Superstition, coffee and rain (Day 32)

I finally got a picture of Palazzo Dario, the cursed palace on the Grand Canal that is up for sale but no one wants to buy because lots of previous owners have come to rather unfortunate ends, (see blog from Day 25). It is the subject of a painting by Monet, which now belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago. The Peggy Guggenheim exhibitions sometimes spill over into it, but they refuse to buy it, in favour of renting and staying alive.

It’s not that impressive in the daylight as it’s currently having building work done, probably in the hope that someone will buy it. What I’ve heard is that they are trying to turn it into apartments so that no one person owns it, expecting that this will break the curse. It could just mean that Death has a busy period and has to orchestrate a long sequence of strange accidents for all the owners, a bit like Final Destination.

There are quite a few nice stories about superstition in Venice, I suppose because it is so old. For example, residents will not walk between the two columns of San Marco and San Thodoro in St Marks square as they believe it is bad luck to walk over the area where the public hangings used to take place.  

It rained today. The second time since I’ve been here. It got cold and we put on scarves and jackets for the first time. Yesterday was shorts and T-shirt weather, and today it’s like autumn or winter. It was a welcome change, but to warm up I went to get coffee from the next door café. It’s funny that in a country famous for coffee they look at you with a puzzled expression when you ask for it to take away. I thought ‘take away’ and ‘coffee’ went together, but not here. The pace of life is slower, no-one rushing around, and there’s ALWAYS time to stand at the bar in a café and have a quick espresso. I’m pretty sure it would be a completely legitimate excuse for being late for work, late to pick the kids up from school, even late to your own wedding “Sorry I’m late, I decided to stop for a coffee”, “Oh, I see! No worries”.

So every time I go into this little café and ask for it ‘per portare via’ they think for a minute, and then rummage around to find a suitable receptacle for me to carry the coffee away in, hold it up, do a gesture that means, “Is it ok if I put it in this?” and then make my order for me, while the locals standing at the bar watch the whole scene unfolding with great interest as if it’s a novelty. Today we were given it in Coca Cola cups.

It did the trick, we drank it while eating chocolate and debating the meaning of life, in particular how pandas are making themselves extinct because they can’t be bothered to reproduce. We should really have been talking about art.

After work I spent the evening celebrating with a friend in the Rialto market, which is a great place to hang out in the evening, better than the more obvious choice of Campo Santa Margherita. There is a petition online you can sign to save the fish market, as there are plans to close down the main distribution depot and move it to the outskirts of Venice in order to make the main port bigger, to accommodate larger cruise ships. A demonstration stopped this happening, for now but you can sign it here

The square in Rialto market is also home to the Gobbo. A little hunchback sculpture, which is currently being restored, so my image is courtesy of Google.

In older Venetian times the Gobbo is where you had to run to from St Mark’s square if you’d been naughty, and to make it more humiliating the act was performed naked. It is also where the announcements were read when any bill had been passed or laws had changed.

We went on to Bacaro Jazz (the bra place from Day 7) A local taught me how to say ‘Can I have a pen please?’ as I needed to borrow a pen from the bar man, although I now realise what he actually taught me was probably ‘Can I have a penis please?’ A useful phrase, but not when you need a pen. The two words are very similar, Penna and Pene. There is also the pasta shape Penne, so I’ll be careful how I pronounce that it future too.