Carnivale a Venezia

Yesterday at 6am I walked from my apartment to the pullman (bus) that would take over one hundred students studying at the University of Foreigners on a five hour ride to Carnivale in Venice. On the way, I chatted with my friend Yesse, originally from Togo in Africa and now working in Perugia as a mathematician and computer programer. At a rest stop I met the woman sitting behind me. She and her son, who was sitting next to her, came from Conneticut to Perugia so she could get credit for her masters in language. She said that they will both be heading to Buenos Aires soon to get Spanish credit. It seems like everyone I meet has such an interesting and unique story.

Through the freezing cold windows we saw the snow covered mountains, a flowing river, and bright white snow eventually turn into green land with warm, spring like climate.

I was the first one off the bus when we arrived in Venice, stiff legged and ready to take in the sites and sounds of the city. My friends Yesse (Togo, Africa), Jerome (Belgium), one guy from Lebannon and another Arab (country unknown) and I started off toward the heart of the city, our destination being San Marco, the largest piazza in Venice that sides to the sea. In front of the train station were tables and chairs set up where artists painted brightly colored, sparkling masks on the faces of men, women, and children alike. On every corner there were mask shops and souvenir stands selling every kind of mask in every shade, magnets, snow globes, post cards, and jewelry.

The crowds were massive and the journey to San Marco was challenging with the skinny alley ways and hand rendered signs directing us all over the city. On the first bridge we crossed, over looking the canal and paddling gondalas I took a picture with the entire cast of Alice and Wonderland.

After hours of wandering around the city we finally got to the San Marco which was filled with massive crowds, caffe tables spilling out from the restuarants, people in sparkling masks flashing their cameras at the charactors dressed in insanely creative costumes, and a fountain flowing with red wine. It was absolute chaos.

At the back of the piazza was a stage set up with a huge screen displaying the people in costumes and who knows what else. The costumes ranged from aristocratic gentlemen from the days of Marie Antoinette and King George, to Mario and Luigi, to human pizza slices. Unlike Halloween, Carnivale is a holiday for people of all ages and throughout the day we saw kids dressed up along with their parents, tossing colorful confetti and spraying unsuspecting victims with silly string. Two little girls dressed as princesses waited on either side of a store entrance for their mother to exit and proceeded to toss handfuls of confetti as high as they could over her head and clothes. This is one of hundreds of scenes I saw throughout the day.

By the time we loaded the pullman to head back at 9:30pm, the sun had gone down and the lights over the stone passageways shown brighter over the constantly growing crowds of people and the night air had cooled to a chilly temperature. We had walked what seemed to be over 10 miles, breathed in the sea air, gazed into the never ending strings of store front windows, seen thousands of masks, posed for hundreds of photos with people dressed in outrageous costumes, waved goodbye to the gondala drivers in their striped shirts paddling black, shiny gondalas through the canal, and were absolutely, unbelievabley, thouroghly exhausted.