On Christmas Eve, we were walking along a street in Venice, late at night, when we were accosted by an Italian couple who said to David, "Excuse us, but we met on Kalymnos in August: you performed magic for us at the Artistico taverna in Emporios and your friend, here, used to sit under the trees reading..."
Now, apart from the extraordinary fact that they identified us by the light of the shop windows of Prada and Fendi when we were all muffled up against the cold in coats and scarves and hats and yet when we last met - in a remote corner of a tiny Greek island - we were all in shorts and T-shirts, BUT they live in Milan and come to Venice every year - for one night only - to attend the Christmas Eve Mass in San Marco... And yet we happen to meet: what are the odds...?
Of course, Venice is - and always has been - a city of encounters...
Whilst tourists - being intent on seeing the sites - tend not to see the residents (who, in turn, do their best to ignore the tourists), there are places where their worlds, inevitably, coincide...
People meet in bars and cafes in campos and on bridges. They stop to talk: their voices ricocheting off ancient walls and mingling with the lap and slap of water in the canals, the chitter-chatter of heels on flag-stones, the murmuring of pigeons and the accordion-accompanied serenading of gondoliers...
Images: Brian Sibley & David Weeks © 2007/8
For more Venice imagery, visit my website to view the album Venice Observed and then follow the links at the foot of that page to three further albums of photographs.
3 comments:
I tend to believe that chance encounters like that are meant to happen. Swop your santa hat for a writing one, Brian!
Love the pics
Bulogge: Italian for Blog?
That pic of the man and woman at the yellow-covered tables is absolutely lovely.
And the more you travel, you know, the smaller the world gets! :)
I love the chance to meet with new people in these cosmopolitan places. Whilst in the mountains of Gran Canaria, we stopped for pictures in the middle of nowhere and two locals came out of their house and insisted that we go inside for lunch. With an ex pat Pole, a Norweigan and two English, the conversation was difficult but we managed. They cut fresh mint and advacado from the garden and picked lemons - all still growing in December, so the meal was very fresh. Of such chance and fleeting meetings are good holidays made !
LOWLYMNI : Traditionally, the state of ones bank account after Christmas (abbr)
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