As we ride the 25 boat across the 2 km of green Adriatic waters that connect the mainland to Venice, I noticed a small shrine. Ave Maria is perched atop three wooden piers in the middle of the water. She is decorated by a well-tended flower box at her feet, a sea green frame surrounding her like a halo with 1979 written above her. I wonder who paddles out here daily to tend to Mary's needs and if that person has been doing it since the year I was born.
After thirty minutes or so, the ferry drops us at our destination – Venice. We quickly find ourselves in narrow alleyways of streets . Not a car is in sight, but many a bridge or boat. Within minutes, I am enchanted. We walk past windows with cooking, conversations, delicious smells wafting, wonderful songs chirping. We walk underneath laundry that hangs two stories above us, flowers dangling from barely-visible window boxes. The secrets these cobblestones must hold. The stories the shirts on the line above us would tell, if only we could speak their language.
As we meandered through the streets and canals of Venice this afternoon, the brilliance of its magic dimmed. This was aided by high end retail shops and crowds of tourists that require you to either dash around them or dilly dally behind them. But I realize that the magic of any new place is at its greatest when you have no destination in particular and you don't know where you are. As soon as I started to orient myself to the map and the guidebook, Venice lost just a bit of its magic. Once its limits can be accounted for, its lands and waters and mysteries no longer endless, its routes explained, mapped, deciphered, the magic fades. I think the experience of the magic of a place is tied to not knowing anything about it for certain. It is definitely tied to not having a destination and not knowing just where you are.
We have been staying at the toes of the Dolomites now since Monday in the small town of Caltrano, Italy. We have been staying with Emanuel and Rainie and their two children, Emiline and Emile. When we arrived late around 9 pm. on Monday, they were complete strangers. We found them via couchsurfing.org with help from Annette's friend and veteran world traveler, Adrienne. As we leave Saturday morning, we consider them friends. Emanuel is Italian. He is 28, does office work for a family-owned truck repair business in Caltrano. Rainie is Estonian. She is 23. Currently, she looks after their two beautiful children – Emiline, almost 2, and Emile, five months. They met in a castle in Estonia. Rainie was working there at the time. Emanuel was running a youth camp there for a week as part of a year-long European Union volunteer program, much like AmeriCorps back in the U.S. They got married in that same castle four years ago. Emanuel loves movies and has a collection in the thousands. Rainie loves cooking. Annette and I indulged in both.
With our evenings filled with good food and movies, we spent afternoons day tripping from Caltrano – to Asiago, Vincenza, Verona, Venice. Each town is more charming than the last, declaring its existence with a sentinel clock tower next to the church at its center. We ate cheese and speck (regional cured bacon-like meat) in Asiago, marinated fish and pumpkin sea bass in Venice. We admired the Romanesque architecture of Palladio in Vincenza and quickly came to understand why Shakespeare chose Verona as the setting for Rome and Juliet. If Shakespeare's muse was Verona with its roman amphitheater still in use, Hemingway's was Venice.
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