An Homage to Veneto and Italy In These Troubled Times

Ever since the first time I walked into Piazza San Marco as a wide-eyed eleven year old, I've felt that Venice was a home away from home. There is no place in the world that fills me with more emotion than Veneto and Italy. I get a strange sense of belonging, of familiarity that definitely has to do with reincarnation, with lives in Venezia, Vicenza, and the area around Bassano and Marostica. But no matter whether this is true or not, it hurts my heart to follow the grim news coming out of one of the greatest countries in the world.

Italy saved my life in the Nineties when I suffered from depression. The Italian language became my sound healing and the clouds lifted every time I went to language school in Feltre, Lucca, and Perugia or were writing on my novels in Trastevere or on the Amalfi coast. 

So this is a small photo and love letter to my beloved Italy during this difficult pandemic - to the fun loving Italians, to Vicenza, Francisco d'Assisi, Lecco, Zucchero, Vernazza, Atrani, Taormina, Monica Bellucci, Lago di Como, Aosta, Andrea Pirlo, Belluno, Feltre, Bassano del Grappa, Luigi Malerba, Fiat 500, Campo dei Fiori, penne arrabbiata, Gomorra, Canaletto, Paolo Sorrentino, Ravello, Marostica, Santa Caterina da Siena, Gazzetta dello Sport, Carpaccio, Urbino e un tramezzino al tonno in Piazza San Michele a Lucca alle 11.22.

Thanks for all you've given the world, Italy. GET WELL SOON!

Photos: Venice, Bassano del Grappa, Venice, Marostica.

Travel Advice for Tourists: If You Don't Do This in Venice, You Need to Have Your IQ Tested

This is what you should do when you visit Venice, or I’m going to get so mad at you it’s not even funny!

First, you should go to Piazza San Marco like everybody else because it’s the most beautiful square in the world with the restored freschi on Basilica San Marco and the majestic Doge Palace facing the lagoon, but you WILL go way before 9 AM or after 8 PM unless you’re suicidal or want to bond with 25 Chinese tour groups, two thousand cruise passengers, and 333 pimpled teenagers from Belgium.

Also, you will NOT - I repeat NOT buy a selfie stick for 3 Euros because then you can be sure I'll unfriend you on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or worse, I'll send you signed copies of my third novel that nobody liked except my mother, and she's dead.

However, on your second day, you WILL get up at 5.05 AM, throw away your cell phone and the wrinkled map you got for free at your overpriced hotel that's either close to the station or Piazza San Marco, which are the WORST places to get a hotel, but you're forgiven because you probably didn't know better - and now you WILL get lost in the REAL Venezia, enjoying the narrow canals, the red bras flapping in the breeze, the seagulls attacking the garbage bags outside the medieval palazzi, and tears will stream down your face because you didn't know how gorgeous, turquoise, and calm Serenissima was at dawn.

Yes, it's true. You WILL get lost without your GPS.

Your kids WILL scream at you.

Your partner WILL divorce you, but who cares because you've experienced the greatest city on earth before it's destroyed by mass urination, and the rising sea that some day will leave Venice at the bottom of the laguna like a 21st century Atlantis.

 Copyright Peter H. Fogtdal, Danish Accent who has visited Venice about twenty times, and suffers from a serious Venezia-addiction for centuries that can't be cured, thank God!

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