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| Free Hugs near the Ferrovia |
This weekend I met Andy in Venice and we lead the first ever Weekend Student Adventures' Venice tour! We began Thursday night with three, by Friday morning had five, and by Friday night, nine. Eight girls and one guy - all wonderful and super fun. We had a great weekend - strolled through the Rialto, San Marco, and Palazzo Ducale, caught a vaporetto to the exterior islands and watched glass blowing in Murano, and ate delicious pizza and a three-course dinner (side note - finding a decent restaurant that does not serve overcooked, precooked, sick nasty food has been the most difficult task in planning a tour in Venice because of its extreme tourism). However,
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| Rialto from the gondola at sunset |
the most pleasantly surprising part was the Venetians themselves. Venice is known for its rude and cold inhabitants, quick to point you in the exact wrong direction and make fun of your accent. However, I was greeted by the contrary. Example 1 Oeople were giving out free hugs next to the Ferrovia (main train station). Example 2: Galleria San Marco. We went to the elegant glass shop Galleria San Marco to watch a glass-blowing demonstration. The visiting of a Murano glass Gallery is known as an expensive, prestigious endeavor, often reserved for those interested in spending hundreds or thousands of Euro on hand-blown Murano products. We were bring students, however, who were hard-pressed to spend five Euro. After visiting the gallery, I began speaking to the portiere about how I noticed the differences in his dialect and Italian and how I was interested in the Venetians as a people and as a culture and as a history. We talked for over an hour, and finished our discussion with him giving me his number and inviting me to call him any time I came to Venice and he'd personally take me to show me the "real Venice" and exterior islands. Example 3: That night we went for a gondola ride - I chatted with the gondoliere in Italian, pulling out random Venetian dialect words, about his life and the history of Venice and the ride ended with the same - him telling me to return and call him whenever I would like so that he could take me and any friends on a gondola ride. Example 4: I went early to the restaurant where we were having dinner in order to finalize arrangements and ended up listening to the proprietor's stories about his jobs, his obsession with white bedsheets, and his garden. Andy joined us part-way through and we finished the night with free coffee, two free bottles of wine, one free caraffe of spritz, and a free contorno. My point is not that you should be nice to people because you get free stuff, but that if you show interest in people and who they are what makes them them (family, culture, and language/dialect), they show interest in you. Take the time to learn a language and a culture and the world becomes so much nicer and so much more piacevole :) C'e' un'opportunita' che ti aspetta - ciappa!!
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