To live as Miss Honeychurch plays...

A very long time ago, when I was a fresh-faced college student, I took an Introduction to English Lit course. I was wary: I had come to expect "Lit" classes to really be about micro-examining a text until it was a dessicated husk of its former self, shrivelled and lifeless. Also, Heart of Darkness was on the syllabus, and, well...just...ugh.


However, I got lucky. The instructor was quite young, and loved English literature in all its shapes and forms. She didn't want to put it under a microscope; she wanted to suck the marrow out of every juicy word. She even went so far as to make Chaucer interesting, by getting a friend who specialized in Medieval literature to read us some of the saucier bits. We shared similar tastes, and she introduced me to E.M. Forster. She suggested I start with her favourite book, A Room With a View.


Being the keener I was, I hied me down to the local Book Shoppe and picked me up a copy. I scarfed it down in one sleepless night. I convinced the instructor to let me write my term paper on RWaV, rather than Heart of Darkness, and she agreed. (For which I will be eternally grateful, if only for saving me from the tedium of reading HoD again...oy!) A closer reading of RWaV intrigued me...Shortly afterward, I saw the Merchant Ivory film, and I fell in love. Someday, dammitall, someday I was going to go to Florence and stand on that bridge over the River Arno! Stated with all the idealistic fervor of that young college student, of course, so perhaps destined to....not.


Then this Berlin trip was proposed, and Mr.Q and I started talking about where I might want to go afterward. An enticement, to coax me on board. Simultaneously, the loosely organized book club at work were looking for a new read, and someone suggested Room With A View. 


Ding ding ding ding ding!


If you haven't read the book or seen the film, this post may be completely lacking in context. But I did pack my beat-up, dog-eared copy of the book, and Mr.Q and I spent a lovely day tracking down the key sites in the story....


The Ponte Vecchio, over the Arno...sans bloody packet of postcards:

The Piazza della Signoria, where we (accidentally) had gelato the size of our heads (I really did order a single scoop! She put a good half-litre on each cone! I wanted a pic, but the logistics were impossible.)

I also made a point of buying a nude Venus postcard here.

The fountain in the Piazza, where the stabbing took place, and where Lucy fainted:

The Hotel degli Orafi stands on the former site of the real, live Pension Bertollini:

On the steps of Santa Croce, without her Baedeker:

And inside the church, with some of Della Robbia's babies:

We did go to Fiesole as well, but I forgot to bring the book with me. And the ruins there deserve a post of their own. For those who are maybe not quite the geek that I am, I'll give you more of Florence in a another post. Meanwhile...already trying to decide on the next literary travel adventure! Hideous Kinky, and Morocco? (The film was meh, but visually stunning.) Chocolat, and Provence? The possibilities are endless!

Venezia

Venice was....unexpected. I wasn't all that keen on going; I would rather have spent the extra two days exploring more of Tuscany. Also, hotels and hostels are really expensive, and it's a total tourist trap. But Mr.Q was in Venice as a teenager, for one afternoon, and he really, really wanted to go back. So, dutiful spouse that I am, I humoured him.

We landed on the mainland after a traumatic airport experience in Berlin, on a hazy, overcast afternoon. We were exhausted both physically (up far too late the night before, saying our last good-byes to the city and the people we knew there) and mentally (we put every ounce of energy we had into experiencing Berlin, and it drained us....it's an odd city: the site is old, but many of the buildings are new. Neighbourhoods of glass and concrete, not unlike Vancouver, erected since 1945, or even since 1989. So it feels very young in parts, and it's discombobulating. You know there's something older below that shiny new exterior, but you'd have to stay a lot longer to really see it. We sure tried though!)

Mr.Q had his heart set on taking a water-bus across, insisting that the view of the city from the water would be breathtaking. Me? I was more concerned about how spendy it was, and the dull day & salt-stained windows of the boat did nothing to spur any enthusiasm. Plus, I had directions to get to the hostel via bus; not a boat coming in from the opposite direction.

First impression: a dingy, grungy city. Peeling paint, and plaster flaking off walls in chunks. Lagoons and canals murky, not with the wealth-bringing jade of a Feng Shui garden, but with boat fuel and probably sewage.  Foundations exposed at low tide were slimy with algae and mold. Not so much the magical city of Mr.Q's recollections.

We docked, closer to the hotel than I had expected: an encouraging sign. The bridge between us and Campo San Geremia, where we needed to be, was jam-packed full of tourists. Less encouraging. The throng was fairly easy to navigate: the pendulum swung up again. The hostel was somewhat dingy looking...less thrilling. The Italian hipster at the front desk was cheerful and welcoming....Good. Four narrow, twisty flights of marble stairs to our room, which had a view of mildewed rooftoops and a shower the width and breadth of a refrigerator...somewhat discouraging. But it was clean, and painted a warm yellow, and I only had to endure it for two days, and what the hell - let's go outside and see what we could see.

We immediately found a trattoria with cheap, tasty panini to eat while we walked back over the bridge. The sun had come out, and the city looked a little brighter. We stumbled almost immediately across a gondolier, who was honest about the price he quoted. I don't think we even looked at each other, let alone discussed it we just got in the boat.

Because we were staying in Cannaregio, the old Jewish quarter, it was a bit less frenetic than the more central, touristy parts of the city. Glidng down some of the smaller back "streets", it was almost completely silent. The late afternoon sun gilded the buildings, so the city looked less dingy, and more like a dowager duchess, defiantly clinging to the elegance of her youth.

It's a city that has to be seen from the water to be appreciated.

After the gondola ride, we just wandered the streets as the sun set, and stayed out till well after dark.

Dinner was eaten here: a slice of pizza, enjoyed while listening to a trio of violinists play Vivaldi...and then some rag-time tunes.

Day the second: armed with day passes for the city water buses (vaporetto) and a city map, we decided to just get on a boat and see where we ended up. We got turned around and sort of lost a couple times, but that was part of the adventure: you can only go so far before you hit the water, either the Gran Canal or the surrounding lagoon, and there are vaporetto stops at regular intervals.

(The idea that somebody actually mapped the city is amusing, given that some of the "streets" are maybe 3 feet wide, and a few dozen feet in length. Whoever took the time to do the job must have laughed their asses off at the idea of tourists trying to decipher the warrens laid out on paper....)

 

A street performer, playing Ave Maria on water glasses. The idea sounds cheesy, but the reality sounded exquisitely pure.

Last sights of the city...

The weather began to turn as we got back to our hotel, and we left the city the next morning as the rain started. It seems to have followed us to Florence....More about our arrival here later; we have museum reservations: off to see some Renaissance art!

So, we took Berlin...

Clearly, the time in Berlin got away from us. We tried to cram as much as we could into the few days we had...and it wasn't nearly enough! A few highlights from our last 3 days there...

Thursday was my birthday (I think I like this habit of spending the day somewhere new!) So Mr.Q took me to a castle:

 Where there was even a Knight in Shining Armour:

 And a ballet performance:

 Then we went down to Museum Island, and looked at some really cool buildings, including the Berlin Cathedral:

 Mr.Q's German was not up to the task of translating the warning sign on the elevator at the train station:

 So we've decided it means: "Do Not Use Elevator When Giant Space Slugs Attack! Achtung!"

Finally, at the end of the day, the band had a show at a really cool pub. The bartender was a sweet, funny Willie Nelson look-alike, and when he heard it was my birthday, he gave me a bunch of silk roses and a glass of sparkling wine:

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Friday, we went to Potsdam to poke around, but were SO tired and overwhelmed that we ended up on a bus tour. It was perfect, actually, because even though it was pretty quick, and we didn't have a lot of time for exploring - it got us to some places we wouldn't otherwise have seen. (For next time!) Including a windmill:

And the summer palace and gardens at Sanssouci:

 Back in Berlin, we wandered for a bit around Oranienburger, where we saw (and just missed entry into) the Neue Synagogue, an absolutely stunning building:

And Mr.Q found the Ramones museum:

He didn't actually go inside, as he wanted to make sure he had enough time to go for some "real" German food, which he enjoyed immensely:

Saturday, our last day, we spent wandering around, saying good-bye to the city. We stopped back at the cafe we'd discovered on our first day, for another Nutella Dream coffee:

Then found ourselves on a boat tour of the Spree river - a German tour, but we didn't care; I just wanted to see part of the city from the water, and they served us beer & gluhwein. Happy-making!

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We wandered around a bit more, and I sat on a bench and knit outside Humboldt University

While Mr.Q rummaged through the used books for sale on the sidewalk. (He only bought one! Impressive restraint!)

Then the band's last (and best!) show, where a lot of German teenagers listened attentively to (and maybe made out to) the tunes...

And that, as they say, is all she wrote. Up at a ridiculous hour to tidy our rented flat, take a taxi to the airport (we did NOT like Schoenfeld Airport...NOT the best airport ever! We're quite lucky in Vancouver!) Now in Venice, woken up several times last night by the silence. Took me awhile to figure it own, then I was like: Duh! NO CARS!

Now for breakfast & an explore of some of those twisty, narrow cobblestone paths!

Size Matters

In my very limited observation, I have noticed that Berliners like small cars, small parking spaces (with lots of creative parking!), and small cups of coffee. But everything else is Pretty Darned Big. Huge recycling bins for glass. Long trains. Big bratwurst sausages. And so on. For example:

Mr.Q with his Very Big Breakfast Beer:

 Brandenburg Gate is Really Frickin' Huge (with red-sweatered Viking for scale:

And there's a Really Big Monument on top of it:

The Reichstag is Ginormous! (Sadly, we failed to make reservations, so we didn't get to go inside and see the Not-So-Wee dome)

 There are even Brobdignagian Bubbles:

Brondignagian Bubbles, blown by a Viking, for scale:

 Even Massive Lego Sculptures, like this life-sized giraffe (made out of Duplo blocks, mostly, to be totally accurate)

  The eyelashes slay me:
 

I'm sure I'll find more big things tomorrow. A couple last images from the day...

The track of the Berlin Wall running through the city:

 Including right under my seat at a cafe:

 Pretty trippy!

I also had the strangest hot dog of my life tonight. A very thin cheese sauce, diced tomatoes, and what I had expected to be pickles (given the "gherkin" on the menu) turned out to be diced cucumber soaked in vinegar. It was...odd! Fortunately, I had some good cider afterward, to take the edge off.