Essays on Venice: Marie Le Conte

by Marie Le Conte

“Oh I wonder what I’ll miss when I leave Venice”, I told myself the other day, happily walking through Dorsoduro in the middle of the afternoon, munching on a polpetta. I have moved here for two months for no real reason, largely because I could, and am nearing the end of my extended holiday.

The first thing I will miss, I suppose, is the ability to walk into a bacaro at 4pm and ask for a single meatball, and for the interaction to seem wholly normal. The entire world should have cicchetti; it seems unreasonable that I will soon be made to once again have after-work drinks without being able to eat a small plate of deep fried courgette flowers. Barbaric, even.

Still, I will be glad to return to a city where it is possible to walk into a nice restaurant at 8pm without a reservation and not be laughed at when asking for a table. Venice can be an odd fish in this respect; everyone takes their time and everything is spontaneous, but restaurant tables must be booked and tickets to exhibitions must be bought in advance and christ, did you really think you could just turn up?

But of course, don’t expect any website to have any form of even vaguely useful information on anything; that is not how things are done here. Just turn up and see what happens. But definitely don’t turn up unless you have a booking. You get used to it, really; it’s part of the charm of the place, and if worse comes to worst, you’re never more than about two minutes away from a cheap ombra of prosecco. That always softens the blow, I’ve found.

Soon I will leave Venice and I just know that I will miss the silence, which may seem odd to people who have never spent any real time here. Venice, from the outside, feels like a place crawling with tourists, speaking all sorts of languages and blocking all the narrow alleyways. It is true and it isn’t; I will always remember, with a deep sense of horror, the day I planned so poorly I ended up having to cross the Rialto four times. It was a weekend and it was sunny and by the end I was ready to sit there and wait for the lagoon to take me.

The rest of my time here, however, has been defined by the stillness of the place. There are no cars and no bikes; no large screens with adverts and no loud music popping up from every corner. For what feels like the first time in my life, I have been able to hear myself think, wherever I am, and it has been glorious. It is a place that offers (nearly) everything a city can offer yet also gives you the blissful solitude of the countryside; it is the best of both worlds.

Well, apart from when students appear out of nowhere, like cheerful demons, and start drunkenly singing that blasted “Dottore! dottore!” song at the top of their lungs - but I decided to live close to Campo Santa Margherita, that one’s probably on me. And I love the students, really; it is a delight to be surrounded by such a diverse bunch of people.

Venice is a city full of expatriates and, even if they have lived here for years, they will still tell you of the spots that took months to find or the shortcut they discovered by accident with a glint in their eye. They still remember what it was like to be here and be new, and that joy has not been lost; everyone remembers the first time they stumbled down Zattere, and everyone you talk to will give you the name of a bar or a restaurant or a church or a shop, like they are the only one who knows about it.

It feels like being let in on a secret. Only some capital cities share the same quality, but they are often too big and crowded to truly become familiar. Again, the best of both worlds - at least most of the time.

This mismatch between the size of the place and the sheer number of tourists it welcomes - sometimes begrudgingly - means that learning to fit in can take time. I’ve taken to calling it the rule of three; if you want a place to accept you as more than a mere annoyance, you must visit it three times. By that point, you will be welcomed in as a local, just about. My hope, I suppose, is that this status does not get lost with time; I am leaving Venice soon, but have no intention of staying away for long.

Venice is not my home and never will be but it remains one of my favourite places in the world. It can be odd and frustrating and suffocating at times but of course it is; it can afford to be.

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Marie Le Conte is a French-Moroccan journalist living in London. Find Marie on Twitter at @youngvulgarian.