It was the summer of 2006. The FIFA World Cup was in full swing, and I was in Germany, where the Games were being held and where I was visiting my relatives for the occasion. Before returning home from the trip, I desperately wanted to explore one other European city. Italy, having just won the Games, was all over the news and the talk of the world. But I was also remembering a tape that was given to me by my piano teacher as a child: Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery, which told the story of Caterina, a young orphan and talented violinist who was committed to the care of the Pieta` in Venice, where Don Antonio Vivaldi himself trained the orphan girls in music. The story focused on finding oneself after being lost and orphaned in the world.
So, Venice it was. I was all by myself, did not speak a word of Italian, and stayed only three days, but the mystical city awakened something in me. It wasn’t just the romantic canals and fine attractions – but more like a sense of belonging. Among the European cities I had visited so far, none had quite the same impact on me as Venice. I was bilingual and bicultural already, a dual citizen, and at that point in life was searching – consciously or unconsciously – for a third language, a third country, a new culture. It felt like something in Italy was relevant to both aspects of my identity, an unexpected point of convergence between two otherwise disparate entities. I didn’t feel like a tourist – in fact, I made a point of visiting the less-touristy parts of the island and communicating with locals as much as possible.
My hotel was located on the island of Lido, about a 10-minute waterbus ride from Piazza San Marco. An excerpt from “The Traveler,” a popular work by the poet Sohrab Sepehri, perhaps illustrates my first night there best:
The courtyard was lighted
And the wind was blowing…
It is a clean solitary room
How simple is its dimensions to ponder!
My heart is so heavy,
It’s impossible to sleep.
Walking to the window,
And reclining on the chair matted with a soft cushion:
“Still I am traveling.
I think
There is a boat in the rivers of the world
And I – the pilgrim of that boat – have been singing for a thousand years the lively song of ancient sailors
And I am advancing
Where does the journey take me?”
I think the poet must have had a glimpse of my room in Lido when we wrote those lines. It was indeed adjacent to a courtyard with lights; the wind was blowing that night, and a chair with a cushion sat next to the window. I wasn’t recalling the poem when I sat there and pondered the significance of my presence, what this trip was all about, what direction my life would take from here, and where the road would lead me. It was some time later when I started to realize how vividly the verses illustrated my adventures. Where in the world is more fitting than Venice to be on a boat in the river, advancing wherever the journey would take?
Indeed, I had no intention of sleeping much during the couple of nights I spent there; instead, I was led to roam the winding alleyways lining the canals, walking and walking to the far reaches of town well into the night, with no maps and no particular destination in mind. But not all who wander are lost, even while the whole point of visiting this particular island is to lose oneself in it.
Years have passed since that mystical sojourn. It led me to achieve my goal of learning my third language, Italian, and eventually to explore Rome, Naples, and Salento. But the pilgrimage did not end. It extended to new countries in Europe and beyond, even leading me to pursue my graduate studies abroad. “And I am advancing.” For me, the best thing to take away from any travel is not a particular object or a visit to a certain attraction, but a broader perspective. Especially at this point, as ethnocentric populist movements surge across the globe and capitalize on fear of the “other,” maintaining an open-minded worldview is more vital than ever.
The journey may never end. As I keep on walking and roaming, there’s always something new to discover around the bend. Once a traveler, bitten by the traveling bug, always a traveler. But I owe part of my heightened sense of adventure to Venice. It may be a way of keeping the city’s seafaring legacy alive, sending out its explorers and navigators to all corners of the world. Whether intentionally or not, it looks like I’ve managed to live out the ending of the old Vivaldi tape: “Farewell, my little princess, this magical island of Venice may sink beneath the waves, but you’ll take its music, its spirit and soul out into the world.”