I pass the italian border in the early evening, surprised to see how Italy looks good and well-kept after all the eastern urban landscapes, even the richest ones. The first railways stations look old and burdened with a rich, intriguing past. When I get off the train in Mestre, though, in the hope to find a connection that isn't there, the inexplicable dirtiness of everything, pavements, seats, windows, wastebaskets, lines; the loud noise of the city traffic; the triviality and violent indifference of the people: it all suggests me what I was missing from the train window. Italy is always a bluff.

So, anyway, no good connection at this hour, I jump on the first train to Venice from Mestre, to do once again that good ol' 10 minutes ride. I'll have to find an accommodation in Venice, something I obviously never did during the years I lived there, and it feels weird and wrong. A sad sign of my having lost contact with the city.
But it's incredibly easy, I must say, to just step into a two stars decent hotel near the station of Venice and get me a cheap room with bathroom, with a window on a narrow calle from where venetian voices come. It's the cheapest hotel of the entire trip, actually, which is kind of stunning.

How much I love this town, I can't say. Tonight the sky is all starry, as very often happens here, the streets are filled with tourists, the air is windy and pleasurable. Clusters of italians outside the bars are watching the championship match, and later I will find them partying in the streets, where improvised musical ensembles play loudly. Venetians, sometimes so boring or rude, seem magnificent tonight, in their being always the same, a little greedy, a little absent minded, full of life and pride. Doing business, making jokes, wandering about, alluring tourists into restaurants, they always have that air of knowing better and caring less. I never actually liked them, with their sing-song accent, a little childish, their women always angry at something and disappointed. But it's good to respect them, tolerate them and being accepted by them. This is a small city, it's one of the most beautiful and incredible city in the world, it's a rotting-down museum, and people still live in it, collecting garbage and selling fruits from the boats as they did for centuries.
I feel at home in this city. Maybe it's because of all the tourists, because they don't know. I wish this was a homecoming and the rambling was ending here tonight.

I take all the shortcuts to St. Marco square. I want to see the basin and hear once again the foolish orchestras playing. I take an actual round of the city, passing the Accademia, Santa Margherita square and some of the other places where students meet at night. I drink glasses of wine here and there, eating the so tasty venetian tramezzini. I look at the girls, all of them. I sit on one of the benches in San Polo square, near where I lived once. I lay down on it because of the starry night and I remember many things I don't want to remember tonight, not in detail. They just show their faces in my mind for a while, their old smell and that air of having irreparably happened.

I just lay there for a while, looking at all the endless variety of human figures strolling the streets of this city, glowing in the yellow light of the shop windows. I think at some of the people I've looked at around during this trip.

The fifty years old woman who picked flowers from the beds in front of Budapest Keleti station, making a bundle with them in a piece of colored paper she had with her; Always at Keleti station, the guy endlessly singing his song with a guitar and a powerful, moving voice, unconcerned of all the drunks fighting and arguing around him, as the swallows flew by over people's heads crying their high calls, above the open grave of the metro station; The old crazy lady dragging two armchairs down the streets in Budapest, stuck against the obstacle of a high curb, whom I helped out, without a word, while she kept thanking me, with the word I couldn't recognize yet; The bookshop in the center of Budapest where a hungarian writer was presenting his latest book, and as I stopped to look at his back on the other side of the shop window, everyone among his group of listeners looked at me until he turned to see who it was; The young B. whom I met on the train from Trieste, and who relieved me out of my dark thoughts like a random, casual angel, and with whom I talked of loves, delusions, dreams and accidents (I lost your email, B.! Write me!).

And together with the people, during the trip were the birds, the many trees, and all the memorable smells that won the smell of cars and cement, like heavenly gifts, like the smell of fishes and vegetables at that indoor market in Budapest.
I haven't taken a single picture or a single sample from all of this, and as I lay on the bench in St. Polo square I know that all the souvenirs in my mind will be fading soon as if sunk in a big sea, or in the Venice lagoon, and that I will be able to get hold of just bits of it, as it must be. But that's the way I like it. I think the rambling really ended tonight, after all.