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| Exterior wall image, Arsenale entrance, Venice Biennale |
Two days before I’m due to leave on the Permaterrailean tour, I get
a Facebook message from my Italian journalist friend Ilaria, looking
for contacts to young German worthy-cause-warriors, the kind who
concrete their arms into pipes on railway tracks to halt nuclear
waste trains, or go out on the Mediterranean to help aid refugees.
We’d met each other in Berlin in 2015, in some kind of magical
constellation – there were three journalists in our class – while
on an Integrationskurs at the Friedrichshain
Volkshochschule. I’d been pretty ill at the time, one year
into chronic pain followed by an immune system crash and chronic
fatigue. So to stop having to drag myself about for work, and to
satisfy the Jobcenter, I was dragging myself there to learn and talk
instead.
Both our group’s teachers were social justice champions and there
were various animated discussions about topics like the inequities
for freelancers created by Germany’s pricey public-private health
system; endemic gender-based labour discrimination that contradicts
the country’s constitution; long-term foreign residents not being
able to vote; the politics of migration, institutional racism,
forcing vs forgiving repayment of Greek debt, and so on.
Integration in Germany doesn’t mean agreeing with Merkel et al’s
neo-right governance. It means being educated about it, and, even if
you have no democratic rights, being able to take part in the
Diskussionskultur (discussion culture). We did it in spades.
Facebook being the social networking wonder that it is, Ilaria and I
have stayed in touch via various comments on posts over the time
since our course ended. I can’t help her directly with any
‘extremists of solidarity’, but put her in contact with another
journalist friend, Nadja, the editor in chief of Exberliner magazine,
as it’s the kind of subject that’s up her street as well.
Though the article might not come to fruition (due to clashing
deadline priorities), incidentally we discover that Ilaria is in
Venice, and that I am just about to train south to Italy.
An invitation ensues, and as gladly taken up, to extend my planned
hectic day-trip to drop into the Biennale art exhibition, to a
two-nighter in the lap of a house packed full with eight journalists,
themselves all in the embrace of the Venice Film Festival.
Wait, embrace... scrap that. It’s more of a whirling dance.
For me there’s always a little turn of excitement as my train
leaves the mainland station of Venezia Mestre and trundles with
delicious portent across the lagoon bridge to Venezia S.Lucia. On
this early evening crossing to the island, I have just enough time to
finish scoring my book cover cards (by teeth) and repack everything,
ready to take to the seas.
One two-day multi-swipe hefty ticket fee (€30) later I’m happily
water-bourne. I suspect vaporetto transfers aren’t covered
by my travel insurance but anyway we make it safely across in the
special 5-stops fast service from Ferrovia to Lido Casino that the
city puts on for the festival’s duration. After 44 minutes aboard
the ferry I disembark and am swiftly plunged into a benign twilight
gyre.
Round the corner from the ferry stop, security gate. A nice officer
inspects my three bags. Satchel with computer and
valuables/essentials, open, close, check. Rollkoffer packed
with colourful, single poem books, same procedure. Backpack with
poetry collection books-in-assembly, clothing, sleeping bag,
toiletries, etc, all clear. She waves me on.
Up the street I ask another officer if he knows the location of a
public phone. Public phone?
Yes, they do still exist. And no, I don’t have a mobile phone:
reasons being, they’re expensive, the jury’s out on their
negative effect upon the navigational abilities of one of our most
important pollinators, bees, and there’s also my impression, after
three years sick on the sofa, that I’m just not that popular.
The officer can’t help me except to say there are a lot of bars, so
I continue my hunt... I need to contact Ilaria to let her know I’ve
arrived.
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| Waiting to see the evening stars, Venice Film Festival, Lido, Venice |
My pack-animal self encounters head-on a throng of glamourous
film-goers processing in leisurely high evening-wear fashion along
Lido island’s main drag from the Hotel Excelsior towards the
glowing red and white cinemas zone. Very high heels, extensive
make-up, big hair, glittering rainbows of silk, billowing and
sculpted long skirts, embroidered and sequinned form-fitting
transparencies, a phalanx of tuxedoes.
I’m wearing mascara, my knee-support-bandage, some black flats I
recently found on the street in my neighbourhood, my fat silver
Veneto-crafted Swarovski crystals ring with one stone missing
(there’s always one), and a luminescent teal-blue & white
patterns bias-cut linen dress. I’d op-shopped it for €3 one day
before departure, then ripped out its non-breathing bias-cut
polyester lining, and altered it to fit me the long, sleepless,
packing evening before I exited Berlin.
Still walking relatively upright despite the weight of my pack,
looking fantastically strong, I pass the gaudy horde by.
There’s another police-carabinieri check-point beside the Excelsior
at the end of the star zone promenade, but still no sight of a public
phone. The most lovely officer of the batch whips out his
smartphone and we call Ilaria. No answer. We use a mix of English,
Italian, and slightly deaf translation programme to communicate. He
suggests I leave my bags beside him, says he’ll tell Ilaria I’m
here if she calls his phone back, and directs me to the toilets
inside the hotel.
The mass of star-spotters across the street from the hotel entrance
crane their necks to attention. It’s taking a wee while to be
allowed in because another horde of glamour-pusses is exiting the
hotel, some have limos pulling up in the otherwise-pedestrianized
zone. I don’t recognise anyone. They are, at least, all suitably
beautiful, as befitting the silver screen.
Without a journalist’s festival accreditation card or a hotel room
door-key, I’ve told the head-radio-fitted doorman the approximate
truth that I’m looking for my journalist friend and that the
policeman said I should look in here. I gaze at the beautiful sunset
instead of the unknown famous people, till swoosh, I’m allowed
access, and am waltzing through the revolving door.
Think marble and palms. As they say on their website, “Old world
glamour & five star splendour.”
Traversing the lobby and pausing in the expensively hushed inner
chamber, I pull out my laptop and tap briefly at the keyboard to make
it look official before descending to ascend the vital porcelain
throne.
Having made myself comfortable and having combed my hair, I go back
upstairs and tell my Ilaria-hunt story to one of the pleasant
reception staff, who grants my wi-fi access code wish with the
flourish of a small piece of pre-printed paper with colour images of
the hotel.
Back in the inner sanctum, there’s piano music emanating from a
room on my left, Cole Porter’s ‘Night and Day’ being crooned in
Italian. Gorgeous. The sea-facing lounge is all potted plants,
easeful furnishings, soft and muted whites and shades of purply
blues. (I hope that memory isn’t a fabrication, it is at least how
it felt.)
I select a non-reserved table. The cheapest thing on the menu is a
four-euro croissant. Espresso, double that. Aperitif, eleven. An
inspired martini (on my sister’s and James Bond’s behalf) isn’t
even on this card. Too stratospheric, without a doubt.
I perch and message Ilaria about the piano lounge and how nice
everyone is being. Even Facebook looks luxurious in here. Suddenly
she’s there! She thinks I’m a hilarious genius, how I’ve
inveigled my way in and around. Mission accomplished, we cruise back
out to the street and effusively thank our middle man.
Let’s just say, you don’t go into journalism without good
communication skills.
A day and a half later, on one of my exit-connecting vaporetto trips,
luggage-laden once again, I feel a bit like a couple of the church
towers I see on the main island that I’m sure are tilting. Let’s
say, my Venice dance-card hath runneth over.
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| One of my conversation partners: inside the Italian pavilion, Venice Biennale |
I’ve visited a kind of sad film party as Ilaria’s spy poet on the
wall, paid special attention to the Italian and New Zealand pavilions
in the Biennale art festival, discovered (the more bitter) Campari
spritz, had several limited conversations utilising my in-development
Italian skills, added several trophies to my mosquito bite
collection, witnessed big Lido bats biting mosquitoes, heard a joyful
group of teenagers uplifting the star zone promenade with melodic
footpath “Mamma Mia” karaoke, and just had another sleepless
night.
Damn that full moon. No-one’s going to aid me against its brutal
ravages. I shall have to save my social warrior self.
Anyway, a little weary, I’m almost glad to be on an ice-cold
Frecciarossa train heading south to a permaculture project in Puglia,
away from the beautiful sinking city. Except that I can’t access
the on-train wi-fi to do a bit of editing work. No mobile phone.
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