Venice

Ah…Venice. Venice is a truly unique city. Yes, the canals romantically meander through the lagoon islands and the winding, narrow streets are simply charming. But the city is also a history treasure trove. Venice’s many buildings function as remarkable time capsules, sharing with us 21st century travelers, distant echoes of when Venice was a wealthy, major maritime trading center with the east. More remarkably for us, much of the wealth that created the splendor of the Doge Palace or the golden opulence of the Basilica of San Marco came from the very place we now call home …India. Maybe the world’s been flat longer than we thought.

Venice, however, is first for lovers.

We stayed at a delightful hotel called Locanda Ca’ Del Brocchi on the lagoon island of Dorsoduro. Our innkeeper, Nicola, always referred to the accommodations as “my hotel.” He provided us the care and comfort one can only get from an innkeeper with a personal attachment to the premises.

Our location positioned us for a short water taxi ride to San Marco or the option for a hand-in-hand stroll over the footbridge at Academia to San Marco. Frequently, we opted to stroll our way to whatever destination took our fancy. On our first afternoon in Venice we were greeted by an older gondolier who invited us to go for a ride along the waterways in his gondola. Now, how could we refuse?

We toured the Basilica San Marco. The current basilica is the result of many re-buildings and re-modeling efforts. One cannot avoid being struck by the eastern style mosaic artwork that adorns the ceiling of the church, much of it done in gold. We were very fortunate that our visit to the basilica allowed us to see the inside of the church by early morning natural sunlight, illumination from the internal lighting system which is turned on for only one hour each day, and finally, filled with the bright rays of the midday sun. Each lighting experience provided us a new view of this overwhelmingly beautiful structure. We also visited the Treasury, the upper loge and the Pala d’Oro inside the basilica. Each time we gladly paid the required 3 – 5 Euros for an admission ticket.


Another discovery in our wanderings was the scheduled performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons that evening. Tickets were purchased. Vivaldi was born in Venice in 1678. Comfortably seated in a building with a cornerstone laid in 1487, we listened in awe as seven women musicians (four violins, a cello, a base and harpsichord) dressed in period costume transported us in time and enraptured us with beautiful music.

Our plan to depart early the next day from Venice to Rome was foiled by sold out train bookings. Rats…another day in Venice. We visited the Doge Palace. Vacations can be filled with such wonderful surprises. Ah, Venice…a place for lovers.

Complimentary Breakfast to Last Supper

Helen made hotel reservations at the Milan Marriott using Jay’s Marriott points. It was a wonderful surprise when we arrived to be greeted with a room upgrade due to Jay’s Marriott Gold status. A cold bottle of white Soave wine and some snacks were also provided. We were tired after our long trip and opted for a restful night’s sleep in our comfy bed surrounded by a most delicious quiet. Ahhhhh……

In the morning, we took advantage of the complimentary breakfast in the spacious hotel restaurant. It was a slow time for the hotel and we had the breakfast area almost all to ourselves. We shared some morning conversation with Jim, a physician from Utah on a week’s vacation in Italy. We also inquired about a guided city tour. Our luck was strong and we were able to book seats on a three-hour city bus tour.

We caught a taxi to the Tourist Office by the Duomo (church), purchased tickets and got on the bus. Our timing was exquisite. When we sat down we heard our tour guide say, “Let me tell you about today’s tour.”

The tour took us through a small area of Milan, but it was interesting and significant. We started at the Duomo, the church in the middle of town. This particular church was left standing after the bombing of WW II. By volume, it is the third largest church in the world after St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and another church in Seville, Spain. The church was massive. This duomo also contained a holy relic.

Holy relics, of course, were the European rage from the dark ages to the Renaissance. Many churches have sacred relics, mostly a bone or bone fragment of a saintly person. The Milano Duomo, on the other hand, has a nail from the cross of Jesus. The nail is housed high above the altar. A bright red light marks the location of the holy hunk of iron. We were told on the tour that 36 such holy nails from the cross of Jesus were housed in various churches in Europe. Hmmmm….36 nails. We learned that if an “actual holy” relic touches a “wannabe relic”….voila…a new relic. Egad, if Jesus knew what was going on he would roll over in his grave.

We toured the back areas of the famous La Scala Opera House and saw some rare musical instuments and some original compositions. There were also paintings and busts of famous composers, conductors and singers, including Arturo Toscanini and Maria Callas.

The finale of our Milan tour was Michelangelo’s Last Supper. Tourists are organized into groups of 20 or so and allowed a limited time in the chapel housing this famous painting. Entrance to the chapel is controlled by the synchronized opening of an outside door, tourists enter a small hallway, outside door closes, inside door opens: high tech humidity control.

Much to Helen’s surprise the Last Supper was bigger than she had imagined and in a brighter, more open setting. The painting (not a fresco…to you artwork wonks) is at one end of the chapel. A fresco at the other end of the chapel depicts Jesus on the cross. Quite a dichotomy of visual images. Our guide indicated that the painting of the Last Supper captures the moment when Jesus said, “One of you will betray me…” The posture of the disciplines at the table reflects their reaction to Jesus’ pronouncement. Our fifteen minutes with Last Supper ended quickly and we walked out to allow another group to gaze at the painting.

From Bangalore to an Italian Holiday

Two hours after Santa Claus was safely back at the North Pole and last the string of firecrackers had exploded outside our apartment, we boarded a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. We had a ten hour flight to Frankfurt, a four hour layover and a 50 minute hop before we would be in Milan, Italia. We looked forward to our two week vacation. Milano to Venezia (Venice)… Venezia to Roma…. Roma to Florence, then back to Milano. A true Roman holiday awaited us.

The holiday, however, unexpectedly veered to concern and worry 20 minutes after our take off. Jay, who had been battling a case of “Delhi belly” (diarrhea) for a few days, broke into a cold clammy sweat and feared he would soon lose consciousness. He tried to maneuver his body to lower his head, but our cramped economy seats would not yield any space for such a position. Fortunately, Helen’s call to the flight attendant was quickly answered. Jay’s sallow color gave our flight attendant an equal sense of urgency and with the assistance of Gerhardt, the flight purser, Jay was slowly navigated up to the nearly empty business class section. Gerhardt sat Jay down in a more spacious seat where he was eventually able to position himself to ward off his impending loss of awareness. Cold water and plenty of genuine concern were provided by the flight staff. Helen was ushered forward as well to care for Jay.

The crisis lasted for only 10 minutes, but it was a harrowing 10 minutes. Jay soon stretched out on the extended business class seat and slept for more than eight hours. Rested and mostly recovered from his ills, we resumed our Roman Holiday…. from the business class section of plane. Life has its ups and downs.

We landed in Milan around 2:00 PM. Skies were overcast. The temperature was 4 degree Celsius (don’t know the conversion…it was cold). We had equipped ourselves with sweaters, and a hooded Old Navy pullover Jay purchased for 110 rupees ($2.25) provided more warmth, as did the knit hats and leather gloves also purchased in Bangalore. Finally, our yellow wind breaker rain jackets gave us a protective layer from the first onslaught of the chilly weather. We were warm among the very stylishly dressed Milanese. We looked, however, like we had just flown in from India.

The bus ride to the central bus/train station in Milan was surprisingly uneventful. No road trip in Bangalore is without its adventure. Not once did the bus driver swerve into on-coming traffic to overtake a lumbering lorry. Drivers showed “lane discipline.” Blinkers were actually used when changing lanes. What’s that all about? We were sure the absence of loose cattle and goats on the highway was a fluke. These crafty Italians have got to keep their cattle and cattle poop somewhere.

Plenty Good Room in my Father’s Kingdom

When we packed our bags to come to India we included a few of our favorite CD’s, not knowing what we would find here. Among the handful was the UUCA Quartets’, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” One of the songs on that CD is “Plenty Good Room,” a song that says there’s room for everyone in our Father’s kingdom. We listened to that CD several times on Christmas Day, trying to create for ourselves a feeling of being with our church families who are so far away.

We move through our Indian experience as expats. There is clearly privilege embedded in our experience due to our Western heritage. Upon our approach to the lobbies of the finest hotels in Bangalore, the doorman, typically in colorful garb, pulls open the door with the smart, “Good Morning.” At work, Jay experiences quick deference to him regarding leadership decisions. Helen is called “Madam” without pause. Sales clerks at the small kiosks where we frequently conduct business move their attention from their local customers when we enter. The experience is a bit disturbing. We are all God’s children…and he or she…loves us all, no exceptions.

There are so many people we see each day that form the circle of our lives, but never enter our lives. This is a land of great human toil. A billion people mingle about in India, 9 million of them in Bangalore alone. We see women in their saris, sometimes barefoot, as day laborers building or sweeping the roads of Bangalore. Sometimes we pause and take a “snap” with our digital camera. With the delight of children on Christmas Day, they chatter among themselves in Kannada, Hindi or Tamil when they see their images in the small display of the camera. We will continue on our way, they will return to mixing concrete and stooping to sweep the street. They will become only images on a jpeg file on our computer.

We see children all the time. This is a youthful country. Among our favorite pictures is that of eight young girls in their school uniforms packed in one of the many ubiquitous auto rickshaws that ply the Bangalore streets. Their future looks as bright as their shining faces. There are also other girls who have no school uniforms to wear. They have shining faces too, but someday they’ll be wearing their saris as they mix concrete or stoop to clean the streets of Bangalore.

Not all is bleak. People have their livelihoods that provide them income for a home, food and hope. Wares must be sold, taxis driven, buildings built, food prepared, newspapers delivered, and clothes ironed. When Helen pulls our clothes from the washing machine at the apartment they are hung from a clothesline nine stories from the ground. There is no fluff and dry, wrinkle free cycle. We have only the warm winds that circulate about our apartment. Clothes are sent to the basement for pressing with a charcoal-heated iron in the morning. They are returned, pressed and neatly folded the same day. Two rupees per article of clothing are exchanged; about 5 cents. We continue on with our lives, as do God’s other children. We are blessed, however, to have an opportunity to stand outside our “normal lives” to see another part of our wonderful world.

Happy X-Mas

It is Christmas day. And here in Bangalore, India the Christmas celebratory mood surrounds us….we think. This morning we were awakened at 5:45 AM not by the clatter of reindeer upon our roof, but Hindi music blaring from a nearby loudspeaker system. The familiar tune and lyrics of “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” would have been welcomed. It is our first Christmas in India and we have some expectation adjustments still before us.

Later in the brilliant sunshine and warm air, we walked around the colony to ascertain the source of our morning melodies. We found a very old temple compound filled with people in bright red garb. The compound was teeming with activity we were sure was associated with some religious roots. We did not want to intrude. Having confirmed the source of the loudspeaker system, we departed and wandered other parts of our new neighborhood.

Christmas cheer is found in rice flour decorations that adorn many doorways in the colony. These rice flour decorations are very common during Diwali which was celebrated in November. We suspect there is a fair amount of celebratory cross-decorating. Diwali lights are ubiquitous in November and found again hanging from balconies and roof tops in December. One wonders if the lights were ever taken down.

Wishing someone a “Happy Christmas” is common here. We have been wished a “Happy Christmas” several times yesterday and today and returned the greeting. We hope your Christmas is a happy one.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Today, Christmas Eve, we walked about our neighborhood.

The Salarpuria Splendor apartment complex sits on the edge of a section of Bangalore called the N.R. Colony. We do not know the origin of the name of this section of town, but we do know that the N.R. Colony is a true slice of modern Indian urban life.

Bangalore is better understood not as an emerging metropolis, but rather as an urban village. Much of life as we now see it is rooted in another time; a time when people moved at a different rhythm. Urbanization has brought new apartment homes, piped gas versus delivered cylinders, water piped into the house versus public roadside spigots. Urbanization has brought to a new young generation of Indians the ability to go deeply into debt buying Honda two wheelers or a new Ford Fiesta car and mobile phones with Hindi songs for ring tones. This is a boom time. The sky is the limit.
Many, many shops fill our neighborhood. You can get your two wheeler repaired, book a trip at a travel agency, make an interstate or international call at the many STD/ISD phone stalls, buy sweets, fruits, juice, even 750 ml of Royal Stag whiskey at Rs 130 ($2.95). Helen has ventured into our neighborhood to the Provision Store to buy water, potatoes and milk. Next to the Provision Store is the live poultry market. Helen picked out a chicken squatting in a small cage. She came back in 15 minutes and the former feathery fowl was in a bag ready to be cooked for dinner.

Cows continue to roam the urban streets as they roamed village byways. Pushcarts ply the streets and alleyways, their owners selling fruits and vegetables. In the evening, we watch from our balcony as a streetlight at a small nearby intersection illuminates people who venture a few steps from their homes, meet a pushcart vendor, exchange conversation, product and cash. The pushcart vendor continues his rounds. People return to their homes to make dinner. The whole transaction appears quaint for us who are accustomed to jumping into our cars, dashing off to the local Kroger and plucking items from immaculately clean and well lit store shelves. Then the swipe of a few bar codes at the self-service check out line, another swipe of a credit card, back in the car …home …. make dinner. We are not too sure that the car-Kroger-home modus operandi of living is better.

But then village life is not idyllic. Raging dogfights occur nightly to our chagrin and loss of sleep, night after night after night. In a village, dogs roam, dogs fight. Who notices except us?

We are still new to our urban village. The sounds of the morning and evening prayer calls from the mosque are melodic and not very disturbing. The Hindi music that blares for a festival or to entertain workmen at a construction site (we are not sure which is which) is still disturbing. At least we know where to buy water, potatoes, milk and chicken. We will not starve as we become part of this urban village.

Can’t Remember Nuttin’

We both fear that with age and the stress of so many changes in our lives that we will be struck down with an incurable syndrome called CRS (Can’t Remember Shit). We fight off CRS by making lists of things we must do the moment we think of the task. A day or even hours later when we read the list we marvel at our earlier clarity of intent. That’s right; eggs, bread and toilet paper. How could we possibly have forgotten?

We asked the same question of our new 256 MB flash memory card for our Canon digital camera. It appears our new memory card was not a list maker and it had its own memory problem.

We realized during conversation over dinner with fellow expats that we were in the technology backwaters when it came to digital cameras. Among the conversations we shared was our quaint story of how we marveled a small band of children months earlier. We took their “snaps” with our digital camera, filled the memory card to capacity and then downloaded the snaps to Helen’s laptop, only to repeat the process three or four times. There were looks of incredulity at the table. Hmmm…. “My camera will take up to 400 pictures before filling the memory card.” A nod of comparative experience was conveyed about the table. We opted not to engage in any further dueling memory card capacity and moved on to other pleasant banter. We took a few “snaps” with our digital camera when dinner was over and resolved to explore our memory card capacity shortcomings in the privacy of our own home.

We selected our digital camera from a website shortly before leaving for India. Camera operation was easy. Point, click, download, repeat. Eggs, bread, toilet paper, repeat. We had a rhythm that was working for us.

We realized that the camera originally shipped with only a 32 MB memory flash card. We resolved to increase the size of our memory card. We have a trip to Italy approaching and we wanted to have the same expansive picture capacity of our dinner guests. But where does one buy a digital camera flash memory card? India is not awash with stores such a Circuit City, Wolf Camera, or Wal-Mart where an electronic selection can be found.

We trooped to the Forum shopping center (the high-priced mall in Bangalore) and found the only camera store. We put down 2,800 rupees ($63) and slid in a 256 MB memory card. We thought we were now on top of the world. We soon discovered the new card would display not pictures, but more frequently only a small notice indicating corrupt data. Pictures taken were pictures lost. In the “no return” policy of India, we trooped back to the store and exchanged the memory card. We did that three times to the marvel of no one. Finally, we said we needed to try another brand or have our camera examined for a possible defect. We looked for another camera shop and finally found Camera Citi. We paid 1,800 rupees ($40) and slid in a new 256 MB memory card. “Top of world, Ma!” We have pictures again. Click!

Shifting

Much has been going on which has diverted our attention from our blog. The pace of Jay’s work has increased and Helen has been increasingly involved in activities with the Overseas Woman’s Club. However, the biggest activity that has dominated our thinking, and time has been our shifting. Yes, shifting….one can not leave home without shifting. As a matter of fact, the only way to leave home is to shift.

As with many subtleties in Indian English, variations from our American English are used to describe everyday events. One takes a diversion rather than a detour. One rides a two wheeler rather than a motorcycle. One calls on a mobile rather than a cell phone. One reverts rather replies to an e-mail. Lift, flat and satchel are now common words in our lexicon. Most recently when we moved from our home in the Diamond District to our new apartment in Salarpuria Splendor, we realized one does not move…one shifts.

As part of our shift, we needed to transfer our AirTel broadband service. Helen intrepidly ventured out to find the AirTel business office to coordinate the move…er…shift. When she asked for directions to the office from an AirTel store front that takes only payments and sells mobiles, she was told, “Down the road by the battery (Exide) shop.” Down the road by the battery shop means…walk down to the motorcycle…er…two wheeler battery shop, turn down the alley, walk past several buildings, find a narrow entrance way and walk up to the second floor, that would be three flights of stairs, and hunt down someone who knows something about shifting. Really simple stuff once you get the hang of things.

When we first arrived in India a bit more than three months ago, we didn’t have a clue about styles and qualities of apartments. We had basic needs upon arrival: a safe, secure compound-like apartment, walking distance from Jay’s work and something that would fit Jay’s work budget. The Diamond District satisfied all requirements. After a week in India we signed a three month lease and home became D-57 Diamond District. With time we learned more about apartment living in India and the quality and amenities available. We also realized our 80,000 rupees ($1,800) rent was way overpriced and the service provided way under par. So we started our own search. We visited many apartments, compared value for money with other expats, found an apartment broker (very common here) and eventually selected our new home at A-801 Salarpuria Splendor in N.R. Colony, about a kilometer east of the Diamond District.

We now live in a six month old apartment (vs. 15 years old). The appointments are marvelous. We have three balconies. We have piped in gas instead of a cylinder under the counter and a water filter instead of having 20 gallon jugs brought in that sit beside the sink. If you think that’s top drawer, if one leaves the refrigerator door open too long, “It’s a Small World” begins to chime out from a tiny computer chip. All this and we have a 40% reduction in rent. We had other discoveries in the apartment upon our arrival, but that will be another blog.