Venezia Spogliata /Hitch-hiking in Venice

There are notably fewer people out after dark. Le Calle all clear. It’s about a 20-minute walk back to my cousin’s new apartment from the train station. Well, not her new apartment, but new since I had last been to Italy.

I like walking back through Canareggio, a different way each time and slowly find my way to Piazza San Marco, which is not far from her home and the biggest tourist attraction during the day. But, after dark, there is a connection you can feel with the city that makes the morning crowds seem as if they were ghosts.

It’s everyday, after dinner, that the foot traffic stops. The commuter shuttles and cruise ships leave. Couples and families go back to their hotels or attend an evening concert in one of the old churches nearby. After the sun sets, they all drift off and the mists come in, fading the city to black and white. The light and the dark all around, bouncing up off the water flowing along with me as I weave my way along in the canals of Cannaregio and on to San Marco, the lowest point of Venice and the first place to flood if there is high tide.

The grand piazza is filled with a heavy fog that leaves an open trail behind me as I cross through heading back to my cousin’s home.

***

One of my favorite walks through Canareggio was early one evening. All of the colors of the city warming up as I crossed the first bridge and decided to walk left along a fondamenta to the open water. There was a woman ahead who I had seen earlier coming in and out of shops picking up what she needed for dinner. She walked quickly ahead of me, all the way to the end of the fondamenta and came to an archway that looked out to the lagoon. On her left in the distance was the long low bridge to terraferma. The woman glanced around a bit and stuck out a hitchhiker’s thumb and waved her hand. A small motorboat came by; the driver greeted her by name, and took her to where she needed to go, off in the opposite direction from terraferma.

All the different kinds of boats that keep Venice alive: motor, pushed with a pole, oars, ambulances, delivery, fruit stands...well, fruit boats, fishing boats and flower boxes.

New gas stations, newer taxi piers and old wells. A city of water was without drinking water. Vere (wells) were built all around the city by the pozzeri brotherhood to collect rain water.

Via Garibaldi is a wide walking street that used to be a canal. When Napoleon came to Venice, he wanted it to become a path for his horses, and had it filled in. It is one of the natural borders within Venice--walk one way and you get to the tourist area of Piazza San Marco and Rialto. Walk the other way and you are in family neighborhoods. No one form this side ever has much reason to go to the other.

It was a Sunday morning and I was out taking photos, watching the neighborhood get ready for the midday meal. A grandfather walked by me and paused, he thought he knew me—what is your name, Alessandra Corazza--Corazza! Who is your father? Luciano Corazza--I know him! Come with me. Catching up to his step, I fell in beside him and we spent an hour or so together, wandering around. He pointed out buildings that had a particular memory for him or had an interesting historical fact or local lore, adding to the mystery and romance of the city. Somewhere along the way, listening to him talk, I realized that some of his stories seemed out of time and place, and perhaps his mind was in that limbo, too. It seemed as though he had flipped some of his past with present and was showing me around another version of Venice from when he was young. It was hard to tell, though, many of the reference points are still the same as they were then. The local lore and legends continue to this day. So, I was right there with him on this walk through his neighborhood that blurred decades. Our final stop was one of the oldest churches in Venice, San Pietro, which he told me was the seat of the first Patriarch.

He probably never did know my father...but you never know...my father grew up not too far away and there are many reasons why he could have know him. After the visit in the church, we parted ways and I walked back around the old monestary to the east edge of the city, on what is called the fish’s tail.