Come Hell or...

Indeed.

My first impression of Venice was somewhat skewed due to my arrival in a period of high water, or acqua alta. This doesn't happen nearly as often as I'd like, but I was lucky enough to have it happen my first two days in town. Venice was my puddle. I arrived on the vaporetto (water bus) thinking that this was the normal state of affairs. It being a misty mysterious sort of day, the oft-described weirdness of the place was compounded ten-fold. How exactly does this place run? Surely, surely this can't happen always?

The water had subsided by the time I headed out for training on Day 1. Halfway through, however, Alessandro's phone rang. I understood some numbers. 142. Greek. The voice was telling him that tomorrow, my first day of work, was going to be the highest high water that he could remember (and he remembers a lot). I followed him around as he busied everyone putting books on top of tables and bricks under photocopiers. I have no head for numbers and definitely no head for Venice so I had to wait until the next day to see what it was all about. I woke up and looked out my window onto my reasonably elevated street.

This is what I saw from my third-story window:

No problem. I have boots. Ale had warned me to take the vaporetto as I wouldn't be able to make it through San Marco in all this ocean. In retrospect I'm sure I could have managed but it was early days yet and this was all a bit too much stimulation for one morning. Also, we must remember that my bags hadn't yet arrived so I was best keeping the one set of clothes I did have dry. Good thinking. Down into my hallway, then, and this is what I see:

Out the door, onto the vaporetto. This is the commute by sea:

Salute is my stop when I take the bus (thats the cathedral there), and I join the ranks of the tip-toers tip toe-ing (as this motion can only be described - moving very slowly) through the alleys.

This is wonderful, I think. What a wonderful place this is, what a backwards town. Gleefully I take my seat in the student room and start to feel very, very guilty as the interns file in one by one and I see that I am vastly better equipped than they for these centuries old aquatic shananigans. I have always said that there is absolutely nothing in this world worse than wet jeans.

Alas, it could not last. There have only been about 5 days of flood in my nearly 6 weeks here (gosh, really? Already?). I have exceptionally tall gumboots so all it means for me is that I must leave for work an extra 30 minutes early and there are less dogs about to play with on my commute. It's a give and take.