Everybody Loves Raymond Kitchen Table

tourist season if I cursed Venice? The tide of 2030 prevails forever

For beauty

I never lose

But for whatever it

Who is achieved through adventure

- Giovanni della Santa Croce .

Dear all,

In a country where time does not exist, where schedules are just to calculate the delay that we take, the spring will be an exception to the rule. He fell on the city of the Doges March 20 and no longer seems to want to leave. The air, still damp, has greatly warmed and the sun is now strong enough that I spread in t-shirt along the quays and terraces. The water is rising, some sewage backup and some streets have been flooded. My good channel even came caress the walls of my Pallazetto Tito, no mess and for a few hours of a warm evening only.


So Venice, after two months? What this mail is certainly less exalted than the last, the surprise of the first few weeks having given way to a life no less interesting, but more tinged with a reflection on the city that never stops inside me. Reflection, which obviously is extremely acidic and negative. My exaggeration is legendary here to take a joke, nothing serious, and frankly, I pay a good time.

Ah! What would have been my experience if instead of Venice, I chose as the destination Salamanca, Hamburg, Galway or even - or especially Naples? Any other insurance. The choice of "city-Erasmus, if risky, based on two or three ideas - affinities waves, seems to greatly influence any future life.


I have so many things to tell you, I do not know how to begin. Start with an example in good essay:

Saturday at 16h, I go to church Santa Maria della Salute, with its magnificent dome, on the tip of Dorsoduro, listen to vespers organ therein data. Program last week, the Stabat Mater of Pergolesi. You have to imagine the place in a chapel "baroque-cold" tens of meters high, with statues ready to rock in space, where you can see the organ. Begins to float the soft music, she gets carried away, ton, cries, tears ... You bet! in this atmosphere of thunder pass tourists, guns in hand, they discuss - no, they cry because the music is too loud , read aloud their guide, applaud when they believe it's over. This is not a brothel but a complete mess, squeezed between the ignorant and the fanatics of the art, endless dissecting of the altar that you try again painfully t'imprégner.



This could be a picture of what is now Venice. Again, I will try to explain - and explain what is happening here, what is this strange city.

Venice is not just a museum town. The palaces of the Grand Canal are not under glass, one can touch them failing to live there. One person sees in the window, no trace of domestic activity, but they are real, at least as real as their reflection in the water. Ie they have a physical existence, but they could very well be cardboard. Venice is a city museum but a theater, not a city but the representation of a city. We playing live - or for tourists to discover.

More than Venice, the entire lagoon that separates the world and play. Arriving in Venice by the aptly named Liberty Bridge that connects Mestre to the lagoon is like a passage from the other side of the mirror. Did you see Mestre, refineries, warehouses and cranes, smokestacks polluting? It's as if we had wanted to spoil the mainland to underscore the chasm separating the charmed circle of the sordid reality.

Because of this "shift" required to reach Venice, improvisation is absent, it never happens by accident in Venice. Once landed at Piazzale Roma, the roles are written, signed routes. The festival is programmed, repeat. Everyone has a role to do well in the scene: the tourist is more tourists than anywhere else, the lovers are adding to it ever, poetic souls are disgusted with the dandies. Anyone strolling player to "make Venice." Venetians and ensure the grain, their livelihood, the show must go on.



Last week, for the first time in over two months, I came out from Venice to Padua to visit. In great romantic, I went by way of the poets, the one that runs along the Brenta Canal linking the two cities. How horrible! Okay there are villas, old remnants of what I read described by Byron or Taine. But it takes a lot of imagination to try to recreate what was this road before the flood industrial factories, vacant lots, public housing, filthy houses and supermarkets aggressive. But at the end of the road, Padua is beautiful, quiet city with long avenues and sunny at the center.

A church of Padua upset me, San Antiono. Famous for its host particularly good, it hosts many pilgrimages throughout the year. I've never seen such fervor. The church, components rather eclectic, and it boiled down to one-five centuries of art history, is a veritable supermarket of religion. A woman in a trance reciting rosaries in the microwave, the faithful are lying between the rows, crutches, and votive pictures, words of thanks are strewn altars, statues cover. The jaw of St. Anthony is exposed to the public in line to collect himself. In every dark little chapel is a priest who confesses pilgrims, blessing, the incense. There are even neon lights of Las Vegas worthy entry of some chapels, and religious icons are sold almost in chorus. I felt faint several times, but I must admit, I was happy as a child. I loved the crowd that idolizes sign all the time, lit candles, talking to statues. In San Antonio, the place is alive. The church, splendid statues, some genuine masterpieces, all this serves to religion, meditation, as he is superstitious. And I'm willing to believe in miracles in such a place!

Venice, however - hence my surprise at Padua, is spiritually abandoned, dead to all magic. The "Pearl of the West" is no longer a place of worship but of culture. There are church but no religion. Clichés of the animistic religion of the pious and superstitious Italy, Venice is in cultural activities, as if all his wonders that had been made to make beautiful. In the city of art, there is no faith. The sacred image has become a work of art, churches and museums. And then everything is noise, baroque, rococo, angels, lace marble. All for showing off. Nobody expects anything, faith is a party. Churches are slot machines that are contemplating the same pay table at the minute in the machine room and the light comes on.

Art seems to have replaced religion, art is the religion of Venice. Same pictures, same devotion should see the installation of aesthetes, the way they exclaim, their use of references, their blinkers, convinced of their blindness.

But Venice is a city of art. Venice is the city art is almost too perfect, more rare, unique, original. Coming to Venice it's dirty washing, take a makeover, as instituted.



Do I say, I live here a very rewarding relationship love-hate relationship with the city. I consider myself as a being as unique as the city, accomplice, confidant, contemplative exception? Or rather I am becoming iconoclastic, rebellious? Point of balance as my usual. Moving from one extreme to another. Currently, I'm pretty electric.

Sometimes I wish I go out and tag the palaces, gondolas overthrow, smash the souvenir shops. Thugs for hire warm the streets, scaring passers-by. I sometimes wish that the water rises and floods the city wins the churches, the statues, the storm is breaking down the bell. I would like to remove the directional signs, blocking some streets. Understand me. It is hard to live perpetually in those halves viscontiennes-tones, the atmosphere warmed by end of century, this false decadence touristically maintained. Venice lack of grime, his hand frozen ideal city, without initiative, without improvisation, short on my nerves.

All offers directly to us, just follow the red carpet rolled out for us nicely. The risk does not exist in Venice. You can get lost, yes, and even among a thousand prettiness, but without running any risk. Just occasionally, the full moon, a small concern though polite, "oh what a terrible fog! "But it's only theater.

If I could have at least earned Venice. But living in Venice was not only hard-won, not really desired as long coveted a rare gift. It was almost by chance, so to speak. Rest assured, I am very happy to be here in "the city of marble and gold accented with jasper and paved with emeralds," in the mid- "Men majestic and terrible as the sea, bringing with hints of bronze armor under cover of their bloody coat" - J. Ruskin.

John Ruskin is a great aesthetic nineteenth century English who has spent half his life in Venice and was excited throughout Europe of his day. Proust in particular came to Venice, after months of preparation and intensive reading of Ruskin, which he translated. I try to imagine his feelings when he entered the city in 1900, after having so long dreamed.

Venice, everyone is always gone before me, all the world has seen what I see. What does it even to think about when so many books already appeared on the subject? I can not visit without any campiello a poet has not already written a painter reproduced. Venice was already a memory for me before I enter. We need to see it get rid of any legacy, avoid gestures conditioned stereotypes that prevent us from seeing such a building, such a place, such a channel without having a pictorial or literary reminiscence. Impossible! What makes Venice a city where the enchantment can only be achieved honestly, of course, but in a roundabout way, studied or experienced.



Good, now go the other extreme: communion with the city. Everything I write above is very beautiful, but you know as I am, I play the game as it should. I must confess, Venice is particularly gentle with me, she simply most of my predispositions. Where else on earth among those whom I happened to see the fireworks he reached these dizzy natural, he spreads the feeling of fullness, neither perfectible nor increased as the sea or forest? That's what I wanted to find arriving here.

There are places with which we feel some affinity, where one understands certain things. Cities that haunt us, open our eyes and sometimes reward us. Venice is one of those few. Hippolyte Taine wrote: "Everything is beautiful, I suppose there are sympathies of temperament, I find one here, give me a large forest beside a river or Venice."

But the sympathy of temperament I presume to find myself with Venice is also dangerous. The confusion is never far away, the illusion, as among those people whose similarities bring us back, like a mirror our own image. In Venice, I have plenty of time to look at me.

It is good to listen to walk the calle, see his shadow grow under the streetlights and soften a little about yourself. Of course I do. Venice is also the perfect city for narcissists. Water is everywhere to admire the imagination that surrounds the city is full of this poetry for lonely, that sweet melancholy. This city like no other where you just gaze at the centuries lying in his gondola, cutting themselves off from the world's violence, aggression of everyday life, is the perfect place for meditation, for personal balance sheets, for breaks before the big plunge. But beware, because the sweet melancholy easily leads to laziness. Above all, do not sleep or go on forever, it will start on time.

Because we cut indeed the world. It's a retirement home. This is the great city of disillusioned, defeated, the ideal city to hide, flee or abandon its responsibilities. Nobody ever came to Venice to change the world, nothing will change here, everything is finished, perfect, there's more to roam. And as such, Venice is a city not of thinkers but thoughtful. As said in property Debray its funny manifesto against the city, you come to Venice "as if, unable to change the world, we changed the world."

A city without risk, a movie set, artifice, all this damn softens. Nothing to do with the living image which can sometimes be Italy. Nothing can ever happen in Venice, no move recklessly, everything is far too polite. We can obviously depressed in Venice, but we do not commit suicide.

I'm sorry to say that my penchant for cynicism at every opportunity to thrive here. Nothing more important to me outside, I like to play hide and seek in the Venetian alleyways. And you who know me know how it can please me.


All these ramblings boring that you're forced to read, I am pleased to say, are worthless. Another point of view disillusioned voluntarily negative, defeatist unbearably, that could translate to every place I travel. Remember Louvain-la-Neuve (or not). Few people here who share my point of view. Some have found their paradise in Venice.

These considerations do not tell you much either of my daily amazing, my discoveries unspeakable, my twisted stories. Try to be concrete and concise, qualities that are far from mine.

Let me first tell you about the arrival of Marie-Eve in March, fifteen days in another world to wake up the dream a little numb, to communicate, to imagine a life like that. It was beautiful. We made a visit together virtually exhaustive of the lagoon, Venice and the islands. The islands of Venice, he must above all go to Burano, a fishing village more or less untouched by tourism, the island of all colors (people repaint their homes every year in little pink, purple, green or bright blue), which provides calm paradise. There's also San Lazzaro degli Armini, a small island along the Lido where a convent of Armenians incredibly rich. Finally, the Lido beaches, the vast sea, walks on the dike and luxury hotels. We also visited several museums, including the modern art collection of Peggy Guggenheim and Ca'Pesaro Museum of Art 19th and 20th centuries rich Belgian charts.

Being at university in Italy, I'm informed, is a rather disconcerting. The courses usually start with 30 minutes late, but it happens anyway when desired, even 10 minutes before the end. Classes are or are not given such a book should be read or not, the review date changes every week, work and oral presentations are distributed arbitrarily among the students.

For examinations, there is still time to register for the course two days ago. I have a Monday, Storia del Jazz, and I'm number 30. The professor is apparently the call, and students from 8:30 to 18h poireautent waiting to be singled out arbitrarily. I have a friend, it'll be two months, that is to say seven weeks, he expects to pass his exam. They are more than 150 in the course and the teacher comes sometimes and sometimes not. And no question of a passage time, it would be too complicated.

Moreover there is no logic in calendars. We are supposed to be on vacation, but my review falls next Monday and I have another class where the teacher decided to continue to . My other reviews probably fall in May, with no further details yet.

I also attended courses on the island of San Servolo, International University of Venice. This is a special case: a small fortified island lost in the middle of the lagoon, San Servolo is the only place in Venice where the official language is English. Besides, there is just U.S. of internal rules to dances. During my "Nationalism and Ethnicity," given by an Israeli nationalist, is certainly one of the most interesting that I have ever followed, for the content and how it is addressed.



Time, will have different convergence centers operated a sort of interest in my dating. I almost got rid of all my cumbersome "encounters-Erasmus and all these obscure figures who believe they are in communion with you because they have the same official status. My circle of friends widened, it is increasingly diverse, and meetings between absurd and crazy nights, I have the opportunity to get rich at all levels. The Erasmus

the beginning, I only stayed in contact with the two Catalan, Anna and Maggie, Finland's Sanna and the Party-people Portuguese Riccardo. So of course that incredible Giorgio I put on another foot, professor of life and first-class drinker, fighter and veteran musicologist eclectic. This former French engineer, exiled several times, benefits of retirement to investigate his lifelong passion: music. Trumpet in several bands bebop, Giorgio listening with the same pleasure Purcell and the Beach Boys, Scott Joplin and Peter Schaeffer. It is also with Giorgio that j'épanouis my immense passion for Leonard Cohen, between Jeanne d'Arc and Sharon Robinson, when the music does not matter. Relatively speaking, it is wise that I eat at Leonard Cohen and Giorgio, named after the simplicity of an absurd life and tormented.

I made many other meetings, as Albanians Aniel, architect and "party-animal"; Massimo denying his Sicilian roots and cultivating the art of the German and the group of Antwerp, good ambassadors of humor to the Flemish, whose leader, Thomas is a true star in Venice. Dali mustache and goatee to Don Quixote, he calls himself El Diablo, the English, but speaks with an Italian accent flamoutche not credible. So many other characters too, like this Turkish-austrio paranoid, Emre, anti-American calling and speaking absolutely no language; Charly, the seller in a hurry you can buy up to Senegalese your Ikea furniture for "not-expensive "

Foreigners especially, as you can see. Rest my apartment, three very nice but the Venetian occupation reduced, sleeping until noon, smashed most of the time. And knowledge of courses, with whom I have discussions underway.

Venetian Evenings are far from warm. Curfews at 2am, we find after some obscure bars and nightclubs lurk, which everyone complains but when everyone goes, since they are the only places open. The university on Thursday evenings, and my neighborhood has the coolest cafes, where the umbra is drunk standing at the counter and spritz on the terrace.

Tuesdays jazz have replaced the vague Mondays guitar neo-Louvain. These are real musicians and real music, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, the greatest musicians are each entitled to an evening of tribute. A few jam sessions are also held in the Giudecca, with an approximate success.

The best is yet to hold the party at home, as everywhere, and then go out into the desert night, turn by vaporetto asleep between palaces, discover the neighborhoods abandoned.

My Italian is getting better and better, my listening comprehension and reading are now the same level than English. The vocabulary is the most debilitating thing to express a nuanced, but I am now able to deepen my conversations with an interesting level. The first test will be my review of Monday, I decided to go in Italian - I could do it in English. I'll give you some news.


In conclusion (the most clever and least interested will already have jumped so far), I must recap the situation and offer some prospects for the city and my sad person, who discoursed on both subjects.

Venice has no merit, beautiful and useless, she spends her days feeding old losers illusory dreams. A little bitch, she wears the lace of seduction and makes its services pay high price. Wrapped in cellophane as a relic of a lost world, cleansed to the bone, saw his relifting Venice for tourists in young dynamic copy of the Piazza San Marco in San Moise, Harry's Bar in Florence, the Rialto the infamous shops and Murano glass. Theatre for fools, paradise precious retirement home for billionaires, Venice is the only city capable of impersonating an artificial a millennium of history.

Fleeing the world in Venice? Finally, no. No, we do not see that too, which sits at the gates of fire by Serenissima. And it is invaded, wash, purify, to set itself up as the archetype of what would become the cities of history in old Europe, a nostalgic amusement park, a sewage treatment plant for assholes, thermal baths to repent.

Me I'm tired, not feeling quite concerned not to cry, and before turning completely nihilist, I'm in Venice cons-example. Ever leaving my skin kid without losing my dreams, I am less tempted and take a little time. Fragile, however, still too shy, I'm still not ready for action. But I do not party, I face my morbid nostalgia, and the world when I do.

Nothing to do in my heart, I dream of a stream, forest and new world.

Well, I leave you, I am Erasmus after all, to discover the "culture of others," to enrich myself by diversity, and as said the other, = Sangria Fiesta!

William.