Review: Death in a Strange Country

Every once in a while I manage to pair a reading of a book with a vacation that manages to improve both. One of my favorite examples of this was reading Bill Bryson's In A Sunburned Country while in Australia. I managed to do it again, this time with my trip to Venice and Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon. The book was recommended to me before my trip, and it couldn't have been a better choice.

First off, the descriptions of Venice are wonderfully vivid. The food, the landscape, the people, Leon could have been describing the scenery of our trip. It definitely gave my visit there another dimension.

Next up, I very much liked the main character, Commissario Guido Brunetti. He's sort of an anti-Jack Reacher. Sure, he's a sharp detective, but definitely not a super hero. He's a likable guy, who's qualities include honesty, sincerity and perseverance, not the ability to beat up bad guys and deliver cold hard justice. Fitting with the anit-Reacher theme, he's a family man, with a truly loving marriage and real kids. I can't think of another detective who manages to be both good at his job, and come home to an understanding wife and kids. Seriously, who else gets to do this?

Finally, I loved the Italian and Venetian take on things. It's always tricky to generalize, but I think the author did a relatively good job of capturing America's smugness and how this must come across to the rest of the world. At the same time, the book made me appreciate the power of corruption and how thankful I am that I'm surrounded by a community where the rule of law is supreme.

Oh, I have to add, once again I was appalled at how much information the Amazon blurb gives away about the book. 3/4 of the plot is laid out for you to read in summary form. I'm just thankful I didn't read it ahead of time, and got to enjoy the pace set by Leon to share the story.

For a different type of detective book, I'd definitely recommend it. And if you're heading to Venice, it should be required reading.

15th Anniversary Trip - Day 7

Day 7 started with a humble request to Shira: please navigate us to the Jewish Ghetto. By consulting three maps she was able to get us to the correct location without even a hint of getting us lost. She's good.

The Jewish Ghetto is small - about 2 large city blocks. At one point it contained around 4,000 Jews. They lived there not by choice, but by strict law that controlled their comings and goings. According to our tour guide, there's now about 400 Jews in the whole of Venice and it's surrounding environs, and there are many more funerals per year than brises.

With that many Jews in close proximity it's no surprise that they had to have a number of shuls, I believe the total number came out to 5. We had a chance to tour 3 of them. The shuls we were in date back to the 1500 or 1600's, and as the tour guide kept reminding us, everything we see there is original. In some respects the shuls look exactly like you would expect an Orthodox shul to look like: an ark for the torah, a reading desk, various inscriptions in Hebrew, a ladies section, etc. But in other respects, they are totally foreign. Jews at the time were forbidden to be craftsmen, yet had money to hire the best. So the architects and designers of the shuls weren't Jewish. That explains why one of them has gorgeous greek colums and the ark looks it could pass for the front of a church.

While the shuls have been in continous use (even to this day, they get a few uses every year), many of the reasons behind the symbols on display have been lost. Consider the case of large sea shell above the doorway in one of the shuls. What is this non-kosher item doing there? Does it represent the wash basin used by the Levi'm, or was it simply an in-vogue symbol of the time, so the architect put it in place? Nobody knows. But being Jews, we have no problem coming up with a handful of explanations, and using the one we prefer the best.

After the museum, we went in search of Kosher food for lunch. We found an especially nice place, and we ate lunch only a few feet from the edge of one of the canals. It was like out a movie.

While we ordered a number of standard dishes (hummos, kabobs, etc.), I couldn't resist ordering the classic Venetian dish of sardines and onions. It arrived, and looked exactly like its contents suggested it would: a heaping pile of onions over sardines mixed with some oil based sauce. It was absolutely delicious, with a sweet flavor. By far the best sardine related dish I've ever had. If you make it to Venice, I highly recommend you search out a restaurant that offers this treat.

From there, we explored more random parts of the city until it was time to head to the train station. After a 45 minute delay we boarded our overnight train to Paris, which is where I'm typing this from now.

I'm so thankful that I was able to make it to see and experience Venice. It suffers from the usual woes any popular city has: too many tourists, too many souvenir shops and too many people out to make a quick buck off of an unsusupecting tourist. But, the beauty and sheer wonderment of a city with canals instead of streets makes it all worth it. Throw in a dose of Jewish history, and the glass making on Murano, and you have a city that more than compensates for any detractors.

But enough about Venice, it's back to Paris and the French Open!!

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15th Anniversary Trip - Day 6

Today we explored Murano and Burano, two islands a short boat ride away from Venice. Murano is famous for its glass, and Burano, its lace. Both islands, for the most part, lived up to their hype.

We saw two different glass blowing operations on Murano, and they were both equally impressive. It boggles the mind the amazing creations that they fashion using little more than a long hollow metal tube, a pair of tongs and a heck of a lot of heat. Apparently the glass blowing ovens are kept at 2100 degrees F 24 hours a day, as it takes days to bring them up to that temperature.

One of the most amazing sites we saw today, if not during our entire trip, was when a master glass blower pulled a blob of hot glass from the furance. With seemingly little effort he drew out various lengths of it and shaped it. Before my eyes, in about 20 seconds, he managed to create a horse sculpture. The legs, mane, tail, and head were all pulled from that one blob in fluid motions. Truly stunning.

Another cool part of the trip: our guidebook reported that behind the alter of the Santa Maria e San Donato church were dragon bones! I can now report that dragon bones are large, but not as large as you might expect. Maybe this was a relatively petite dragon that Saint Donato dispatched?

I continue to be fascinated with Venice as a city. Of course all goods must be moved in and out of the city by boat, or if on land, by cart. I stood there like a 5 year and old and snapped photos of the trash boat as it did its duty hauling away Venice's garbage. I suppose this sort of scene is to be expected, but to a land lubber like myself it was really cool.

Tomorrow is our last day on the island, and then it's back to solid ground in Paris and more tennis. Now that I'm invested, I'm actually quite excited to see how this whole French Open thing works itself out. Look for us in the very top row of the men's semi finals and the men's finals! And I mean very top!

15th Anniversary Trip - Day 5

Our 13 hour overnight train ride from Paris to Venice was uneventful. Sure, I felt like a sardine packed in a canister for 13 hours. But it was a clean canister, and had enough room that I never really felt claustrophobic. Our Italian car-mates departed from the train around 5:30am which gave us about 4 hours of alone time in the cabin, most of which we dozed away.

The Venice train station looks like any other in the world. But as soon as you walk through the gates you're transformed into another world. It was like stepping into Oz. Gone are streets and cars; replaced by canals and boats. It was an even more delightful scene than I've ever imagined.

If we thought navigating Paris took skill, Venice requries a PhD. in orienteering. The "roads", none of which contain cars, and some of which are only a few feet wide are marked. But the map we have doesn't name them all (or most), and there is absolutely no rhyme or reason behind their layout. Consider our hotel. It has an entrance on the Grand Canal. However, to access it, you've got to take one apparent back alley to an even smaller apparent back alley, only to find yourself in a gorgeous hotel.

When I asked people who had been to Venice what I should expect to do, they said just get lost and wander around. This turns out to be trivial to do. One minute you're walking along the next you turn a corner and you're at a canal. Nobody appears to bother with directions, it wouldn't do any good as they would just be too confusing.

We made our way to the main square, Piazza San Marco, the narrow paths gave way to large passages which added open air markets and lots and lots of tourists. It was both depressing and awesome to see such crowds.

We visited the musuem in the Basicalla of St. Mark, the main attraction at Piazza San Marco. I'm hardly an authority on churches, but this one was awfully impressive. The gigantic church is covered in mosaics, which when you consider that each one is made up of tiny fragments of colored rock, makes it a nearly unfathomable project.

Still, for all the glitz of the main square, I'll take the quiet narrow paths and canals around our hotel. It's that side of Venice that keeps me taking out my camera everytime we approach another small bridge.