Travel Time: What Venice Taught Me, by Sandra de Helen

Travel Time is a regular feature at LGBTSr, highlighting destinations, travel suggestions and travelogues for the LGBTQ traveler.

What Venice Taught Me
By Sandra de Helen

The only place outside the United States my mom dreamed of visiting was Venice, Italy. She was entranced by this city built on water. As for me, I wanted to go everywhere, see everything. But we were working class poor, living in rural Missouri. We became even poorer when my father died at age forty-two leaving my mom who was nine years younger with two little girls, one of who wasn’t quite two years old. I was the other daughter, and I was seven. Any traveling we did was through reading. Every book offered another world. I spent my childhood dreaming of those worlds.

My first trip out of state was to New Orleans. I was eighteen. At twenty-one, I flew to Alaska and stayed for two months. Later that year I moved to Texas. Over the next decade, I lived in Alaska, Kansas, Arizona, and Missouri again. By the age of thirty-two, I had visited seventeen states. I was ready to go to Europe. When my credit union offered a chartered trip to Seefeld, Austria for only five hundred dollars for eight days, I placed a down payment and invited a friend to join me.

It wasn’t Austria I was aching to see — it was Venice. I would go for my Mom. I planned to catch the first train out of Seefeld and stay in Venice, Italy as long as I could before I had to get back for the return flight to Kansas City.

I spent months reading about Venice. I bought guidebooks. I studied maps. I bought an Italian dictionary.

About two months before our scheduled departure, my friend backed out of the trip. I scrambled trying to find a replacement. I asked my Mom, who had always dreamed of this trip, but she had to work. I asked my sister. I asked other friends. No one could accompany me.

People warned me about Italian men and foreign travel. After all, I was young, blond, and curvy. I was warned about thieves, rapists, murderers who would follow me to my hotel and kill me in my bed.

There was no Internet at the time. I didn’t personally know anyone who had traveled anywhere alone, never mind to Venice.

But I had survived my childhood, an abusive marriage, and two divorces. My best friend would look after my eight-year-old daughter so she could stay in school, and I made the bold decision to go alone.

Our flight left Kansas City one day in October and landed in Munich, Germany the next morning. This was when I learned that foreign cities have their own names in their own language, and for some reason, those names are completely different in English. Speaking of languages, I’d completely overlooked the fact that I had to spend time in Germany and Austria where the citizens spoke German. The only German I knew was how to say I love you. This did not prove useful.

From the airport, our group took a chartered bus to a Seefeld hotel, where I was paired with a woman I’d never met. She was thrilled to learn I would share the room only the first and last night. Once registered, I headed to the train station to purchase a round trip ticket to Venice. I left early the following day.

Only thirty minutes after I set out, I had to change trains in Innsbruck. I walked around lugging my forty-pound cardboard suitcase, wondering which train to catch, and when. An older woman came up, spoke to me in German, and seeing my blank look, grabbed my ticket, read it, and steered me to a different track on a different level. She stood with me until the train arrived, then pushed me forward, smiling as she shooed me aboard.

It took a while to find an empty seat, but when I did there were five US soldiers nearby. One man found his way to my side and asked if I spoke English. When I said yes, he whooped and the other guys came over. They were on their way to Rome. They told me I’d have to change trains again, and offered to help me get on the right one. Time flew by as they laughed and joked.

On the final leg to Venice, I spent the time to admiring the passing countryside. We arrived at the Santa Lucia station on the Grand Canal about 7 pm. As promised in the guidebook, the train was met by men hawking hotel rooms. Only one other person was looking for a single room, and it began to look as though neither he nor I would be lucky enough to snag one. He suggested we get a double, but I kept looking. When I found a hotelier with a single room to let, the room was only seven dollars a night. Perfect. The stranger and I exchanged names, and he found another hotel.

The hotel man grabbed my suitcase and signaled me to follow him. We went out to the Grand Canal where we were lit by a full moon. The man hopped onto a boat with my suitcase and I paid our fares (lira equivalent to about six cents each). Soon we hopped off and I followed the man down narrow alleys and across pedestrian bridges. I felt apprehensive but had experienced nothing untoward, so continued following. We arrived at a narrow building with a sign reading “Albergo,” which I knew meant hotel. I tipped my guide and signed in. The male receptionist gave me a key, a room number, and pointed me toward the stairs. My room was about five feet wide and twenty feet long. The bathroom was down the hall. The room contained a narrow single bed, a table and two chairs, a wardrobe, and a sink with running water. At the far end of the room, past the sink, were two green louvered doors as tall as the room’s high ceiling. I threw open the doors. I had a balcony! It was exactly as deep as my feet were long, but I could stand on it. Two stories below me was a narrow canal. A gondolier sang as he passed by. I did it. I was in Venice.

Five minutes later I left my tiny room to find dinner. I stopped at the first restaurant I found, did my best to read the menu, and chose what I thought would be a vegetarian dish. It turned out to be liver and onions. I ate the side dishes, paid my check, and went out to explore further.

Everyone had warned me I would get lost in Venice. It was night time, it was dark, and I had no idea where I was in relation to anything else. I simply walked. In minutes I found myself in Piazza San Marco. I stood looking out into the plaza,  gaping like the tourist I was. To my right was the campanile, straight ahead was the Doge Palace, and in between were three outdoor restaurants with live bands. People danced at each one. I found that as I got close, I could hear only the band near me. I wandered from one to another, admiring the dressed-up dancers, the music, the smells of coffee, cigarettes, and perfume. As I headed back to the hotel, I took my time, gazing in darkened store windows, and nodding hello to each person I passed.

I easily found my way back. I didn’t question my luck, I enjoyed it. At the hotel, the receptionist said, “Buona sera, signorina,” and I smiled all the way to my room, thinking of Louis Prima singing the song of that title.

The next morning I followed my nose and found continental breakfast laid out in a room down the hall. Seven dollars a night included my lovely room, cappuccino, hard rolls, butter, and jam. As I had in Seefeld, I took an extra roll with me for lunch. That day, and every day, I headed out determined to see everything. transportation, tips, entertainment, and souvenirs.

I visited the Piazza, the Doge Palace, climbed the campanile, and walked everywhere I could. I discovered a city park with greenery. I found the Peggy Guggenheim museum. I visited every museum I came across.

To supplement my lunches, I would buy a piece of cheese and some fruit. One day I decided to drink a glass of wine after lunch and sat at an outdoor cafe in the sun. I used my minimal Italian to order and found myself with not a glass, but a full bottle of white wine. Two hours later, I staggered back to my hotel, stopping to pet every cat I saw along the way.

Every evening I bought a slice of pizza for dinner.

On my last day, I caught a Vaporetto to San Michele Island to visit the cemetery. I had no idea what time the next water bus would arrive, but as long as I made it back by nightfall, I would be fine. The cemetery contained relatively few burial plots. Most of the dead were contained in drawers. I understood the families could keep their relatives in the drawers for only twelve years. After that, the space would be given to someone else. Every drawer had a flower vase, and every vase was filled with fresh flowers. I saw many people replacing flowers for their loved ones. The burial plots in the ground were reserved for nuns, priests, and famous people.

After San Michele, I hopped another Vaporetto and went to Murano, the island famous for its glass. I arrived at the museum just as they closed for midday. It would be two hours before they were open to the public again. I didn’t understand enough Italian to learn more than that, and the kind museum man didn’t understand English beyond knowing I wanted to see what was in the museum. He had no idea how much I loved glass, or that I had studied glass science as my only hard science at university. In fact, I had visited glass blowers, had written a long article on glass blowing and glass science for my school paper, and owned several pieces of blown glass myself. In spite of not knowing anything about me, this man (I’ll call him Gianni) decided to let me into the glass museum and give me a personal tour.

Gianni delighted in showing me everything in the building. A highlight for me was the backstage area where pieces were being restored. Included was a major exhibit consisting of a replica of the city park I had visited, complete with grass, trees, flowers, birds, a children’s swing set, and filled with people. All made of blown glass.

Gianni showed me a chandelier, told me the artist’s name, and made sure I understood it had taken the artist four years to complete the piece. Four years. He showed me glass buttons, many with tiny portraits of Garibaldi.

Gianni and I communicated with words we didn’t comprehend, and with gestures and facial expressions we did understand. He gave me the gift of his time, knowledge, energy, and showed me things I wouldn’t have seen had I arrived on time.

The next morning, I caught the train back to Seefeld, this time with no assistance from kind strangers. Because we were stopped at the border for hours as soldiers searched our train, I arrived in Innsbruck too late to catch the last train to Seefeld.

Instead, I experienced the most dangerous taxi ride of my life. The road to Seefeld was through mountains. No streetlights, and no speed limit. The driver sped up the curvy road as though he were being chased by the police. I was thrown from side to side across the back seat with no seat belts. My feeble protests were ignored.

When we arrived at my hotel, I was breathless and angry. But I was so relieved to have arrived in one piece, I tipped the driver and sent him on his way.

My roommate and I spent the last day of the chartered trip by taking a train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where we ate McDonald’s fries, then crossed the street to a beer garden, where beer was cheaper than a coke at McDonald’s. I drank a litre of beer for the first and only time in my life.

I returned to Kansas City with souvenirs for everyone. I brought handmade lace for most people, tooled leather wallets for myself, and a bottle of water from the Grand Canal for Mom. I had spent every one of my one hundred thirty-five dollars.

My eight-day trip to Seefeld and Venice was the first time I went to Europe and the first time I went solo. It was the beginning of a lifetime of traveling alone. I learned how to plan, how to pack, and how important it is to learn a few phrases of the language of the country or countries I’m about to visit. I learned that people everywhere treat me with the same respect I grant them. I learned some people will always go above and beyond my expectations, and I hope I do the same for others.

Sandra de Helen’s essays and poetry appear or is forthcoming in Artemis Journal, Dramatist, ROAR, The Medical Journal of Australia, The Dandelion Review, Lavender Review, Sweatpants & Coffee, Mom Egg, and other journals. Her full-length poetry collection Desire Returns for a Visit will be published by Launch Point Press August 2018.