Croatia and Venice
Getting up early has never agreed with you, but then you don’t fly to Venice every day, so you’ll have to live with it. At 4.00 you figure that the trains probably aren’t working, and when that’s confirmed it’s time for a taxi. Obviously he tries to get you to hire him all the way to Stansted, but given that you forgot to get enough money out of the bank, you figure you’d better save the £50 for the journey ahead and just go to Liverpool St for the train - you’ll have to try and make what you have last as long as possible.
And then onto the train and through the blue countryside to an early morning Stansted. The view from the lounge is amazing – fog covers the entire airport, with nothing but the tailfins of the planes peeping out above it. You can’t get a shot because you don’t have a camera yet, although sometimes these things are better left remembered. Onto the plane and attempt to sleep, an attempt which is doomed to failure by the constant adverts for various products blasted over the intercom (a fact which explains how Ryanair manages to keep their fares so low – that and the early departure).
And then you’re back in Italy. The bus driver tells you, in the only English he knows, “yellow machine ticket”, and so you take a wild guess and stick your bus ticket into the yellow machine, which seems to make him happy. And then you are driving along the Autostrade seeing the same flat, beige landscape and bleached, hazy sky you saw out the window of the train to Torino while you played Scupa last year, and you smile. It feels like a lifetime ago.
And after the wasteland of Mestre you get the aquamarine of the water flowing under the bridge which carries you into Venice, the colour changing like Dorothy landing in Oz. You book a hotel for a couple of nights after the disappointment of the lack of a ferry service to Croatia at this time of year, and you pick up a 3 day pass for the Valporetta for L35,000. And once on board you realise the beauty of the public transport system here – regular services and (as there are no ticket checks the locals, being Italian, don’t feel any obligation to buy tickets) completely funded by tourists.
And you get off and follow the map to the hotel, and find … nothing. And 30 minutes of walking finds … nothing. Until you ask the girl selling coconut on the fountain and she points up, and when you walk around the corner you see the tiny brass plaque on the door you walked past any number of times, and you wonder how many deposits have been given up without finding that. And you smile – Italians have the best schemes for fleecing tourists.
So upstairs and flick through the TV channels (69 channels – half static, all Italian) and then out and over to Piazza San Marco. It’s pretty run down compared to when you last saw it (22 years ago, although you realise no one has real memories from that long ago, particularly if they were a kid at the time), so you walk on and over the bridge to Academia and on towards the Peggy Guggenheim Museum (closed Tuesdays, naturally), passing a small pub blasting out reggae – should be one to come back to.
A change of pace, you figure, so back onto the valporetta to Lido, where you decide that a walk along SM Elizabetha to the beach should be the next move. A quick espresso for energy and you walk along to find that they’ve fenced the whole beach off for some reason. The weather isn’t perfect, and it may not be the best beach in the world, but this seems an extreme way to stop tourists getting in. You climb over anyway – this is Italy: rules are made to be broken – and down towards the water you climb a pile of rocks and pretend you can see Croatia. And soon enough you will.
You stroll back to the terminal via the back streets, listening to the bark of the odd dog and the burr of a distant motor scooter, when suddenly it dawns on you – you feel happy for the first time in a while. Your stomach is calm, and you feel … content. You think about the future and it seems okay to you. Who knows – a couple of years with the new position and you could do anything – they’ve got offices everywhere in the world after all – Milano, Madrid, Paris, even home. And for once you feel good about the future.
You get back onto the boat, staring at the water, hypnotised by the glare of the reflections of the sun and the feelings of calm they induce in you. You notice a large stand at the top of the island next to the naval academy, and get off at S.Elena to investigate. As you’d hoped it’s AC Venezia’s home ground – a fairly ramshackle affair, with steel stands which are, like so much in this country, held up by a wish and a prayer, and which remind you of the one you sat on (so briefly) at Monza another lifetime ago. Great days. So it’s not Stadio Della Alpi, but then Venezia isn’t Juventus either…
As you walk back through the calm, quiet (in Italy? What’s wrong?) lanes of a residential area it suddenly hits you – people do this everyday, everywhere – there are always people like you travelling past people’s houses, past people’s lives on the way to somewhere else. You feel a little like a ghost here – strolling through the area, seeing everything, touching nothing. But imagine doing this all the time – permanently soaking up the experiences of something new, something else. So all you need now is a lottery win to pay for it all…
You figure this all needs writing down, as you haven’t written for a while – sometimes life intrudes – so you get lost until you find the hotel, which has no paper, then out to find a pad and pen. Another espresso and a quick pint to help the notes come, then back for a quick shower and change. Obviously MTV has a short dorky guy making jokes presenting with a tall blonde girl. You watch for long enough to remember that Italians really don’t know much about music, and then the girl starts complaining about how Italian TV is full of bimbos with cleavage and little else. Something about kettles and pots occurs to you, and then they play Celine Dion and it’s clearly time to go.
So off to that reggae pub, you figure, and your first night in town. Dusk in Venice is breathtaking – the sky awash with pinks and blues against the white marble of Salute as the lights blink on along the canals. You head over towards Salute and stroll along the darkened corridors until you find your pub. But it’s closed for renovations – why didn’t you notice before? – so you keep on towards Academia on the solid principle that Universities always have good bars nearby. Not in Venice though, at least not on a Tuesday at the end of March.
It’s dark now, with the gloom washing through the laneways and rinsing everyone away, so you walk back over the bridge and head towards San Marco – at least tourists should be looking for something to do tonight. But there seems to be nothing on – you see a few older locals, but there is no one young around. You realise it’s March, and maybe there’s just no one here – it certainly seems pretty deserted for 7.30. And you realise you’re tired – you’ve walked everywhere today after a very early start. Maybe you should just get something to eat and get some sleep. And then, just in the nick of time … the Blue Fly. Coffee, beer, food, people, life. Stop writing, start living.
Some memories – Armani, the most amazing pants in the world (black silk, Gucci, L3,700,000), endless corridors, talk of the best places in the world, more beers, proscuitto and artichoke on foccaccia in a Bob Marley obsessed pub, more beers, more corridors, bed blessed bed …
… Only to wake up to the sound of a million Italians walking under your window, all of them talking at once, of course. Breakfast in the hotel, with the Americans asking you every question that pops into their heads – they ask you if you had any trouble finding the hotel, and you smile. Americans always seem to want to talk to you when you eat breakfast in hotels, so you were ready for them. A couple of coffees to steel you for the morning ahead and you jump onto the valporetta to Burano via Lido.
You notice while getting on the boat just how small Italians are – you feel like a basketballer here. Not to mention that they all look English – who ever told them that flat caps look good? It seems that the biggest difference between the English and the Italians is where they shop – the English shop at Designer Warehouse (doesn’t matter what it looks like, as long as the logo is big) while Italians shop at Marks & Spencer (doesn’t matter what it looks like, as long as there’s no label). Still, maybe this is a good thing as, bizarrely, on the exchange the guard asks the loud Americans out the back (as well as the Japanese couple inside) for tickets, but no one else. Obviously you look Italian you figure, a fact borne out later when you see a man who looks identical to your father speaking Italian.
As you travel alongside the long spit at the end of Lido you notice a guy on his bike riding alone towards the end of the spit. He’s gone a long way by himself, with a hell of a distance ahead of him, and you can’t help but think of yourself riding out there, the wind at your back and the pedalling smooth. Godspeed.
A little further on there are some guys trying to reclaim land. There are two large digging machines, although only one is working, and just beyond them there are two guys slowly putting down some fences to hold back the soil from the diggers while another guy sits in his tiny sailing boat nearby, who may or may not be their supervisor. That’s the Italians for you – they always think they’ve got all the time in the world, and then seem surprised when it’s moved on. You figure there must be an old guy around here who talks of them putting the sticks down to create a foundation when he was a boy – I remember when all around here wasn’t fields…
Burano is amazing – every house is a different, brightly painted colour to the next one. You wander around and see the locals touching up the paint work before the tourist season and wonder what it’s like to live somewhere where so many people come and stare, but then you remember they’re Italian – they probably love the attention. You remember reading about how the houses are different colours so that the fishermen can remember which house is theirs when they come home drunk – this would be handy in identikit cities like London, where every street conforms to every other.
You have a quick stroll past another of those towers the Italians seem to specialise in – looking like it will drop at any time but somehow defying gravity by staying upright – then back onto the boat. You see a guy do the push/pull tell your mother I saved you routine with his girlfriend - she squeals and then turns and smiles, smoothing his hair – that trick always works. And then on to Murano, and yet another walk around an island. Good for the legs, you think, although your shoes have seen better days. You grab a couple of proscuitto ciabatta and eat them on the bridge and watch a couple of fat Abruzzese women chatter past, clipping vowels off their words like meat off a bone.
You walk on and see a boatload of tourists being shoehorned into a gallery and wonder why they choose to see it all this way – life has no guidebook, and certainly no guide. Sometimes all you can hope for is to be fortunate enough to meet people who will help you along in life, who know some things and want to share them with you. You know some of these people, and you know how lucky that makes you.
And, as you walk along one of the canals lined with gift shops, you see the horse. Your mother has bought two of these glass horses over the years, and they both broke on their journeys home. You tempt fate and buy another one for her, knowing that it’s unlikely to survive your trip – you’ve still got a long way to go – but sometimes you’ve got to try and make something survive, to make it last. At least you’ve got a new challenge.
You get the boat back to the main island and walk across to Ferrovia just as the town is waking up after lunch. The quiet streets are suddenly full of guys with briefcases, kids with backpacks, and any number of other people, sunglassed to the hilt, enjoying the day, living for it. You find out the time of your train tomorrow morning and walk back towards San Marco, where you decide to go into the Basilica, which is a great idea – it’s second only the one in Krakow, with an entire roof covered in gold mosaic ikons. You think of a friend of yours who loves these ikons, and smile. Shame the piazza is still poo, though.
You walk back through the fashion section of town and see all the amazing clothes there, but it’s late in the day, and you don’t have the energy (or heart) to go shopping. Time for a shower, some beers in that café around the corner, and to get some more writing done. They play a lot of excellent music, and when eventually they play Love is Blindness by U2 you notice that the world conspicuously fails to swallow you whole. And when the guys behind the bar have an argument about the meaning of the song you provide an interpretation, via an ever more amusing sign language conversation, to the entertainment of all.
You wake up early and get ready to move, your stomach rebelling again so that all you can down is yoghurt with your juice and coffee – clearly there was a problem with the tap on that last beer. On to the valporetta a bit late, so obviously they go slower than a week in Warsaw in winter, although somehow you make the station with five minutes to spare, get a ticket and get onboard as they blow the whistle. You love travelling on trains – you always have. Something about the countryside rolling past – those trees in perfect rows, the deserted and crumbling buildings – is so soothing to the soul. All that’s missing is the walkman – maybe that New Order track about sound forming in a vacuum to replay the memories of that journey through France. It’s great how songs can replay old memories as effectively as hitting play on the video.
Into Trieste and on to the bus station to find out there is a three-hour wait – this is the longest wait you’ve ever had to endure for a bus, but it could be worse – although someone you know who can never wait for a bus certainly wouldn’t agree. Nothing else for it but to have a look around town. Trieste is crap, of course – it’s the kind of town that exists merely to make somewhere like, say, Genoa look good. At least Genoa has a big statue of Christopher Columbus, that guy who was a traitor to his country until he did something good. You see the Roman amphitheatre, which is tiny – then again, so are they – and stroll around the shopping district, which is depressingly like every other shopping district these days. Reflecting on the sad state of multinational label stores you walk on looking for a café which sells Illy coffee until you find one. The irony of this doesn’t escape you.
On the bus to Pula you sit next to a woman who talks to you for the whole trip – partly about herself, but mostly about you. She says she can see your sadness, and that only you can make it disappear. At the stop she buys you a glass of local wine and lets you admire the scenery – Croatians don’t seem to remove trees like Italians do – and gives you her phone number in case you need somewhere to stay. Not for the last time you are amazed at the generosity of Croatian people. As it happens, though, the parents of your friend are waiting at the station to pick you up, to drive you home, to feed you and talk to you, and to give you somewhere to sleep. All things considered this seems to be the best course of action, so you do.
You get up at 7.30 to the sound of a cement mixer, and when you come downstairs you see the workmen starting on the driveway after they’ve started on the Slivovici. Well, it’s over the yardarm somewhere. After breakfast and a quick stroll Sanja sweeps in like an angel of mercy and carries you off with her. You see the amphitheatre (which is the real thing – this makes the Colliseum look like a pile of rocks), the main street (which, with the trees, reminds you of Krakow), the James Joyce pub (he lived there for a year – no prizes for guessing what it’s called), the old town and the castle. You lunch at the market, which is fantastic – fresh food after all this time. And, mostly, you talk.
And in the afternoon you go to church. Not just any church, of course, but the church – the one who’s name you don’t know, but which seems fairly unforgettable right now. You walk in from the heat of the day into the cool, thick atmosphere of the church and sit on one of the pews and wait to see the mummies of the six saints they have behind the altar here. This is odd, you think – these bodies preserved in this place, or brought here for safekeeping, for literally hundreds of years. There is never any rational explanation for things like this, and yet they exist.
She tells you the stories the people of various religions told her of the healing powers here, and you notice that the air does feel different here to anywhere you know – it’s as if you absorb it rather than merely breathe it. People come from far away to pray and ask for a healing in prayer, and you feel like you want to be healed – like you want to reclaim your life. You concentrate on your breathing as she talks, and as you think about what she is telling you you feel one particular breath, and it feels as if something is falling into you. Then the old women start chanting – one added to another as they walk over to join the group, like the gulls swooping one by one into the yard in The Birds. And then it’s your turn to see the mummies, and you know there is something going on in this place. When you leave she tells you how spooked she felt in there, by the chanting and the atmosphere, and it’s written all over her face. You nod and agree, but you know that you feel changed somehow, cleansed in some way, somehow set free.
And you certainly feel great later that night, especially when you are headed towards the first of many bars. On the way there you realise it is 11.00, and the bars would all be closing in London just as you are starting. She knows everyone, of course, and you meet a few bar owners, a few exes, and about half of the population of Pula. You drink a lot of drinks, dance to a lot of really bad songs, lead the singing in Cake’s version of I Will Survive, which is more popular here than anywhere you’ve seen, and laugh a lot. This is what life should be about – finding the joy that can be had if you really want to have it. You talk about how good it feels to be happy, and agree that sometimes you can have what you want if you are only prepared to ask for it.
You wake up at noon and notice the artwork, both Jon and Maja’s, staring down at you, and you remember that you have Mr Bunny at home now, and you realise that that painting seems to have started this whole trip. You certainly wouldn’t be staying here if Maja hadn’t offered accommodation with her family when you picked the painting up. You could relate to him from the moment you saw him – that desire, that need in his eyes, clinging so tightly to the bunny, protecting and being protected, with that finger pointing the world in another direction, another way. He feels like a talisman for the trip, as if somehow it couldn’t have started without his approval.
But there’s no time to dwell on the artwork now because she’s ready to take you out to see the rest of Istra. Rivenj first – a hill covered in old buildings and cobbled laneways overlooking that beautiful fishing port and wooded island. “Imagine living there” she says at every second house, and it’s too easy to do just that. You want to climb the tower by the church at the top of the hill, but it seems to be locked – something to do with some people hurting themselves by falling through the rotten stairs. Down to the waterfront for a coffee and to bask in the glorious sunlight, and then off to Porec. It’s smaller than Rivenj, but no less beautiful for that. You stroll through the laneways and, almost by accident, into the Basilica, which has an amazing gold mosaic covering one end of the room, and which had looked like any other from the outside.
Then back to the car for the drive to the ‘crazy mushroom restaurant’ in Vrh. On the way there you stop at a tiny village on top of a hill and sit on the enormous ancient wall to watch the sun set to the sounds of the town bells peeling, and you realise that it’s one of those moments when the sun does that pow thing to set the scene for a memorable night. You see a Porsche with Milano plates outside the unmarked restaurant and figure that’s a good sign – Italians willing to travel this far for food must mean something. And soon you learn exactly what it means - a perfect steak covered in layers of truffles in a rich sauce, the freshest salad ever (they pick it from the back yard as they need it), magnificent wine and fantastic company. Completely sated, you head back down the hill and into the thickest fog you have ever seen. You’re only going about 20kph, both leaning your noses practically on the windscreen and laughing like drains at the insanity of driving like this. You eventually make it back to see the Miss Croatia competition on television, and without understanding the language you can tell which ones have the worst answers from the look of shame on their faces.
Later she takes you back to the bar owned by Alan the boring bald guy, and exceeds all comers in the bitchiness stakes when she talks about the local girls, which is hilarious. You look around you and can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation – you are sitting under a speaker in a tiki lounge bar in Croatia watching some girls dance like loons with guys in cheap suits to sub Eurovision tunes with a great friend who you didn’t even know 2 days ago. And you realise that the email you recently received was right – if you live every day like it’s your last then you win the lottery every day. And this is today’s payoff.
You’ve got an 11.00 start and a lost hour due to daylight saving, but you make the bus and watch the landscape roll by as you wish (again) for your walkman. You remember the joy you’ve felt over the last few days as you roll along the coast, through the mountains and into some Soviet built slag heap of a town, and this can’t be driven from you even by the guy who gets on and sits next to you, stinking of whatever he’s just eaten. He’s probably just happy to be on the bus and out of town, and good luck to him.
Into Zagreb at last, and Branka and Vedrun are waiting to take you back to their flat, which is above a cool looking bar, across from the cathedral and around the corner from the main square. You’re amazed that anyone anywhere in the world could live so centrally, but they seem to be immune to this by now. A quick coffee and then out, but the rain quickly drives you back indoors – you had to get some poor weather eventually. Moussaka for dinner and you watch the most boring Grand Prix ever (after she called to remind you it was on), and then into the car and off to the club. As you pass the library he tells you that it’s the best place in town to meet girls – try the third floor for languages and they’ll all be there. You try, and fail, to imagine this happening anywhere else in the world and are amazed once again at how individual this town, this country seems to be.
This feeling is reinforced when you get to The Swamp. This club has opened only two nights ago and is still illegal, although from the number of people there that night there would be a riot if they ever tried to close it. And you’d join in with them to keep it open. In the time you are there you see every single haircut of the last 40 years, meet most of the musicians under 30 in town, have a singer try to prove how much of a rock star he is very loudly, and dance like an idiot for about four hours straight. You look into the lights as everyone throws shapes and realise that tonight is one of those nights … just like the last few nights, really.
And the next day you get up and go. You give the travel book you’ve been reading to him (for inspiration, and for thanks), get down to the station and onto the train and on towards Venice. You wait through the incredible delays at the borders with a guy from Split, which you swear to visit as soon as possible, and eventually you get there and manage not to meet up with the friend of a friend who was to give you a bed tonight. No problem – you probably need some time to yourself to digest this amazing trip. So off to find a hotel and get some long overdue sleep, and in the morning you return to London and nothing (not even the inevitable seat kicker) can take the smile off your face.
And you return home to find that the horse is still in one piece after all – sometimes, it seems, miracles do happen.
(April 2000)
And then onto the train and through the blue countryside to an early morning Stansted. The view from the lounge is amazing – fog covers the entire airport, with nothing but the tailfins of the planes peeping out above it. You can’t get a shot because you don’t have a camera yet, although sometimes these things are better left remembered. Onto the plane and attempt to sleep, an attempt which is doomed to failure by the constant adverts for various products blasted over the intercom (a fact which explains how Ryanair manages to keep their fares so low – that and the early departure).
And then you’re back in Italy. The bus driver tells you, in the only English he knows, “yellow machine ticket”, and so you take a wild guess and stick your bus ticket into the yellow machine, which seems to make him happy. And then you are driving along the Autostrade seeing the same flat, beige landscape and bleached, hazy sky you saw out the window of the train to Torino while you played Scupa last year, and you smile. It feels like a lifetime ago.
And after the wasteland of Mestre you get the aquamarine of the water flowing under the bridge which carries you into Venice, the colour changing like Dorothy landing in Oz. You book a hotel for a couple of nights after the disappointment of the lack of a ferry service to Croatia at this time of year, and you pick up a 3 day pass for the Valporetta for L35,000. And once on board you realise the beauty of the public transport system here – regular services and (as there are no ticket checks the locals, being Italian, don’t feel any obligation to buy tickets) completely funded by tourists.
And you get off and follow the map to the hotel, and find … nothing. And 30 minutes of walking finds … nothing. Until you ask the girl selling coconut on the fountain and she points up, and when you walk around the corner you see the tiny brass plaque on the door you walked past any number of times, and you wonder how many deposits have been given up without finding that. And you smile – Italians have the best schemes for fleecing tourists.
So upstairs and flick through the TV channels (69 channels – half static, all Italian) and then out and over to Piazza San Marco. It’s pretty run down compared to when you last saw it (22 years ago, although you realise no one has real memories from that long ago, particularly if they were a kid at the time), so you walk on and over the bridge to Academia and on towards the Peggy Guggenheim Museum (closed Tuesdays, naturally), passing a small pub blasting out reggae – should be one to come back to.
A change of pace, you figure, so back onto the valporetta to Lido, where you decide that a walk along SM Elizabetha to the beach should be the next move. A quick espresso for energy and you walk along to find that they’ve fenced the whole beach off for some reason. The weather isn’t perfect, and it may not be the best beach in the world, but this seems an extreme way to stop tourists getting in. You climb over anyway – this is Italy: rules are made to be broken – and down towards the water you climb a pile of rocks and pretend you can see Croatia. And soon enough you will.
You stroll back to the terminal via the back streets, listening to the bark of the odd dog and the burr of a distant motor scooter, when suddenly it dawns on you – you feel happy for the first time in a while. Your stomach is calm, and you feel … content. You think about the future and it seems okay to you. Who knows – a couple of years with the new position and you could do anything – they’ve got offices everywhere in the world after all – Milano, Madrid, Paris, even home. And for once you feel good about the future.
You get back onto the boat, staring at the water, hypnotised by the glare of the reflections of the sun and the feelings of calm they induce in you. You notice a large stand at the top of the island next to the naval academy, and get off at S.Elena to investigate. As you’d hoped it’s AC Venezia’s home ground – a fairly ramshackle affair, with steel stands which are, like so much in this country, held up by a wish and a prayer, and which remind you of the one you sat on (so briefly) at Monza another lifetime ago. Great days. So it’s not Stadio Della Alpi, but then Venezia isn’t Juventus either…
As you walk back through the calm, quiet (in Italy? What’s wrong?) lanes of a residential area it suddenly hits you – people do this everyday, everywhere – there are always people like you travelling past people’s houses, past people’s lives on the way to somewhere else. You feel a little like a ghost here – strolling through the area, seeing everything, touching nothing. But imagine doing this all the time – permanently soaking up the experiences of something new, something else. So all you need now is a lottery win to pay for it all…
You figure this all needs writing down, as you haven’t written for a while – sometimes life intrudes – so you get lost until you find the hotel, which has no paper, then out to find a pad and pen. Another espresso and a quick pint to help the notes come, then back for a quick shower and change. Obviously MTV has a short dorky guy making jokes presenting with a tall blonde girl. You watch for long enough to remember that Italians really don’t know much about music, and then the girl starts complaining about how Italian TV is full of bimbos with cleavage and little else. Something about kettles and pots occurs to you, and then they play Celine Dion and it’s clearly time to go.
So off to that reggae pub, you figure, and your first night in town. Dusk in Venice is breathtaking – the sky awash with pinks and blues against the white marble of Salute as the lights blink on along the canals. You head over towards Salute and stroll along the darkened corridors until you find your pub. But it’s closed for renovations – why didn’t you notice before? – so you keep on towards Academia on the solid principle that Universities always have good bars nearby. Not in Venice though, at least not on a Tuesday at the end of March.
It’s dark now, with the gloom washing through the laneways and rinsing everyone away, so you walk back over the bridge and head towards San Marco – at least tourists should be looking for something to do tonight. But there seems to be nothing on – you see a few older locals, but there is no one young around. You realise it’s March, and maybe there’s just no one here – it certainly seems pretty deserted for 7.30. And you realise you’re tired – you’ve walked everywhere today after a very early start. Maybe you should just get something to eat and get some sleep. And then, just in the nick of time … the Blue Fly. Coffee, beer, food, people, life. Stop writing, start living.
Some memories – Armani, the most amazing pants in the world (black silk, Gucci, L3,700,000), endless corridors, talk of the best places in the world, more beers, proscuitto and artichoke on foccaccia in a Bob Marley obsessed pub, more beers, more corridors, bed blessed bed …
… Only to wake up to the sound of a million Italians walking under your window, all of them talking at once, of course. Breakfast in the hotel, with the Americans asking you every question that pops into their heads – they ask you if you had any trouble finding the hotel, and you smile. Americans always seem to want to talk to you when you eat breakfast in hotels, so you were ready for them. A couple of coffees to steel you for the morning ahead and you jump onto the valporetta to Burano via Lido.
You notice while getting on the boat just how small Italians are – you feel like a basketballer here. Not to mention that they all look English – who ever told them that flat caps look good? It seems that the biggest difference between the English and the Italians is where they shop – the English shop at Designer Warehouse (doesn’t matter what it looks like, as long as the logo is big) while Italians shop at Marks & Spencer (doesn’t matter what it looks like, as long as there’s no label). Still, maybe this is a good thing as, bizarrely, on the exchange the guard asks the loud Americans out the back (as well as the Japanese couple inside) for tickets, but no one else. Obviously you look Italian you figure, a fact borne out later when you see a man who looks identical to your father speaking Italian.
As you travel alongside the long spit at the end of Lido you notice a guy on his bike riding alone towards the end of the spit. He’s gone a long way by himself, with a hell of a distance ahead of him, and you can’t help but think of yourself riding out there, the wind at your back and the pedalling smooth. Godspeed.
A little further on there are some guys trying to reclaim land. There are two large digging machines, although only one is working, and just beyond them there are two guys slowly putting down some fences to hold back the soil from the diggers while another guy sits in his tiny sailing boat nearby, who may or may not be their supervisor. That’s the Italians for you – they always think they’ve got all the time in the world, and then seem surprised when it’s moved on. You figure there must be an old guy around here who talks of them putting the sticks down to create a foundation when he was a boy – I remember when all around here wasn’t fields…
Burano is amazing – every house is a different, brightly painted colour to the next one. You wander around and see the locals touching up the paint work before the tourist season and wonder what it’s like to live somewhere where so many people come and stare, but then you remember they’re Italian – they probably love the attention. You remember reading about how the houses are different colours so that the fishermen can remember which house is theirs when they come home drunk – this would be handy in identikit cities like London, where every street conforms to every other.
You have a quick stroll past another of those towers the Italians seem to specialise in – looking like it will drop at any time but somehow defying gravity by staying upright – then back onto the boat. You see a guy do the push/pull tell your mother I saved you routine with his girlfriend - she squeals and then turns and smiles, smoothing his hair – that trick always works. And then on to Murano, and yet another walk around an island. Good for the legs, you think, although your shoes have seen better days. You grab a couple of proscuitto ciabatta and eat them on the bridge and watch a couple of fat Abruzzese women chatter past, clipping vowels off their words like meat off a bone.
You walk on and see a boatload of tourists being shoehorned into a gallery and wonder why they choose to see it all this way – life has no guidebook, and certainly no guide. Sometimes all you can hope for is to be fortunate enough to meet people who will help you along in life, who know some things and want to share them with you. You know some of these people, and you know how lucky that makes you.
And, as you walk along one of the canals lined with gift shops, you see the horse. Your mother has bought two of these glass horses over the years, and they both broke on their journeys home. You tempt fate and buy another one for her, knowing that it’s unlikely to survive your trip – you’ve still got a long way to go – but sometimes you’ve got to try and make something survive, to make it last. At least you’ve got a new challenge.
You get the boat back to the main island and walk across to Ferrovia just as the town is waking up after lunch. The quiet streets are suddenly full of guys with briefcases, kids with backpacks, and any number of other people, sunglassed to the hilt, enjoying the day, living for it. You find out the time of your train tomorrow morning and walk back towards San Marco, where you decide to go into the Basilica, which is a great idea – it’s second only the one in Krakow, with an entire roof covered in gold mosaic ikons. You think of a friend of yours who loves these ikons, and smile. Shame the piazza is still poo, though.
You walk back through the fashion section of town and see all the amazing clothes there, but it’s late in the day, and you don’t have the energy (or heart) to go shopping. Time for a shower, some beers in that café around the corner, and to get some more writing done. They play a lot of excellent music, and when eventually they play Love is Blindness by U2 you notice that the world conspicuously fails to swallow you whole. And when the guys behind the bar have an argument about the meaning of the song you provide an interpretation, via an ever more amusing sign language conversation, to the entertainment of all.
You wake up early and get ready to move, your stomach rebelling again so that all you can down is yoghurt with your juice and coffee – clearly there was a problem with the tap on that last beer. On to the valporetta a bit late, so obviously they go slower than a week in Warsaw in winter, although somehow you make the station with five minutes to spare, get a ticket and get onboard as they blow the whistle. You love travelling on trains – you always have. Something about the countryside rolling past – those trees in perfect rows, the deserted and crumbling buildings – is so soothing to the soul. All that’s missing is the walkman – maybe that New Order track about sound forming in a vacuum to replay the memories of that journey through France. It’s great how songs can replay old memories as effectively as hitting play on the video.
Into Trieste and on to the bus station to find out there is a three-hour wait – this is the longest wait you’ve ever had to endure for a bus, but it could be worse – although someone you know who can never wait for a bus certainly wouldn’t agree. Nothing else for it but to have a look around town. Trieste is crap, of course – it’s the kind of town that exists merely to make somewhere like, say, Genoa look good. At least Genoa has a big statue of Christopher Columbus, that guy who was a traitor to his country until he did something good. You see the Roman amphitheatre, which is tiny – then again, so are they – and stroll around the shopping district, which is depressingly like every other shopping district these days. Reflecting on the sad state of multinational label stores you walk on looking for a café which sells Illy coffee until you find one. The irony of this doesn’t escape you.
On the bus to Pula you sit next to a woman who talks to you for the whole trip – partly about herself, but mostly about you. She says she can see your sadness, and that only you can make it disappear. At the stop she buys you a glass of local wine and lets you admire the scenery – Croatians don’t seem to remove trees like Italians do – and gives you her phone number in case you need somewhere to stay. Not for the last time you are amazed at the generosity of Croatian people. As it happens, though, the parents of your friend are waiting at the station to pick you up, to drive you home, to feed you and talk to you, and to give you somewhere to sleep. All things considered this seems to be the best course of action, so you do.
You get up at 7.30 to the sound of a cement mixer, and when you come downstairs you see the workmen starting on the driveway after they’ve started on the Slivovici. Well, it’s over the yardarm somewhere. After breakfast and a quick stroll Sanja sweeps in like an angel of mercy and carries you off with her. You see the amphitheatre (which is the real thing – this makes the Colliseum look like a pile of rocks), the main street (which, with the trees, reminds you of Krakow), the James Joyce pub (he lived there for a year – no prizes for guessing what it’s called), the old town and the castle. You lunch at the market, which is fantastic – fresh food after all this time. And, mostly, you talk.
And in the afternoon you go to church. Not just any church, of course, but the church – the one who’s name you don’t know, but which seems fairly unforgettable right now. You walk in from the heat of the day into the cool, thick atmosphere of the church and sit on one of the pews and wait to see the mummies of the six saints they have behind the altar here. This is odd, you think – these bodies preserved in this place, or brought here for safekeeping, for literally hundreds of years. There is never any rational explanation for things like this, and yet they exist.
She tells you the stories the people of various religions told her of the healing powers here, and you notice that the air does feel different here to anywhere you know – it’s as if you absorb it rather than merely breathe it. People come from far away to pray and ask for a healing in prayer, and you feel like you want to be healed – like you want to reclaim your life. You concentrate on your breathing as she talks, and as you think about what she is telling you you feel one particular breath, and it feels as if something is falling into you. Then the old women start chanting – one added to another as they walk over to join the group, like the gulls swooping one by one into the yard in The Birds. And then it’s your turn to see the mummies, and you know there is something going on in this place. When you leave she tells you how spooked she felt in there, by the chanting and the atmosphere, and it’s written all over her face. You nod and agree, but you know that you feel changed somehow, cleansed in some way, somehow set free.
And you certainly feel great later that night, especially when you are headed towards the first of many bars. On the way there you realise it is 11.00, and the bars would all be closing in London just as you are starting. She knows everyone, of course, and you meet a few bar owners, a few exes, and about half of the population of Pula. You drink a lot of drinks, dance to a lot of really bad songs, lead the singing in Cake’s version of I Will Survive, which is more popular here than anywhere you’ve seen, and laugh a lot. This is what life should be about – finding the joy that can be had if you really want to have it. You talk about how good it feels to be happy, and agree that sometimes you can have what you want if you are only prepared to ask for it.
You wake up at noon and notice the artwork, both Jon and Maja’s, staring down at you, and you remember that you have Mr Bunny at home now, and you realise that that painting seems to have started this whole trip. You certainly wouldn’t be staying here if Maja hadn’t offered accommodation with her family when you picked the painting up. You could relate to him from the moment you saw him – that desire, that need in his eyes, clinging so tightly to the bunny, protecting and being protected, with that finger pointing the world in another direction, another way. He feels like a talisman for the trip, as if somehow it couldn’t have started without his approval.
But there’s no time to dwell on the artwork now because she’s ready to take you out to see the rest of Istra. Rivenj first – a hill covered in old buildings and cobbled laneways overlooking that beautiful fishing port and wooded island. “Imagine living there” she says at every second house, and it’s too easy to do just that. You want to climb the tower by the church at the top of the hill, but it seems to be locked – something to do with some people hurting themselves by falling through the rotten stairs. Down to the waterfront for a coffee and to bask in the glorious sunlight, and then off to Porec. It’s smaller than Rivenj, but no less beautiful for that. You stroll through the laneways and, almost by accident, into the Basilica, which has an amazing gold mosaic covering one end of the room, and which had looked like any other from the outside.
Then back to the car for the drive to the ‘crazy mushroom restaurant’ in Vrh. On the way there you stop at a tiny village on top of a hill and sit on the enormous ancient wall to watch the sun set to the sounds of the town bells peeling, and you realise that it’s one of those moments when the sun does that pow thing to set the scene for a memorable night. You see a Porsche with Milano plates outside the unmarked restaurant and figure that’s a good sign – Italians willing to travel this far for food must mean something. And soon you learn exactly what it means - a perfect steak covered in layers of truffles in a rich sauce, the freshest salad ever (they pick it from the back yard as they need it), magnificent wine and fantastic company. Completely sated, you head back down the hill and into the thickest fog you have ever seen. You’re only going about 20kph, both leaning your noses practically on the windscreen and laughing like drains at the insanity of driving like this. You eventually make it back to see the Miss Croatia competition on television, and without understanding the language you can tell which ones have the worst answers from the look of shame on their faces.
Later she takes you back to the bar owned by Alan the boring bald guy, and exceeds all comers in the bitchiness stakes when she talks about the local girls, which is hilarious. You look around you and can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation – you are sitting under a speaker in a tiki lounge bar in Croatia watching some girls dance like loons with guys in cheap suits to sub Eurovision tunes with a great friend who you didn’t even know 2 days ago. And you realise that the email you recently received was right – if you live every day like it’s your last then you win the lottery every day. And this is today’s payoff.
You’ve got an 11.00 start and a lost hour due to daylight saving, but you make the bus and watch the landscape roll by as you wish (again) for your walkman. You remember the joy you’ve felt over the last few days as you roll along the coast, through the mountains and into some Soviet built slag heap of a town, and this can’t be driven from you even by the guy who gets on and sits next to you, stinking of whatever he’s just eaten. He’s probably just happy to be on the bus and out of town, and good luck to him.
Into Zagreb at last, and Branka and Vedrun are waiting to take you back to their flat, which is above a cool looking bar, across from the cathedral and around the corner from the main square. You’re amazed that anyone anywhere in the world could live so centrally, but they seem to be immune to this by now. A quick coffee and then out, but the rain quickly drives you back indoors – you had to get some poor weather eventually. Moussaka for dinner and you watch the most boring Grand Prix ever (after she called to remind you it was on), and then into the car and off to the club. As you pass the library he tells you that it’s the best place in town to meet girls – try the third floor for languages and they’ll all be there. You try, and fail, to imagine this happening anywhere else in the world and are amazed once again at how individual this town, this country seems to be.
This feeling is reinforced when you get to The Swamp. This club has opened only two nights ago and is still illegal, although from the number of people there that night there would be a riot if they ever tried to close it. And you’d join in with them to keep it open. In the time you are there you see every single haircut of the last 40 years, meet most of the musicians under 30 in town, have a singer try to prove how much of a rock star he is very loudly, and dance like an idiot for about four hours straight. You look into the lights as everyone throws shapes and realise that tonight is one of those nights … just like the last few nights, really.
And the next day you get up and go. You give the travel book you’ve been reading to him (for inspiration, and for thanks), get down to the station and onto the train and on towards Venice. You wait through the incredible delays at the borders with a guy from Split, which you swear to visit as soon as possible, and eventually you get there and manage not to meet up with the friend of a friend who was to give you a bed tonight. No problem – you probably need some time to yourself to digest this amazing trip. So off to find a hotel and get some long overdue sleep, and in the morning you return to London and nothing (not even the inevitable seat kicker) can take the smile off your face.
And you return home to find that the horse is still in one piece after all – sometimes, it seems, miracles do happen.
(April 2000)