A Jolly ol' time in Venice

On Friday morning, we left Florence and headed to Venice. As with our last train, our tickets were in 1^st class. Now, 1^st class on these trains is quite nice, with spacious, reclining seats, a complimentary beverage and snack and lots of room for luggage. The problem with all this is that even though our seats said 1^st class on them, we didn’t actually pay a 1^st class price for them. This happened through some slight confusion and misunderstandings, which we really don’t need to get in to here.

On our train to Florence, our ticket was checked, no problem and we relaxed, blissfully unaware of the scam we were (accidentally) running. But on the way to Venice the “jig” was up. First, we were forced to pay the difference in the 1^st class and 2^nd class ticket for the leg of the trip before our tickets were checked. (Florence -> Bologna) Then we were unceremoniously kicked out of our seats. It all wasn’t the biggest deal, until we realized there were no open seats on the whole train. So, disgraced and feeling like we’d had the winning lottery ticket that is a 1^st class seat snatched away from us, we plopped down on the floor and looked dejected. This proved to be a winning strategy when the ticket inspector who’d just kicked us out, felt bad and told us to go back to our 1^st class seats. Woooho! Take THAT Trenitalia.

We got to Venice and headed straight to the apartment we’d rented for Shabbat. Staying in Venice itself is a fairly expensive venture, so we decided we’d stay in an apartment for Friday night and Saturday night, and then move outside the city for the next 2 nights. This time we actually followed the instructions correctly, and made it to the apartment, only a 10 minute walk from the train station.

“Yay! Nothing could possibly go wrong now!” We stupidly foreshadoweded. But hey, if nothing went wrong, it would be a way less interesting story, right Sarah Sofer? (Shout out to last blog)

When we got to the apartment at around 11, our hostess, told us that her key wasn’t working. She also told us that the wifi wasn’t working, but we didn’t really mind because the next place we were staying also had free wifi. (More foreshadowing!)

So she called a friend who had a spare set and we waited for a while until he came. Then we found out that his set of keys wasn’t working either. Worried, we did the only thing we could do in the situation. We left our stuff with Andrea, the apartment owner, and went to explore the city while she called a locksmith.

We took the opportunity of free time(mind you, this is the only free thing we got in Venice) to get very lost, and walked down and over the Grand Canal, through fruit and fish markets,
and made our way to the Jewish Ghetto. Fun fact, the Venice Jewish Ghetto is the oldest ghetto in the world, and nowadays is home to a vibrant Chabad center, 2 active Sefardi shuls and a bunch of kosher restaurants. 

We must be in the right place

After poking our heads around, we headed home, sure that by now, close to 3:00, the door would be opened. At around 4 the locksmiths showed up, and were completely perplexed about what to do, so they just busted the door down. Turns out the previous tenants had left the keys on the inside of the door. Not the brightest crayons in the shed, if ya know what I mean.

Friday night we chose to daven in the Spanish Shul. We were told on Friday that Davening was in “Ladino” and we’d have no chance of following along, but these just turned out to be plain ol’ lies. Davening was slightly different, and the shul was pretty nice, but we followed along just fine. We did have to bring a copy of our passports to get in, but as we’d learned that day, almost all of Venice (except for the outskirts) have an eiruv.

After davening we headed over to Gam Gam, a restaurant in the Ghetto associated with Chabad. Here, they host all Shabbat meals.
Before coming to Venice we’d heard about Gam Gam, and most people made it seem like it was the only place to grab a free Shabbat meal, and that every single Jew would be eating there together. This wasn’t exactly the case, as there were at least 3 different places hosting people for meals, and everyone kind of split up.
Gam Gam is definitely the most popular though and works with shifts. About 60-70 people ate inside, and probably another 50-60 people ate outside, but started 15 minutes later. After that shift was done, the next shift began and so on. We ate as part of the 1^st shift, at around 8:30, but the next day I met a guy who said he ate at the midnight shift. Over Shabbat we met people from Efrat, Ramat Eshkol, Nachlaot, Edison, Passaic, New York, Atlantic City, Charlotte, Italy, France, Amsterdam, England, Mexico and Switzerland. And no, none of them knew you, or at least, you didn’t make it into the conversation. Sorry.

During Shacharit, 4 separate Israeli (non-religious) tour groups came to the Chabad. Each time, one of the Chabad guys went outside, made Kiddush with the group, gave out cake and sang with them.

 Because the Yeshiva was so packed, Chaya was able to grab a seat in the women’s section, but I had to stand right outside. During davening, there was also a lot of commotion going on between the “Bochrim” because the night before, at 4 in the morning, one of the guys had gotten stabbed. I immediately resolved to not tell Chaya, because I knew if she heard about this definite anti-semitic attack, she’d be justifiably scared.

But as time went on, more details about the story leaked out. To sum up the story in 3 key points:

1)      First and foremost, Baruch Hashem, the guy was fine. He was actually in Shul on Shabbat morning.

2)      The “attack” was not at all Anti-Semitic. What happened was that apparently at around 4 in the morning, a bunch of visiting Chabad guys who’d gotten to Venice that afternoon, were on there way back from a Fabrengen, when for some reason the key to their apartment wouldn’t work. (Twins!) They kept trying, twisting the key, making a lot of noise, when all of the sudden the door burst open from the inside, a man came out, and thinking that he was being robbed, stabbed one of the guys and slammed the door shut again. “Oooooh!” one of them probably said. “This is apartment 4! We’re in apartment 5! My bad!” And they all presumably had a good laugh.

3)      The man who thought he was being robbed was a fisherman, and stabbed the guy in the arm with a 4 foot pole with a hook attached to the end of it. Kind of a Buster Bluth situation going on. (In fact, when I told Chaya all these details, I left out the fact that there was a pole at all, and until right now she was under the impression that this guy actually had a hook for a hand.)

I'M A MONSTER!!!!

After our post-lunch nap we went out and explored Venice. Venice is made up of 118 tiny “islands,” some of which are only a few blocks wide. The city is beautiful and fun to explore, with tons of canals, bridges, and tiny alleyways. Because of the way Venice is structured, no cars or busses are allowed inside. There is a huge parking lot at Piazzele Roma, behind the train station, but once you cross over the Grand Canal, it’s all walking and boats.

We ended up back at Chabad for Mincha and Seudat Shlishit. For the 3^rd meal, they split up the men and the women (Men at chabad, Women at Gam Gam) but more importantly, the men got served Parve chulent, which is a definite plus. Shabbat ended with Maariv and a few hundred people gathered in the square for Havdalah and singing.

On Sunday morning, we left our luggage in the apartment, and headed out to Piazza San Marco. Piazza San Marco is a beautiful, huge open plaza, featuring San Marco’s Basilica, a bell tower, and the Doge’s Palace.
Of course, being on the budget we’ve been on, we decided we didn’t really need to go in to any of these places, but enjoyed them from the outside with a 45 minute long Rick Steve’s tour. (Although from what I understand, the inside is really beautiful.)

As beautiful as Venice is, boy is it expensive. Wanna take a cute little Gondola ride? 80 Euro for 30 minutes. (Unless you go at night, then its 100) Need to use a bathroom? 1 Euro please! Feel like taking an incredibly slow waterbus? 7 Euro for a one way trip. Brought your car to Venice for Shabbat? That’s gonna be 20 Euro a day to leave it in Piazzele Roma. Craving some Octopus? 9.60 Euro for a kilo (Outrageous!)

But oh, so worth it

And so on and such as.

Anyway, we headed back to the Jewish quarter where there’s a Kosher bakery that also sells kosher products, and bought some tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. This probably turned out to be the best decision since Lebron chose to take his talents to South Beach. We took our sauce and cheese, headed home, and made some pasta. Now I know, pasta with sauce and cheese doesn’t sound particularly special or amazing, but then again you’ve never spent 2 weeks eating nothing but tuna or peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, and then one day had pasta with fresh mozzarella and Italian tomato sauce. If you have, then I apologize, but you for sure know exactly what I’m talking about. It was so delicious.

After lunch we schlepped our stuff back to the train station and took our bus out to our next location, “Plus Camping Jolly.”
Adept readers may remember that in Florence we tried staying at a place called “Plus Camping Michelangelo” and probably assume that there’s no way in heck we’d try another hostel from the same chain, but we did, and it turned out to be waaay better. 1^st of all, out with the tent, and in with the private room, with private bathroom and shower and possibly the best air-conditioner any hostel has ever had. The facilities also included a “Half-Olympic” Pool, supermarket, laundry facilities and free wifi. Of course, the wifi was down, and every time we asked, it was “being fixed” but never actually was fixed. Oh well.

We dropped off our stuff and went to Murano, an island off of Venice which is famous for its glass. Unfortunately, as it took us about an hour and a half to get there from the hostel, we got there just after most stores and factories were closed, but it was still cool to walk around and poke our heads into what was open.

We woke up the next morning and went back to Murano, and we were very glad we did. As opposed to the day before, when we mostly only saw handmade glass dishes or animals, we saw huge 4,000 Euro chandeliers and beautiful vases. We saw an awesome chess set, which was really tempting to buy, but it was around 1,800 euro out of our budget. On one side the pawns were Hassidic Jews holding Menorahs. The Rooks were holding Challah and a knife, the “horses” held a Lulav and Etrog, the “bishops” held Shofars, and the King and Queen were a Rabbi and Rebbetzen.
On the other side, the pawns were altar boys, the bishops were actually bishops, the King was the Pope, the Queen was a nun and so on and so forth. Really cool considering its all hand-made

. We went to a glassblowing demonstration and saw a guy blow a vase in about 4 minutes and then make a beautiful horse, with its front legs in the air, in only about 1 minute. We sat next to a man who was this particular glass maker’s assistant and he told us some really cool things. There are only about 400 artists in the world who were trained at Murano’s prestigious school, which takes between 5 and 10 years to complete. It works like a trade school, with every class focusing on different aspects of glass blowing.
He could’ve explained this the same way to us, but chose to use a different analogy. “You’ve seen Harry Potter, si? Okay, so it’s like in the Hogwarts, every class, it’s different kind of magic si? Okay but here it is like that, but with glass.”
 Oooooh NOW we get it!

Anyway, he told us that the horse is the most difficult animal to make, and they spent 2 years perfecting the techniques needed to make this horse in about one minute. After sufficiently blowing our minds with how delicate and intricate this process must be, he told us that the school’s final exam includes making 14 different animals in under a minute. Puts the OWLs to shame.

From Murano, we took a boat to Burano, an island famous for its lace. (We didn’t find Curano, Gurano or Zurano, but presumably they exist too.)
Turns out, the lace was totally lame, but the island is unique and really beautiful because each house is painted in a different, bright, vibrant color. We spent a little time walking around, finding some ridiculously colored houses and headed back to Camping Jolly.

We got to the hostel at around 4, tired, and super-hot, and decided to just head over to the pool. In the middle of the day, the pool was almost completely empty, except for a bunch of families with little kids, and a DJ who was spinning such fresh beats as “The theme from Men in Black” and “Yeah!” Presumably these 2 songs have just made it to Italy now.
I feel bad putting this story in, but it was just too funny to not re-tell. The staff of the hostel had thrown in all sorts of inflatable balls, tubes and beds into the pool, and for the most part the only people using them were 4 year olds and the Rapps family. At one point we saw a long yellow inflatable bed floating by itself so Chaya went to go grab it. She got on, and 20 seconds later, a guy came over to us and said “excuse me, but you know that you stole that raft from that little boy?” He pointed to a 4 year old boy, now out of the pool and crying hysterically to his parents who were consoling him, and explaining that the married 22 year old girl was using it now. We obviously gave it back to him, but I didn’t personally feel bad at all. The kid already had a floatie on each arm! Why do you need floaties if you’re gonna lay down on a pool-bed?!
We eventually left the pool, showered, changed and headed back out to Venice, where we had dinner reservations at Gam Gam. On our way to the hostel, we had discussed how despite running into Jews or Israelis everywhere, we probably wouldn’t see anyone we knew at “Plus Camping Jolly,” half an hour outside of Venice. Of course, we were wrong again, and we ran into a guy Chaya once worked with in Moshava, and then, none other than Tali Kern. Tali was with her friend, Channah, and the 4 of us went into Venice together, and had a splendid ol’ time hanging out before dinner.

We ate dinner outside, on the canal, and started off with the classic Italian appetizer of “Chumus with meat.” (I couldn’t help myself, I’ve been going through withdrawal.)

I got chicken, and Chaya got fish, but the real highlight was the amazing fresh squeezed lemonade. So far, everywhere we’ve gone in Italy has been “THE city/region/town most famous for lemons” and lemon products are sold everywhere, but this lemonade was particularly outstanding.
During dinner, a man playing an accordion serenaded us to all the stereotypical Italian songs that we knew such as “That’s Amore,” “Que Sera, Sera” and “Hava Nagila.”

It was a beautiful end to our stay in Venice. Feeling full, we headed back to our beloved hostel and left the next morning feeling very jolly indeed.

Cha-ciao fo’ now!
Zvi and Chaya