The First Weeks.

Gianni come quick, they are changing my kitchen"! All too soon I would understand the undercurrent of machismo in Italy and the frustration resulting from not speaking the language, but at the time was so enamored of all things Italian that I failed to comprehend the reality check. It all started with a knee jerk decision to quit my job at General Motors, close my galleries, sell my house, and leave (bodily, but not emotionally) my long time boyfriend and family and move to Venice, Italy. Having traveled around Europe with said boyfriend for 20 plus years, I was familiar with Venice and had maintained a rental house on the nearby island of Murano for about 3 years, a spot to call my "own" in a foreign country. From this strategic spot, I began searching for housing in Venice, a daunting task. Gianni’s wife, Liviana, located a huge palazzo on a canal beside St. Mark's Square, a big, unoccupied old house that needed to be restored, a task that falls to the renter in this country. I said yes the minute that I stepped inside, a Venetian palazzo, the dream house with marble floors, all those rooms, words failed me, and it might have been better that way.
What was I thinking?!

As I received the quotes for electrical wiring, new kitchen, bathroom fixtures, etc., it became clear that I needed to use this house as a money making venture or at the very least, a way to clear the expenses for the restoration. And so began my bed and breakfast business for the next four years, a new concept in Venice in the year 2000.
The most common contracts for rental properties are four years plus four years, with an increase of 3% annually allowed by law, unless other arrangements have been made with the owner. Naively, I made a 4 plus 4 contract with the verbal agreement that the rent would remain the same for the first four years, and the last four would be "slightly" increased. Thus began my relationship with the owner, hereby known as the Wicked Witch of the South. More on her later...An electrician friend in Murano agreed to rewire the house for a very low, at the time, cost, and to install phone lines, doorbell and intercom lines to the doorbell 2 stories below. I set out to get quotes from a local (and expensive), kitchen refitter, blithely ordering marble for counters, backdrop and splashes, content that it was costing a fraction of the amount in the States. Hand rolled glass for the cupboard doors? Yes, of course! And so the project began with the assistance of a good friend who spoke English and would look after the remodeling while I returned to the US to wrap up loose ends.Upon my return a few weeks later, the kitchen work had begun with a big chiseled hole in the floor in order to repair the old lead pipes that could be bent by just touching them. They needed to be replaced and then connected to the outlet pipe located on the floor below. Fortunately, it went into the closet and not a main room of the house below, occupied by an elderly Venetian lady.

The houses of Venice have been chopped up, sectioned off, and subdivided over hundreds of years, mostly without official permission, and one never knew what might be found during a restoration. With the new pipe in place, the muratori, or bricklayers (mostly wall destroying workers), then proceeded with their task. The wall was gouged out to accept the new pipes, and as the work progressed the muratori discussed the various ways to improve the current kitchen design, which I had drawn and posted on the wall. As Gianni translated, I tried to explain to the workers that I had remodeled many kitchens and this design was by far the most efficient way to handle it as it did not include moving plumbing and gas lines, only replacing them. They ignored me. What would a woman know about such things?!
As a former supervisor of Engineering at General Motors with an entire department of men who had worked for me, this offhanded chauvinist approach to all things female was just the beginning of the growing frustration I was to feel during this remodeling process..Gianni, friend and overseer of this restoration, brought a handyman to the house for me to interview, and he explained that Oscar was a local who worked hard, charged less than the going rate and this, by Venetian standards was all that was needed. Interview?! He had a nice face, I hired him.
Thus we embarked upon our daily routine of sign language, selecting wall colors and determining the scope of work. It went like this: Oscar speaks to me in Italian explaining some of the problems and resolutions of the ongoing work, I shrug, and he goes to work. I learn words like battiscopa, (baseboards) literally meaning the board that is beaten by the broom, cacciavite (screwdriver), vite (screws for which the aforementioned is applied), cavi (wires), tubi (plumbing pipes) etc. The fact that I still can't say "Good Morning, how are you?" in Italian, I am filling my brain with a repertoire of words that are becoming useful in the short term but if I ever leave the house I will sound like an idiot .
I take the vaporetto (ferry boat of a sort, and our public transportation) from Murano to Venice in morning and walk the 20 minutes from F. Nuove to the sestiere or district of San Marco. Oscar arrives, usually with paint (pittura), sandpaper (carta vetrata) and other sundry items to apply the stucco and the paint. Traditionally in Venice, many of the baseboards are painted directly upon the lower portion of the walls, so I choose a main color and Oscar begins in one of the spare bedrooms with a kind of brick color that I immediately dislike when the room is finished. We change colors, throw out the previous paint and proceed again with a neutral gray, to blend with the various paints and wallpaper colors.
Since I have decided to name each room and assign a different theme, we begin with the Cherub Room, filled with antique hand-colored lithographs from the 18th century, two single beds inlaid in various woods and decorated with old bronze medallions of cherubs, which hopefully can be pushed together to make a double, or matrimonial, bed for guests desiring to sleep together.
The Murano Room is to be all Venetian red and gold, filled with Murano glass and has a window directly on the terrace. The Venetian Suite will be done in blue and gold (due to the fact that there is an existing en suite bathroom with blue and white tiles) and it also needs a new floor because when we lift the old blue carpet we find only concrete, probably a modern repair done to the old existing floor. But the room has soaring ceilings and is decorated around the perimeter and in the center with curlicues and medallions of hand worked raised plaster detailing. I begin to think of all the furniture necessary to fill these huge rooms, and the cost. Furniture shopping begins with a trip to an outdoor market in Via Garibaldi where I spot a carved dresser that I just have to have when learning the price. The seller, Walter, who speaks some English and used to be a graphic designer, tells me that he has rooms and rooms of antique furniture if I would like to see some. He suggests we go immediately to look (he smells money, an American has arrived!) and abandons his street stand and I follow him down a maze of back streets called calli and we enter an old fisherman's cottage filled with disassembled armoires, beds, stacked chairs, and everything else wooden that might go into a house. And some items that would not...
There are three floors of tiny rooms, no electricity, and dust so thick that it is difficult to breath. I begin selecting furniture and extract the promise that everything will be refinished, if needed. Oh, yes, he has a ragazzzo, a young man, who does the work for him, no problem. I select two armoires, find matching headboards and foot boards for the beds and on one of the two floors below are the matching nightstands, a minor miracle.
Then on to a large table with 6 matching chairs, a small inlaid china closet, desk, divano, or couch, with two matching side chairs and small side table. The prices for everything are amazingly low for antique furniture but I bargain a bit, asking for a lower price if all the items are purchased together, what is called a stock.
Oh, those were the days. A dollar actually had some buying power, usually 90 cents for every 1,000 lira, and buying a piece of furniture for half a million lira was equivalent to about $450. It was like using Monopoly money. I wanted to throw it around and wallow in it like Scrooge McDuck in the old comics.
Where to put the furniture when it arrives? No problem, the house has ten rooms, and it will all fit somewhere. I am still gloating over the price.
A few days later I am trying to put the furniture out of my mind as I sit on a borrowed metal folding chair in the cavernous living room/foyer space while making some small changes to the kitchen layout. Gianni has found someone to repair, sand and paint all the shutters along with some of the doors and windows. Since the house has 22 windows and 44 shutters, this job has the house filled with dust and old paint, electric sander groaning away in the background. When the weather permits, the work can be done on the terrace, but for the paint to dry properly we cannot trust the fall weather and the rapidly arriving storms. I open the windows to let out some the paint fumes in an attempt to clear an ever constant headache. Shutters are on sawhorses and scattered across all of the floors throughout the entire house in various stages of drying. The old windows are multi-paned single glass nightmares to refinish and I begin to think about washing the glass in them on a regular basis. This is old glass, with bubbles and irregularities so beautiful that I can't bear to replace it, but every pane requires caulking, and the surrounding wood needs sanding and painting.
I am now hoping that the headache is only from the paint.
After a few weeks the shutters are finally dry enough to reinstall and I count out a wad of lira into the hand of the worker who has been in attendance for what seems like eternity. He is scarcely down the stairs when I hear a shout from below. The furniture has arrived!!!!
The boat is parked in the canal below and I must run down and unlock the door to the waterway so they can begin to carry everything up the 3 flights of stairs. The house is on the third story (called the second story in Italy because they do not count the ground floor, an endless source of confusion) and it involves six flights of curving stairwells. I mentally wish them luck and then begin to worry about the newly refinished furniture as they navigate the stairs. There are also three workmen currently repairing the marble floor in front of the main door upstairs and I will have to ask them to move and to cover the repairs with something while the furniture is brought up.
The floor repair has progressed nicely, the three workers in unison fitting tiny pieces of marble together in the style known as allo venziano, and in this house it is a beautiful warm coral color which I plan to accent with fabrics and drapery in those same tones. They have determined that the corridor floors are too old and badly damaged to repair without practically beginning over. It is akin to assembling a million piece jigsaw puzzle with no photo on the box top to use as a guide. I abandon the project for the time being and dream of carpet, softening the echoes and warming the floors.
How did all those craftsmen from centuries ago make the miracle which is Venice, using only the simpliest of tools? That reverie is interrupted by another shout from below, the first pieces of furniture arriving through the door and being propped against walls gratefully not yet finished with paint or wallpaper. Finally all the pieces are in the house, and Walter assures me that he will send someone to assemble the armadio, just to give him a call when I am ready. As the patment is counted out, he begins telling me of another house and maggazzino (storeroom) full of things I have not seen. And I need to come soon before someone else buys everything!
This is typical of most Italians, believing that every American is rich, having seen for years only the crème de la crème visit Venice and spend, spend, spend. Always the best hotels and restaurants, the finest Murano glass money could buy, indeed only the wealthy Americans for many years arriving to pump up the economy in Venice. In addition, most Italians have relatives in America and are steeped in the stories that filter back about the riches, the opportunities. I continually try to refute it, this perception that all Americans are rich, but it is to no avail. Anyone who can afford to live in such a grand house of 500 square meters (almost 6,000 square feet) with two terraces overlooking a canal behind St. Mark's Square must be very wealthy. If only they knew...

The next morning I abandon the furniture assembly process as a futile project because there are no floors or walls completely finished and to assemble furniture to continually push around the house while the work continues deflates me. I decide instead to frame some prints and proceed to the frame shop on the ground floor directly below my house.
This framing store has been run by the same family for over 80 years and the current proprietress Luisa, the daughter of the original founder, has a voice like Hermoine Gingold, deepened from years of cigarette smoking and rusted to a timbre like thunder, and is always attired as though attending a dinner party at any minute. I will discover that this is her normal mode of dress, an old world Venetian style.
She scurries around selecting and suggesting appropriate framing samples and I begin to wonder if she is leading me down the Italian “put all the assorted paintings together in no special order and hang as close to the ceiling as possible” style. Next will I buy bright plastic modern furniture that will then be covered with garish colored patterned sheets to protect it?
“Cara, cara” snaps me from my reverie and we begin choosing the color of the mat to go with the prints, traditionally done in white or off-white, like the walls of all Italian houses, and I am beginning to be viewed as a bit eccentric for suggesting other colors to accompany or accent the prints and lithographs. Again, the pricing is incredible, a fraction of what it would cost in America for custom framing. Heavy frames with gold or silver leaf, ornate carved wood in many styles, touches of color here and there, all hand finished. I find myself thinking of ways to send frames back home and almost have a business plan formed in my head when interrupted by "Argento o oro"?, gold or silver? "I will take the frames in gold, please". Well, that is what I would like to say, but still lacking all the necessary verbs and nouns, I instead point to the gold one in universal sign language. This was the first of many such frames that would be purchased in this shop, hand cut and assembled by Carlo, Luisa's employee who had worked for this family for over 40 years, since he was a child really, and about whom the neighborhood whispered that he was, shhhhh, gay.
I take leave of the capable Luisa who promises to have the frames ready in a week, thinking that it will add to the growing list of the items to shuffle around the house while waiting for the walls to be finished.
Thinking that it seems like the right time for another expresso, I decide to join Luigi at the restaurant and have our (my) normal conversation in Pidgin Italian and to learn a few new words.

Luigi is a wonderful man who with his brother and their respective sons, run the Omnibus restaurant on the Grand Canal in the San Marco district. The restaurant is in fact is situated in what is left of the second oldest palazzo on the Grand Canal, built in 1325 and once the original home of Doge ???? During a fire centuries ago only this portion of the grand house was spared, a narrow 4 story remnant of the old palace.
The doges are still spoken of in Venice as though they are walking the streets today, and the current ancestor’s of those first great leaders in Venice are more than eager to relate to anyone who will listen the hereditary facts of their descention that connects them to that great and glorious past.
The doge was similar to an emperor and held the office for life and was regarded as the ecclesiastical, civil and the military leader. The doge's prerogatives were not defined with precision, and though the position was entrusted to members of the inner circle of powerful Venetian families, a hereditary monarchy was checked by a law which decreed that no doge had the right to associate any member of his family with himself in his office, or to name his successor. After 1172 the first election of a doge was finally entrusted to a committee of forty, who were chosen by four men selected from the Great Council, which was itself nominated annually by twelve persons. After a deadlocked tie at the election of 1229, the number of electors was increased from forty to forty-one.

Pipes, Paper, Pavimenti, Parquet, and Parecchio Problemi

The walls in the house are a disaster. The house has settled over the past couple of hundred years and all the stucco in the world will not make them smooth again. Like an old woman with pancake make-up, it would be a surface cosmetic fix at best, all tired and worn underneath.
Clutching a slip of paper with the name of a wallpaper store in one hand and my trusty street guide in the other, I trudge off to the store that a friend has recommended. Eventually, I find the tiny shop of Massimo, located near the house of Marco Polo in a small campo or square. He has samples of carpet, (rarely used here, not hygenic!) wood flooring and wallpaper samples in the window.
I find Massimo and his wife inside. He speaks the prerequisite 3 words of English but is prepared to drop everything to give the rich American a quote on a new job. I try to explain that I am on a budget, which would have fallen on deaf ears even if explained in Italian.
He accompanies me back to the house and proceeds to do the walk though, and I call Gianni to come and translate. We discuss the parquet floor to be installed in the master suite, real wood, as the Wicked Witch of the South has instructed me. "Do NOT put in any of the plastic laminate type" she has demanded, as if she were paying.
Then we discuss the estimate to remove all the previous layers of wallpaper and to smooth the surface in preparation for the new heavy modern paper, designed to hide defects. Then we go to the Murano Room for another wallpaper estimate and to examine a common wall between the bedroom and kitchen which seems to move when touched. It is determined to have had a leak at one point and the wall is crumbling and needs to be replaced. I make a mental note to ask about drywallers. We then proceed to the large foyer and living room to examine the walls and measure for the estimate. I am feeling lightheaded.
Enamored of Italian stripes and determined to have it in the wallpaper for the foyer, I am now struck by the fact that there is a combination of 12 doors and windows in the first two rooms and nothing is plumb, and I am thinking that the end result may be like something like Alice in Wonderland may have designed. Fear rising like our proverbial high water, I immediately call my former store manager, Pam, and suggest that she and her husband might want to come to Italy and wallpaper a house in return for free airline tickets and a place to stay. She whoops for joy and we make a plan. I put Massimo on hold for the time being and he dejectedly leaves with the promise from me that he can do the wood floor in the master bedroom. Talented Pam and her equally talented husband Dave, arrive in October to assist with choosing the wallpaper and the hanging of same. We stay at my house in Murano, where I still have 2 months left on my verbal lease. Less than two months to make the Venice house livable, and with the hope that the kitchen will be installed by the end of November, as promised. (I am thinking Thanksgiving, a large bountiful table filled with Italian friends oohing and ahhing over a perfectly roasted turkey with all the trimmings). Right!
November is generally rainy and also famous for acqua alta or high water. This year October is competing with November. It is cold and rainy, I have the flu, and we are working in a cavernous house with no heat, hanging striped wallpaper around doors and windows with off kilter trim - a house to make the Crooked Man proud.

Back and forth, Murano to Venice, boat rocking in the wind and waves, Pam also sick now, all three of us papering like zombies, celebrating when we hang a strip of paper that does not require cutting. We eat lunch from the local Burger King, take out only, as we are too dirty to go inside, a place in which I vowed never to eat in Italy and too tired to care.
Papering the foyer
Soon the week is up and it is time for them to return to their workshop and mail order business. We have papered the entrance room. One week! One room! Massimo's quote now looms large at a price that suddenly seems so reasonable that I can scarcely make it to my cell phone fast enough. "When can you start"? I ask in my pidgin Italian. "Next week? Perfetto"!
Next week arrives and the floor guy calls in reinforcements to assist in the repairing of the marble floor. The elderly lady downstairs tells Gianni that the house had been used as a large office/showroom at one time, and holes were drilled in the beautiful floors to accept the wiring. (The kitchen also had one of the old-fashioned counters over the door like the kind in a meat market that indicates when it is your turn, the kind where the numbers flop over each other as they change. I just hope that it used to be an office, all those bedrooms....)
So the man repairing the floor (I never did learn his name) is laying on his side hand polishing the marble repair with what he explains is some kind of oil and pumice in addition to a powdered coloring agent, matching the old tint exactly. This recipe acts as a kind of grout that is smooth and shiny when polished. (Italian women are fanatical about their floors, shining them to a high gloss and pity on the person who scuffs one)!
In addition to the three men working on the floor repair, Massimo has sent two young workers to strip the paisley wallpaper in the master bedroom, done to the beat of a loud radio. Oscar is calling me concerning something about the pipes in the office and the drywallers have shown up and want to know about parking their boat in the canal outside my front door to unload materials. I find that the kitchen installers are putting in the refrigerator cabinet on an angle, of all things, and I am on overload, so frantically call Gianni. Just then, Giorgio the plumber arrives.
Now, we have many levels of doing things in Italy; the official, by the book, according to the law, or whatever-else-you-want-to-call-it way; and the under-the-table, unlicensed, no receipt kind of way, which is how everyone operates. Giorgio is in the latter category, an unlicensed plumber who works in the black, or under the table. This does not mean that he is not capable, just not "official". He talks non-stop about his antique hunts, how little he paid, where it was purchased, what famous family used to own it, etc. I swear that he can talk without breathing and I wait for a pause. There isn’t one so I forge ahead and try to explain to him that I do not speak Italian. He ignores this and continues his narrative, pointing to the furniture stacked against the walls, gesturing wildly. I call Gianni again. "Help", I say in English.
The background noise has now reached a crescendo like an old Sofia Loren movie set in Naples, everyone talking and yelling at once. What happened to my romantic visions of sitting at a table beside the Grand Canal sipping red wine and watching the gondolas? Or strolling through St. Mark's Square and maybe dancing to the orchestra, the mind-boggling scenery of Venice all around? Instead, I am in a bad Italian movie waiting for the credits to roll.
Gianni finally arrives and we stop the kitchen refitters from proceeding with the angled refrigerator installation and try to get to the bottom of their decision to divert from the precise and much studied layout. The "leader" says that the wall is crooked and if the refrigerator cabinet is positioned against it, there will be a large gap that will be evident and brutto when viewed from the kitchen entrance. To rectify this, they have cut a huge triangle out of the adjoining cabinetry where the angled refrigerator now fits, pivoted and facing the door at a drunken angle.
Now, I haven't spent all those years in Engineering for nothing, so I eyeball the offending wall and declare that it is almost perfectly plumb and IF there is a gap of half an inch at the very top, surely it is better than this monstrosity as it sits. Not to mention, I add, that they will HAVE to promptly replace or repair the adjoining cabinetry that has been notched.
They ignore me.
As one, they turn to Gianni and in fast moving dialect, voices rising, explain that they understand how to install things in Venice where nothing is square or straight. They turn to me with a "so there" expression.
I ignore them.
I ask Gianni to tell them only one thing, an American expression, one that will shake their little chauvinist brains down to the last cell. He who holds the gold makes the rules. "This means, just in case they can't comprehend the subtlety of the expression, that the 20 million lira due on account will NOT be paid until the work is done according to the layout"! They both are close to apoplexy, faces red and eyes bulging. A woman giving orders, well, porca miseria! I leave, there are other workers in the house to offend, sigh....
Two days later the refrigerator sits against the wall, not a gap in sight. The marble has been replaced along with the notched trim. They look up as I enter the kitchen and I look pointedly at the refrigerator and then at them. They ignore me. The refrigerator is never mentioned again.
The kitchen 6 months later. The infamous heating unit or caldaia is on the back wall.
(Insert photo)
Giorgio the plumber has determined that the caldaia, a strange kind of central water and heating system in Italy, and residing in the kitchen, will not deliver the hot water into the bathrooms in less than 5 minutes because of the size of the house and the length of the associated plumbing. He has determined that it would be better to have a scaldabagno in each bathroom, an on-demand kind of hot water delivery system. These can only be installed by an "official" company, everything paid with a fattura, or invoice, due to the risks with the gas lines and carbon monoxide.
Gianni locates a company, via passa parola, or word of mouth, the way it is done here. The company sends a licensed worker with 2 new scaldabagni, meaning literally to scald the bathroom, and he labors away cutting holes in the walls to accept the pipes for the exhaust and installs the gas lines. I will now have instant hot water in the bathrooms, progress of a tremendous sort, and I can almost smell the bubble bath. He tests the systems and all are a go.
There is no hot water. Neither system works. Gianni calls the company and they tell him to try the reset button but the flame will not ignite, hence, no hot water. He goes to the company in person but since they have been paid, they are not too interested. So he calls an "unofficial" type of person to look at the problem. It seems that the work is so shoddy that both scaldabagni will not function. The exhaust tubes have been taped and covered, the holes made too large, and a myriad of other problems. The unlicensed installer redoes both units and, voila! there is hot water, oceans of it, and they never fail again.
A word here about the scaldabagno. This is a wonderful system, instant hot water when you want, as long as you want it, and it makes you wonder why we Americans continually heat water in large tanks just in case we might need it. This alternate system is fuel efficient and one never finds that halfway through a shower the water turns to ice-cold amid rapid intakes of breath and depending upon the gender, changes in anatomy.
I have found something that makes sense here! A definite breakthrough, and possibly the only one, at least for now.
The Italians buy domestic appliances produced primarily in Germany, items like vacuum cleaners, air conditioners, irons, toasters and clothes dryers, a new fangled and not too popular an appliance. (Probably good news to the tourists who are constantly taking photos of the wash hung on lines to dry. I mentally vow never to hang my underwear out over the canal).
The plugs and switch plates in the houses are Italian plugs, designed for two smaller round prongs instead of the larger round German ones, thus necessitating a constant flow of various adapters. Some have a ground prong, some not, and one can never locate the correct adapter for any appliance and so one adapter continually makes the rounds in the house. Hmmm, let’s see, did I last use the 3 prong adapter on the microwave or maybe it was the vacuum? A most inefficient, frustrating way of doing things but good practice for things yet to come. (I eventually changed all the switch plates and plugs in the house to accept both Italian and German plugs).
Good news! I have found near Campo Santi Apostoli a tappezzieri, or upholsterer of furniture who works in a small studio that he purchased from Barbie and Ken. I mean, this room is so small that he sometimes takes a divano outside to turn it around and then bring it back into the shop. Really.
He has been to the house to scope out the work and has given me a rough price for all six pieces that I would like him to do. I like him and he has come recommended so I tell him to send his ragazzo to pick up the first three pieces, a divano and two matching side chairs.
I enter the shop with the prerequisite “Permesso” and he offers me a small wooden stool on which to sit, there not being enough room for any other type of furniture. He shows me the fabric samples that he can purchase or tells me that I may purchase my own. I opt immediately for the latter. He carefully measures the first of the three pieces that are now stacked together, one on top of the other like those nesting tables for a patio and gives me the quantity of yardage to buy. He also has to install and hand tie new springs and in fact make from scratch the entire interior of all six pieces. He then gives me a price for everything and is the custom, he scratches off the odd lire amount, about $40, to make an even amount. The Italians are absolutely obsessed with rounded off numbers and don’t even ask about using coins!
I am wondering at this point if anyone in American even knows how to hand tie springs any more and if they did they would certainly NOT do it for this price! I explain that I will go immediately to the fabric store and then return to advise him when the yard goods, (meter goods?) would arrive. Fortunately, there is a nice fabric store with hundreds of samples just around the corner on Strada Nuova. I go inside to the ringing of the proverbial bell on the entrance door and point to the samples and the owner tells me, prego, please look. I choose a pale coral colored subtle striped cut velvet for the one divano and two side chairs. The other divano is 18th century with a curved back and also has two matching side chairs for which I choose a rich brocade in a deeper coral color overlaid with a yellow/gold abstract floral design. We choose the trim for both selections and I pay the deposit as he scratches off the odd amount and gives me the rounded balance in lira. Another discount! Seems like a good system to me. He also promises to deliver it directly to the upholsterer when it arrives. I can come to pay later.
The Venetians have been for centuries the most famous of merchants and this style and courtesy of doing business continues to this day. They are polite and almost off - handed about the payment. Pay when you have time, pay when you pass by, etc., is frequently heard, never pressuring the customer for the balance or for the entire amount.
After about an hour I return to the upholsterer’s shop and advise him of the delivery date of the fabric so that he can begin the work and tells me that the fabric shop will call him when the stofa arrives and he will call me in turn when the first piece is finished. I discover later that this courtesy call is a means for me to pick up the sofa or chair immediately, as he cannot proceed with the next piece when the first is filling his tiny shop.
It is now time to check on the day’s progress at the house. The kitchen has not been touched in two weeks, and I discover after speaking with the coordinator at the kitchen refitters that something is amiss about the sink, so there vanishes my dream of that wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. I will in fact be making instant polenta in the microwave located in the one habitable bedroom.
The house is a disaster. There are pipes and debris in the hallway from the muratore and kitchen workers. The boys are in the master bedroom scraping at the layers of wallpaper. Unassembled furniture is stacked everywhere and the heat has been disconnected due to the kitchen remodeling. I think to try some primal scream therapy but the thought of the echoes in this big cavernous house and the resulting calls to the police by the neighbors brings that idea to an end. Instead, I decide to find someone to make the drapes.
I trot back to the fabric store, about a mile, and kindly ask the owner about someone he might recommend to sew custom drapes. He gives me the name of a man, another tappezzieri! It seems that working with fabric is a man’s job, dressmaking, alterations and such being delegated to the women. I consider that the price of the upholstery has been so reasonable that maybe the low labor cost on the draperies will offset the high cost of the fabrics. I was in for another reality check.
I call Sig. Bianchi and make an appointment for day after tomorrow and give him the address of the house. I am sitting on the same metal folding chair in the cold house waiting for him to arrive and am struck by the irony that I am surrounded by furniture and have nothing to sit upon. There are wooden frames of everything but no seats!
The doorbell rings and I say into the intercom “Che e”? (I just love doing that!) “Who is it”? Ah, Sig. Bianci has arrived, dressed to the nines and looking more like a doctor or lawyer than a drapery maker, which should have given me an immediate clue as to the upcoming price. He looks around the house and I spy his assessment of this enormous house, windows everywhere!
There is an open archway between the foyer and living room that I want to divide a bit more and soften with heavy draperies, and needing them also to dull the echoing.
He measures and writes and hmmmm’s and sounds more and more like a doctor as the minutes tick by and I am beginning feel like a patient, increasingly nervous. He finally asks if he will be providing the fabric or will I? I tell him that I will choose and purchase the fabric and with this he recalculates and gives me a price that I am sure includes a tonsillectomy. Four million five hundred thousand lira! $2,250 for a pair of large double-sided drapes with fringe, and for which I am providing the fabric??!! I am stunned but try to act casual, feeling a small muscle twitching near my eye and hoping that he will not notice. He moves to the four large windows in the salon and I follow meekly wondering if I can distract him by fainting or something. I tell him that I must choose all the fabric for the house and must decide if the drapes will be lined, if they will have fringe, etc. and it is too soon for an additional estimate at this time. He eyes me like a school teacher who has just caught a child in a lie and tells me that if I need anything further, I have his number. I never saw him again.
OK, so plan “B” it is. I will go back to the States and have all the draperies made there and will transport them back in my luggage. And so I begin to measure and give that up as a lost cause. First I must take photos of all the windows and walls and then will write the measurements directly on the photos so that the seamstress can really see and make corrections to the process if needed. I measure everything, floor to ceiling, every window, between windows and walls, every combination I can think of. Nothing is level and the draperies will vary as much as 2 inches from one window to another. My mother always told me that every job one has ever done will be useful in one way or another in the future, and I thank her and my drafting department experience from long ago.
Acqua Alta! Or High Water.
We are plugging merrily alone, kitchen workers, wallpaper scrapers, Oscar painting, Gianni translating and with everything under control, I run down the stairs to the maggazzino. A maggazzino is a storeroom and they are much revered and sought after in Venice, a city of small apartments with no closets and a need for a place to put stuff. Stores and shops rent them all over the city and the streets are an endless procession of goods flowing from maggazzini to retail outlets. I am fortunate to have a large one facing the canal and it includes a window through which to watch the gondolas glide by and to listen to the gondolieri singing or talking on their cell phones. As I round the last landing, I am stopped in my tracks by water covering the ground floor. I mean water! About 2 feet of it! We have not had the normal siren signaling the arriving high water, it has snuck in on silent feet and we are inundated. At 5:00 it is also a very unusual time for high water and it has caught the city unawares.


THERE ARE MANY CHAPTERS IN BETWEEN THE BEGINNING OF THIS BLOG AND THE CONCLUSION, WHICH FOLLOWS. I PROMISE TO GET AROUND TO FINISHING THE MIDDLE  ONE DAY. :)

Leaving Venice….

Friday I am moving all of my special things to Austria, an Italian lifetime collection of everything that I love.

To facilitate this move from Venice to Austria I had given away and sold the items that I did not care to relocate, and reduced as much as possible the accumulation of things that one keeps over the years, and vowed to move only the special antique pieces, family photos,  Murano glass collection, books, etc. that I had carefully packed in 30 cartons. 

A friend had referred me to a mover who was supposedly reliable and honest so I called him to make an appointment to come over to the house on Sunday to look at what had to be moved and to provide an estimate.  His name is Marco, around 30 years old, and he arrives with girlfriend in tow, making the best of his Sunday.  He explains he only works under the table, or in the black, as the Italians call it, cash only, and no taxes to pay. 

This is how Italy runs, everyone cheating the government, the government cheating the populace, a kind of daily game played by workers, companies and even my accountant.  This type of mentality extends to many parts of life in the Veneto, the underhanded ways being more the norm than the exception. But this is explained in the previous chapter and is one of my reasons for leaving.  I feel a need to be in a more stable environment with like-minded people.  So I am heading north to my summer place in Austria and from there will look for a permanent place in Germany, a country that I love. 

The following Friday the boat movers arrive, a separate service apart from the truck that Marco will provide. We spend four hours loading everything from the house into the barge and I ride with my goods and dogs down in the hold, arriving 30 minutes later at the Tronchetto to offload the boat and transfer all the boxes and furniture into the truck.

It is soon obvious that Marco has underestimated the amount of items that can fit into his small truck but begins piling and pushing things in, furniture first and then boxes, more furniture and another layer of boxes, like a layer cake.  He then sends his assistant Mirko to rent another small van for the overflow, with instructions to follow behind the primary truck to our destination.  I again confirm that Marco has the directions written down correctly and I drive on ahead to my house in the Alps in Austria, taking the shorter, but more difficult, road over the mountain pass.  Marco and Mirko will take the longer route on the main highway through Villach, Austria, an easier drive with a heavy load.

I am now at my place for four hours, have unloaded my car and walked the dogs and am wondering why these two still have not arrived. I have allowed “Italian time” for two men who will traditionally stop every hour or so for an expresso and grappa, talk with the locals, etc., etc. It is now 10:00 pm, I have made dinner for everyone and am approaching tired and cranky. Are they lost, drunk, or both???

Time to call the cellphone and see what’s up. So I dial and hear the traditional “Pronto”.

"Hello, Marco"?

"No, this is Mirko"

"Hi, Mirko. Why are you answering Marco's cell phone? Where is Marco"?

"Marco is in the ambulance".

"Ambulance? Why is Marco in an ambulance?" I tentatively ask.

"He was so agitated and upset that they had to give him a sedative to calm him down"

“A sedative? Why is Marco so upset that he needs a sedative? And who is they?” I ask, feeling a trickle of dread.

"Because of the fire". Says Mirko quietly.

"Fire? Fire?! What fire?" And I feel the trickle become a torrent.

"The fire that was coming out from under the truck"

"WHAT! Fire under the truck? Where are you? Is the fire out?” I ask, hearing my voice getting higher.

"No, the fire truck put out the fire."

"The fire truck?"

"Yes, the police called the fire department".

"The police!? The police had to call the fire department?" My voice, I can hear, is now near the soprano range.

"Yes, the police came because the truck was in the mountain tunnel"

"The truck was on fire in the tunnel? Is the fire now out? "

"Yes, completely out".

"Is the truck OK? How is the truck after this fire”? I whisper, hoping against hope that the smoke damage to my things is minimal.

"Well, the truck is completely burned but Marco saved a small wooden box that was propelled into the side of the tunnel when the stream of water from the fire hose hit it"

"A small box? A small BOX?"  I croak.

"It was all that we could save".

"Where ARE you?" I gasp.

"In Italy, near the Austrian border."

Of course in Italy, the country with no mover’s insurance, no coverage for goods and I realize no recourse for compensation unless I want to enter the grinding inefficient judicial system where even serious charges and issues take in excess of 20 years.

So here it was, my unofficial divorce with Italy finally finished.  And they had gotten me one last time.