Banditos
Written at 7:48 PM, 9-22-06
After our long and arduous recovery from Oktoberfest, Jacob and I kicked back in a couple coffee shops in and around the Munich train station as we waited for our 11:40 PM train to Venice. Most of this time for me was devoted to catching up on blogs, emails, and the like. The only occurrence of incident was this young German girl who came and sat down at our table and began talking as if this were totally ordinary. I had to hand it to her, going up to a couple strangers and sitting down to talk in your second language was pretty cool. Her train came after about an hour and she left with her friend and mother back to somewhere in Germany, the name of which I can neither remember nor could spell anyway. More time passed and after roughly seven hours of killing time, our train arrived promptly at 11:30 and we began boarding.
Unfortunately, the arrival was to be all that would be prompt about our train ride. First, Jacob and I couldn’t find our cart. The numbers on the train carts descended downward from 270, but we were 289. Instead, we assumed we were just confused and that 289 was our train number. We were swiftly corrected in this thinking by several Germans who seemed to take personal offense at our assumption that our beds were their beds. We discovered after much confusion that the cart numbers declined up until the last two carts which were 290 and 289. For the record, the train numbers was in fact also 289, so our confusion was justified.
Sleeper trains, by the very nature of their existence, defy the laws of physics. To cram as many people into those trains as they do—well—let’s just say that if we were all Schrˆdinger’s cats, we would definitely be very dead inside our box. Six people in a room that was smaller than my Freshman dorm (mind you, Oregon ranked #1 on the “Dorms like Dungeons” chart, so you can imagine what this means). Fortunately, all the people in our room were very cool.
That is to say, no one smelled, no one stored, no one stole, etc. Actually, I’m kidding—that is, everyone really was very cool. The unfortunate part was that there was a very real language barrier going on. Two of our roommates were Americans, Bryan and Renee; they were a couple and had recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Obviously there was no language barrier there except for the occasional Wisconsonian “nasal-ness” that seeped out. (I hope my friend from Wisconsin isn’t reading this!) Another of our roommates was a guy who was living in Venice, originally from Chile. His name was Nicholas, and though he spoke Spanish and Italian, he spoke very little English. (He did a lot better at English than I did at Italian though, more on this to come). The last person, who remained quiet for most of the trip, was a South Korean guy. He spoke Korean and French, but none of us spoke either language, and his English was very limited. He seemed good-natured, but we just simply could not communicate.
So for those who don’t know, I studied Italian for two years in college. And what did I get out of those tedious two years fraught with oral exams and presentations? “Grazie, ciao, prego, buona, male.” That about covers it…
I exaggerate of course, but my well-learned Italian, which I hadn’t used in (how many years since I was a Junior in college…three?) quickly descended into some horrible fusion of the remnants of my High School Spanish class and my two years of Introduction to Italian. I had invented Spitalian.
Nicholas was very obliging, and between my Italian, his English, and Renee and Jacob’s High School Spanish, we were able to reasonably convey meaning. However, the effort required was completely exhausting. I began remembering more Italian, but even as I did, my mind slipped into a delirium in which English joined the Spitalian to make Spitalish. At this point, we all more or less decided to try to sleep.
I should mention what became an ongoing joke for all of us, though. Doubtlessly the humor will be lost on those who are not half-awake, cramped inside a six-person sleeper with strangers, but I will try to convey the experience anyway.
Banditos.
Yes, beware of the banditos. After taking our tickets and passports, the conductor left us with words of warning. Granted, no one really understood what he was saying because it was in German, but we did understand one thing:
Banditos.
He made gestures about locking the doors and pointed at our possessions. We got the idea, but not without conjuring images of stocky Italians dressed in black with masks around their faces, stalking down the corridors and carefully searching for unlocked doors. Soon, we were all warning each other about going to the bathroom, for fear of the banditos.
It was funny. Banditos.
I think it was just because we were all stupid Americans who couldn’t understand any foreign languages that didn’t have a direct correlation to English. Thus when we found a word such as “banditos,” we were like “AH! BANDITOS!” We clung to it like—I don’t know—a bug to a windshield. And we had no wiper. Okay, that was a bad analogy—moving on…
I’m not sure why they call sleeper cars “sleepers.” I think they could more aptly be named “shift-around-uncomfortably-all-night-because-the-mattresses-are-hard-as-rocks cars.” Or perhaps “don’t-get-a-wink-of-sleep-because-of-the-constantly-shifting-train-and-loud-noises-outside cars.” I think the only reason such names are summarily dismissed is the length. Even was someone were to work the name into an acronym, SAUANBTMAHAR Cars (looks vaguely Indian, doesn’t it?), I suppose it wouldn’t market well.
Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep. Maybe three or four hours. All the same, it saved a night’s accommodation and it was nice to wake up a couple hundred miles away in a totally different city. There’s not much to say about the arrival in Venice besides to say it was morning and I felt tired and dirty. The morning itself was beautiful. We got off the train and bid our farewells to Nicholas. Jacob and I, along with Bryan and Renee, checked our bags into storage until we could get into our hostel. (B&R were leaving on another night train that evening). We tried to keep together, but after getting to Piazza San Marco, we went our separate ways. B&R braved the momentous line leading to St. Marco’s Basilica (which had yet to open and already had hundreds of people waiting at it), while Jacob and I preferred to wander about.
You should have seen the pigeons.
Eventually I took the lead and decided to go to the Palazzo Ducale, the palace of Venice’s former Doge’s. The place was beautiful, full of amazing paintings, wicked weapons, expansive stone, prisons and wood rooms, and complete with history. This occupied us for about two hours, but by the time we finished, we were suffering from both a lack of sleep and food. We set our sights on a cheap pizza place across town, but first we wanted to investigate a nearby hostel to find out if it had vacancies. (We made reservations at a hostel but we weren’t sure if we wanted to stay there.)
Well, what was to be a brief investigatory trip quickly became meandering the streets of Venice, utterly lost. It didn’t help that the only maps we had were conveniently in the middle of our 500-page travel guides. Every few minutes we would pause at a canal or street, watch a passing gondola, and try in vain to locate ourselves. After passing way beyond the hostel and then circling nearly back to San Marco’s, we managed to track down the place.
It was full.
By this time we were suffering utterly from lack of food and sleep. I basically gave up on trying to communicate with Jacob, as the only response I got (if I got a response), was a grunt vaguely resembling a yeah or nu-uh. To be fair, I’d stowed away an apple so I was running on slightly more food, plus travel-adrenaline had come over me. This is what happens when I go to a new place. I can eat less and sleep less—though it catches up if I stay in a place more than about two nights. (Thus sleeping in until 10 and 11 in Munich).
We made our way back to San Marco’s and then crossed over the canals to one of Venice’s other large islands. Food was near at hand. We found the place we were looking for, La Pizzeria Volo, and it was glorious. Ten euros for an enormous pizza. We had mushrooms, prosciuto (thinly sliced ham), artichoke hearts, and mozzarella on it. I easily finished my half, and Jacob did pretty good with his.
Now we were off to another hostel to investigate vacancies. We crossed back over the canal and began exploring. I loved the little shops. The mask shops are amazing!! I’m definitely getting one, even if I have to ship it back. They had all kinds of animals and masquerade-like faces to choose from. Jacob indulged my browsing with mild indignation and I assured him that I would take care of my purchases tomorrow when he wouldn’t have to wait around.
To be brief (hard to believe, I know), we got lost again—and when we found the hostel, it was also full. We resolved to go with our original reservation (which was off on one of the islands further from the city center) and so went to retrieve our bags from the train station. It took roughly half an hour to get from the train station to our hostel’s island because of the many stops. Also, the canal expanded out into the ocean, so there was a much greater distance to cross. This discouraged Jacob and I at first, but then we found later that one could cross fairly easily from our hostel to San Marco.
The hostel didn’t turn out as bad as we thought, though I’ve definitely seen better. It’s a nice location because it’s on the water and far from the real touristy area of the town. Once we were settled, it was approaching sunset and we headed back into the town to track down internet, a good coffee shop, and some gelato. To sum it up, Venice is a beautiful town with a picture around every corner. I really like it, but I definitely can’t see spending more than a couple days here. Tomorrow, it’s off to some of the surrounding islands to check things out. I’ll repeat what I posted in one of my lost blogs—internet is expensive and hard to come by here in Italy and Greece. My posts might be few and far between, but hopefully I’ll get new posts, as well as the old ones, back up for viewing as soon as possible. Pictures might take longer, but I’ll try. Cheers.
Tags: Germany, Italy, Munich, Oktoberfest, Travel, Venice
gregbilsland
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