Tag Archives: Venice

Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: Venice and Munich (Grünwald); waxing lyrical over the paintings

Posted on by
Reply

Fri 28-Sep-56: Got lost all day but managed to see the Tintorettos at Scuola di S Rocco. Cashed £5

Sat 29-Sep-56: Cashed £2 Left 10:30am for Münich. Had a wonderful flight over the Alps. No room. Am in guesthouse 13kms from München. Grünwald quite full. Cashed £5 in Marks.

Sun 30-Sep-56: Went by train to city. Saw Alte Pinakothek Old Masters – magnificent show. Many people at Grünwald – had dinner with Dittmar & family.

Hotel Regina, Venice

Venezia Friday

8pm before dinner

I managed to get someone’s cancellation flight to Munich & leave at 8.30-am in the morning. So that I am still keeping up to schedule. It doesn’t look like I can stay overnight in Budapest because I don’t think I can get any Hungarian currency. The dopey coots in Sydney endorsed the Travellers Cheques for Rumania only. This was purely an oversight because my passport OKs me for Hungary as well. So there, perhaps on the way back I may stay one day with Rumanian currency.

Anyway I’ve had the dutiful tramping around, being the best poor quarter finder in the world. I don’t know how it is but as soon as I start walking I finish up in the poorest area. How is this? I do know that I haven’t got a clue as to direction in the Northern hemisphere. Naturally down south you walk away from the sun to go south. Up here you have to face it. Plus the fact that there is a different velocity influence on the human balance. As in the South pole, people lost, always walk to the right & in the North pole area to the left (or vice versa, if I must be corrected). Christ I got soured this afternoon. Three times I finished up in the same end of the island, and it was not until I told myself my instinct for direction was arsy-boo that I got anywhere. I told myself (just like you would, in any emergency) to walk towards the sun. And do you know it worked! After one hour I was back to tors.

But thank God for big blessings. As I was lost in the morning I stumbled across the Scuola di S. Rocco (or something), the church or palace in which are housed the finest Tintorettos paintings. They were on the heroic Italian scale – enormous & hard to see because of the light coming through the windows alongside them. Oh but what pictures. No reproduction could do justice to the wonderful subdued luminosity & grandiose virility of these really wonderful paintings. It is unbelievable that a human, one human could have conceived & carried through these huge and moving works. Everything was in them – humanity, wonderful abstraction. Lines of movement, colour & attitude, all the source from which El Greco got his thing. (By the way I saw two El Greks in Rome & Holbein & one Titian.) I could if I was full, & alone, & without the TV, go on for hours about the Tintorettos. When I see that book of mine again together with the pamphlet I bought at the gallery, which cost me the same as my theoretical cheap lunch) I shall know what I know.

Enough for now. The last letter – must have been on awful heavy paper cost 4/9 to post, 480 lire to you. I shall see you (i.e. write to you), my dear, in Munich. I really missed you and needed you with me when I sat down in St Mark’s Square & had a beer. All Venice seemed to be walking around and the deepening blue of the night was showing up the red & white topped Campanile. Behind it a wedding cake joint of a church with gilt facings, pigeons flying around, lights under each of the hundreds of marble arches – people in chairs – people walking, & bowings & God knows what – with 3 different top class 5 pieces Restaurant orchestras playing to their clients in the open square. And the blue getting deeper and deeper as the white marble cake got greener & the great spire smouldered strong like a Fred. I can never tell you how I felt about it. Pictures won’t – what will. Perhaps one night with the help of a 25 lire postcard I may give you some idea. But then these vicarious jaunts can be boring.

I’m finished – for the second time I’m seeing everything. The first time in Italian – Charlie’s Aunt on television – I am looking at now – Goodnight darling.

8.30pm Saturday

I am in Munich or to be more truthful 13 kilometres out of it. There was no hotel booking & to cut a very hard luck story short, I am where I am.

Dearest darling don’t hammer me! For the first time in my life, I’m full in Germany. As you always say – things turn out for the best? When I arrived in Munich – München – I wandered up & down two blocks carrying all the garbage I possess, finally ran aground the C.I.T. agent. Of course he had never heard of me, & it was impossible (with a capital IMPOSSIBLE) to get accommodation in München. He had never heard of me or anything connected with Australia. However, he very kindly drove me (and his son) all the way out to a guesthouse – which is beautifully appointed & which I seem to have the bridal suite. Two nice loving single beds tight alongside each other with the sheets short sheeted on the sneaking-in side. Very nice, but I am 13,000 long miles off….

P.S. at this stage I went to sleep.

Don’t take too much notice of the preceding page. Anyway it gave me the best & longest sleep I’ve had since leaving Australia. It is Sunday evening at 6.30pm and I have spent 4 hours of my one day in Munich in the Haus der Kunst (or Art Gallery). Can you imagine seeing 30 odd Rubens in one blow, about 10 Rembrandts, some Tintoretto, Velasquez, Titian, Goya, Giotto, Van der Weyden – the works. Wore me out it did – no eats or beer all day. Travelled all across Munich in the trams & spoke German like you imagine I would – Anyway, I got there & back. 3 different trams each way. I’ll tell you later about the wonderful pictures. From Vienna I am sending by book post some odds & ends of travel folders & things plus the catalogue of this show. I don’t want to build up my weight on plane travelling. It is possible I will be home before them – It seems so long ago since I left that time is unaccountable.

I don’t care much for Munich. It gives me the feeling of a grey stone prison. Despite the fact you always say things turns out for the best – they have here. This morning at 6.30 I went for a walk around Grünwald where I am staying. It means ‘Green Forest’ and is very lovely spot with silver beeches, & pines & plane trees thick & tall around the river Isar. Green & fresh & lovely. With a castle – and church bells (It is Sunday) and beautifully quiet then – restful. When I came home (every room you have is that important) there were thousands of people in Grunewald. There are a lot of beer gardens around here and they were all full of people, well behaved and drinking enormous things of beer. Grunwald must be something like Manly, everyone comes out here for a day in the forest & a beer & a bite before getting back to the barrack like city. Really choice here. Don’t take any notice of any illiteracy or lack of polish in these letters. All I want to do is talk to you. Not going too well am I, after only a week? I guess it’s the complete absence of conversation, It should be a lesson to me.

I leave here in the morning and will be on the way to Vienna where I know I’ll have more bloody trouble! I’ll have to alter the flight plan, because of that currency bother. And I suppose there will be no accom. & mod cons. I don’t know whether I mentioned that this fortnight in Munich is the annual Sep-Oct Autumn Festival – a very big affair – because this is the best & most reliable weather op the year. There’s no accommodation available. Things are like Sydney at Show time except this is mostly culture. Ballet, opera, concerts, art, etc, etc. Sport too. Included in the pile of trash I am sending back is the Festival programme which I can interpret well enough. I love you. I am going out again to get myself a beer & a bite. This seven dwarfs like darling establishment serves no meals. Last night I had a schnitzel in batter & potato salad & about a schooner of superb beer for less than 10/-. This Sunday afternoon before I came up to the room I had a big beer. Must have been more than a bottle & half for 3/-. It was served in a glass about as tall as a bottle & half again as wide. Lovely. Cheers me up no end.

P.S. The CIT agent who drove me here turned up after I had finished this letter. He, and family, apparently live here. He asked me to be his guest at a Brau Haus or Wirt haus (means beer house – but they serve very good food & plenty of it.) So I accept. He and his family were very gracious. His son is learning English at school. They had just returned from a 400 mile trip to the Austrian Alps. When I asked him on Sat what the charge was likely to be he said about 20 marks which I thought was cheap. Now I find they want 40. That means I have to cash more Travellers Cheques. I would rather spend them on the way home – I don’t know what is ahead of me. If I have my fare back fixed up, I know where I am. I think I am being clipped. I tell you if I had a month in Europe nobody would do me more than the next. It is not that I don’t want to spend the damn money

And so to Vienna.

Post to Twitter

Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: Venice; excitement abounds at the Hotel Regina.

Posted on by
Reply

 

Thu 28-Sep-56: Left Rome about 3pm after cancelling early trip. Got luggage in from Karachi. Arrived Venice about 5:30pm. Trouble about accommodation. Cashed £5

CIGA Hotel Regina, Venezia (Wouldn’t it!)

http://www.westineuropareginavenice.com/en/hotel-history

Wed night  [actually Thursday 28th]

27 Sep 56

Happily my bag arrived intact & with a great steel band around it, to protect it from the thieving Pakistanis, and Italianos. It was cleared off only about an hour before the plane for Venice took off.

Had a good trip, less than two hours & landed on these little mounds of earth that just show above the sea level. The area looks very small from the air – what made it tick & why, I hope to find out. Nowadays it is quite obviously tourists. There are thousands of the beasts. Seems like a fair percentage of Americans as is fit, I suppose, because who else could stand this clip joint racket for long.

(If I sound a bit disjointed in parts – blame the screaming quiz show in Italiano which is disrupting the peace & quiet. The reproduction photographically is good – but the ensemble with talk is beyond me.)

The Orbit travel service has let me down badly in the matter of hotel bookings. In both Rome & here the bookings weren’t confirmed & in Venice there is no such hotel as they named. What with the millions of tourists here I had no option but to take the single room & bath C.I.T. the biggest Italian agency (to whom Orbit referred me) managed to get for my stopover. To make things easier I am not on the plane to Munich on the 29th. I have to ask again tomorrow to see if there has been any cancellations. How does one get out of here? Swim? I have a very fancy room in a second class hotel (for here) & a magnificent bathroom, complete with bidet (unused).

I had dinner seated on the edge of the canal, with gondolas parked alongside, and a fine view of the Santa Maria church just a hundred yards or so across the canal. All very dashing and fetching if you were here with me. Mostly, I’m sitting there chewing my nails & wondering how many 1000 lire a minute it is all ripping off the roll. I can’t get the hang of the way they bash your wallet in this country. They ask if you want full pension or half pension – which is about 1/6th cheaper. For half pension you have only two meals, breakfast & dinner or lunch. As you still have to pay separately for each of these meals, I don’t get it. The govt. taxes the bill total, which makes it extra – & having your meal brought to you apparently necessitates a service charge & so it goes on – HORRIFYING!

I can’t tell you much about Venice as by the time I had a shower & changed into fresh clothes it was too dark for me to begin an exploratory tour. I sort of tied a mental string around my waist & did a round of the block – or I mean where the block ought to be. St Mark’s Square, another example of Italian grandiosity – a massive open area with a very ancient church at its end & a huge campanile sort of thing alongside it. You may recollect hearing of the pigeons on the square. Just after dinner a combined drive of gondolas came past, accompanying a gaudily decorated barge with colored lights & professional serenaders singing into a flaming microphone full blast. How these Italians like noise. Gondola blokes yelling at each other like fish wives. It is still very beautiful despite the commercialisation. Delightful to have your meal in the open, pleasant lights, linen, good service – nice cool night – It could be done well in Sydney in some sheltered spot.

Later)

A funny thing just happened. After dutifully washing shirts & underwear & hanging same up on a cord which was attached to some thing over the bath, I was rudely awakened from my mediations on the can by a knocking on the door. On opening up – a chamber maid about 50 something agitatedly asked me some foreign questions & upon getting no reply came into the room & started mucking about with a switch beside the bedside light. All of the time nicking out of the front door to look at something. To no avail apparently. Back she nips into my odoriferous bathroom and a sigh of relief asks me to take the shirt off the cord over the bath. Seems like dear Willy hung his shirt on the cord you pull for help if you get stuck in the tub, etc. The ringing of bells ceased & the red light over my door miraculously went out on disengagement of the shirt. – What would they do without me?

6.45am Friday.  A very nice bed to sleep on. In Italy the shops open at 8.30am and the millions pour out of the apartments, rooms, etc. the traffic starts and the noise begins. This goes on till 1pm when they all seem to go home again. The real peak hour rush starts again at 4pm when really everyone in Rome must go out on the streets. It’s deafening & you get jostled off the footpaths, if busy, cars and buses scrap your ass, and the cafes are setting up for the open air meal hour of 7 to 9.30. The uproar continues until 8pm. Then all is relatively quiet again. Not that the place dies, nothing like it – merely the commercial shipping is over for the day. Down near the pub I stayed at there is a park square slightly bigger than Wynyard which was always full of cats. Dozens & dozens of them. I couldn’t work it out until yesterday at noon when I was returning to book out. It seems that from about 10 till 12 the place is turned into a Paddy’s Markets. Double rows of stalls forming a corridor all round the park spring into life. They are brought in & set up and shelter beneath their own huge umbrellas or canvas awnings. Everything conceivable is sold. The real attraction being the food vendors, I imagine. You should see those cheeses & sausages, vegetables of every description, great yellow capsicums, long thin tomatoes, red and white speckled beans, eggplants, mushrooms, strings of garlic, all supported by a host of the commoner varieties. Many, many meat stalls displaying the frowsiest carcasses. Lambs, miserable skinny things only about a yard long. Yellow scrawny chickens, all peck and legs – tripes & bellies and kidneys & god knows what from beast & fowl all somewhat on the nose. Fish stalls stand opposite the meat. Squids, long fish, thick fish, herrings, sardines, mussels, pippies, lobsters, crabs, prawns, and any edible spawn of the sea. The buying & selling goes no for about an hour, when at 12 everything is carted away again, leaving behind a colossal litter. Hence the cats. I guess they feed on the offal from the meat & fish boys.

I shall now take me down to my collazione and find out where I can have a gander at the Tintorettos with a fist full of lire I suppose. A look at a couple of dozen pictures at the Rome Gallery cost me 3/6.

Post to Twitter

Wep’s 1956 Romanian adventure: Rome; “I am in anything but a state of Splendor!”

Posted on by
Reply

Mon 24-Sep-56: Took off 8:30am through Bangkok, Calcutta and Karachi, flew all day & night, arrived Cairo 3:55am.

Tue 25-Sep-56: Landed Rome 10am. Found suitcase had been left at Karachi. After lot of bother settled in Splendor Hotel. Cashed £10

Wed 26-Sep-56: Walked miles saw Vatican & Coloseum

[Roma, Italy, Splendor Hotel via Luigi Luzzatti N. 20.A]

Wed 27th 9.45pm [Actually 26th]

To My dear little wife & Graham,

I am in anything but a state of Splendor! I’m done in, I’m finished, I’m in bed, and I miss you both very much. I’ve walked Rome down to its original foundations and have had no one to whom to speak of it. Haven’t spoken to an Englisher since I arrived on Tues morning at 10.30am with the exception of tonight at dinner when one of the passengers of the plane turned up at the Hotel.

Things have got off to a bad start for the fool Qantas crowd left my baggage behind at Karachi. I hope to get it off the first available plane, which arrives tomorrow morning at 9am or so. I had to change my booking for Venice as that plane leaves at 8.45am. However a plane leaves at 2.55pm and have booked that. God knows what I’ll do if the bloody bag doesn’t arrive, or is half missing. It has been awkward without the gear. I have to walk everywhere because I can’t understand the gabling lingo, am ignorant of the destinations of trams & buses and don’t trust myself on finding a way out of the predicament. I must have cyclometered 20 miles, & the old dogs are killing me.

Had a very smooth trip on the plane but saw little of the land before we got to Singapore, as we were flying at 16,500 ft (i.e. about 3 miles up). After Bangkok we flew over thick cloud all the way to Rome. Ian Hamilton met me at the airport and drove me to Raffles where I had a shower & we had a look at the city on Sunday afternoon. It is a fantastic place with myriads of people milling around like ants of all conceivable shape & color, and in all stages of dress & undress. I haven’t the energy to elaborate much on the curiosities of Singapore but must mention that Ian, his wife, two other wives (not his) and myself went to a fantastic joint called Happy World, which is a collection of everything like the side shows & display stalls of the RAS and then some. But, my dear, the people! Polygot!

We had a Chinese meal there sitting in the open amongst the passers by. The chop shop had all its uncooked wares on display & as we pointed out what we wanted they would chop it up & cook it. Very good & very light. How Bill P Jones’ eyes would have stuck out, etc, etc.

I’m half asleep writing this in bed.

I wouldn’t care much to lose myself in Singapore. Even for the wonderful  chinese dolls.

You’d love Rome and I think I could now show you round a bit if you were with me. Sheer exhaustion is taking the edge off it for me. It is full of contrast & movement. Great slabs of it are like very much better done Kings X & Macleay St. Huge open places alternate with old past centuries dwellings flanking narrow streets. The city proper is built in the old area. Streets not much wider than Rowe St, down which busses, cars & motor scooters by the million whiz down with breakneck speed in a truly terrifying way. I really am frightened of the traffic here, it’s unbelievably fast & seemingly chaotic but strangely I haven’t seen an accident or a bent car. Every mobile thing is used, bicycles with box carriers in front, horse drawn phaetons, motor bike trucks, etc, all with practically open exhausts, and horns blowing & blasting ad nauseum. To make matters worse it runs in the opposite way to ours, which is what makes it dangerous for me because I am fixed on looking for oncoming cars where they aint. Only my increasing old womanishness has kept me in tack.

A few tired words couldn’t give you any idea of what the Vatican is like. Stupendous – and not in the Hollywood use of the term although most of the interior is Hollywood. In the conception & execution this general headquarters of the R.C.’s is gigantic.

Post to Twitter