First year of freedom

I arrived in Europe one year ago today. I landed with a limited 182 euros, following a run-away roadtrip in the states, and the name of a hostel. A week later and I was down to 20 euros and still just the name of the hostel. It worked out, I didn't become a bum, well not in the traditional sense, and I got a job at the hostel. From there it was pretty plain sailing from a survival point, although Barcelona was a bit of a stretch and as was the beginning of winter on the streets of Amsterdam. With one year down, any development is difficult to identify. I am a few countries away in Italy now but still working in a hostel. No real progress there. I have no huge savings to boast of, and little memorabilia. But there have been positives. For example I;

1. Perfected the Captain Planet dance medley.
2. Purchased shoes off the feet of a guy on the street.
3. Didn't die.
4. Developed an incredibly believable arm-wrestling background for myself.
5. Picked up an array of colourful sunglasses.

A very satisfying year. Achieving more than that would be overly ambitious. I did manage to have one goal, which was to pay little notice to reason and logic and special attention to the feint itches and tickles of my slightest whims and desires.

The utter freedom led me to choosing exactly what I wanted and that has been exhilirating, inspiring and even challenging.The books resonated with me, the people inspired me and the experiences encouraged me. Here's to another one.

Venice is a fish

With an awkward gap of a few months between the Winter season in Austria and Summer season in Greece, I was lost as how to pass the time. I considered another return to Amsterdam, or even the dreaded London to see friends, but at the last moment a friend from Miami pulled through and got me a job in a hostel in Venice. This would provide me with an opportunity to achieve a long-held dream. For years I have wanted to be a gondolier in Venice. Seriously. I just thought it would be cool. I was under the false belief that my grandmother came from Venice and that maybe I had a bit of gondolier blood in me. I found out when I was about eighteen that my grandmother's family came from Sicily, the other side of the country. This shattered my world. Nevertheless, I have always felt an attachment to Venice. It could have something to do with one of Sean Connery's Bond movies, when in the final scene Bond floats away with his girl on his side and the bad guy defeated. That also just seemed cool. So I came to find out just how cool it is.

The Hostel

Working in a hostel is practically the only way I could come to live here. Finding accommodation and a job in a traditional manner would prove impossible, especially considering the ludicrous prices for rent in Venice. It also happens to be a nice little arrangement, the hostel provides free board, food, drinks and daily friends, all in a 400 year old palace on the Grand Canal. The hostel is fairly central and a short walk to St. Marco's square. It is in a large building, and was in fact a palace that was built for a leading Venetian family in the 15th century. The hostel takes up all of the second floor. Busks feature along the welcoming staircase and the entrance has magnificently high ceilings which are adorned with sculptures of chubby babies with wings. The hostel can take about forty people but the occupancy floats around the thirty mark. My job has is three fold, I organise the beds, handle the check-ins and setup the meals. Organising the beds is a saga in its own right. The hostel only has a license for five beds per room, but have as many as fourteen guests in each room. The police often have routine checks of all tourism enterprises and will show up demanding to be allowed in to make an inspection. Due to this, a large part of my working day is spent taking down and hiding beds and putting them back up at 5 o'clock, once the police have called it a day. On Sundays I don't have to do it, because the police don't work on Sundays, which is a nice change. (It is through this aspect of my job that I was introduced to the Italian concept of fregatura which is indispensible for anyone living in Italy. A fregatura is doing something in a way which is not exactly legal, not exactly honest, but just this side of outrageously bad. It is a way of life in Italy.)

The Check-ins have become a passion of mine, or at least a large aspect of my entertainment. At first I explained everything in a sensible and straightforward way, which quickly got boring. It then evolved into great rambling performances that could freak out the guest, and question their decision to stay there or I could be down right rude if the guest gets in anytime before 10am. Generally I have perfected my routine answering the questions before they are answered, and satisfying any nerves or qualms, especially after explaining why their bed will only be ready at five. I tell them the truth. Some people try guess where I am from and most fail horribly. There are cheaper rates for females which half explains why 90 percent of the guests are females. We are currently coming to the end of Europe's spring break and many of our guests in the last few weeks have been obnoxious Americans studying in Europe, although not all are obnoxious and some are even agreeable. The guests from Canada, Mexico, Britain, Ireland, Norway, Australia and Brazil (basically everywhere except America) have been awesome and a highlight of the job.



Setting up breakfast is a straightforward deal but dinner is the day's great event.
Every night we prepare a 3 Euro dinner for the guests. It is generally a variety of pasta but lasagne, gnocchi and pizza make appearances too. The gnocchi and pizza are made from scratch and are half day affairs. My bosses take great pride in their dinners and the guests realise that. Initially the guests will endure awkward and plodding conversations regarding day trips and travel plans. But after the 'Surprise Sangria' has been unveiled, drinking games kick off, similarities are recognised, defences dropped and discarded and any awkwardness quickly vanishes. After dinner, the guests are louder and happier and the drinking games are picked up at one end of the table while the other side chats freely. After an hour or so we head to the bars.



My Bosses


There are four of them. Four thirty-something friends who own four hostels; one in Milan, one in Florence and two in Venice. Diana and Alberto are brother and sister, Matteo and Andrea are friends with Alberto. They bounce around from hostel to hostel spending a week here and a week there. It can happen that three of them meet up for a few days just for a party it seems. As I mentioned, they are behind the dinners and the kitchen is their playground. As Diana has explained to me, "The kitchen is where we have our funny". They pump the music, which features 70's disco, Italian favourites and Jamiroquai. They smoke cigarettes, drink wine, sing and dance all while milling around and contributing to the cooking. Andrea or Alberto will over see it and keep focused on the job while the others perform. More than anything though, they argue vehemently. It is classic, they throw their arms around in wild gesture and are emphatic with every point. Every conversation is a raging argument, a constant ranting, and I was convinced that only someone who is furiously angry will shriek that loudly. I was wrong. After every argument they burst out laughing and spin around for another cigarette to light or glass to full or song to pick or pot to stir. The kitchen is one big celebration. Friends come over and join the festivities and their riot intimidatingly looms over the hostel guests. Their party is much more raucous than the collection of travelling strangers.


Venice



I spend the time I have free in the afternoons joining guests on random explorations, trips to nearby islands, and quests to different areas of Venice. We always get lost. We wonder down the smaller alleys, investigate the curious squares and trust our instincts. My personal mission for the moment is to get gelato everyday. There are free exhibitions and churches to check out too, I do if there is nothing else going on. There are ferries to sneak onto for free trips along the grand canal. There is much on offer but best is just to wonder. I head back to the hostel at fivish to put the beds back up.


Venice Nightlife

Venetian nightlife is pretty limited. There are some clubs on the mainland but on Venice itself, there are few places that play music or where one can dance. There are a few plazas with small bars surrounding them that spill crowds onto the plazas. The most popular one is Campo Santa Margarita which is popular amongst the students. The bars are tiny and just big enough for us to squeeze in, order a drink, and squeeze out. The most popular drink is a Spritz, the 'Venetian cocktail', which is pink and fruity and is made with either Aperol or Campari, and is dirt cheap. If you're lucky you will get an olive on a stick with it or generally a slice of blood orange. I tell the guests they have to get this signature drink and ordering is made easy for the large group. Standing outside we are bombarded by rose sellers from Bangladesh. The bars play no music and close early. Not so vibrant. Some nights we seek out random bars to prolong the night or try our hand at the unpredictable wharehouse club, Zona Bandita which operates with what sounds like one blown speaker, but generally the afterparty heads back to the hostel, where we play music and finish off the sangria and our night.




End Note: I have recently moved to the other hostel in Venice, where myself and an Afghanistani guy called Ateek run the show. It is dingier and dodgier and we can do what we like. It is not a palace.

Flashback #2 Trent's Head

It was a joyous occasion. We were happy and loud and laughing and spitting in the face of the night. Well, a bottle of Jagermeister will do that to you. It was my third night in Austria and we were off on a random mission to some bar in the mountains. There were six of us. Myself, Flo (an Austrian friend from the pub crawl in Amsterdam), Martina and Rosa (two local girls) and Pixie and Trent. The idea was to hike up the hill at night to some relatively close bar, have some drinks and then the grand finale would be to sled down the hill on a skibop. We had some practice drinks at home, and had some practice skibops at the base of the hill. Spirits were high and it took a brisk ten minutes for us to reach our destination.

It was exactly what you picture an Austrian bar in the alps to be. A trickle of smoke rising from the log cabin, no doubt a gulaschsoup or gluwein on the broth. Discarded skis and sleds framed the entrance as we traipsed in and the jovial warmth slapped us in the face. Benches and tables made up the room and despite being relatively full we managed to find a vacant table. A round of beers and Jagermeisters was ordered as reward for our mild exertion. As we settled in, I noticed what was happening around us. There were two men dressed in full mountain regalia, one playing an accordion, the other a guitar, parading around performing apparently popular Austrian folk songs. The people in their seats swayed and sang with the songs in utter revelry and the three Austrians amongst us too joined in the chorus. The musicians were in their element, prancing on and off the tables and sang each song with more gusto than the last. After a few more rounds it was go time and we headed out to get on our skibops. In essence, a ski bop is a dildo glued upright onto a plastic plate, ergo the name penis bopping that Martina gleefully referred to it as. In our state we were barely finding our feet to prepare ourselves for flight. It was planned to be a no holds barred dog fight to the end. Organization was shocking and as the first one hurtled down we all threw ourselves onto our penis bops and down the piste. Squeezing the penis, squealing, and having no real idea how to do what I was trying to do, I managed to make it to the bottom unscathed. We all did. In quick succession. Except Trent. He eventually showed up, we glanced at him, took no real notice and continued our shrieking. Trent got up, trotted over and casually mentioned that he had hit his head. That is when we saw it. The blood. It was thick and dark red, almost like gulasch soup. In our excitement we did a horrible job of not freaking out.

“Oh my fuck, Oh my fuck, Oh my fuck. OK Trent you’ll be fine”.

“What?”

“No don’t worry, you’re not gonna die…. Is he?”

“What?”

“No its a mere flesh wound. You’ve just been drinking so that’s why it is thick and covering your entire head and neck and back and won’t stop bleeding… let’s go to the hospital.”

“Fuck, that’s a lot of blood.”

What we figured out, once Pixie confessed, was that Trent fell off his ski and Pixie following close behind hit Trent in the head with his sled and carried on going because ‘he thought it was me’.

We arrived at the hospital, Trent shaky, the girls worried and the guys ecstatic at the outing and some gore. Trent was taken into the operating room immediately and our unruly gang was left in the waiting room. We busied ourselves doing wheelies on the wheelchairs and expressing our horror/delight at how much blood Trent had lost. His scarf and jacket were soaked with it.

Trent would later report that we were not the only ones who freaked out. While we were celebrating in the waiting room, he was lying on the metal operating table, and under the care of the night nurses all he could make out between the two of them was “Scheisse, scheisse, scheisse”. They were not doing anything because the injury was so severe that they were waiting for a senior doctor. They kept on looking at and poking his head, repeating “Scheisse, scheisse, scheisse”. His bleeding had not stopped and lying on his chest, face sideways, the blood was slowly rising, eventually forcing one eye closed and nearing his nostrils. It was about that time that he became very cold , and recognizing the symptoms of shock, got a little worried and asked the doctors for a blanket. The senior doctor arrived, the bleeding slowed, the wound sutured, head bandaged and a dishwasher’s life saved. He eventually came out of the operating room to see us and get ready to go to bed.

We were regailing each other with drinking injury stories, when Trent appeared.




He entered through the side door and in an instant I took in the picture. He was dressed in a hospital gown, head heroically bandaged around his ears, hobbling in, hanging onto a drip, looking very sorry for himself, and rightfully so. The sight of him appearing through the door threw ourselves onto the floor in hysterics, pounding the floor with our fists at the this. The noise we were making was beyond laughing, it was an impossible gasping for air, giggling and coughing and shrieking. We just could not believe Trent’s get up. It was too good to be true. Too classic. Too awesome. Rosa had earlier seemed irritated with how terrible friends we were. We explained to her, “Hey he’s not dead, so it’s all good”. She didn’t agree.

Trent spent the night high on morphine and dined out on a slice of bread and jam in the morning. We went out and had a few more drinks, boasting of our adventure and Trent’s misfortune. He survived, with this anecdote and a cool scar for the chicks to dig.