Down the rabbit hole

Fellini is here.  And I have my camera.

There are times in my life when I look around and think I am truly in an altered state of reality.  Everything to do with Venice is extraordinary. A normal day is like being on the set of a Fellini film, where everything is fabulously beautiful but nothing makes sense in relation to the lives we're used to living. We wake up expecting a casual walk and a quick coffee, and the experience very quickly escalates into the most bizarre of experiences that, ten minutes later, you have to ask for proof that it actually happened that way.

We have hot chocolate and an Americano every morning at the cafe on our corner, where the stunning blond Italian woman knows the name of every patron, and those she doesn't know she calls carissima mia.  Or "amore!"  The jacketed workers with knitted beanies come in, smoking outside in the frosty air, stomping their feet on the slippery stones and arguing vociferously over the headlines in Il Gazzettino. This always escalates into a complicated, noisy novella of political intrigue while I sip the best hot chocolate on earth.  Lewd mildly pornographic images of semi nude women on throbbing motorbikes leer into my coffee, and straight across the calle into the pharmacy where little old ladies cross themselves while buying their Mylanta.

As this week is Carnevale, the moment we step out side, we fall down a rabbit hole, populated by hundreds of fabulously garbed characters in everything from metaphysical concoctions to historically perfect costumes. Serpents squirm from net entangled hats.  Coloured polystyrene shapes float around a human form with a blue mouth and red eyes.  Five giant jellyfish squish through the lanes, followed by The Count of Monte Christo and a giant teapot.

You can't rely on the weather for anything, not even a photograph. One moment the sun is out, next the ugly wind blows across and turns our lips blue;  the report promises sun but the skies crack, the buildings shake, the calli become dark and creepy, and our sills are peppered with hail. We look to the watery skies expecting rain, and the skies melt to blues.  We rug up with thermals and the sun comes out and we have to peel off and carry our clothes in puffy bundles;  we wear less and our ears freeze and we have to come home to thaw out.

The organisers of Carnevale have finished building the Roman Forum in Piazza San Marco that busied them for the whole of our first week.   It's made of beautifully carved solid wood, with heated boxes for those optimistic enough to pay $100 to sit in them and watch the daily show.  

Work was held up because of the rain and high water, but finally, on opening day, all was done in time, the sun beamed as hard as it could and Venice was packed to its gills with tourists.   Tens of thousands of frantic tourists, most of them frantic photographers with obscenely large lenses, descended on Venice for the weekend, to piss in corners, eat pizza, get drunk on Prosecco, graffitti the ancient walls and get lost. Particularly on the weekends, when trying to get anywhere is like being in Sydney on NYE. We wish they had got lost, gone home, leave this spectacle to those who have the time to look.

The mosaics on the walls of the Doges palace sparkle like diamonds, and bronze horses rear in mid gallop.  Dogs wear broderie anglaise and tartan coats;  women strut about wearing rabbit, sable, ermine, mink and fox.  Men wear lace cuffs and gold braid, children wear powdered wigs.  Teenagers have green faces. The carabinieri wear guns and Ermigliano Zegna uniform with equal dignity.  The queues to enter the Campanile and Palace stretch for 100 metres. People pay 13E ($20) for a coffee on the yellow plastic chairs of San Marco, facing out onto the lagoon and the Santa Maria Della Salute.  The fabulous costumes come out from about midday, to pose against the walls, or on bridges, or on the edge of the water. The photographers go nuts, pushing and shoving, and trampling, not caring who lies underfoot.  The bigger the camera, the more obnoxious its owner. 

It's the opening day of Carnevale.  Venice is thick with people - from the Ukraine, Russia, Korea, Slovenia, Japan. Tour guides rush through their itineraries - quick, the Doge Palace, then a hike up the Campanile for five cold minutes, then a plastic-wrapped gondola ride and a limp pizza before a photo shoot on the Bridge of Sighs with 20 other people a second. They buy cheap Chinese masks from the travelling vendors who drag their dreadful carts into the square at 8 every morning, weighed down by tea towels, aprons, umbrellas and t-shirts. The scourge of Venetians, an insult to their creativity, a blight on the Murano glass makers.  A female compere screams from the stage, where jugglers and mono cyclists draw the crowds' attention. Everyone waits for the 11.30 bells that will signal the start of the angel's flight from the top of the campanile,   for centuries a tribute to the Doge.  A young woman is chosen as a "secret guest" to fly on a wire from the top of the campanile to the stage below, where apparently she is welcomed into the arms of the - probably panting - Doge.  

The crowd thickens until we can't lift our arms above our heads ... and then all is quiet. The bells of the Campanile and the Doges Church peal madly, and the compere on the stage counts down.  There's movement on the platform, high up. A flutter of fabric.  A gasp and sigh from the crowd.  Then she glides down the 150metres to the square below, scattering confetti.  A glorious billowing butterfly, with a clear blue sky to herald her decent.  Breathtaking.

Along the fondamente, actors in astonishing imaginary concoctions mime and perform for the phalanx of photographers sycophantically grovelling at their feet, anxiously trying to get the iconic photo through their ten thousand dollar lenses.  I am pushed off my feet, by these desperate image grabbers, jabbed in the ribs, thumped in the knees, bandied about the head.  I wear my soft wooly hat for protection, my gloves to protect my fingers from boots, always on the lookout for someone who will rush in front of me and knock me far enough out into the water. Then I look down at my pink tights, strewn with confetti, and the bursts of colour also down my coat, and I'm happy.  I'm living my dream, even though Venetians shudder at the thought of such indecency and debauchery.  I'm in a technicolour rainbow of creation and imagination and if I get cranky for a moment that someone walked in front of me, I take a step back and want to cry with joy.

I always thought the people who paraded for Carnevale were the locals, or people dressing up for the balls and functions. But as the Venetians hate Carnevale with a vociferous passion, vitriolic that the money is "going to Mestre" and loathing  the tourists, not many of the participants are true Venetians.  The true performers, the ones who parade on the fondamente, or hang on lampposts, or walk slowly up the stairs and stop in an exquisite pose are French.  It seems they come as performers, because a few years ago, I almost enrolled to do a photography course where I was told that we'd go to secret places and costumed models would be hired.  When walking with Carmen and Stefano who came to visit for two days, we went to Santa Maria De La Salute, usually a quiet spot to view the Grand Canal.  That morning it was over-run with "models" who came in spectacular waves, and more heavyweight cameras than I'd ever seen in my life were snatching images as if it was the end of the world.  You can tell the difference between those tourists (or maybe locals) who hire, and those who do this for a living.   The most inventive costumes are these "models" whereas most of those trawling the streets wear typical 18th century high heel shoes with lace, cuffs, three pointed hats and hooped skirts. The difference is that the "models" would be holding bird cages or the insides of a clock, or a stuffed owl in their elaborately stitched hats.Those who hire costumes sit behind the frosted windows of Florian, enjoying their E100 tea and cakes, while being mobbed by iphones, smartphones, ipads and cameras of those outside who can't - or won't - afford it.


We shop for fresh vegetables and fish at the Rialto every few mornings, and while cooking our salmon (lightly grilled with EV olive oil, some thyme and a swish of garlic on our rocking frying pan, carciofi lightly steamed with tomato and capsicum) I opened the window to let the smell out. From the lane below I heard drums and whistles and Italian singing, and I looked down onto the top of a plumed hat , and a velvet coat that flared over  knickerbockers.  A woman wrestled her hooped, brocaded skirt through the lanes, and tried to let a bewigged judge and an executioner through.

We're less than 100 metres from La Fenice, the opera house, so we get the passing parade ... from flowing robes to majestic plumes, from pirates to jesters and jokers to the Queen of Tarts.

We walk every morning expecting a normal day. But we wake up in a Palazzo, that Goethe, the writer and philospher, stayed in.  Outside our door is a bridge under which gondolas - and kayaks - paddle.  We are three minutes to the Rialto and less to San Marco, both fantastic historically significant places where wars were waged, lives were auctioned, and people have spent their whole lives saving to see. We watch scenes that Vivaldi, Tintoretto, Turner, Goethe, Napoleon, Marco Polo, the Romans - composed, painted, eulogised, fought for and travelled the world to show off about. The grandest spectacle in the world is at my feet, and I'm on my knees with my camera, trying to get it all in one photograph. No sooner have I think I've seen it all, when a flock of giant jellyfish trail silk tentacles past me.  An ice queen puts her white gloved finger to her black lips so that people won't talk to her.  A headless chicken sits on a suitcase talking on a mobile phone, while a two year old Count woos an adoring crowd by insisting on seeing his image in an ipad.

Then we take the vaporetto down the glittering Grand Canal, accompanied by Madam Pompidou, the Count of Monte Christo, Casanova's consort, the Girl with the Pearl Earring, and Johnny Depp.  A pirate with a stuffed parrot gets off, replaced by a giant clock with a ticking hat,  and a heavily embroidered tea cosy that speaks a muffled French.  These glittering, feathered, brocaded creatures jostle for space in the vaporetto as we float past the giant chandeliers in the trembling palazzi through whose windows we can see shapes and shadows of every costume designer's wildest experiment.  There are kettle drums and violins in the echoing, dark lanes.  A man throws a bucket of water close to our feet, shouting Vai, Vai, pi pi, si, pi pi!   We walk where shadows follow and water tells no tales, over lacy bridges and under stern stones, take a new turn, and then there is tango in an inky dark square, lit only by lights reflected from windows, and people dancing to music from an iPhone. 

My new husband and I walk speechlessly through these days and nights, needing only to talk about the necessities like what we'll cook for dinner in our postage sized kitchen.  All else seems redundant. On the way to the supermarket, we passed an antiquarian book shop piled to the ceiling with Italian art and literature tomes.  A shop window filled with orchids and cyclamen.  An antique silver store. A collector of Moroccan silver who always has his back to his customers, petrified someone will buy something from him.  A table of waiters in their tall white hats, eating before the crowds. Tables set outside with white linen, and lily of the valley in pots.  Stravinsky crashed from beneath the heavy carved doors of a church in the square of La Fenice. We sat in the cold, near the ancient water well, listening to the practice for the show, later that night.  A light drizzle fell.  Then we bought tickets for La Traviata,  Le Barbiere di Seville for now,  and Tosca for our May return.  We went home to cook schnitzel we bought from the supermarket, dunked a strawberry in a Bellini, and ate a finocchio and apple salad with balsamico, lemon and olive oil.

Let's go for a walk, said Reno.  We put on our thick coats, and hats and scarves. We walked over the slippery stones and a bridge until we reached the church where the Stravinsky concert was on. This time Debussy crashed from below the doors and the cracks in the stained glass windows.   Reno found a way in, and we sneaked into the dimly lit church filled with crazed music of geniuses from centuries ago. A young woman and an old man played one piano with four hands.  I looked to the ceiling, and could barely breathe, for above my head were paintings so dense with age and history and value they gleamed in the semi dark.  Angels and cherubs, food and fortune, fabrics and light and shadows. There must have been twenty million dollars worth of Renaissance paintings above my head.  I wanted to move to a cushioned carved bench along the stone wall which would give me a better view of the pianists, but Reno whispered that I should wait for the break in movements.

A man sat on his own here, in a blue suit.  The music ended.  The lights came up slowly.   The audience applauded, shouted Bravi, Brava, Bravissimo. They donned their furs and their Borsalino hats, peered down their haughty Venetian noses as the two puffy Plebs, and waited for the man in the blue suit to walk out first.  He wore gold braided epaulettes, tight pants and high boots, and a tall hat with tassels and pom poms.  He also carried a sword. A very long sword, and a scabbard, tucked carefully into his belt.  The crowed hushed as he rose from his elevated seat at the side of the wall.  He left the church first, while I was still goggle eyed at the goings-on on the ceiling.

The perfumed crowd bowed as he left, stood back reverently as he passed through the ancient carved doors, into the piazza outside La Fenice, the most famous opera house in the world.

Great costume, I whispered to Reno as this elegant man donned his fabulous hat and threw his blue, fur lined cape over his shoulders.  But nobody else in this elite gathering would be so plebian as to dress in costume, gasp, even though it was Carnevale.

We'd gatecrashed a private viewing of the Venetian glitterati, attended by what we've speculated is the head of military. 

The music was pretty fabulous too.

Ten minutes later, we were home, in our apartment in the Palazzo Vittoria Regina.  Standing in the boiling shower, warming up, I called Reno.   Did I just wake up from a bizarre dream?

Venice is like that.   I'm black and blue from pinching myself.