Last Confetti from Venice

Here - to end my report on Venice - a few confetti-like impressions which I especially remember.
(Honestly: you don't really want to see my 720 photos and listen to the description of every church or painting or Guggenheim we visited - at least 13 km walk every day, not included the vaporettos - even after three pictures of the wonderful marble floors that were everywhere you would politely yawn and remember your appointment at eleven, Pooh-bear-way).

because, somehow, they might look all the same to you_ 

I will remember:

- the smell --- water against old buildings, a musky mouldering smell - smell activates the memory of the very first time as a child in Venice
- the glitter on the often surprisingly bright turquoise water, and the very blue sky

- tons and tons of gold - on stucco, on buildings, on paintings
- the beautiful old ladies in their huge furs (it WAS cold), yet wearing thin silk stockings. Venice has a very vivid timeless elegance - both: the (often old) people and this old city do LIVE, thank you very much!

- the almost "fop" elegance of the men - beautiful patterned pencil-case thin cloaks they wore, utterly beautiful shoes (go in rags in Berlin and nobody will care - come as what the Berliner thinks of as "overdressed" - and they will stare).
- the long, long "Lido" where we took a very long walk in bright sunshine along the turquoise sea, crunching shells under our feet - I picking up shells -- just can't resist - which is for the grown-up persons accompaniyng me sometimes a bit trying... shall I keep the bizzare one, the interesting black one or - the pink one? And of course this child woman was utterly convinced to have found a rough piece of jade, which grown-up eyes tried to disenchant into "a piece of old glass formed by the sea" (let them talk... the lump of jade lies on my windowsill now, together with the - of course pink - shell...)
- the Venetian dialect: WONDERFUL! That is the Italian I had wanted to learn! (In Berlin I left after the second Italian course and after having visited Rome -- but now: two days ago I unpacked my Italian school books and will start again - uno, due tre!)
- My unability to laugh with all the other visitors in the Doge's Palace, when we were in the "interrogation" room.

The guide made a little joke, and I, being normally a person who laughs easily, looked at those awfully low cells, the walls breathing out suffering, and icy cold. I looked longingly through the window,

and silently congratulated my brother Casanova, who managed to escape. So close together: utterly horrible conditions - and golden splendour - and how easy it is to fall from the hight of luxurious abundance into this prisonal black, bleak despair.

- If I would live in Venice, I soon would have a problem: not much nature.Two parks, very few trees, a few seagulls. You can give me all the Tintorettos, and the gold, and the theatro Venice: after a few weeks I would heavily cry for a forest, or at least a garden.

- a surprise were the quite low prices in restaurants, and even more in those funny little cafés, were "the typical Italian" hastens in, grabs a tramezzino, washes it down with an espresso - and out he is again - quick, quick!
- And with this beautiful little "discolo" - wind-bag - for only 1 Euro - and so delicious! - I leave you, my Dear You - this should have been more than enough as an appetizer for Venice...

Yours Truly (a humble tourist among others)