Trip to Venice

Dorota and I decided to celebrate the trial victory in August by taking a cycling trip through Lithuania. These plans didn't transpire though as she landed a job with Polish Humanitarian Organisation - helping to co-ordinate a great project regarding global schools and humanitarian education. So we decided to head to Venice, Italy for a week instead, staying in a campsite, trying to get a grasp of the vast history of this former city state and the church's powerful role in it's past aswell as following in the footsteps of Shakespeare's great dramas (Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Two Gentlemen at Verona - a little bit outside Venice).

A city some fear will be populated primarily be blow-ins within 20 years, which seems doomed to worsening flooding, and has already being doomed to bear the heavy toll of tourists and monotonous trinket shops and stalls, still sustains a natural beauty in terms of the actual topography of the multi-islanded layout of the city, frequently bridged and connected by a colossal amount of gondolas, water taxis and buses.

Anyhow, this is a belated report with the key purpose to give some context to a few photos I wanted to publish. I'm not a very good person to go on holiday with, as despite the fact that I like travelling, I also like to be doing something constructive while I am there. All in all though it was a really cool trip - the proximity to the sea and regular transportation we took to various islands was a reminder to me, as I grew up in a small town situated on the river Shannon, of the frightening power and beauty of water - whether it be sea, river or lake.

But I fear the tourism which we were apart of is taking it's environmental toll also - in a sense Venice seemed more like a theme park, with overt celebration of it's purported glorious past but nothing to commemorate the slave labour which was a fundamental aspect of it's economy for centuries. The only reminder of this slave trade was the colourful guys from the African or Asian continents (I unfortunately didn't stop to ask where from - mainly cause I didn't want to interfere with their merchandising attempts to sell counterfeit designer bags and watches or calligraphically designed names) who lined the streets at various junctures. Every once in a while rumours of police on their trail sprung them into immediate scurrying in all directions to avoid capture by the Carabineiri. A subtle and cruel reminder of injustice that has being a cornerstone of Venetian society since it's very foundation.