most successful writing, resume the passing days, events, looking back, stop the mad race in Venice. I have one more year, nearly five months living in Italy, and a wealth of memories that becomes hard to bear. But I can relieve myself again.
How to sort through all these stories, these streets, these people, these discussions. What would be left after a letter, which would be forgotten, exaggerated, caricatured? There are so many things I want to talk.
It does not matter. I entered the third volume of my stay .. At first amazed, then disillusioned, now gone mad.
My addiction daily Venetian does nothing to cure me of astonishment. Every day reserve his surprise, every morning inspiration. I am not a tourist, I see things without having already views. I am no longer living, the future of the city does not interest me more than I am resigned. I drill the third layer. So every day I discover a Venice supernatural, which is neither that of tourists, nor the Venetians. Venice is my last, that of my adventures, a city not only to me, an endless playground, lighted in the morning and off when I close my eyes.
Venice are really outside the myth that I am wrought? Regardless, the city offers me a life unreal unreal. Unlike Byron, I continue to wander. This bohemian life I lead, or rather the complacency with which I myself ready, I was so detached from me I do not know who I am. By winning Venice and the universe beyond the city, I lost my story and certainly a bit of my soul.
This is another soul who speaks Italian, more vibrant, but also perhaps more superficial, less real.
If I almost forgot my country, I do not it assimilates me. And it does not assimilates me. Would I be alien to one another? A barbaric northern cities, also slicked it is, do not swim deep enough into the Italian olive oil.
Venice Is North? The wine is cooked but the fried fish.
is the seriousness of I realize that some misunderstandings of the irreducible differences in our backgrounds. The Italian people I still largely inaccessible. I never know what these men say when I'm not with them.
I try to move beyond the frame. It is so hard to live through. In Louvain-la-Neuve, I lived through my studies. I came to Venice in the framework of Erasmus. So the scene changes; it is deeper than Brabant. I try to push myself as much as possible, while continuing to do my homework.
I have no camera. A picture of Venice is lighter than its reflection. I took in hundreds of places, at all hours of day and night, but I never had the color, smell, soul. I am a bad photographer and a poor writer. I can not draw. No weapons to take it, I can send it to you.
But I feel alive. Venice dazzles, frustrates me, fascinates me, scares me. I am happy to understand. I can not describe to you in Venice poet, I can not lynched by the journalist. I'm away, in a silent experience, neither positive nor negative, but an exciting rarity.
Am I really happy where I have slept my fears?
Here to compensate me, postcards from other cities, when I had the courage to leave the lagoon.
Verona
I wanted to go to Trieste Aniel, I went to Verona. The blazing sun and reduces the time we were forced into a superficial tour of the city. Boredom also read and learn, Venice request sufficient effort. I'm not back in the churches, some remarkable it seems.
So I sniffed the atmosphere of the city, dubbed Piccola Roma by the idiots at the Venetian influence clearly. Pretty sad at first, held in Verona's historic center of unbelievable wealth. Surrounded by the Adige, large circle of water that makes you forget the sea Venice, Verona is a delicate, quiet and mostly Italian. There is the Roman Arena, a great Roman amphitheater of the 1st century which casts its shadow across the Piazza Bra, there is the Duomo to the original portico, Palazzo degli Scaliger, who belonged to a family Scaliger, who reigned over the city during decades, the Loggia del Consiglio, beautiful baroque building, etc.. Palaces, Venetian villas. The houses, too, without the channels and the lack of space, they are bigger and stronger.
We climbed the hill after dinner, we sit on the promontory at the Castel San Pietro, Austrian castle of the 19th century. We overlooking the city with him, and, beyond the river, the whole region. Going down, we visited the Castel Vecchio, beautifully restored by an architect whose name I forget but who is admired Aniel.
The Juliet balcony is a joke, but can contain the ugliest tourists in one place.
Trieste
With Aniel again, I went to Trieste by bus. We crossed the northern Veneto and Friuli, to Slovenia. We stopped in Gorizia, a city copy of the new Europe, cut in half by the border. Not just any border, a border between two worlds, even fifteen years after the fall of communism metal.
As I set foot in Slovenia, my poor friend got stuck to the Albanian border, without the necessary visa to such a transgression.
We took the train, traveling the last industrial valley of Italy, Monfalcone, skyscrapers in the fields, aqueducts hidden by vines and hills before the mountains, and drained dry by the terrible Bora, severe; Trieste finally surrounded, encircled. We went through the mountain.
What about Trieste? City of air and water, heavy architecture, silent and fearful population, fragrant old, surviving as an exception to the ambiguous identity: Latin embarrassed, Slavic and Austrian stashed stray?
Leaving the station, everything is square and massive, gray avenues; cars glide silently down the slope that goes from the rocks into the sea in small parks Germanic climb trees look depressed air, one above the others, assailed on all sides by buildings twenty stories. The sea bottom, underneath, where the wind takes us. The invisible city
growls, groans, murmurs all around, awaiting the time when darkness will cover the rheumatism its old streets remained upright but trembling. We forgot Trieste in the Adriatic after she hides meanwhile, is silent, but still dignified and does not bend under the weather and wind. After all, the horizon is endless, well behind last Miramare and barges.
Adriano welcomed us to his home in the pedestrian area. We ran into the wind, rain. On Saturday, the ungrateful Bora stopped our march towards solitary Miramare, we constantly pushing back, preventing us from breathing in the hills overlooking the vast sea.
So we went out into the empty night, and we drank until daylight.
For the first time I saw the Italian countryside, the Veneto wild.
Oh that car ride I liked. Under a black sky clouds, colors and smells swirling around threatening us. We went north, where the flat Veneto is more dented, ending in the clouds. Marostica is charming, with his place to play chess, and his incredible castle perched on the hill by a series of walls falling to the ground like a seat belt not fastened. Bassano was quiet, smelled the grappa ponte dei Alpini, where the Brenta is the most beautiful.
... and so on.
Tomorrow I'm off to Rome, a few days. More by duty than desire. Because otherwise I'll regret. How can we go to Rome after Venice? I could see, but I need to clear my head a little too full. I'll tell you.
William.
