Scene 16 - 5th July
As per usual during the Tour-Europe-by-Train trip account, the story of Venice doesn't start in Venice. It starts in Rome. The train from Rome to Venezia runs through the Italian countryside, cutting through perhaps what could be considered hills in Central Italy. On one hand, they're hills and perhaps could offer an equivalent view as to that from Tivoli.
On the other hand, they don't.
As per usual during the Tour-Europe-by-Train trip account, the story of Venice doesn't start in Venice. It starts in Rome. The train from Rome to Venezia runs through the Italian countryside, cutting through perhaps what could be considered hills in Central Italy. On one hand, they're hills and perhaps could offer an equivalent view as to that from Tivoli.
On the other hand, they don't.
Venice is perhaps one of the most unique cities in the world. Perhaps it is common knowledge to know that they have canals rather than roads running through the city, and that the main form of non-pedestrian transport is, in fact, water based.
So one shamelessly overpriced (6 Euro) water-bus ride after reaching Venezia St Lucia Station, we reach our hostel. Or at least the plaza near which our hostel would be.
Skipping ahead, we find our hostel (which is a 5 min walk from that plaza) 1 hour later. All this while carrying our huge bags.
For Venice, while being the only city with canals instead of roads, is also the city where they don't seem to see the importance of assigning proper addresses to places. We practically walked around in completely random (Brownian) motion; changing direction only when we asked a passer-by for directions. A note, each passer by seemed to give contradicting directions. Perhaps that's just Venice.
Finally one guy actually helped us by calling the hostel. It was a great upturn on my opinion on Venice because the general sentiment insofar was that the hoardes of tourists flocking to their city had turned them into rude and unhelpful people. At least the guys at the train station and the water-bus stop were so. Looking back, perhaps
I ought to have tipped him just for being so helpful. Ultimately, we find another guy who walks us straight the the hostel. In fact, he takes out his key and unlocks the door and leads us in. Apparently he's the owner of the hostel.
A moment of being amazed at the coincidence later, I realise that, being forewarned of our arrival, the hostel manager got out of his office and started looking for four blur sotongs wandering about the streets of venice in close proximity to his hostel.
The hostel itself is not a hostel - rather, it turns out to be a private suite. So its our best and most costly hostel so far. We had booked this accomodation much much earlier and yet I think that its pretty worth it.
Gobi and Eugene go hyper around the awesome room and I realise that perhaps we wouldnt be seeing much of Venice at this rate. However, we do get out of the room eventually, get lost again, and end up wandering about somewhere in Venice.
Make no mistake, we do see the stuff that we had intended to see. We see St Marco's Basillica, but considering that we had just seen St Pietro's yesterday, St Marco's is well... dull at best. Inside, I tell Gobi that considering that we have already seen the best Church and the best Museum in Europe, there isn't really much left to see, unless we go see the best Castle. Which probably is in Prague.
Walking around Venice is the hardest thing that we've done so far. It's also probably the best preparation for the Orienteering Experience that we're going to have in Orebro, Sweden. For the majority of you who do not know what Orienteering is, it is, in the most general terms, an Amazing Race where you're given a map and a compass. So getting lost would be norm. In this way, armed with nothing but a map and a compass, we trudge through the maze of alleys and bridges that is Venice.
This is probably the hardest city to navigate too so far; only perhaps the deserted countryside of Sweden will match it.
Venice doesn't really have that many sights. First is St Marco's Basillica which I just mentioned. Secondly, we have St Marco's Square, which is just outside the Basillica. In this scorchingly hot weather; all squares, triangles, circles, and in general any geometrical shape of land built without shelter becomes exponentially less of an attraction. This effectively kills St Marco's Square as an attraction. Just as it severely dented St Peter's Cupola as the main attraction of Rome.
Finally we have the Bridge of Sighs which crosses the Grand Canal of Venice. Grand Canal is probably the equivalent of any other normal city's Main Street. Anyway, just as in any Main Street, you probably need a pedestrian bridge to cross it. This pedestrian bridge is famous for goodness knows what reason. Its just a pretty bridge, I reckon.
Gobi has officially renamed the bridge to the "Waste of Time Bridge". I doubt it'll be long before he renames Venice to "Waste of Time City". Honestly, Bridge of Sighs doesn't specify what kind of sighs one gives when seeing it or crossing it. Probably sighs of disappointment in Gobi's case.
To give the Bridge of Sighs some credit, it does give a fantastic view of the Grand Canal.
If you missed it earlier, the Venice hostel that we are sitting in now is NOT a real hostel. It is a suite. So once we settle down in the hostel, there is little incentive to leave. Fortunately, we had bought back some Italian dinner from a Chinese-run restaurant. Its not too bad actually.
A plus point was that we didn't pay that much for food. We had been forewarned earlier that Venice would be "shamelessly expensive", hence when we get food at prices similar to that in Rome, its a mini-victory for us.
Beer is also very cheap - much much cheaper than London for one. I'm talking about a price that is on the order of 20% London price. When beer is this cheap (at least with respect to coke), I have to take the opportunity to buy it back for dinner. In general, prices, if you know where to go, actually are comparable to Rome. Perhaps the "shamelessly expensive" description applies only to the tourist attractions. And the water bus, which WAS shamelessly expensive.
Eugene turns in early tonight; probably we won't get such great accomodation for the rest of the Eurotrip. Out of the blue, Gobi gets inspiration to exercise and declares that he should run 2.4km below 9 min by the end of the year. Unfortunately, he feels that the hotel room is too good to leave, so he doesn't go for a run today. Besides, there aren't really any proper roads in Venice where one can easily run on.
He does, though, exercise indoors.
After failing to find a weight to lift, he decides to lift the sofa. Ordinarily this would not be significant for me to comment on. What makes this not ordinary is the fact that I am in fact still sitting on the sofa.
Getting lifted up and down on a sofa is dizzying. True story.
Scene 17 - 6th July
I wake up before anybody else. Gobi's still asleep, so I assume that it is still early. Turns out that he's overslept; despite assuring everybody that he'd wake us all up since he had wanted to go for an early morning run around Venice. Perhaps its to do with the fact that Venice has no cars or trucks or any road-vehicles; hence the air would be marginally cleaner.
Gobi blames my alarm clock for not ringing. I assure him that it probably did ring; but its unhearable compared to Eugene's or his own. Eugene's alarm is the most annoying alarm possible. Britney Spears. Very effective alarm clock. You'd wake up at the first ring. Even if its just to shut it off.
Anyway, I agree with him that my alarm clock is miserably soft and I don't wake up half the time. Which is pretty much accurate.
Seeing as we had bought breakfast yesterday and done most of the packing yesterday as well, waking up late doesn't really have too much of an effect. Besides, the hotel room is honestly too awesome - so much so that the Nash Equilibrium is us staying in the hostel and Venice staying as infested with tourists as it usually is.
The problem, though, is that we need to dry our clothes. I'd left my clothes in the washing machine, and basically nobody had the time to dry their clothes. So there were three of us competing for one iron to help dry off the clothes. It doesn't really work. So two of us give up; and the third technically had the whole night to dry off his clothes.
I wear one decently half-dry shirt so that the sun would finish off the job; and carry another half dry T-shirt to air-and-sun dry it.
We'll soon see that this wasn't that good an idea. Not today, at least.
First though, we have to deal with our giant bags. Note from now on I shall point out that everybody on the trip has one giant bag and one tiny bag. For gobi; both his bags are tiny - in fact, his tiny bag can barely be seen. Lase's tiny bag is decently sized, but it actually can fit INSIDE his giant bag. Legend. Eugene's tiny bag is decently sized but it can't fit into his giant bag.
MY tiny bag is definitely smaller than my giant bag. Unfortunately, my Tiny Bag is heavier than my Giant Bag. Urgh. So despite putting down my giant bag, I still am to lug my uber heavy tiny bag around Venice.
Today is slightly cloudier than any other day (remember this) so its not too hot. Lase says that there is this "Student's Square" in Venice where students tend to hang out. We agree with him that we should go find this.
It should be, from here on end, declared that the phrase "A Quest for the Student's Square" should replace the phrase "A Wild Goose Chase". It sounds much cooler and unfortunately means the same thing.
We actually walk around the Whole of Venice in this quest, and we don't find it. In the end, Gobi says that perhaps we should start looking for a triangle instead because we just cant seem to find the square.
Perhaps the "Quest for the Student's Square" shouldn't be likened to "Wild Goose Chase". After all, in this time, we actually do see stuff. Like the Ghetto region. Which is ACTUALLY called the Ghetto region.
We actually also find a square. The Israelite square. For those who do not know, there are very few Jewish people in Singapore; if any. So a traditional Jewish person is a novel sight for us. I think we might also be seeing a Rabbi. But seeing that we don't have any Rabbi's in Singapore, I really don't know.
Remember how I said there weren't any cars or trucks or buses in Venice? This doesn't mean that there is no traffic. Or traffic jams.
In the end, we decide to just stone in Venice by a canal and watch the Gondola's going by.*
We see a gondola with a girl inside it. In Gobi's version, she is dipping her hands into the water (you'll see why he's exaggerated this story in this way in a few moments). A mother comes with her young son. And she makes him pee into the canal. We look from the mother to the girl in the gondola who's watching. Her hands are most definitely NOT in the water anymore, and she's not smiling any more. Her face mirrors Eugene's face, except that together with the look of horror on his face, Eugene is laughing at her horrified expression.
*
We hear thunder. There is still time to kill; but better to kill time at the Station safe from the rain than to kill time somewhere else where we'd be trapped by the rain. Note that today, we're taking a Night Train for the first (and probably the last time) in our trip. So our train departs quite late.
As I mentioned just now, today was a very cloudy day. While that made for easy walking, it also means... RAIN!
It does come suddenly, while we're walking with our Giant and Tiny backpacks to the station. As with rain, it is light in the beginning, so we brave it. I do not take out my rain coat. Then, when the train station comes into sight, it starts to pour. I still don't have my rain coat, so we all start to run. We do reach the train station less drenched that we were at Tivoli.
So now we know why it wasn't that good an idea to try to dry my T-shirt by carrying it around. Its wet again.
Because we left early to avoid the rain, we are at the station way before dinner time. So we put down our bags and stone.
In fact, if you look carefully at Lase's hands, you'll see a pack of cards. We successfully taught him Dai Di. And he won the first game.
It'll probably come in handy eventually because he is in fact Asian at heart.
When it does come to dinner time, though, it turns out that the Dinner place at the train station is pretty much closed. Fortunately, there is still pizza so we have that.
As soon as the train arrives we find our cabin and settle in. There actually are beds! Bunk beds which are squashed into a tiny room with no space. But there are BEDS!
Eugene puts the wrong date on the Pass, but the Ticket Inspector helps us to change it, so no harm done.
Later, we realise that we actually do have one day to spare, so each of us has one spot to make a mistake. But only one mistake.
We have to wake up early for the change at Salzburg at 4am tmr. So, off to bed then.
Interlude - Salzburg, 0420hrs, 7th July
The train was supposed to arrive at 4.15am and allow us time to find and change train to Munich. The train arrived late; and we have to run. The Munich-bound train departs at 4.28am. We board it at 4.28am on the dot, panting. We're afraid of the famed German effiency which involves being on the dot.
In the end, the train departs only at around 4.35am. Salzburg is in Austria, after all.
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