Impossible to miss entering Venice. By vaporetto, train or car, the city-lagoon reveals itself majestically on the horizon of this little piece of the Adriatic. Planted there, the palazzi make fun of the tide, which comes every day to lick their thresholds. Arrived from Ljubljana by road, we board a train at Venice-Mestre station, on the mainland side, the “terra closed”. And it is from this Italian RER that the Venetian horizon is discovered. The lagoon. As if resting on the water, the buildings of the former city-state seem to be waiting for us, impassive.
The Santa Lucia station knows how to manage its suspense until the end. Disembarked from the train, backpack, we cross the building like so many others, and suddenly, the Grand Canal. It is a tumult that carries us away. The gondolas spin on the water. Tourists stroll, strike a pose, hesitate, set off again. Catering professionals come and go to load boxes, tidy up their terrace. Transit officers provide information, order the queues of water buses. We are indeed in Venice, 50,000 intramural inhabitants, 30 million visitors per year. A myth.
The city is a symbol, from every point of view. That of the power that the municipality has reflected in its stones, and that of a more recent world threatened by rising waters. You should take off your shoes around Piazza San Marco. Every afternoon, the slabs disappear under water, but life goes on. Tourists, sandals or sneakers in hand, continue on their way.
Fisherman’s boots on their black trousers, the waiters in livery of the chic cafes of the place take orders, imperturbable. Some establishments have installed chamber orchestras on platforms, which perform classics or play variety titles of all kinds. There reigns, in this emblematic space of the city-lagoon, an atmosphere which could recall the Titanic in the process of sinking. Venice would sink almost majestically.
The biennial of architecture, which is held in the heart of the city, takes us to other continents, with a place of choice reserved for African projects. And this unmissable event does not fail to question the evolution of cities in a more concerted approach with their environment.
Istanbul had already made us reconnect with the crowds, whether they were made up of residents or visitors. Venice makes us turn our heads a little with this tourism that overflows at every corner of the alleys. We had lost the habit of the masses of travelers from China. The European summer, with its crowded train stations, forces us into a new kind of sociability.
The popes are remembered in our memory and their importance in the geopolitics of the Silk Roads, where religions have built empires. The Christians sent crusaders over several centuries. Byzantium long tried to repel Muslim armies, before yielding to the Ottomans in the 15th century. All along our route, it is amazing to see how the cultural sites, which have crossed the centuries and anchored the different civilizations in stone, are religious buildings.
After traveling through a first part of Europe by bus, we get back on track. Strange stage than that of the antechamber of the arrival. We are in France but not yet at our destination. We now understand everything that is said around us. Automation is back. Travel turns into vacation. All that remains is to sink into this ordinary summer with delight and cover the last kilometers before Paris.
