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lollardfishExcept for a nagging cough and the lack of a vaporetto pass (which I will really only need once I have visitors), I am all settled in in Venice.
Venice. Venice has everything. Well, not everything. It has no cars, for example. No real cinema. No bars showing NFL games (that I can find yet), and I don't even want to think about baseball. The Twins and the Red Sox could be playing, in theory, and I might miss it. Then again, the Vikings are 2-0, and I haven't watched either game. I am a little superstitious, so I might not be able to watch another game until they lose. Anyway, Venice has many things you might not see elsewhere, like men in lederhosen. No, really. I was walking on my way to the internet cafe and there was a group of elderly tourists, and right in the front were two men in lederhosen, completed with high wooly socks, short pants, and vests. I forgot to check their footware. See something new every day, really.
Life in an apartment in Venice, rather than in a hotel, is blissful. First of all I have a kitchen, and the key to a kitchen is breakfast. I mean, sure, I save money by making my own sandwiches. And for dinner, I've made a delicious leek and pancetta fritata (recently dubbed man-quiche on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which I only watch cause the girl likes it) and a grand chicken soup. Turns out there's a butcher, open mostly in the mornings, two or three shops down from the apartment. There's also a produce store, a produce stall, a fancy desert place, a less fancy desert place and bakery, the Italian version of a grocery store (which is really pretty handy, if small), a cookware shop (where I bought my apartment a cutting board), a tobacco store (vital for matches, phone cards, and cough drops), a snooty pharmacy, six restaurants, four bars (a bar, in Italy, is a combination bar/coffee shop/lunch place and sometimes pizzaria), and two gelaterias. All this is within two minutes of my apartment (imagine three blocks in a normal city). But I digress. Though the soup -- onion, garlic, basil, spicey paprika, really good chicken breast, white wine, chicken-stock bullion, water, spinach -- was grand and I credit my relatively levels of healthiness to it. And I digress again.
At any rate, I was talking about breakfast. In my apartment, I can fry eggs! I can make omelettes! I can pretend pancetta is bacon. I can have bowls of cereal. In Italy, I can get pastry and coffee. And I like pastry and coffee, but last year I began to long for a real breakfast. I do think a keen money making venture in any Italian tourist city would be to have a pub with English and American breakfasts available all day long. My cooking facilities are adequate. I have a really nice gas stovetop (matchlit like every other one I have seen in Italy) with plenty of cookware and utensils. I have only a toaster oven for baking, and, really, there's no where to put an oven. Except in the spot where the washing machine is, and, well, I'd rather have clean clothes. I don't bake much anyway. Tonight I think I make some sort of seafood pasta dish, depending on seafood availability (I missed the fishmarket).
Hot Water (I received concerned email from my mother, so I must address it): There is, in the bathroom, on the wall, connected to the plumbing, a box. It looks like it could hold about three gallons of water. There's a pilot light. When I turn on the hot water, lots of pretty blue flame appears, and shortly thereafter the water turns hot. Then, after a bit, the flame goes out. If you turn off the water, wait briefly, and turn it back on, the flames return. I assume this is a water conservation tool. If you keep turning the water off whenever you are not actively using it (when soaping, shampooing, etc), there's always hot water. Otherwise, it comes and goes. Damn green party ...
Having rambled on at length, I now present the contest (very exciting, I know). I think I can receive mail, but am not sure. There are some letters in the hall that show up, but no noticeable mailbox (other doors have letter slots). I know my address, though, so am going to buy a surprise prize in Venice for the person who can get a postcard (the cheapest option) to me first! Let's see if the system works.
The address is ...
David Perry
c/o Sartoretto
SRE Castello 5761
30122 Venezia, VE
Italy
But I thought you were on the Calle de Paradiso, you cry! Well, I am, but using streets for addresses would be far too useful for navigation purposes. No no, in Venice, they don't use streets, they use sestiere ... districts. Venice is divided into Canareggio, St. Marco, St. Paulo, Castello, and a few other sestiere (I can't remember them all now). At some arbitrary point in, say, Castello, there is a building that is Castello 1. Next to it is Castello 2. And through the streets they wind, moving up number by number, until they eventually got to 5761 (my building) and beyond. Of course, Venice doesn't have the problem, much, of adding new buildings and so having to re'allocate addresses. At least they don't do it by parish, or something.
There is, actually, a keen book called Imagined Communities (I think) by a professor named Daniel Smail. It's about Marseilles, and talks about how the concept of address and location in the early modern city differed by class. Something like the nobles thinking of addresses by district, the notaries by street addresses (the system that won out, they being the ones who wrote it down), and the poorer classes by vague quarters (the fishmongers quarter, for example). I keep failing to read this book, but did hear him give a talk from it six years ago, hence the vagueness of the information. What's interesting to me is that the Venetian system clearly predates modern mail, and certainly modern issues of trying to find places via address and map.
Anyway ... if any mail gets to me, I shall be quite pleased. And I promise a prize!
All the best ...
David.
Venice. Venice has everything. Well, not everything. It has no cars, for example. No real cinema. No bars showing NFL games (that I can find yet), and I don't even want to think about baseball. The Twins and the Red Sox could be playing, in theory, and I might miss it. Then again, the Vikings are 2-0, and I haven't watched either game. I am a little superstitious, so I might not be able to watch another game until they lose. Anyway, Venice has many things you might not see elsewhere, like men in lederhosen. No, really. I was walking on my way to the internet cafe and there was a group of elderly tourists, and right in the front were two men in lederhosen, completed with high wooly socks, short pants, and vests. I forgot to check their footware. See something new every day, really.
Life in an apartment in Venice, rather than in a hotel, is blissful. First of all I have a kitchen, and the key to a kitchen is breakfast. I mean, sure, I save money by making my own sandwiches. And for dinner, I've made a delicious leek and pancetta fritata (recently dubbed man-quiche on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which I only watch cause the girl likes it) and a grand chicken soup. Turns out there's a butcher, open mostly in the mornings, two or three shops down from the apartment. There's also a produce store, a produce stall, a fancy desert place, a less fancy desert place and bakery, the Italian version of a grocery store (which is really pretty handy, if small), a cookware shop (where I bought my apartment a cutting board), a tobacco store (vital for matches, phone cards, and cough drops), a snooty pharmacy, six restaurants, four bars (a bar, in Italy, is a combination bar/coffee shop/lunch place and sometimes pizzaria), and two gelaterias. All this is within two minutes of my apartment (imagine three blocks in a normal city). But I digress. Though the soup -- onion, garlic, basil, spicey paprika, really good chicken breast, white wine, chicken-stock bullion, water, spinach -- was grand and I credit my relatively levels of healthiness to it. And I digress again.
At any rate, I was talking about breakfast. In my apartment, I can fry eggs! I can make omelettes! I can pretend pancetta is bacon. I can have bowls of cereal. In Italy, I can get pastry and coffee. And I like pastry and coffee, but last year I began to long for a real breakfast. I do think a keen money making venture in any Italian tourist city would be to have a pub with English and American breakfasts available all day long. My cooking facilities are adequate. I have a really nice gas stovetop (matchlit like every other one I have seen in Italy) with plenty of cookware and utensils. I have only a toaster oven for baking, and, really, there's no where to put an oven. Except in the spot where the washing machine is, and, well, I'd rather have clean clothes. I don't bake much anyway. Tonight I think I make some sort of seafood pasta dish, depending on seafood availability (I missed the fishmarket).
Hot Water (I received concerned email from my mother, so I must address it): There is, in the bathroom, on the wall, connected to the plumbing, a box. It looks like it could hold about three gallons of water. There's a pilot light. When I turn on the hot water, lots of pretty blue flame appears, and shortly thereafter the water turns hot. Then, after a bit, the flame goes out. If you turn off the water, wait briefly, and turn it back on, the flames return. I assume this is a water conservation tool. If you keep turning the water off whenever you are not actively using it (when soaping, shampooing, etc), there's always hot water. Otherwise, it comes and goes. Damn green party ...
Having rambled on at length, I now present the contest (very exciting, I know). I think I can receive mail, but am not sure. There are some letters in the hall that show up, but no noticeable mailbox (other doors have letter slots). I know my address, though, so am going to buy a surprise prize in Venice for the person who can get a postcard (the cheapest option) to me first! Let's see if the system works.
The address is ...
David Perry
c/o Sartoretto
SRE Castello 5761
30122 Venezia, VE
Italy
But I thought you were on the Calle de Paradiso, you cry! Well, I am, but using streets for addresses would be far too useful for navigation purposes. No no, in Venice, they don't use streets, they use sestiere ... districts. Venice is divided into Canareggio, St. Marco, St. Paulo, Castello, and a few other sestiere (I can't remember them all now). At some arbitrary point in, say, Castello, there is a building that is Castello 1. Next to it is Castello 2. And through the streets they wind, moving up number by number, until they eventually got to 5761 (my building) and beyond. Of course, Venice doesn't have the problem, much, of adding new buildings and so having to re'allocate addresses. At least they don't do it by parish, or something.
There is, actually, a keen book called Imagined Communities (I think) by a professor named Daniel Smail. It's about Marseilles, and talks about how the concept of address and location in the early modern city differed by class. Something like the nobles thinking of addresses by district, the notaries by street addresses (the system that won out, they being the ones who wrote it down), and the poorer classes by vague quarters (the fishmongers quarter, for example). I keep failing to read this book, but did hear him give a talk from it six years ago, hence the vagueness of the information. What's interesting to me is that the Venetian system clearly predates modern mail, and certainly modern issues of trying to find places via address and map.
Anyway ... if any mail gets to me, I shall be quite pleased. And I promise a prize!
All the best ...
David.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-18 04:34 pm (UTC)Thus confirming my suspicions raised by your previous post on the subject.
Although I don't think it's fair to blame the Greens - such a system was common when I lived in France mumble-mumble years ago (oh, alright - 1962 to 1965). I think it's a reasonable response to the fact that European houses/apartments tend to be much smaller than American houses (so it's difficult to find a place to put a space-eating American water heater), as well as to the fact that energy costs in Europe are much higher than they are in the USA.
But I could be mistaken.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-18 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-19 06:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
From: