there it was - Mahoganyova - on the shelf. Reno translated, and it passed the chemical test.  He queued with the Czech women buying lipstick and deodorant, and bought two boxes of hair colour, just in case the wastes of Morocco were devoid of L'Oreal.

That's my husband.  When we go into a computer shop, I sit on the floor, snoring.  As I write, because I have something to expiate - later - this remarkable man has made us a salad in a champagne bucket, used the food stolen from our breakfast table to make an aperitif, and is boiling up a pasta bianco that he found in the supermarket, after we'd tried to work out if we were buying mayonnaise or body lotion.
We took a different route to the book shop, and accidentally passed the stall of an artist we'd ignored the first day when we were trying to work out what butter and milk looked like.  We both immediately fell in love with an oil painting of a large eyed woman with red hair and red lips, with Prague Castle behind her, done by an Albanian artist whose works were in collections all over the world.  His wife was an adroit and adept seller. She slashed the price, we paid in cash, and she rolled up our painting. Reno was levitating.  What does that painting mean to you? he asked.  I was still rattled and unhappy, so I replied that it was obviously me in Prague. Reno said - it's your past, your present and your future.  This is a good omen.

No 11.

Back at the hotel, I flopped on the bed, exhausted. The sun was blazing, the spires were shining, but I wanted to curl up under the doona and sleep.  The trail of my parents had run cold.

View from rooftop of parents flat, visible on other side from our hotel.

Reno stood on the balcony and looked across the rooftops, across our part of Prague.

Get up, he said, as he put his shoes back on. We're going now, he said, back to Provenizska street. We're going to find where your parents lived.   But I want to blog, I protested. No, he said, now, we're going now.  Don't even finish your tea. He dragged me out, with my tear stained face and knotty lank hair and the grey jumper I'd been lolling around in.  Depressed and embarassed, he dragged me into the cobbled streets, past the high end clothing shops and into the graffiti molested back entrance of my street.  The gutters were clogged with KFC packets, cigarettes, tram tickets and plastic bags. Windows were broken. An African drug dealer was shrieking into his mobile phone in English and French.  People were rushing into and out of the underground metro, which Reno and I went into - he saying that must be where my father travelled into the city and out to the country where they were living according to my father's book he was reading, I protesting the underground was too young and modern.  We said we'd buy tickets the following day and ride the metro to see where it went, as We Meet the Czechoslovaks was about my parents life in the Czech countryside.

I photographed the buildings in the street, as we had the idea of going to some sort of bureau in Prague to see if any of them had been a hospital at some time. But I kept going back to one building, at the end of the street.  Reno asked if I had a street number in my head, for where I'd lived. No, I said, no, I don't remember.  Bring your childhood back, he said, concentrate, feel the street.

Eleven, I said, the number 11 keeps coming up.  We walked from 3, where I was standing, to 5 to 7, to 9 .. to 11.   (later, we remembered that 1,3,5,7,9, is the password for wifi in our hotel ... )A mid forties man was helping load a washing machine into the building, which we could see now was being renovated.  In reasonable English he asked if we needed help.  I told him that I thought I had been born in this building.  "Oh, no, "he said, "it's never been a hospital, it's flats.  The man who owns them is now 90 and lives in London. His name is Kollinsky - he is Jewish - and maybe he knew your parents!  He has a textile business and we are renovating his flat."  We're going to London next week, we said, maybe we should look him up?

Me in tears, with the man who knew my parents in 1948.

Would you like to see inside the building, our new friend Radek Hodan asked.  Reno and I were speechless.  We went up in the minute lift, through which we could see the various floors winding along the stairwell. We were shown Kollinsky's flat, now made into offices which had been sectioned off from a much larger area. We walked around a large,  100 square metre flat, which was originally 200 metres, in mint 1940's condition, with original stove and plumbing.  We were taken up to the rooftop, from where we could see two balconies away from our hotel balcony ...  and then our friend rushed downstairs to bang on the door of his neighbour, a 90 year old man who'd lived there his whole life.

My mother mentioned lots of stairs, and an attic.

Who knew, and remembered, my parents.  They lived here, he said, pointing to the doorway three steps away from his.

Who, without prompting apart from their names, real and invented, remembered that my mother was blonde and elegant.  That my father was a writer and reporter. He asked if my mother was a teacher.  Now I need to find out if she taught English at some stage but there is no body alive to tell me.  He remembered a baby.   He looked at me and said he'd held me, as a baby, when I'd been brought home from the hospital. He remembered that they had a lot of friends, with a lot of comings and goings. And that they'd gone back to Africa.   And that maybe (after a lot of concerned looks and much Czech that wasn't translated) there was a scandal.

Unionist plaque on the wall of my parent's building

By this time I was crying. Our friend's wife had come out of their door, and she was cross translating with a squirming baby in her arms and a 3 year old who'd stripped to nakedness on the landing while we were talking.

The man asked if I knew anything about a Mrs Evans.   I hadn't.

After profuse thanks to Radek and with his email address in hand for exchange of photos and more information, we went downstairs. The old man followed us.  At the door, he shook our hands and then fell to his knees against the wall, and put his hands over his head,  and in Czech, told the story of Mrs Evan to our friend who translated for us.  She had gassed herself in my mother's Czech oven, in flat 3,  no 11 Provizneska Street.  Three owners had lived there since.
 

Interior of flat similar to my parents

When I returned to our room, there was a message from my mother's opera singer friend, Denver Smith, who we are due to see in London next week.   I have lots of stories to tell you of your mother's life in Prague, he wrote.  She spoke of lots of stairs, and an attic. " Did she ever tell you of a Mrs Evans?" I wrote.   "God, I have the shivers," he replied, but I can't remember."

"Work on those shivers," I wrote.  "We will talk about them next week."

My parents flat, No. 3.

Roll over, Beethoven.

The Rudolphinium is touted as being the best concert hall in Europe.  It's acoustics are apparently beyond reproach.  Tickets were available. And Beethoven was playing. The Emperor.  Priceless.

The Rudolfinum, one of the most noteworthy buildings in Prague, was built between 1876 and 1884 according to the designs of architects Josef Zítek and Josef Schulze. Originally intended as a multipurpose cultural building in Prague, the Rudolfinum was inagurated on February 7, 1885. It carried out its mission until 1919, when it was converted to the House of Commons of the Czechoslovak Republic. Concert activity was restored to the Rudolfinum during the German occupation, but full rehabilitation, particularly of the gallery, did not take place until 1992. After a general reconstruction by architect Karel Prager in 1992, the Rudolfinum became the home of the Czech Philharmonic and the Rudolfinum Gallery.

This fabulous building is 10 minutes from our hotel.  We dressed to thrill, me in my red dress and silk shawl, handsome husband Reno in his Boss linen jacket, and walked to the Rudolfinium through the back streets, past Prague old town square, the busking silent men painted gold, mulled wine sellers (I bought one and gave my leftovers to a cold, hunched up beggar) the sausage sellers, the sax and trombone and washboard players, the ghostly and glorious Gothic spires, the Astronomical clock, the centuries old churches touting for their own classical concerts of Dvorak, Vivaldi, Mozart, past so many garnet and amber shops and "original" pashminas.  

The building stands on the shores of the Vlatva, with a ghostly Prague Castle looming on the opposite hill.  The audience, lulled with Bohemian Rose, were a quiet and orderly, well dress lot; not the usual tourist trash in sneakers and backpacks. Tickets were cheap - $35 each; we sat upstairs in the gallery with perfect vision of Australian pianist Piers Lane as he played Beethoven's Emperor Concerto on a piano that had risen from the bowels of the concert hall onto the stage. Above our heads, glorious chandeliers and murals, velvety walls and marble columns.  And a rendition of Beethoven that carried us with every note, every hue, every grand and minute gesture, to transport us right into the heart of the music. The Emperor will reign in our hearts forever. We shouted bravo, bravissimo, but the restrained Czechs turned and glowered.

This was followed by Strauss' Don Quixote. What sort of ego does a composer have to  include 2 harps, 10 cellos, 8 bass and double bass, 22 violinists, 4 French horns, 4 oboists, a kettle drum, trombone, four trumpets, a full set o drums and ... the siren used for Venice's aqua alta, or the siren left over from WW2 just as the bombs were going to drop.  I would rather have root canal than listen to this piece ever again. The conductor  worked himself to a frenzy keeping the 120 players in tune; the musicians were clamorous, discordant, and too many.  I was too nervous to watch Reno, who was as appalled as I ... but it wasn't the place to laugh, and we couldn't escape. Instead we watched with musical horror as the wind machine was wound up and around, as the percussionist beat his 20 strikes with one eye on the conductor and the other on his watch; at the cellist, trying valiantly to be heard amongst the cat-calling, barbed wire rolling, rattlesnake rattling, wailing din as he tried not to fall off his little platform.  I am sure there must have been a triangle in there, somewhere ... or could it not fit on the stage.  The only way that anyone could be forced to pay for this would be as a follow on to Beethoven.

Reno and I laughed all the way home, relieving the tension with a well deserved KFC meal, in the company of derelicts, prostitutes and some relieved tourists. 

Prague Spring - revisited.

We're in Prague.  The city where I was born, so long ago, while my father was working as a Reuters Correspondent, a civil rights lawyer, a photographer, and a communist.  My parents had been in Europe for almost nine years, having left immediately after their 3 week courtship and marriage, on a troop ship, into the European war zone.  I know little about this time in Europe.  We escaped during an uprising because my father's friends were being "dealt with" in a way that made them permanently invisible and the net was closing. In order to get married in December, I'd had quite a rigmarole to get my Czech birth certificate, as all I knew was that I'd been born in Provaznicka Street, Prague 1. And that we fled in the dead of night leaving all our papers behind.  It was a time my mother didn't share with me, and I didn't know the questions to ask.

It was Reno's idea to visit Prague. I'd been here 15 years ago with Liza, my daughter for a few days and remember so much of it, especially that the time had been too short.  Reno wanted to see my origins, although those are so complicated. My mother had told me so little, and I hadn't known my father since I was about 10 - so my origins are vague, although I have always felt European, ridiculous as that sounds.  Reno, who found me, is helping me find myself.  A task he has set himself assiduously to do.

That is was winter, and would probably be cold enough for snow, made visiting Prague for more than a few days more enticing.  We flew from Venice, over the chilling, snow covered Alps, and in an hour landed in an entirely different environment from that of insular Venice and its narrow lanes and enclosing walls.

But Reno was silent and anxious for the half hour taxi ride from the airport. Anxious I suspect because he may have been wondering about the efficiency of the Czechs as our airport/hotel pickup didn't materialise; soon sorted with an apologetic phone call and a speedy taxi ride in a Skoda.  Skoda. Skoda. Skoda.  Is it the only car in Prague? Mine is a luxury car in Australia:  here everyone from the Police to Taxis own them.  From stately buildings, canals and bridges, to Skoda filled traffic jams moving at 120kms an hour past concrete blocks, advertising billboards, buses, trams and the usual urban detritus that surrounds an airport, was quite an aesthetic jolt,  and Reno felt every tremble, rumble and hiccup.  I watched him watch this old city of mine, could feel him wondering what we could possibly do here for two weeks.  Then we entered the old city, and Reno relaxed when  our cab lunged over the cobbles and through narrow streets to leap the curb and stop jubilantly outside our quaint, cigarette smelling hotel - Residence Leon D'Oro,  just 100 metres from where I was born, we quickly discovered - a co-incidence as, when visiting Cezsky Krumlov and Saltzburg were still on our agenda, we'd booked a different hotel.

The sun was out.  The gothic buildings gleamed.  The markets were busy.  Streets were wide enough to run a pair of horses through.  Our room was high up, overlooking the three copper embossed domes of the Church of St Gallus, with sloping terracotta tiles.  We had a kitchenette! Miracle of miracles!  The Albert supermarket was across the road, inside an art deco building with a domed, frescoed roof, where we spent two hours trying to buy milk, and butter, struggling to decipher not only language but also an alphabet that had more consonants than vowels and preferred most of them backwards.   When I asked a woman for help, beginning with "Do you speak English", she replied NO! and walked off, muttering.

We bought roll mops, gherkins, black breads, watery tomatoes, tea bags, olive oil and spices. Our fab kitchenette only supplied a kettle, some plates and table cutlery.  It cost us less than $30.  This supermarket didn't sell knives or tea towels. Finding these would be another adventure. The front desk attendant fell over himself to help us, drawing on maps, offering to get us tickets for theatres, and pointing out the street where I was born - just 100 metres away.

But I wanted to find it myself, unaided. We walked up towards Wenceslas square, not a square at all, but a wide, glorious boulevard, now lined with high end shops, like Marks & Spencer, Calazione, La Borsa, sausage sellers, donut makers, the Palace of Books, the largest commercial bookstore I've ever seen, selling JK Rowlingova, amongst a million more on three floors. It's to the left, I shouted to Reno, wanting to do it mapless ... no, it's to the right .. and there it was, my street. Small square hand carved cobbles from the 16th century; four storied houses with domed windows and dormer windows and huge doors and magnificent architecture ... and ugly graffitti and papers blowing around and clogged gutters .. Where was the Prada shop I saw 20 years ago, that explained my handbag fetish?Where were the other icons of fashion?  I clomped down the street, and picked up a cobble to take home, to tell me hopefully, stories about myself.  We walked to the other end of the street, and then!  Viola! Eccola! There they were, jostling for my attention.  Zara, Burberry, Chanel, Zegna, Max Mara, Cardin, Versace.  I yam what I yam, no doubt about it.  My genesis found, we could keep walking.  Through the back streets, finding small, smoky places to have coffee and bagels, seeing evidence of hard times for so many decades. The mood is not Venice, so filled with light.

Surprisingly, unlike Venice, my internal GPS hadn't yet been programmed. We seemed to walk in circles, but eventually we found Charles Bridge, thronging with artists and tourists, dogs on leashes and musicians, including the blind woman who sang Ave Maria with her piano accordion all those years ago.  This time she was accompanied by a young woman with an equally angelic voice - I'd hope it is her daughter.  I remember when I heard her singing that I'd hoped one day to have that played at my wedding. And so it came to pass.

Prague is a fairytale.  It's history is breathtaking. The architecture other worldly. The cobbles tell tales from the 12th century. The art deco remarkable.  The people getting friendlier, in direct proportion to their English language skills.  Add to their tangled tongues the more familiar Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Spanish and Italian - they're doing very well.

But the food is revolting.  There's no other word for it. Huge slabs of pink fat globbed onto plates with gravies and dumplings.  Choose from pigs trotters, goose legs, liver dumplings, pigs ribs, lambs brains, duck liver, pig's ears.  The smell of pig wafts from mid morning to midnight, as piglets, wrapped in alfoil, are turned on the rotisseries, and sold from numerous food stalls.  Thousands of sausages, promised with sauerkraut and tomato ketchup, tempt the palate.  But they're all made with pork. 

And everyone wolfs it down (sorry ... couldn't resist that) with gusto. So we're shopping for pasta and spinach and cheeses and SuperReno is once again doing all the cooking on our tiny little hotplate in our apartment. I reminded him that our love story began when he sank in my arms, and he is now spending more time with his arms in the sink ...  for as I write, he's washing our clothes in the bidet!

We walk for miles and hours, rugged to the eyeballs for it's so cold the air sneaks in where it can and bites.  Sunglasses stop our eyeballs from freezing.  But the blossoms are waiting for the first temperature jump to burst out and adorn the city.  Gnarled magnolias hide their tender buds, and some vivid yellow mimosa is already colouring the generally grey look of Prague.

We wandered into the grand and glorious Municipal Buildings, which has a concert hall that can hold 2000 people, and I wander into a restaurant that I immediately recognise as being the one in which the fabulous and funny "I served the King of England" was filmed.  If it didn't stink of roasting pork, we'd eat there.  The head waiter was as disdainful as the character in the film, and not the least bit impressed that I knew his restaurant was in a film.  We explored the gorgeous Hotel Paris, were almost as impressed in the Hotel Imperial, and booked ourselves into a Mozart Opera dinner in the grand ball room of the Hotel Grand.

We revisited the Don Giovanni marionette puppets that I'd been so impressed with when I was here with Liza, and Reno enjoyed it equally, although it had changed. We found a place for chicken and beer and chips, loading up on protein.  And we spent a whole day moving from one hotel room to another because the roof leaked ... just as well because the bathroom door didn't open, the shower rose was broken, the hot tap was really cold, and the cold hot. And were incredibly excited because we'd been given a suite - for fifteen minutes, unfortunately not enough time to invite Francine and Pippo to join us for some Czech frivolity.

And listen to the banging and knocking for two days as the leaking roof is repaired.  But we've booked for Beethoven at the Rudolfinium, where Davide our Venetian cellist played.

Roll it over, Beethoven.  We're excited.

Arrivederci, Venezia.

Our month in Venice is done.  It went slowly, arthritically in the cold of late winter, when the only reason we found to get out of bed was to walk 50 metres to our favourite cafe for boiling hot chocolate, espressi,  and sticky buns, even though Tintoretto, Titian, Klimt, Ernst and all the others were waiting impatiently for our adulation.  There were days when hail rattled the windows and frost bit the metal and fog, then we wrapped ourselves to the eyeballs,  and plunged into the soggy lanes to dance with delight at the foamy rage of the waves knocking the gondolas senseless because so few people were mad enough to be out.  Even the gondolieri were huddled in coffee shops, smoking, going out only for the loads of Japanese on day tours, determined for their rides.

We'd fought the rivers of masked revellers splashing through 10 days of pantomime, where our vaporetto companions were everything from Aphrodite to Zeus with a flaming halo.  We'd befriended a doctor, an artist, a cellist, an antique dealer, a madly gay restauranteur, and two laundry women, but never, never, the grim cranky woman at the entrance who glared at us every morning with the same expression of the dragon in 9.5 weeks when Mickey Rourke was trying out the beds.

When the nights began to grow shorter, the days began with soft light filtering through the shutters.  We went out early, before the hoards, and before the squares were filled with souvenir vendors and those upside down map holders.  We lay in soft green grass sprinkled with wild daisies, waiting for the first burst of spring buds on the naked, still-shivering trees, drinking champagne given by our friends, near statues of generals, doges and kings.  Babies were out in their beautifully cut clothes, blinking in their first watery blue days. The grand dames, walking arm in arm with their life long friends, were still coated in flocks of chinchilla, herds of mink, and packs of foxes, their lips painted vermillion, their older-wiser eyes hidden behind Raybans, giving their coats the final airing before being packed away for the winter.

We've thrown away regular time tables and are living within our personal rhythm. We've eaten gelati in the rain.  Breakfast at dusk.  Biscuits and cheese and pickled herring sitting on the fondamente of Rialto with tourists and pigeons watching so many types of boats. We've fought and we've shouted, and we've laughed, and we've loved. We've been lost, and found, and lost again, maintaining identities while becoming more flexible.  So we'd have fought again,  but each time one of us wants to throw the other into the Canal of the Assassins, or down the river of Lepers, or into the short cut to the street of the fabric makers, that's the one who is carrying the passports or money. So we've gone home and listened to Vivaldi and woken to bells clanging and people laughing and Venice at our fingertips. And realised that nothing really matters.  Even though we think it does.   Or we've been silent, just walking the shadowy lanes at midnight, when all the shutters were down and the graffitti looked more menacing, and only the thin line from heart to head led us home. We're learning to be married, adapting to each other like moss around rocks. 

On the pale blue morning that we left, the moon was still in the sky, and there were still puffs of confetti on Piazza San Marco, left over from Carnevale.   We'd made peace with the idiosyncracies of the apartment and its stairs designed more as a bookshelf than a means of ascension. (Descending was easier - one step, one slip, one step, watchout.)  Reno's strong, tall frame had adapted to being permanently bent while upstairs, to avoid ugly bloody encounters with the low beams.  We'd resolved to using only the downstairs shower if we actually wanted to get wet. We'd given up on the receipt for the cash handed over in lieu of rent.

We'd cooked in a space so small we could now audition for MiniChef or My Kitchen Pebbles. From a kitchen so well equipped in Sydney, we'd learned to improvise: using a folding frying pan as a lid, a jug as a salad bowl, tea lights as champagne glasses.  Our tomatoes tasted as they should, filled with warm Italian flavour. Vegetables were crisp and juicy.  Oranges had mouthfuls of Sicily deep in their hearts.  We'd found our favourite vegetable seller at Rialto and she'd begun putting extra surprises in our shopping bags.

We'd spent a month watching as the sun slipped earlier and earlier through the cracks in our shutters. We knew that the 10.30 pm rabble from the cobbles below meant the La Fenice concert was over and whether or not the night had been a success.  We bought tickets for the Barber of Seville, dressed to thrill,  and almost garotted ourselves in the cheap seats trying to see the performers,  and then found how quickly (30 seconds tops) we could get rid of our cheap tunnel vision tickets for La Traviata the next day, to giddy-with-delight tourists who never dreamed they'd see the inside of this fabulous theatre at such short notice.

We made friends, saw friends, said bye to friends for a while.  We facebook befriended the fabulous cellist Davide Amadio, who has now asked that we meet him for a pre-Rossini concert coffee when we return in May.   We rescheduled some of our trip so that we could see Gaspare, the artist we met on our first day, in Paris.  We cooked and shopped and found how to prepare fresh carciofe hearts, discovered the sardines we'd bought to deep fry were actually sold as cat food, invented more ways to cook gluten free pasta, and walked so many back streets, till our legs wobbled and all we wanted when we returned home was a tube of Dencorub and some chamomile tea.

We dragged a spare case across bridges and through tunnels and over squares, to the shipping dispatch centre I'd remembered from 2011. Closed for lunch, shrugged the man selling souvenirs. I can keep it for you?

So, trusting Venetians, we left the case there, and went home for lunch, hoping we'd trust ourselves enough to find that same place again.  We did ... and our case will meet us again in May, in Varenna, when Carmen and Stefano will bring it to us.

We went to Burano, for lunch, although it was a day's trip, there and back.  We boarded a boat and rocked in the waves, sat in the front watching and wondering about those desperate people of 2000 years ago who sank their poles into the marshy ground to escape from persecution. How could they have known that their rickety wooden shacks would become palaces and their grubbywaifs, princesses. A great and glorious and grand civilisation from a mosquito infested marshland.

We ate at a restaurant I'd remembered from 20 years ago; where, while we were waiting, we were given a glass of Prosecco.  We wandered around the coloured, peeling houses with our glasses, over bridges and through sottoporto's, drinking our prosecco.  We feasted on grilled sea bass, and sardines, and hot crusty bread, salad, coffee, biscuits ... and more Prosecco ... and thanked the generous wedding guest who'd paid for this spectacular lunch.  Because we would always remember it.


And Reno fell in love with Venice, as I had.  For the last few days we walked while he schemed how we could live here. I reminded him that I needed greenery and dappling shade. He said I could buy pots of basil for a windowsill.   I reminded him of high waters and mould and how difficult it was to get baggage and groceries from place to place. He said we could hire a porter when necessary and after all wasn't living minimalist more sensible.  I said I needed space and light. He said Geneva and Paris and Verona were a train ride away.  I said I wanted to live near my children. He said bring your children to Vivaldi and Tintoretti.   I could see that the love bug had bitten deep ... a bug that respect silence and secrets, and bows to the sequence of life in the rhythm of stones, and light and water.

When I left this time, catching the Alilaguna Blu line from San Marco, we took the long-way-round vaporetto to the airport, zigzagging all across this network of boggy islands holding such spectacularity.   This time I didn't cry with a broken heart that I may never be back.  I held my latest handbag (red leather) to the sky, I shouted I love you to the moon, I held my new husband's hand as he gazed wistfully at a disappearing Venice, and I sang, Arrivederci, Venezia.  I shall be back.  In May. With my new, delicious, adaptable, amenable and well-travelling husband.

It's spring. Off to Prague. 

Inside our apartment - starkly.

I'm sitting on the large white sofa, in our 18th century palazzo just five minutes from Rialto and San Marco.  We have four very tall windows that look out very closely onto four other pink walls opposite, the goings on within which fascinate us. The woman across the way, above the mask and photography shop, watches television from dawn till midnight, and at regular intervals stands up to stretch her arms and touch her toes.  We think we spies on us too, because we've seen her cleaning her windows more often than she should, wearing the clear plastic gloves the supermarket requires us to wear when we are choosing vegetables.

On the other wall, the inhabitant is a mystery.  This building is a stunning, although sadly rundown and ignored palazzo, with spectacular windows and a balconette.  Old, moulding books seem to line the floors as we can see them through the windows.  Through another window we can see piles of opaque plastic bottles.  Gaspare was wanting inspiration for paintings so we've had great fun inventing stories about the owner of the apartment and the books. Reno's theory is that the owner died a long time ago and is still sitting at a chair with a tome in his hand ... but I like to think that a book gets moved from one pile to another during the night ... he's still there reading ..  whatever we invent is still rather sad, for there is so much of Venice that is in the dark in so many ways.  You can live an arm's length from someone, and know nothing about them. 

"Famous" artworks line our walls.  Two sheets of medieval music behind glass.  A grim portrait of a depressed man on the bedroom landing.  There's a painting of what we think is the Venice La Fenice on fire, or the Texas chain saw massacre, or the opening scene of Pulp Fiction.  It's an enormous canvas of what looks like splashed blood with a few handprints.  Oh, of course, it's the dna evidence from In Cold Blood.  I've looked at this thing for weeks now, trying to figure it out.  It's so large that all I've realised is it would have had to come into this apartment in a roll, and the frame would have been made in situ.  The bed is on a glass mezzanine landing, without any form of railing on the side of the steps ... which look like an uneven pile of books. You have to walk down them with legs spread ... and if in a hurry to go to the loo after a big day out ... better to go downstairs. We mentioned to the landlord that we thought the steps were dangerous, and could we please have the name of a doctor in case of emergency. His retort was that the stairs were designed by a "very famous Italian architect" with the subtext that we wouldn't know art if we were to fall down it.   If Reno or I have to go downstairs at night, we often miss the steps and crash hands first into the wall of the "kitchen" ( which is the size of an ikea desk, with a two burner hotplate and a sink installed.  For bench space we've had to use a chair. ) A chair at the foot of our bed fell from the mezzanine down the stairs and I watched in horror as it headed towards the prize Murano glass displayed proudly on the shelves ... but wasn't brave enough to hop down the stairs to catch the chair on its descent.

The washing machine is on, scattering anything that was on top of it to the floor as it tries to shuffle around the room. Perfectly normal to have a washing machine going this time of night, you'd think. But when we arrived for our month's stay, we found to our astonishment that there was nowhere to do our laundry. Nor was there a hairdryer.  That the frying pans had handles so loose the pans swivelled around when we tried to use them so flipping an omelette was an oxymoron. The kitchen hotplate is partially tucked under a cupboard so that we have to back away to open the cupboards.   The top of the "desk" becomes a benchtop when it's lifted up to cook or wash up. The  heated towel rail doesn't work, the tap on the mezzanine comes off in our hands, and the shower rose dribbles a few drops of nervous sweat occasionally.  We were supplied with two sets of sheets and two sets of towels. A toaster which is really a grill, so slow that needs to be put on at midnight if you want toast with eggs in the morning. Our kettle is an enamel cup, which gets so hot that we have to use socks to hold it.

There are beams in the ceiling that so low there are dents where previous tenants have bumped heads.  Reno's head has been permanently marked at the high water level.  We put up our luggage labels to warn him to duck, but the maid who comes on Wednesdays complained to Giovanni, who told us to take them down because they were damaging the paint. I said rather luggage labels than brain damage, but he was more worried about paint removal.

After many emails and imploring requests about where we could find a laundromat or buy a hairdryer, Fosca the go-between arrived with :

1 Hairdryer
4 unmatched black plastic chairs
6 Placemats
2 Oven Mitts
1 set of saucepans and frypans, so light they bend in half  - I know because I accidentally closed the cupboard when the handle was sticking out and we now have an inadvertent omelette maker. A bonus is that food never needs to be stirred or shaken, as the pan rocks and rolls on the heat on its own.

Steps! Going up - and down.

The next day, three plumbers, two electricians, the maid, a handman and a person waltzing a washing machine through the door arrived.   The faulty towel rail was replaced, only to be discovered later that the old one worked perfectly : all that was needed was a bit of black electrical tape on the cord. But the unit was replaced anyway.  The washing machine was installed by dragging the outlet pipe through a hole in the chipboard under the sink in the kitchen, which is in the middle of the loungeroom.  Six men worked on their various jobs, chatted on their phones, discussed Italian football and their girlfriends, or their mama's pasta.  One man's job was to shrinkwrap all the packing that had accompanied the goods in, so that it could be trolleyed out again and be hoisted onto a barge to be removed from Venice.

We were thrilled, as it gave us extra bench space for our rocking and rolling saucepans.  But we were vaguely disappointed too, as we'd found a marvellous laundry, Lavanderia Gabriella, where we'd made friends with the mother and daughter who ran it, and who irons our precious t shirts while wearing her pearls and cashmere. They asked us to come by to show them my wedding dress when I wear it for Carnevale! Everyone is so eager to talk to Reno who is so affable and amenable,  that we're making friends daily.  We'd also asked the landlord for an extra set of sheets for when Pippo and Francine arrive, but were told it would cost E50.  And the maid took the extra ones in the cupboard away, just in case we decided to have guests ...

I'd had an awful backache for a few days - thinking that it was the mattress as it was very lumpy, but when my eyes turned yellow we went into the pharmacy to ask for a doctor, who turned up within the hour. Reno wanted to know how we'd recognise him, as he wanted us to wait outside the Farmacia,  and I suggested he'd be wearing the il dottore mask, the long nose stuffed with healing herbs that people wore during Medieval times to help stave off disease. Reno said he'd be wearing a stethoscope.  But this dottore arrived wearing a beret, a scarf, and skin-tight denim jeans. As soon as he reached the entrance to our apartment, he exclaimed that this was the one that had a lot of controversy when it was renovated a few years ago because it was a famous one in Venice - Palazzo Regina Vittoria.  He said he'd always wanted to look inside because he'd heard that only kings and queens could afford it. Well, he was right about the queens, because we know who owns our place!  As soon as he walked in he started with Italian expletives. Soulless. Empty. Cold.  Mama Mia! What have they done?  Then, once inside, and after he'd examined me on the Ikea sofa and diagnosed a stomach infection, taken his E170 for the examination and prescribed E70 of antibiotics, he saw the steps.

Karamba! he shouted. Molto, molto periculoso.  So, so dangerous!  He wanted to dob in the offending queen without taking a breath.  This place should be closed down!  If someone falls, they will be killed!  You should move out immediately!  I would like to tell the authorities! What kind of a kitchen is this? They are breaking all the rules! You can't just do anything in places like this! What's happened to the history of this building?  The Venetian council should be informed forthwith.

Our humble doctor then launched into a diatribe against the state, lawless landlords (did I get a receipt for all my money? because nobody is allowed to take more than E1000 in cash ever, for anything!) socialism, arts, the medical system, the illegal handbag sellers, the people of Mestre.  We loved him immediately and offered him a glass of Bellini, but he ruefully refused, saying he was, after all, working.  Then he offered to take us to the art gallery around the corner where his wife works! So we followed him, chatting about art and Venice and music as if we'd known him forever.

In two days my eyes were green again and my back was better.  We knew a little more about the workings inside Venice.  We tried to ask for a receipt for the balance of our rent money, paid in cash .... but suddenly my emails bounced back ...

High water and nothing walkways

Francine and Pippo came to visit us during Carnevale, from Geneva and Verona.  I'd met them in 2011, during the year of travels, and we'd had a wonderful time, mainly laughing, eating and being blissed out by the Carnevale.  Pippo doesn't speak much English, and Francine, fortunately, speaks everything.  As soon as they knew we were coming to Venice, they promised a rendezvous here, and also to meet us in Varenna, in May.

Carnevale had been busting along in full swing, San Marco swirling with costumes, confetti, and cameraderie.  After a few days we began to understand how the whole business worked.  There were those who hired costumes, and paraded around rather self-consciously, paying exorbitant amounts to be perved at, in their plumed hats and lace cuffs, through the windows of the 19th C tea house, Florian.  There were those who paraded before they attended grand balls, held in many of the palazzi that line the Grand Canal.  They wore splendid costumes, made from luxurious brocades, silks, velvets:  every detail historically perfect. They would have cost a fortune and were suitable for museum exhibits.   There were the more inventive costumes; one in particular that left me speechless - a hand crocheted creation in vivid reds and yellows that made the woman look like a warm medusa.  The super inventive creations, we later confirmed, were Parisian imports who used Carnevale to immortalise themselves - and to be hired out by photographers. On the last few days, when most of the spectaculari had left, the Queens from Queens - and Rio, (because I asked) came in their fabulous adornments, tripping over the diamante eyelashes and size 12 diamante buckled shoes.

But then the weather turned brutal. Grim.  Dire, as il Gazettino put it.  The clouds blackened, the wind came up, the hail came down.  What should have been a chance for the Four of Us to dance in the sun, and for my husband and I to parade, with masks, in our wedding clothes, could have become a dodge from the elements and huddling in our heated apartment sipping English tea.   Instead, we faced it head on:  bracing ourselves with gloves, scarves and umbrellas, and having the time of our lives.  We went to our local trattoria in Accademia, where by now the owner calls us carisissimi, and gives us a good table.  Wearing our masks, we had a glass of prosecco while waiting at the bar for a table, then huddled together at a corner table.  Francine started talking to the young couple next to us, who were Sicilian and told us the box of tomatoes that had been plonked next to him were grown by his father.  That opened up a riot of conversation between the three Amigos – I was left out because I couldn’t understand – into which another couple joined. Reno left our table to talk to them, and in a few minutes everyone in the bar was talking to each other.  Reno found that one of the men was a research scientist into cancer: Francine immediately suggested he contact her as her bank is always looking for people to invest in.  We were making such a racket that the two waitresses stopped working and stood by, listening. The owner came in to see what was happening, shook his head, and walked out laughing. When the noise and frivolity was at its height, Dante Alighieri, in velvet jacket, pantaloons and bejewelled beret, walked in to go to the toilet, chatting on his mobile phone.  We were putting our masks and coats back on outside, when the young tomato man came through the door and started singing O Solo Mio at the top of his voice.A voice worthy of an opera singer.  People smiled as they walked past him ... singing in the rain, masked ... naturally Venice.

We ate at a pizza place around the corner from our apartment that night, huddling again from the rain as all the unfortunate carnevale goers dripped into the grand ball at La Fenice; such a dismal entrance. But Francine and I skipped and danced in the rain, just a quick step away from the carabinieri who were watching us sternly with batons and guns ready in case we were to make a dash for the inside, between the bedraggled counts, lords, ladies, pompadours, bears and Casanovas.   A young Croatian man proposed to his girlfriend, the waiter cried, and when we asked him why, he said "but they are too young to marry!"

We walked to San Marco, along the semi deserted , misty, darkened collonades, and the piazza was filling with water along one side.  The plastic boot vendors were out in full force, to the chagrin of il gazettino the next day.  High tide splashed against the gondoliers, and fairy lights blazed from the ceilings.  Francine and I danced “Singing in the Rain” wherever we could, to the embarrassment of Reno and Pippo.  We’d packed so much into 48 hours that we were really sad to see them off at Ferrovia late on Sunday.  They took our wedding clothes, to be seen again in Varenna in May.

At 9.30 on Monday 4^th March, the last day of Carnevale, when the city was packed and most had been saving their best costumes for last, sirens and hooters blared across Venice. Aqua Alta.  A phenomenon that I’d promised I’d fly across the world to see.  We rushed out before the 12.30 high water mark at 120cm above the usual tide – extreme high water by Venice standards – and I bought a pair of rubber boots. The water was gurgling into San Marco, up through the bricks, like little geysers. Boot sellers were doing a roaring trade, bringing boots in by the trolleyload.  Thousands of people huddled along the collonades, between which bewigged and be-costumed people tried to pose for photos.  Probably the most sensible were those safe behind the steamed up windows of Florian, paying 100E for some prosecco and ciccetti, although they were seen through the lenses of thousands of cameras.

Wet and warm during Aqua Alta

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On the specially constructed stage, the organisers and performers were trying valiantly to keep the energy of the crowd positive, but after hours of sloshing around in freezing water, floating with confetti and caca del cane, with a dreary photographic light, I was ready for carnevale to finish. I have thousands of fabulous photos and memories of  Reno and I doing  some beautiful walks along darkened calli, and along the fondamente during the week.  When Stefano and Carmen (Reno’s sister and brother in law) were here for 48 hours, after exploring a small part of Cannareggio and the Ghetto, we went for what we thought would be a quiet walk from Zattere but all the hired Carnevale models and hundreds of photographers had the same idea.  The restaurants were overpriced, the lanes clogged, the boats filled to overflowing.  Masked people appeared from every alleyway.  Time for everyone to go home!    But not before the final event “spectaculare” – the flight of the winning costume from the Campanile .. which happened without the crushing crowds … very much a whisper, not a bang, as the whole final day had been a wet drippy “I’d rather be home dry and warm” day.  Under a cloud cover as dense as smoke, the acrobat came down from the Campanile – the clock tower – scattering confetti.  The music stopped, the men with their screwdrivers came out, and, just like that,  the show was over.

Grazie dieu.  We breathed with relief.  We rode the vaporetto the following morning accompanied by elegant, well groomed men, willing crystal canes,  who looked at if they could be your lawyer or dentist, carrying large boxes that could have enclosed anything from a pink chandelier to a dandelion to a white dazed rabbit.  A woman boarded carrying an enormous white paper lantern and a hooped skirt, stripped of its external coverings so that it now resembled a moth that had been left out in the sun. The woman in charge of the boat squished herself between the packed feathers and the sequinned shoes, the bulging bags and the faces with traces of glitter, to help the revellers off her boat and back to normal life. If there is such a thing, in Venice. 

For us, this meant a morning at Casa Pesaro, the 17^th Century palazzo that houses Miro, Klee, Kandinsky, Picasso, Pisarro, Monet, Moore, Rodin, Munch, and Klimt. I called Liza from the cafeteria, eating crostini and drinking coffee, with water lapping at our feet.  All of this, and culture on overload, but I wanted to give her a hug.

We walked back through the calli, seeing how the window dressings have overnight been changed to spring fashions, and the mountains of carnevale sweet treats have been replaced by bushels of Easter delights.  At Rialto, we walked into a church to buy tickets for Interpreti Veneziani who were playing Paganini.  As I put my hand on the door to point to the photograph of the cellist I’d almost fallen in love with when I heard him play the Four Seasons,  Reno thought it a good idea to close the door.  While my fingers were in the door jamb. I screamed for him to stop moving the door, and in his panic he moved it in the wrong direction.  I screamed like a mama who realised her son was marrying the wrong woman, and for a moment neither Reno nor the poor guy selling the tickets knew what was happening, but finally the door opened to release my squashed and bloodied, but unbroken, fingers.  That particular church had never heard such blaspheming, but hopefully the diety in charge only understands Italian.  

The church cleaner rushed out to find a hot pack for my fingers, while the ticket seller took me to the toilets to run cold water over them.  Tears poured down my face, and I fanned myself with my Venice map and wrapped the fingers around the hot pack. The ticket seller handed us a little bag. “Present for you,” he said.  “So sorry”.  It was a recording of the Interpreti, playing the Four Seasons.  Definitely worth getting my fingers mangled for.

We walked home over the Rialto bridge, and through our secret shortcuts, and played the music for the rest of the afternoon while I recovered with my hand resting on a yellow brocade cushion.  That evening we went to Accademia and the church where they were playing, and were once again brought to tears by the skill of the players.  At the end, we began talking to the man in front of us, who was greeted by each of the players, who turned out to be their London recording agent;  who said we should come to their recoding concert in st John’s, in June. Why not!  That's like, SO Venice.

Instead, we befriended the cellist Davide Amadio, whose concerts I attended whenever I could on my first part of this Venice journey, on Facebook, who by morning had friended us back.  And who wrote on my facebook page:

Grazie Susan è un grande onore contribuire a lasciare un bel ricordo di Venezia, perchè Venezia non avrebbe bisogno di me quindi è una soddisfazione doppia..vi aspetto quando tornerete!

What a way to end another remarkable week.

There's a myth - or fact - in Italy, that you never risk asking someone about their health, or the weather, for both means that you're likely to be held in a conversation far longer than you want to.  That you could miss your plane, boat, ferry, appointment, concert.  I like that you get to hear about the workings of people's lives, and I have been known to eavesdrop in the queue at the supermarket, and learn another way to cook my fungi or that Gabriela at the Lavanderia has had another grandchild.

However I realised the truth of this myth when I was fluent enough to start reading the Italian newspaper, which discusses any and all of these subject with equal gusto.

From Il Gazettino:

High water in Venice, illegal vendors of boots Carnival 2014

High water and nothing walkways . A mix that has made the happiness of illegal vendors that have flooded the old town of boots in order to overcome the peak tide recorded around 23 on Saturday . Were 105 cm , as reported by the Gazzettino , but many tourists despite the forecasts announced early in the morning there has been no surprise defenses. Even some young people from St. Mark's Square had to reach the Arsenal to make the night.

Nothing . O -paid fifteen Euros (even twenty) to abusive or was the victim of del'assenza runways ( in the period of Carnival nothing "pose" ) . Unless, like two Roman tourists have had the good fortune to obtain , the holder of a few bars not regalasse some garbage bags . Or you can not find some generous knight " equipped " who could carry on his back those who were devoid of boots.

But the business for the squatters is not finished here. The Calatrava bridge and the train station area Sunday was full of sellers of Maghreb origins ready for any weather condition . The morning rain again . So umbrellas at will. Then time is strained to beauty . Then appeared the usual darts of light. Disappeared in an amen when the municipal police transited to the controls . One of the sellers, however, would be blocked by agents of Finance .

Venice Carnival 2014, all appointments of Shrove Tuesday March 4
"Rain, wind and high water can cause problems, slow down traffic and make (literally) to pieces on the streets of the province, but they can not stop in Venice to have its Carnival, especially when we talk of Shrove Tuesday, the day of closing and highlight of the two weeks the most colorful of the year. Hence, despite the dire weather forecast, list of events planned for March 4 in the lagoon and the mainland is always longer, and between entertainment for children and dj-sets more transgressive, everyone will find that fun. "

High water and weather today Venice Carnival Mardi Gras March 4, 2014

"The weather does not seem to want to help this year, the Carnival of Venice. After the hail and storms Saturday that put the masks on the run from San Marco, in the day of " Fat Tuesday " forecasts do not bode well . At least for the morning . According to the meteorological center Arpav , in fact, the probability of precipitation widespread in the province is high. But finally the time has altogether righteous." 

ALL THE EVENTS OF FAT TUESDAY

At the same time the tides of the City Centre at 9.30am ( when the sirens are sounded in the old town ) has revised its forecast of the previous day , announcing a peak of tide at 12.30 120 centimeters ( 24 hours before they were announced 105 cm to 12.15 ) . It is then repeated in all probability the peak tidal last Saturday , with some discomfort more. Blame It on the bora wind that has " reinvigorated " the tide . A level of 120 centimeters ( code orange ) determines the flooding of approximately 28% of the national territory . As the weekend, also in this case there were no pedestrian walkways to ensure paths " dry " for locals and tourists . At the stroke of half-past twelve then , the actual level of the water has settled at around 110 cm .

The laying of the catwalk during Carnival is not guaranteed. " Manna " for the illegal vendors , who last Saturday did brisk business by offering those who have been surprised by the high tide boots rubber twenty euro . For the arrival of good weather stable will arm yourself with patience and wait for Thursdays."

Yep.

And the sun shone like there was no tomorrow.

Ohhhh.  I love Italy