Venezia Carnevale

In the 18th century, the most serene empire of Venice was no more, having been dealt the final blow by Napoleon in, I believe 1797. The story goes that without the business of trade and conquest that had kept it busy for so many centuries, and with a cushion of wealth and luxury that would last them at least a century or two, the city settled into some hard-core decadence. Gambling was legal and socially acceptable (in Venice, that is, not back home, wherever home might be), and the pre-lenten celebration known as Carnevale, or meat festival, lasted for six months. The tradition of going masked, in fact usually in elaborate full costume, meant that the nobility and the lower classes could mingle at will. Perhaps more importantly, the masks gave the illusion that there were no consequences.

You know what's coming: what happened in 18th century Venice, stayed in Venice.

Twenty-first century Carnevale is a considerably scaled back affair. It only lasts for the ten days before Ash Wednesday, for one thing, and the whole mixing of the classes isn't as liberating as once it was. But, it turns out, it is still pretty intense.

Jeremy and I went to Venice this last weekend, which was the last weekend of Carnevale. We had, I say this with no little sense of smugness, a perfectly effortless travel experience. We have figured out the train system and the self-serve ticket machines. We arrived at the train station with the perfect amount of time to leisurely buy our tickets, stroll onto the train, and find our seats. The train both left and arrived on time. We did not get, or fear we had gotten onto, the wrong train. We left the train, bought a map of Venice, and walked directly to our fabulous quarters with nary a wrong turn, and found our hosts were waiting for us as promised. Stunning. Same thing on the way home. Luck, experience, and a little facility with the language -- plus, the stars must have aligned. There is no such thing as stress-free travel here.

Venice is a notoriously expensive place to stay, what with everything having to be delivered via boat and hand trolley. The web is filled with complaints about over-priced, tiny, noisy rooms in Venice. I booked at a random place on Hotels.com, described as a bed and breakfast, that seemed frankly frightening cheap by comparison to everything else on Hotels.com. We arrived to discover that we were staying on the top floor of a fifteenth century (or older) palazzo, called Palazzo Papafava. The bottom three floors are largely empty -- a few apartments, a few offices, some space to rent. In fact, that space ended up being the location of a private Venezian ball each night we were there, so we got to rub shoulders with the real Venezians on our way up and down stairs. The top floor is the apartment of Rosa and Paolo, and they offer two bedrooms and a suite for guests. Each room has an attached bathroom, and ours was gorgeous. It was the old library, with four walls of built in book cases, stocked with a respectable collection of art books, mathematics, and Italian and French literature. Turns out, Paolo is a retired mathematician with an abiding love for art. The room also had a fireplace, windows overlooking the roofs and canals of Venice, and a very comfortable bed (with springs!) Each morning, Rosa served us breakfast whenever we wanted it, and gave us recommendations for restaurants, museums, etc. It was, by far, the best hotel experience we have had in Italy. If you ever go to Venice, stay at the awkwardly named At Home a Palazzo. Totally worth it. And check out the website -- it really does look just like that.

Our favorite thing about Venice were small restaurants called bacari (bacaro is the singular). It's like aperativo, but Venice-style. You stand at a long bar, order a glass of ridiculously cheap wine, and point at the platters of delicious little niblets behind the counter. The lovely bartender makes you up a plate of whatever you want -- we saw mixed grilled vegetables, various salads, lots of shrimp and small fishes, that sort of thing -- and then you pay for whatever you have eaten. It never seemed to come to more than a few euro. One evening I had this lovely . . . something. It had proscuitto and mozzarella inside, and then a thick eggy batter, which was then fried until it was puffy and melty and yummy. But the best thing that seemed to be everywhere were the polpetti carne: beef mixed with potato, plus I think some small amount of crushed tomato and a little parsley, rolled in some sort of breadcrumb, and then fried. Somehow, the meat stayed delicate and tender and moist, while the coating was crispy and salty. Imagine the best fair food you have ever had, and then make it Italian. Get the picture? We ate a lot of polpetti.

I also ate a very traditional Venezian dish: pasta with squid ink. It was lovely. Okay, not exactly lovely, obviously, but tasty. The squid ink sauce was far more buttery than fishy, with more sweetness than brine. Even Jeremy liked it, and he is not a fan of the fruits of the sea.

Venice is really beautiful. It is certainly past its prime, and a lot of the facades of the Palazzos are dirty and in need of repair. A lot have been maintained or restored, however, and the streets seem cleaner than Florence in many ways. Well, mainly in one way: less dog crap. The canals really do make it unlike any other city I've ever been to, and they mean that one's vista is always changing from the close confines of medieval alleyways to long vistas of gorgeous facades. The architecture is far more influenced by Byzantine culture than anything else in Italy, which makes sense given Venice's background as a trading partner/sacker of Constantinople. The pointed arches and attention to pattern give the buildings a lace-like quality that is decided un-Renaissance in feel. On Saturday, we made it all the way to the other side of the city to visit the Guggenheim house and exhibit of avant-garde art (the main collection was, alas, closed). What a mind-blowing exhibit. Not only does it just feel good to see modern art after having been saturated by the Renaissance and the Baroque, but also that collection is spectacularly dense with important and exceptional pieces.

But, I should get back to Carnevale. I have to admit I wasn't expecting much. I've never been a hard core partier, and I have very little patience for the whole "bucket list" concept. As Susan Buffam writes in an interesting little poem titled "The New Experience," "Experience taught me / That nothing worth doing is worth doing / For the sake of experience alone." Nice use of enjambment, that. Experience has taught me the value of doing things even if they aren't what I'm normally into, and that when I just relax and let things happen, I usually have a good time. Plus, Jeremy does like the late nights, music, dancing, and he has been so patient going into churches stuffed with very old paintings. So, off to Carnevale!

Carnevale was actually pretty awesome -- strangely both more and less than I expected. On Friday, we walked all around the city, and saw a number of people in incredibly elaborate costumes. These were no ordinary halloween costumes; some of them looked like actual 28th c. clothes that had been passed down for generations. Others were just insanely elaborate. One woman had a gold multi-masted ship on her head. Another had a jeweled cobra that was about four feet tall and three feet wide. Of course, I have no idea if the jewels were real or the ship was actually gold, but the fact that I couldn't immediately tell should tell you something.

Friday night we went in search of Carnavale and . . . missed it. There was a big stage set up in San Marco, but it was hardly a party. No one was there, and the performers were basically jugglers and Punch and Judy acts. We found another square with a reggae band, but only about 25 people listening. We had a really good dinner, walked around a lot, hit a couple of bars, but that was about it. We had a long talk about how it was really okay that Carnevale was kind of lame, since we were enjoying Venice so much. Such was the power of polpetti to make everything right with the world. 

We shouldn't have worried. By the time we were trying to make our way back to our hotel after the Guggenheim on Saturday, the streets had become so massed that we could barely move. There were cops directing the pedestrian traffic, and several of the narrower bottlenecks had been converted to one way. If you haven't been to Venice, you should know that it is a very strange city to get around in. The canals mean that there are relatively few thoroughfares. If you want to get from the train station to San Marco (which everyone does), you either have to shell out ten bucks for a vaporetto ride, or you have to walk the one route that makes it to that part of town. Since some of that route is about two shoulderwidths wide (or one fat American), it can get backed up pretty quickly, especially with people stopping to take pictures of other people in costumes (or just some random bridge/gondola/canal). What should have been a fifteen minute walk took closer to two hours. Anyway, we finally made it back to the room, relaxed for an hour or so, and headed back out just a little after dark. 

The city was completely transformed. Everyone was in costume -- from the elaborate to the super cheap tourist mask. The traditional costumes were still out in force, but modern costumes had joined the scene. There was a group dressed as the ghost busters, complete with leaf-blowers that they had modified into backpacks (they were using the blowing capacity to disarrange women's clothing). (I'm not sure why I'm a hunchback in that photo. I don't think I was the rest of the evening. Maybe I was. There is some things that seem slightly blurry.)  There was a group dressed as the Beattles, complete with sound system, who would periodically stop and lip-synch. There was a shepherd with his twenty sheep. The was an entire group with hand-made masks based on Metropolis. There were clever Italian costumes making cultural references we didn't get/could't translate. There were an unfortunate number of Afro wigs. I was in an awesome blue leather medusa half-mask, complete with snakes, which I had bought on Friday. I was quite striking, if I do say so myself (see the first picture of this post). Drunks loved it -- several tried to steal it from my head. Everyone was shouting and singing and dancing and acting like people in masks and a crowd. 

There were two main squares with music. San Marco had the most elaborate set up, but was so big that it wasn't packed feeling. The more elaborate costumes were there, and the best people watching. The band was unexpected -- all American twenties dance music. I taught some Germans some Charleston steps, which they quickly did better than I did. In fact, I have to say that music was a pretty inspired choice. It was really fun to dance to, and somehow it didn't feel dated or old. It seemed quirky enough to be cool. The other main square was on the other side of the Rialto bridge, and was basically just a DJ and a hundred million people. We were there twice. Around eight, it was physically difficult to get into the square -- you had to push and shove your way past people -- but the actually dance area was still somewhat danceable. We went back around 10:30, and I seriously think it had doubled in occupancy. Sometimes you could get enough space to do some minimum dancing, but more often you just moved with the biomass. There was moshing, crowd-surfing, elbows thrown, feet stepped on. There were a few times I thought I was going down, and once when about twenty people near me did go down in a big tangle. There were a few times when I swear my feet were touching the ground, and I was held up simply by the press of bodies. It was all surprisingly good spirited -- no groping, no fights or really even a hint of  anger, no out of place bodily fluids. 

It was a lot (especially given the general incompetence of the DJ. You know how a good DJ can organize and coordinate a crowd? Not this one.), so after an hour or so, we left. There was really no escaping the biomass if you were out in the city, but outside of the DJ piazza, we could usually move and breath, if slowly and occasionally with other peoples smoke. Eventually, we made our slow way home. We could have stayed out later, but we had been drinking steadily if not much for about six hours by that point and it was starting to catch up with us. Plus, I wanted to remember what it felt like to have personal space. I do like personal space. And quiet. But, it turns out, I also really like Carnevale in Venezia.