The art of italian train travel

Opposite us on the train to Venice was an American couple. As we approached Venice the man pointed out to the woman, who was deeply engaged with her mobile phone, that the train was crossing the causeway to Venice. After a few moments she tore herself away from the screen and said;

"Venice is an Island?"

"Yes, of course it is"

"Well I didn't know that"

"Just like you didn't know that Italy had horses"

silence

"I think you should ask for a refund on your high school education" 

Honestly, you couldn't make that stuff up.

So why return?  Generally speaking, I don't care to visit cities that much. They are all basically the same. The architecture may differ, the restaurants serve different food, waiters are still rude to you in a different language and the taxi drivers are depressingly dishonest. Cities are always difficult to navigate. Ticketing systems for public transport are incomprehensible and traffic is usually horrendous.

On top of that, museums always turn out to be a disappointment. After an hour of traipsing through galleries you start asking yourself 'Can I really look at another Renaissance masterpiece?' They all look the same anyway. There's always a man with a beard looking fierce. There's always a nude woman looking like she hasn't managed to keep up the weight watchers calorie counting. If there are no nude women then it's a safe bet there's a crucifix somewhere around. 

The lack of cars and taxi drivers gives Venice a head start over its competitors. There are not too many museums and ones like the collection of the eccentric Peggy Guggenheim are well worth visiting if modern art is your thing rather than endless paintings of pious saints you have never heard of being martyred in an assortment of gruesome ways.

But above all this is the strange spell which the city casts over any visitor. It is impossible to define but I recognise it by the fact that even 40 years after my first visit I yearn to go back and experience it again.  The magic is particularly potent at night after the day trippers have departed and the city becomes quieter and darker. Wandering along the narrow, echoing alleys and suddenly discovering silent waterways bathed in foggy light is a magical experience.  It is truly a city like no other.

If you're the sort of person who delights in useless trivia you will share my delight in finding out that Venice has its own 18 hole golf course, however improbable that might seem. It is located at the southern end of the Lido and is close to another Ventian surprise, the Alberoni Dune Oasis with dunes up to 10 metres high and an adjacent 30 hectare forest. It isn't an image you immediately associate with Venice. I looked for pictures of the Dunes on the internet thinking it might be an interesting place to visit but could only find a rather boring selection of images which suggests that the dunes might not be quite as impressive as the Venice tourism authorities would have you believe. 

The golf course exists because of Henry Ford. in 1930 he came to the Lido as a guest of Giuseppi Volpi, 1st Count of Misrata and complained, one hopes in jest, that there was no golf course in Venice. He hadn't reckoned with the formidable Count who saw to it that the great car manufacturer would not be inconvenienced by the lack of a golf course. Henry Ford had a bit of a thing for golf courses in strange and unusual places. His extraordinary 10,000 square kilometre rubber production facility in the Brazilian jungle, Fordlandia, included a golf course among its amenities. The local workers were forbidden alcohol, tobacco and 'women' so I'm guessing that they weren't encouraged to join their managers for the odd round of golf and a refreshing whiskey in the club bar afterwards.  

Count Giuseppi Volpi was a man of considerable accomplishments. He had been the Kingdom of Italy's Minister of Finance, negotiated the end of the Italo-Turkish war in 1912 and was governor of the Italian colony of Tripolitania.  His two other great achievements were to bring electricity to Venice and the Balkans and as if that were not enough he co-founded the Venice Film Festival in 1932. To this day the best actor and actress winners are awarded the Coppa Volpi. The politically correct reader will, of course, bristle at the idea that the Italians still use the antiquated term actress.  But then Italians also use the word 'Ballerino' for what we more sophisticated nations call a male ballet dancer. Since the Italians invented ballet in the 15th century I guess they can use whatever terminology they like. 

Count Volpi was, inconveniently for the modern festival, a lifelong fascist and a senior member of the Italian Fascist party. Strangely there was no mention of this affiliation on the Venice Biennale internet site which gushingly details the history of the film festival. He hasn't been cancelled yet but I'm sure his day will come once the fascists of politically correct thinking discover who the Coppa Volpi is named after.

The Lido has always exercised a certain fascination for me. It began in 1971 when I saw  Visconti's Death in Venice in which the main character comes to Venice and stays in the Grand Hotel des Bains on the Lido. The hotel closed in 2010 but a plan announced in 2022 will restore the hotel to its former glory. In its heyday rich travelers from around the world would stay here on the Lido to be pampered on the grand style. The golf mad Henry Ford stayed there and it was the venue for the first meeting between Hitler and Mussolini.