A Venetian Interlude, Part 3

Campo Santa Margherita

The square we lived in probably isn’t on any tourist maps, and certainly doesn’t have the fame associated with San Marco or Rialto. Santa Margherita does have a perfect model of Ventian life and quite a few interesting people, however. The buildings surrounding the square include a trattoria with excellent food, an open-air market, three pubs, and many residences. To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest idea what goes on here during the day. We tended to wake up in various states of sobriety, stagger to the shower, then head straight for the Grand Canal and whatever was on our itinerary for the day. Once the sun sets I observed children appearing from nowhere (I suspect magic, or possibly secret passages) to play in the square and sing, occasionally joined by adults or teenagers feeling particularly lighthearted. By 9:30 the pubs begin to fill up with an assortment of Venetians and American tourists. Since the Hostel was nearby there were far too many of the latter and very few of the former. Even our bartender was from the States, sadly.

I would like to devote the remainder of this section to an account of Friday night, which revolves around two of Santa Margherita’s more colourful residents. Our tale begins when Mike and I went to refill our drinks, and returned to find two Venetians sitting at our table. They apologized for stealing it, and introduced themselves as Paolo (who spoke a little English and conveyed the rest with gestures and facial expressions) and Salvadore (who spoke no English whatsoever). Since they made no move to actually relinquish our table, we soon fell to making attempts at conversation. This proved rather hilarious. Paolo first made it abundantly clear that neither he nor Salvadore were gay and confirmed that we weren’t either. He also expressed a fascination with American girls, who were of course plentiful at our tourist bar. After a good deal of obvious pointing and drunken encouragement, Mike wandered over to a table full of them and introduced ‘his Italian friend Paolo.’ The Venetian in question proved rather shy, and decided to point furiously at Salvadore. I assisted in this deception and before long the entire situation became quite hilarious. Events of this nature happened about five more times over the course of the night. Indeed, within short order most of the bar was either laughing at us or actively avoiding our table. Occasionally this pattern was broken by one of us turning to Salvadore and happily yelling ‘Bonjourno,’ it being the only word of Italian we spoke. For some reason this happened at least ten times, and never seemed to stop being funny.

After our group alienated the rest of the bar, our new friends brought us to a club somewhere far from Santa Margherita. Nothing partially interesting happened here, except that more beer was consumed by Mike and more whiskey by yours truly. Some time went by, and we decided to take our leave. Yet after bidding farewell to Paolo and Salvadore we realized several things: both of us were piss drunk, didn’t have a map, and that it was 3:00AM. Slightly daunted but lured on by the many advantages of beds over dark alleyways, we chose a direction and started walking. Personally, I had double vision and came within inches of an impromptu swim in the canals every few minutes.

After roughly one hour of staggering about the deserted streets, we somehow arrived back at Santa Margherita. I have no idea how this happened, as neither of us had the slightest idea where we were in relation to anything else. Until the moment we actually entered the square, I was convinced we would never see our Hostel again. This made the sudden proximity of my bed even more wonderful, and I soon passed out happy and inebriated.