[ Main Index ] [ Photos ]
We weren’t originally scheduled to go to Munich, and Venice wasn’t on the radar at all. There was a big tradeshow in Munich and Les and I were building the demo for it. A huge wall of X-terminals. (An X-terminal, if you don’t know, is a graphical user interface for Unix systems). Well, the deadline was looming and we weren’t finished. We finally realized that we would have to ship the equipment to get it there in time, which meant we would also have to go with it and finish the demo in Munich in time for the show. We were scheduled to go to London a week and a half later anyway for sales training, so it meant extending the trip by another week or so.
We arrived in Munich with I think 3 days left to get the demo working. We didn’t see much of our hotel. We pretty much lived in the office, working 17-18 hour days. On one of those evenings (or mornings more accurately), the janitor came by, and we had a reasonably long conversation – something on the order of:
Hi, working late?
Yeah, got lots to do.
Are you going to be here awhile?
Sure looks that way.
When you leave can you be sure to turn off the lights and lock the door?
Yeah, if we manage to leave before people arrive in the morning.
Do you have a key?
Yes we do.
Okay then, goodnight.
Goodnight.
It was about 10 minutes later that I remember turning to Les and asking, was he speaking German? He assured me that yes he was. But we clearly understood everything! A good example of the power of non-verbal communication and communication by context. I still believe I understood the words he was saying. Being somewhat delirious from lack of sleep probably helped.
Anyway, in the end we got it finished with a few hours to spare, and to great fanfare, cheering, and exaltations. We got it installed at the show and it was all a great success.
So now it was, I think, Thursday and we had a day or so to kill before we were supposed to head to London. The folks in the German office had loaned us a company BMW to use to get to and from the office (since the trains didn’t run at 2 am) and they let us continue to use it to sight see.
We did a quick tour of downtown Munich on Thursday afternoon. The office was in a suburb so we hadn’t seen much. Friday we headed out into Bavaria for a look at Neuschwanstein Castle. Better known as Mad Ludwig’s Castle and the inspiration for Cinderella’s castle at Disneyland.
The drive through the Bavarian countryside was really pretty. It was fall and the trees were turning. The weather was beautiful, clear and crisp. Lots of little picturesque villages that looked like Disney Bavarialand.
Mad Ludwig’s castle is on a hill in the middle of nowhere. It’s quite an impressive sight. Apparently, Ludwig pretty much ransacked the treasury, building 5 or 6 castles until he mysteriously drowned (nudge nudge wink wink). And he didn’t skimp on this one. We took the castle tour, then hiked up the hill behind it where we got a great view. We also took the tour of a second castle nearby, a much smaller but fairly impressive castle in its own right Ludwig had built for his parents on the hill next door. It just goes to show that no matter how big a castle you build for yourself, it’s never quite big enough for your parents to live with you.
After the Paris trip, I knew that Les kept an eye out for travel opportunities. And I was beginning to develop that sense myself. I don’t remember how exactly we worked it out, but somewhere during the trip to the castle, Les figured out that since we had a car, we could drive to Venice, spend a few days, and still get to London in time for the training. He had been to Venice before when he lived in Italy and was anxious to get back.
This being my first experience on the continent, my reaction was, I don’t think so. It’s three countries away! Yeah, Les said, but it’s maybe a 6 hour drive. Oh, well, okay then.
We got permission from the German office to take the car, got our flights changed, and in the morning we hit the autobahn and we were off to Venice. We had of course heard about the autobahns and the lack of speed limit. And we were cruising along at a fairly decent clip. But every so often a huge BMW or Mercedes would come screaming up behind us, lights flashing, and zoom on past. Our car, being a low-end BMW, more like a German Chevy, was completely outclassed.
But, that didn’t stop us from seeing how fast it could go. Les managed to break 100 mph briefly. I don’t think I got it quite that high. Mid 90’s maybe. It’s actually quite nerve wracking to drive that fast if you’re not used to it. Things come at you much quicker and zip by in your peripheral vision at a rate that can be quite discomfiting. But even at those speeds, people were passing us, and not slowly. Somehow the accident rate is not very high. But the survival rate is apparently quite low.
As we were driving along, Les pointed out something he had noticed on earlier trips. Have a look at the wood piles next to the houses, he said. So I started paying attention. The wood was always very neatly stacked and organized. An indication of the Germans sense of order and discipline. He said, keep an eye on the wood piles as we head through Austria and into Italy.
We headed into Austria, and sure enough, in Austria, the wood piles were not only neat and orderly, but tended to be stacked by size, with larger pieces on the bottom. Very disciplined folks these Austrians.
The path through Austria was fairly short as we were headed across the narrow part. And no border barriers because of the EU. So it was hard to tell we had even changed countries (except for the wood stacking). We passed through Innsbruck and got an impressive view of the ski jump from the 1976 Olympics. We stopped for gas and that was pretty much our Austrian experience.
From there we headed up into the Brenner Pass through the Alps on the way to Italy, where it started to snow! Not too heavy though. Just enough to make things interesting. I seem to recall stopping at the border but I think we stopped to change money (pre Euro) not because of the border crossing. I was disappointed there were no border crossings because I wanted passport stamps.
We passed into Italy and I almost immediately saw what Les was talking about with the wood piles. On the Italian side, the wood was just thrown about willy-nilly. Big glorious piles. A distance of maybe 50 miles and a totally different way of looking at things.
As we headed down the spine of Italy we passed through the Dolomites. They were quite spectacular. Tall, craggy mountains. I’m having a hard time conjuring up a picture in my mind of what they really looked like, but I do remember distinctly thinking it was quite a sight. We keep getting brochures for trips from National Geographic and other places with hiking tours through the Dolomites and one of these days I’m going to make it back there.
We weren’t sure what the speed limit rules were in Italy. There were speed limits posted but absolutely no one was paying any attention to them, driving just as fast (and well in excess of the speed limit) as in Germany. We kind of split the difference and tried not to get too carried away. Especially since we also weren’t really sure if our US driver’s licenses really gave us permission to be driving around at all.
One thing I do remember about driving through the Dolomites was that we had one cassette tape with us – Graceland by Paul Simon. We played it repeatedly and still whenever I hear it I think about Northern Italy.
The other unforgettable memory was the “meal” we had on the road. We stopped at what amounted to the Italian version of a highway Kwik-E-Mart and got some bread, meat and cheese. Our typical road fare. But the meat we got, mortadella, was the greasiest most disgusting piece of deli meat I’ve ever eaten. Big gobs of fat. Pieces of bone even. You could hardly hold it in your hand it was so slippery. Of course we were starving and didn’t have time to stop at a restaurant so that’s what we ate. I don’t think I’ve had mortadella since.
Les had been to Venice before but had never arrived by car. There are, of course, no roads in Venice so there’s a giant parking garage on the outskirts of town. You leave your car there and take the train over the bridge to Venice. The parking attendant went tearing off in our borrowed BMW. We weren’t sure if we would ever see it again.
The plan was the same as with Paris earlier. Wander around and find an inexpensive motel. This time, we had packed light. No heavy suitcase full of papers. We had left most of our belongings in Munich and just had small backpacks, which made wandering around a lot easier.
We exited the train station and paused to gawk at the Grand Canal and the Old Austrian Bridge. Venice doesn’t disappoint. Especially for a first timer like me. We headed off to the left where Les remembered the cheaper hotels were. And boy did we find one. $16 sticks in my mind. I can’t remember if that was the total or what we paid each, but either way, that’s a major bargain in Venice, or anywhere for that matter.
And with good reason. To this day, almost 20 years later, I think it still rates as the worst hotel room I’ve ever stayed in. And by far, bar none, including the abandoned outhouse at the campground on the east coast of Vancouver Island, the worst bathroom I’ve ever been in. Conveniently located on the floor below too. Well actually, the Vancouver Island one would give it a run for it’s money, but I give the Venice one the crown because it was actually presented as a legitimate facility for which someone actually charged us. I used the toilet but I refused to enter the shower.
The room had silverfish. The bed was a thin mattress on what looked like chicken wire stretched across a metal frame. It bulged upward in the center. The edges of the mattress didn’t touch the frame. We just put the mattresses on the floor to get some support. (A trick later put to good use in New Zealand, where the beds tended to sag dramatically.) But we didn’t spend a lot of time in the room and for a couple of nights cheap in Venice, it sufficed.
We woke up the next day and the first thing we noticed was the difference in the ambient sound. No traffic noise. The occasional boat engine but no steady hum of car traffic. You could hear people walking. That was different.
We wandered around the hotel area a bit, bought some very expensive film as I recall, and ultimately headed back towards the train station where the Vaporetto, the water taxi stand was. We got a day pass, thanks to Les’ passable Italian, and headed down the Grand Canal to the Piazza San Marco.
The canal is lined with multi-hundred year old buildings and palaces, slowly sinking into the ocean. The buildings are beautiful with elaborate windows and balconies, colorful paint, and the occasional gondola, all packed tightly together along the canal. Nobody lives on the first floor anymore. They’ve moved upstairs. Venice has been sinking since pretty much it was established (or the water has been rising but it amounts to the same thing). But the people have adjusted well. I’ve no doubt that when the water reaches the top floors, they’ll just add on some more.
We arrived at the Piazza San Marco and were greeted to a crush of people. This is the main tourist area and everyone seemed to be there. Most of them seemed to be headed in the other direction too. But we managed to make our way upstream and into the piazza.
Here the water problem had become very severe. There had been an especially high tide or heavy rains or something but there was water in great quantities in parts of the piazza. Wooden planks had been laid out to provide bridges. You could tell from the condition of the cobblestones that it wasn’t the first time it had happened.
There is a tall tower in the piazza and Les is a sucker for climbing anything tall for a look. So up we went. The view from the top is great. Lots of red tile roofs all jumbled together and you could see out to the lagoon that Venice sits in. Did I mention the tower is a bell tower? You can see the bells from the top. More importantly, if you time it correctly (or incorrectly depending on your point of view) you can hear them up close. The bells started ringing while we were up there, much to my surprise and the surprise of many of the people there with us judging from their faces. It was deafening! Kind of cool, but deafening. To this day I believe Les planned this, although he continues to claim it was just coincidence but always with a wry smile.
After we came back down we wandered into the church that’s in the piazza. A fair amount of its hallways and walkways were under water. Not very deep but I would imagine fairly alarming to whoever was in charge. There was a service going on. In Latin as I recall. I had seen three or four cathedrals in my life at this point but this was the first time I’d seen a service taking place in one of them. It’s quite dramatic and inspiring. You can see why they build them this way.
From the Piazza San Marco we headed out and just wandered the streets. The city is beautiful and it doesn’t really matter which way you go, there are interesting things to see. There are no main streets anyway so it doesn’t really matter which way you go. You’re going to get lost. You keep walking until you reach a dead end, then try again. In the meantime, there are shops to look in and lots of interesting architecture and pretty scenes.
You are left with just a general impression of the place rather than specifics. Although I do remember one area, near the Rialto Bridge I think, that was filled with art and artisans – jewelry, glass, paintings etc. And I remember we managed to wander into much more of a residential area and it was really interesting to see how the ‘regular’ people lived. It was Italy so there was lots of conversation coming from the windows. And there were cats galore. They seemed to be everywhere. Interestingly enough though, when Marion and I went back some years later, I don’t think we saw a single one. And after I had gotten her expectations set very high too.
Italy is supposed to be known for its food but I only remember having one meal. I’m sure we had more to eat than that. I only remember the restaurant because I remember Les asking for butter in Italian and that it took a couple of tries. Funny what sticks in your mind.
Since we had gotten a day pass on the vaporetto, we had been on and off the Grand Canal all day. Somewhere along the way we realized it was a loop and we could take the boat all the way down the Grand Canal, around the back of the island and back to the beginning. So as a grand finale of sorts, we did.
The two sides of the island are very different. From the train station where we got on, down the grand canal past the Piazza San Marco there were, as I’ve said, many old palaces, impressive buildings, fancy bridges and many tourists. As you get out into the lagoon and come around up the back side, it’s much more industrial. A real seaport with large container ships and port facilities. Not as pretty but we felt as if we had seen something the typical tourist doesn’t see and therefore learned a bit more about Venice than most. And that always feels good.
We went back to the parking garage with some trepidation that we might have lost our car forever, but no problem. We headed back the same way we had come, Paul Simon singing about the glories of Graceland once again. It’s funny, I have very vivid memories of the drive down and almost none of the drive back. Or maybe I’ve just combined all my memories into one direction. I don’t know. But we made it back to Munich and then on to London, where life took an interesting turn. But that’s another story.
[ Main Index ] [ Photos ] [ Top ]