The day the world wouldn't stand still

Europe » Italy » Veneto » Venice
November 30th 2008

Published: December 3rd 2008

After having left the French Rivera we made our way across to our third country of the tour, Italy. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos because I left my camera on the bus and my memory, as I knew it would, is slowly starting to fade but I am very sure that it was during this trip that we stopped over in Verona, the setting of some book called Romeo and Juliet (I think is sold like a million copies or something). Verona was definitely something different, so far all our destinations consisted of large bustling cities but strangely this stop over was a much smaller and much sleepier town. Even more strange, or at least I thought, was that everyone was still dressed so nicely! The only people in shitty clothes were us and the bums. It certainly did seem the theme of North West Europe I don't think I even spotted one local in trakkies!

Anyway we wondered our way around the skinny streets of Verona and ended up at the balcony were Juliet was supposed to have said her whole "Where for art thou Romeo...etc." speech from. As we walked in through a small archway the walls were covered in pieces of paper, mostly love letters Juliet. We were told that only paper could be put on the walls as the graffiti written directly on the walls, which was how it used to be done, was ruining the place. Two of the stranger ones that Jeff and I found was one written on a maxi pad?!? Also there was one that said "I love you Elvis Presley". Once we had walked through the walkway of strange love it opened up into a court yard about 10X10 metres. Directly in front of us was a copper statue of Juliet. Your going to think I am having a lend of you here, but apparently it is good luck to grab her boob a bit like rubbing Buddha's belly. Once again I didn't have my camera and judging by the look of some of the people grabbing that boob I think I would have rather carry a dog turd around for the day but it was still funny watching some of the more unlikely boob grabbing candidates giving her funbags a honk, including one old lady. Just off to the right was the balcony and you could pay a couple of Euro to go up and stand on the balcony to have your photo taken.

Once all that was done and dusted we all split up to grab some food and for some of us a quick beer. We got a sandwich and a Heineken with our best Italian which was worse than an infant but luckily we picked a nice vendor who tried his best to give us some English back. Once we had finished our lunch in the shade we grabbed some gelati (There was a competition on to see who on the bus could try the most flavours while they were in Italy) and we started heading back to the bus. One the way I got a call from Nemo, it was great to hear a voice from home and I thought it was pretty cool to say "Hey dude, I'm in Verona right now!" Once we got back to the bus we sat in the shade of a tree in a little park and ate our gelati.

We arrive at our campsite in Venice in the early evening and we were ready to hit the bar because we were told this was the bar were you could get a drink called an "attitude adjuster". Most of us had read about these in the Contiki forums but most of the references to them didn't really say much but wait till you try them you'll see then. After a bit of dinner, a shower and a lot of beers we decided it was time to give these things a shot. Some people had 3, others barely finished a half; I had one and then sat in pure amazement as I felt this drink grab a hold of me. I should mention there wasn't anything...dodgy, in the drink it was only alcohol but I have never had any drink whip me into a frenzy like that before. I’m quiet sure it was mostly a placebo effect but I could almost feel my attitude being "adjusted". I went through a few stages first disgust at the sweet and overly alcoholic taste of the drink, then amazement at how fast it was working its magic on me, then the song "Killing in the name of..." by Rage Against the Machine came on and it was. All. Over.

The other alternative girl on the tour, Ash and I went flying from the outside into the empty bar and began tearing it up, as soon as the bartender saw this he just kept playing rock tunes until Ash and myself managed to draw enough of a crowd to really start causing some trouble...then he put on some R&B. The rest of the night saw the me and my busload of tour mates just generally being maniacs all "hepped up" on these ridiculous drinks that you could probably run a car with just using the fumes!

The next day was ordinary. We woke early to get on the bus that would take us to the port, where we would catch the ferry to the Venetian mainland i.e. the actual city of Venice. If you take a look at my photos on facebook you can see a photo of Danny, Jerry and I feeling the after effect of the terrible concoction that they unless on an unsuspecting group of young adults. It was bad...really bad. Anyway we all climbed aboard the ferry and we were taken to the city. When we disembarked I kind of thought to myself "The main streets, or canals, must be behind these buildings here" We made our way across the water front and past the Bridge of Sighs which has a number of boring theories on why it is called that but also is supposedly the most photogenic bridge in the world. I guess the fact that I have no idea what makes a bridge photogenic was the reason that I couldn't appreciate why in the hell it was photogenic in the first place. Yes I did take a photo...but I wasn't entirely sure it was of the right bridge.

After taking a photo of some bridge we got taken to a glass blowing demonstration. This. Was. Awesome! As hung-over as I was this definitely woke me up. It was pretty warm in there as we walked in and there was an old dude sitting in the middle playing with a little glob of glowing glass. He made a vase first. I was like well I've seen that on TV and, yeah, it’s cool to see live but if that is all you can do after 30 years in the profession time to get another job Grandpa. What he did next was amazing the announcer guy said that next he was going to make a horse. I was like bullcrap, but sure enough he got out pincers and stuff and he made a freakin horse! It was crazy! I can't even really describe to you how he did it. It was all very complicated. I was like "Hat's off to you old man"

Next we went to the Venetian Lace demonstration and to be honest on a 30 plus degree day on a Attitude Adjuster hangover I would rather have drank a litre of the water out of the canals (think the Murray but worse). I had to sit in the hot shop having some middle age woman justify too me how complicated it was to make lace and therefore why I should give a flying rats butt about what she was talking about. Further, after the walk through the glass shop and having with 4 out of my 5 senses overwhelmed to the point of disgust by the obviously prewritten and thickly layered charisma oozing from the seemingly misplaced Calvin Klein model that had the girls swooning and commenting how funny he was afterward; I was beginning to have enough of being taken to places that we were only lead to so that we could drop some dollar. Unfortunately I had no idea what we were doing next so I was forced to stick around.

Once I had suffered through yet another sales pitch and we left the people who were convinced enough to buy something I went, with the rest of the emancipated, to wait for them in St Mark's square where I came across one of the oddest laws I encountered in Europe. I was hot, hung-over and exhausted from the sales lectures so I decided to have a quick lie down on my face in the middle of St Marks square (I think there was a picture or two snapped once again check out facebook). All of a sudden our bus driver Sue came rushing over and told us to get up. This confused, and angered me just a little, until I realized why. I was told that it was a finable offence to sit down in St Marks square! Obviously, I was not the first smart arse in the world because after being directed to a sign explaining the rules of St Marks, whilst crying ‘loop hole’, I read that it was illegal to sit or 'lie down' in the Square. Not only that you couldn't eat or feed the pigeons! Apparently, once upon a time, St Marks Square was famous for its pigeons and how comfortable around people they were in some instance to the point where people would stand on them because they would move as people came at them…ballsy. It seems every silver lining has a cloud because the pigeons would draw tourists and then promptly shit on them...and everything else. This obviously became a problem and so a little while ago they banned feeding the pigeons to get rid of them. Though their numbers have thinned, you can trust me that they are still just as comfortable around people and equally as comfortable with shitting on them.

The upside of not being able to sit was it gave people a chance to walk around and look at some of the stalls around. This was when Emma came up to me all excited to tell me she had found a hat for Jerry. For those of you who haven't kept up with my posts Jerry is my hand puppet Giraffe who was initially my tour mascot but quickly became a tour celebrity and developed a life of his own when people took it upon themselves to take him out and take turns at being his personal body guard. (As a side note he also now has his own facebook so you can add him as a friend to see his over 150 photos!) The hat was gorgeous and a perfect edition to the pins he had been collecting from each country. Shortly after buying the hat and taking a few snaps the rest of the group arrived and I found out that I had been waiting for absolutely nothing! What was next was free time...damn.
We spent the rest of the day wondering around Venice. First stop was food, we found a little café where the little old Italian lady who owned the place fell in love with Jeff (who is of Maltese background) the food was great and we felt heaps better so we kept trekking. We stopped in for a quick look at our bank balances at an internet cafe, all our hearts sunk simultaneously. That is also when I posted on my blog. When we left the internet café it was time to delve into Venice and see what it had to offer, we decided that the best course of action to really see a city, as had been our experience, was to just explore and then work out where we were later. This was a great idea until we lost Sam and Chris and picked up Batty and we began noticing that there was more and more graffiti littering the walls and rubbish on the streets. We had unintentionally wondered off our maps and into the slums of Venice. We took the words out of each others mouths when we decided it was time to get the hell out of there.

We found our way to a little outdoor cafe and treated ourselves to a Heineken, which by the way is not any better overseas, and watched a dog and cat on a first floor porch as they sat lazily in the sun, their heads perched next to each other on a railing and surveyed their domain. It was something right out of a postcard and we only realized they were real when the moved! I also stopped by a street vendor to pick up my third pair of sunnies! Sunnies was definitely something I mowed through on tour and if I had have known how bad it was going to get I probably would have given up right there and then.

As we all glanced at our watches we realised it was time to scoot off to our Gondola ride. We met up with Mon and Ash at St Marks square where we made them the voices of our rumor. During our walk we decided that we would spread a rumor that Chris and Sam, the boy and girl we had lost during our travels, we said they had been busted unbeknownst to them, by us. This fell apart as soon as the rest of us left Batty with Ash and Mon. Batty, apparently lasted about 30 seconds before she admitted the whole plot. Batty was an honest girl, but decidedly bad at pranks.

After we left we started towards our Gondola rides. We arrived in plenty of time and managed to get ourselves on to the first boat, a move that would prove our undoing. We purchased some champagne and cheese for our boat of Jeff, Reg, Danny, Emma and myself and we all piled in worried that we might finish our champagne before the boat ride was over. We poured some champagne and took in the canals of Venice, which we had really done all day but it was great to see them all in one go and from a different perspective. We yelled and screamed at passers by walking over bridges we were going under to "Jump in" like high school girls going to their formal in a limo and had a great old time watching other Gondoliers sleeping in their Gondolas and trying to wake the poor bastards up. The ride culminated in inciting a race between our Gondola and one filled with more of our tour mates who pulled up beside us. This was exciting, and even more so when we won in the end of course.

Having left the last boat for dead we decided that we weren't going to wait around for the other boats like chumps in this heat so we made our way for the port that we had arrived at that morning and dipped our feet in the oil soaked port water while we waited. And waited. Something was wrong. After nearly getting in a fight with a bloke offering us Hena tattoos after he really started pissing us off when we told him to go forth and fornicate and he misunderstood and offered us a go forth and fornicate Chinese symbol in Hena, we gathered the sense to try and call our tour mates and seeing what the hell was going on. Only after having walked back and forth between two ports that both went to the place we needed to go about 20 times, of course.

Finally with 10 minutes to go before our ferry was scheduled to leave we got a call back from a tour mate. After finally deciphering her increasingly cryptic and annoying directions we finally worked out that our tour manager had actually instructed us to wait at the Gondola dock so she could direct us to the port where we would be leaving from...which was on the other side of the island. Crap! This made everyone insanely shitty. Whether the tour manager had said to wait after we had got on or if we just weren't listening because we were too worried that we might run out of champagne was really beside the point but after a long day in the sun a little champagne, the desire to "just get out of here" and get some attitude adjusters into us we and the fact that we only had one hour to catch the last ferry off the island till the morning anything was up for a whinge.

To cut a long story short after much bickering we finally made it to the other side of the island and boarded our ferry, with about 10 minutes before the ferry. This, clearly, would not be the end of our worries. Once we got on we weren't sure if we got the ferry that took us home or to the mainland in the direct opposite direction, what was worse is that it was the last one on or off the island! We kept our fingers crossed and after some confusion once we got on to the mainland the clicks that our bum holes made as they un-puckered was audible.

Of course we weren't just about to let anyone else know that there was a problem so we bought ourselves some hard earned Corona's and wondered in triumphantly into the packed dining hall to a cheer. We did a victory lap and headed out to grab our dinner, which we didn't know at the time wasn't being served yet. We got our meals anyway and spent the next hour laughing about how we were last in and first served. The rest of night was taken up in alcohol fuelled mayhem and fun all of which is either too boring or too explicit to write here.

All in all Venice was pretty cool. Though it was far too hot, had strange laws and probably would have been served better being taken in by someone not quiet so alcohol affected. Also the canals were not as wide as I thought, I had dreamed of people driving boats down canals equivalent of at least a two lane road. Instead they were quiet narrow and filled only with gondola loads of excited tourists. None the less I really enjoyed it. This was certainly one of the experiences that I signed up for.

The day the world wouldn't stand still

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