We had planned the next morning to head out really early and catch Venice out – to find the streets deserted and bask in the glow of the sunrise. Unfortunately by the time we awoke and got moving it was after 8am. We still saw a very different side to Venice though. Along the canal, the barges delivering supplies to the city’s many shops and restaurants were pulling into unload while yesterday’s rubbish is piling up along the waterways awaiting collection. And the bilge barges are pumping out blocked pipes and drains throughout the cities ancient sewer systems. The tourist strip was largely devoid of tourists at this time of day but there were plenty of workers pouring into the city to ready things for the thousands that were about to arrive.

Today was still hot but much, much cooler than yesterday. Probably early 30s. Dan was still feeling under the weather so we decided the best approach was to catch a ferry up the grand canal to San Marco so we could see all the buildings on the side of the canal and get that feeling of the grand tour that the canal alone seems to provide, maybe because I have watched far too many travel shows about the grand tour of t the early 20^th century. We wandered up to the train terminal to catch the ferry past closed street stalls and shops only to find a plenty of people trying to crowd onto the ferry. As we made our way onto the platform, it became obvious that the ferry was going to be a lot more crowded than we envisaged. We got on anyway and found ourselves pushed into the back section.

One of the crazy things about Venice, which is basically a mass of stone and concrete with nary a tree in sight is that the cabins in the ferries are close to the hottest place on the islands. If you manage to stand near a window you get a bit of a breeze as the ferry jest its way along the canal but the main windows don’t open. On one of the smaller ferries, where the ferry sits much lower in the water and the cabin is just above the water level, the splash from the ferry pulling into the jetty and the waves caused by the activity on the lagoon meant that water splashed in the higher top to, we were free to stand on the window that open like those on the bus. The best place to stand on a ferry is on the deck where they open the sides to let people off or on the stairs to the upper deck at the front of smaller ferries. After the hordes of workers got off the ferry at Rialto, we were free to stand on the deck and enjoy the view. While limiting the number of bridges makes it really difficult to get from one side of the canal to the other, it also makes for a beautiful view as the ferry chugs its way out into the lagoon and San Marco Square. Watching the water lap at the front doors of homes and palaces along the waterway, stairs long since engulfed by the rising waters of the lagoon is a calming sight You can’t help wonder what is going on behind the closed doors and secret gardens I guess that is part of the mystery of Venice, there are no front gardens, so everything is going on behind closed doors. (The Harder They Come – H-Block 101 – these guys remain one of my favourite Australian punk bands – dedicated to their craft and the political stance they take – more serious and non-assuming than most of the 90s breed of punks, they take their cues from the likes of Radio Birdman and The Clash rather than the Fat Wreck Chords phenomenon.)

We arrived in San Marco Square to see vendors opening up their stalls on the side of the canal, tour guides giving the low down to the groups and queues forming for the museums in the square. The square itself though was strangely empty, no one sitting in the café and only a dozen or so people standing in the square not in a queue. From here, we wound our wayback along the tourist path and collected a snow globe – one with a gondola in it not one in a gondola, and some postcards. When we got closer to the hotel we decided to wander through the back street of Carneggio and checkout the tiny island of the Ghetto – the Jewish area of Venice which stood up and defended Venice from those who wanted to destroy it. The ghetto was particularly interesting from a people watching point of view. A number of Hassidic Jews were milling around in the central square. There was a temple and also a number of kosher restaurants and a bakery. We navigated our way back through the alleyways and out through a different gateway onto our canal. By this stage it was 10am so we headed back to the hotel for breakfast. It had already gotten quite hot so we decided to take our time getting ready in the comfort of the hotel’s air-conditioning before heading to the train station.

Dan sat in the (relative) cool of the train station while I headed back along the shopping strip for a couple of last minute souvenirs – a mask, Murano glass pendant and glass Christmas ornaments. I also picked up some baguettes, cannoli, chips and water for the six hour train trip. I also had my first good coffee on this trip – a Café Latte.

The trains are a good way to demonstrate the differences between German and Italian culture. In Germany they can tell you a month in advance which platform a train will leave from. Each day there is a yellow poster put up throughout the station that shows all departures from the station, their destinations and intermittent stops, and platforms. There are also diagrams of where on the platform your carriage will stop. On some rare occasions the cars might be back to front and you need to make a mad dash for the right car. You usually have quite a few minutes if this happens and it is fairly easy to move between carriages. In Italy there are no diagrams or lists. The departure time will go on a board an hour or so before the departure and if you are lucky, the platform will go up 10 minutes before the train leaves. On my first trip to Europe, the platform number for my first Italian train in Milan went up less than five minutes before departure. Here we had 15. (Get your filthy hands off my dessert – Pink Floyd – Like most of Pink Floyd’s tunes, the title belies the lyrics – this is a little upbeat politically aware ditty. I didn’t like Pink Floyd much in my teens as they were so damn depeessing– save for Another Brick in the Wall which I had enjoyed as a roller skating accompaniment in the early 80s and which wasa lot more angry like the punk I learnt to love years later. I rediscovered Pink Floyd in the 90s and while there is a lot that still doesn’t grab me I can understand the allure.)

We got on the train, put our bags up and settled into our carriage, hoping that it wouldn’t be quite as full as the last. About 10 minutes late a quite stern old German lady came in with what looked like her grandson – it turned out she was just a youngster she had paid to carry her bags on to the train. Instead of taking her sat near Dan she jagged the window seat (which had a reservation) and pulled out the other seat to put her feet up. She was very annoyed when the girl who was in her feet seat entered the carriage. Dan helped the girl with her bags and it turns out she was a German who grew up in Australia and moved back to Germany. She had gone back after uni and then returned again a couple of times. This time she had been in Germany, living in Munich, for 12 years. She had been to Venice for a wedding of all things. Weddings really seem to be making more of a splash in my life. She was really lovely and we started chatting. The old lady had enough of that and moved to a less crowded compartment. Another man joined us for a few stops through the Austrian Alps but mostly it was us and our new found German-Australian friend, incidentally from Perth. It turned out the wedding she attended was two Australian friends (although he was born in Italy) and that she may have had a romantic evening with a kiwi who was at the wedding.

We had noticed a number of policemen on the train at different intervals and about half an hour out of Munich, an announcement came over that the plane was delayed for a police investigation – I wondered whether something had been stolen on the train. Eventually we arrived at München Ost, where we were to catch the night train to Berlin,

When I had booked the reservations it hadn’t let me select the main station, despite the fact that both trains went through there. The other unfortunate reality was that München Ost had very limited dining options (and there was no dining car on the train). It had already been quite a long day of travelling and the prospect of another 10 hours on a train was looming. The train was already on the platform but it had to be done. As I was still moving fairly slowly with my strapped broken foot, I was left in charge of the bags while Dan headed down to the station to purchase what turned out to be pretty awful reheated pizza slices. Once those were consumed, he hightailed it to the other platform to get some water and snacks for the journey.

As it turned out we were both too busy coughing throughout the night to need the snacks (or to sleep very much). It was a pity because we both usually sleep really well on trains (while neither of us are able to sleep on planes.) This was the first time we had travelled on the trains in summer – like much of Germany’s infrastructure they are toasty warm in winter but the temperature usually doesn’t require too much in the way of air-conditioning. Of course we had managed to travel through Germany during the worst European heatwave in quite some time. There was air-con on the train but it only really got going while the train was moving. Unfortunately this meant it was stinking hot when you got on – there was a window – like an old bus style window – that could be opened but this meant the blind had to be up. Sounds reasonable except that you can’t really dry yourself in the shower and while the train only stopped at a few train stations, there is less time between German train stations with packed platforms late at night than one might think. In the morning we received the prepacked brekky of roll, brioche, liverwurst, cream cheese, jam and two really awful coffees. I ate the roll and drank half a coffee while Dan spent the last half hour before we arrived in Berlin sleeping. Lucky I had booked our apartment to book in when we arrived – principally because the minimum booking is four nights and we really like these apartments. (Cattle and Cane – The Go Betweens – One of a handful of songs that really speaks to me of Australia – like Wide Open Road, the tune speaks of Australia’s wide open skies and never ending countryside and no matter how good a time I am having while travelling, it always makes me feel a little homesick.)