Wandering Venice with Simpatici

There’s something about being in a place with friends who are locals to the area — it anchors the place, makes it feel more real and accessible than just being a visitor, on the outside looking in through the distorting filter that is tourism. So, we’d leapt at the opportunity to visit Venice with our new friends Andrea and Silvia, who had gone to university there and had a local’s perspective on the city! We jumped on the train and were joined by them in Padova along the way.

Whilst crossing the lagoon on the train and watching the surreal city approach, I got laughed at for eagerly pulling out Google Earth on the iPhone for an additional birds-eye view and showing it to Katherine — “How cool does this look!” — evoking the response that it also looked pretty cool out the window (she said bemusedly that I was missing it because I had my head buried in my iPhone). Andrea laughed knowingly, saying that he does exactly the same thing. We emerged from the train station onto the bustling streets of Venice. Andrea and Silvia took us up and over Ponte degri Scalzi, the bridge crossing the main canal, and proceeded to lead us through a warren of tiny streets, frequently crossing picturesque little bridges over narrow canals lined with boats.

It was very difficult to visualise the city as the collection of little islands that it is — it seemed decidedly more like a solid landmass interspersed by canals! As Katherine answered when asked later that night what she thought of Venice, “I thought there’d be more water”. It was quite cool to think that we were crossing between islands when we passed over those little bridges though. Katherine later remarked on the unusual quantity of graffiti (something I blithely failed to notice), noting that perhaps tagging a place so astronomically famous is quite the ego trip!

A big trade in Venice was in exotic carnival masks — there were lots of little shops selling them, representing a variety of Commedia dell’arte characters. These had Katherine feeling inspired, especially when she spotted the unpainted plaster ones you can buy and decorate yourself.

As we walked, Andrea pointed out one of the university buildings nestled amongst the narrow streets and canals, and introduced us to a great Italian word that we haven’t really been able to find an English version of: Simpatico, which Andrea and Silvia described as meaning something like funny, friendly; basically a word describing someone who’s good company, of pleasant character and who puts one in the mood they’re in just by being with them. (Admittedly, if said about a woman however, it means she has a nice personality but isn’t much to look at, as in “she has a great personality, but…“). It seemed apt, being introduced to the word by those two simpatici.

Andrea was explaining the verb ‘andare’ to me (to go), and a guy passed us and made a friendly comment to Andrea in Italian — something about giving the Americans language lessons and “Americani non parlano Italiano”. We stopped to talk for a moment; he asked us where we were from (actually, Australia!), and our conversation moved from there. and it turned out that Ben was an American who’d just kinda settled in Venice for a few months and had landed some sort of architect internship there – not a bad gig! He looked entirely Italian, and his Italian seemed pretty solid, so I was surprised when he switched to English to talk to all four of us. He was a friendly sort, and brainstormed with us about what to show his visiting mother later that day, given that Andrea and Silvia were being tour guides for the day, as well. When we parted ways with Ben, Andrea turned to us and explained “he is simpatico”.

Andrea grabbed simpatico Ben’s contact details, and we pressed on to Piazza San Marco, one of the main tourist draws of Venice. It was funny, our first visit there with Andrea and Silvia with the pressing hoards of other visitors had us almost entirely unaware of the square’s charms — it was difficult to appreciate the basilica with most of it covered with scaffolding, and the press of people left little breathing-room to look around.

Poor Silvia was feeling pretty drained by this point — our plans to have locals show us around had inadvertently resulted in us dragging a pregnant woman around Venice — sorry Silvia! With Silvia desperately in need of sustenance and a rest we sat down by the water and talked for a while, then pressed on and stopped for lunch at a little pizza cafe way off the beaten track (which made it consequently quite tasty, and very cheap!).

Some more ambling around back-streets and we came across a gelato shop — Andrea and Silvia had two rounds, so I suppose that must be high praise indeed. They laughed at our restraint (only one helping, pah!). We discovered later that the gelateria was listed in our travel guide: Quite a validation for Lonely Planet recommendations right there!

We jumped back on the train and made our way to Andrea and Silvia’s, in Padova. All four of us napped on the journey back (after plodding our way around most of Venice!), although not before Andrea and Silvia had to endure the apparently maddeningly inane chatter of two Italian women in the seats near us; the one benefit to not speaking Italian! We hung around on the couch for a while, and I pulled up an impressive recording on YouTube of Andrea and Silvia’s old band, “K”, playing a gig to a huge crowd.

Paolo and Vivian (Vivienne? Forgive me if I’m wrong on the names, Paolovigo!) had kindly invited us around for dinner, so the four of us joined them at “the cube”, their very Nordic-styled, gleaming house, along with Zage and his partner, and Paolo’s brother Robert and his girlfriend Alice. We chatted with Alice for a while, who spoke excellent English, and then gathered around as Paola and Vivian served up some absolutely awesome home-made pizza. We were startled when out came the shredded horse-meat — really, guys?

At the end of a really enjoyable evening with our new simpatici friends, Andrea and Silvia drove us back to “Monsangeles” (an in-joke name for Monselice that they couldn’t actually remember the origins of!). On the way we introduced them to one more favourite Aussie band, Powderfinger, which went down very well. We said a warm farewell, and promised that we would be back to pester them again — for longer, next time, and hopefully in Italian! Andrea gave us some Italian comic books to practise with – that’s how he learnt English! We’ve got no excuse now.

We’re really excited to have met them — for sure, they’re ‘our people’ — and we can’t wait to be back.

Touring Padova with with Some Very Nice Locals

We had a whole weekend with our new friends all to ourselves in store and we couldn’t wait! We hadn’t spent a good amount of time with people our own age – or close enough – since we traveled with friends in Italy very early on in our trip. This is one of the downsides of motor-homing – whilst most travellers our age are meeting peers in youth hostels we’re hanging out in some field with retirees. Both Silvia and Andrea have lived in Padova all their lives and made very good guides as they showed us around their lovely city. We were all constantly impressed with the random wikipedia-like bits of trivia Andrea kept coming out with. Silvia told us of a famous local saying that describes Padova as the city that has “a meadow without grass, a saint without a name and a café without doors”. The tour took in each of these three things and we were baffled to find that the “meadow” is the city square which does have grassy areas, the saint’s name is Anthony and the cafe does indeed have a door. Huh.

I found Padova, in a strange way, to be a bit like our home town of Melbourne in Australia. It doesn’t look like it at all but I found that Padova didn’t seem to have any grand tourist attractions to it’s name – just like Melbourne – but what it does have is a sense of “liveability”. It’s a nice city. It has pretty parts, it has a pleasant atmosphere and there seems be a lot going on. This was interesting to me as the longer we’ve spent in Italy the more I’ve come to feel that I wouldn’t want to live here. I’ve become very aware of the general lack of space – doors opening right up onto the road in towns, the “country” still being quite populated with at least a house or two always in view. To me, this has amounted to a general sense of crowdedness. This is something I love about travel and learning about other cultures – it shines a new light on our own country and culture. Intellectually I understood that Australia has a tiny population and is massive with wide, open spaces but I didn’t understand what that felt like until I felt what a large population in a small country feels like. It may have been because of our friends’ presence but Padova felt like one of the few places in Italy where I could live – I say “I” as Mike has felt there have been plenty of places that he would be happy staying put in.

It was absolutely wonderful spending time with locals and gleaning little insights we otherwise wouldn’t have gleaned. I love my coffee, I come from a city that has a well-known and respected coffee culture but I can’t for the life of me understand Italian coffee – the espresso. “Sip” and it’s gone! Andrea shed some light on it for me when he likened it to a small gourmet chocolate – it doesn’t last long but it’s a taste sensation for as long as it does.

We had a traditional “spritzer” – a cocktail – at “spritzer o’clock” – sometime in the evening before dinner – and watched the “fighetti” – comically fashionable Italian youth – strut and generally stand around looking rich and beautiful in “The Uniform” – the wardrobe that it seems all Italians have agreed to adopt. I asked Silvia, who expressed exasperation at “The Uniform”, where she does her shopping. Her answer – she doesn’t shop! She proceeded to point out her hole-ridden Doc Martins that were The Thing to have in the 90s!

Just as Andrea finished explaining to us what “fighetti” means, a very expensive looking car that barely came up to knee-level came to a screeching halt right in front of the busy cafe and a trendy young thing strutted out in The Uniform. Everyone in the vicinity turned and stared. Andrea turned back to us, shrugged, and announced, “fighetti”. We all cracked up as the guy sauntered off nonchalantly.

We talked for a while about the band they were in in their twenties, “K”. Turns out our new friends were quite the rock stars back in the day! Later that night at their apartment we watched a concert they played at to a massive audience, Silvia on guitar and Andrea the lead singer! That night we introduced the guys to some Aussie bands – Clare Bowditch and The Cat Empire. It was fun seeing Andrea rock out to a song about our home-town “The Crowd”.

We had a wonderful home-cooked meal with a couple of Andrea and Silvia’s lovely friends and the best strawberries I’ve ever tasted with nothing but a bit of water, lemon and sugar. After dinner we went to the “Gelateria da Bepi”, a gelateria with a very unconventional array of flavours, including basil, carrot, sweet potato, pepper, tomato, rosemary, sage, celery, pumpkin and salmon!

We discussed our plans for Sunday and couldn’t pass up the opportunity of visiting Venice with locals – both Silvia and Andrea went to university there, the lucky things!