Venice

When I started to pick out towns for the European leg of my journey, I thought Venice is a town every European should visit at least once and therefore added it to my route. Nevertheless my expectations regarding it have been quite low. I thought it would be a historical theme park. Like many times before my expectations were far from being right. Obviously there is the theme park like Venice at Canale Grande and St Mark`s square. People try to sell gondola rides, overpriced food and every kind of souvenir you can think of. But still there is another side to Venice. If you get lost in the narrow streets you can see elder people relaxing on benches in the sun, children playing football in the streets or other scenes of daily life.
If you think that you just have to go outside to watch elderly people sitting on benches and children playing football. Then you are probably right, but there is more to Venice. It has a unique architecture, a long history and most of all daily life is different from anywhere else, due to its construction on wooden poles in the middle of a lagoon.
Every kind of transport needs are fulfilled by handcarts or boats. I was amazed how simple daily life tasks got more complicated because of that. Here are two examples for what I mean by that, the garbage man have to collect all the waste with their handcarts andbring the carts to the nearest canal, where a boat waits to collect the waste or the ambulanceboatterminal at the local hospital. I conclude that Venice is definitely worth a visit.
Right now I enjoy the slow way of traveling in a train heading for my fourth stop Zagreb.