Learning Italian in Venice

I stayed in Cannaregio, the Venetian sestiere nearest the railway station and  which stretches up the long back of the spine of the Venetian "fish".

The apartment block itself backed onto the fondementa nuova and overlooked  the lagoon in the direction of  St Michele - the funeral island. 

My room is behind the two shutters at the end of the street.

San Michele - the cemetery island

The apartment block was located very near the "Orto" vaporetto stop (line 42 from memory) and the  church of St Madonna del Orto - the parish church of Tintoretto.  

Madonna del Orto

Indeed, one of his most famous paintings - The presentation of the virgin in the temple - still hangs in the church.

My apartment  was also located  quite close to the original Jewish ghetto - a  ten or fifteen minutes walk away.

The Orto vaporetto stop - from the kitchen/balcony over the lagoon.

The whole area is very charming and quiet - the fondementa in Cannaregio are typically very long and usually tourist free - much different to the rest of Venice and the further you roam from the station in Cannaregio the more cut off and quiet it becomes.

My hostess was a divorced woman - Signora Nadia - and I shared her flat with her three daughters, son, several cats and a borrowed dog (Ringo).  I had a suspicion that I may have evicted Alberto (her son) from his room for the duration of my stay. 

The accommodation was somewhat spare and spartan, but the welcome from Nadia was very warm. 

I paid 350 Euro for my three weeks of accommodation in her home. I paid a deposit before I left and the rest I paid upfront on my arrival. Nadia was an effusive, warm and welcoming presence. The flat was quite chaotic, as you can  imagine being shared by so many people.

The School and my Classmates

The school, Instituto Venezia, is in Dorsoduro - the sestiere which faces across the basin towards Giuedecca and St Giorgio Maggiore.   

The view from Dorsoduro overlooking the basin on a Friday afternoon

The school itself occupies the first floor of a building in campo Santa Margherita. From my flat school would typically take 20 to 25 minutes to reach walking reasonably quickly from my flat, across two or three rii (via bridge and foot) , down the main tourist thoroughfare, across the Scalzi bridge over the grand canal and through the outer fringes of San Croce and San Paolo.

The entrance to the school from the terazzo

The campo is very lively as its the haunt of the local university set - there are young people, osteria  and bars scattered all about and towards evening (when I was in class) the campo fairly jumps.

I elected to take the afternoon semi-intensive course: 4 hours of classes from early afternoon into the evening. I was classified as being an intermediate student (but I dare say I was at the bottom of the class). 

The four hours of courses were divided into two  classes divided by a 30 to 40 minute break which gave one time to have a spritz or two with your class mates before rejoining battle with the Italian language.

Our class had around eight to ten  students in it: Two Columbians, two English (father and daughter), two Spanish girls (24 or 25 years old), a  young German woman  (mid to late twenties), an older Russian lady (60 maybe), an Australian (me, 50 years of age) and a Swiss architect (early thirties).

Some of my classmates and me (the tall one)

Many of the students at the school were taking part in a European post-graduate scheme called Erasmus, that funded students to spend 6 months in a different European country to their own taking subjects in their discipline. Thus  Esther and Diana (the Spanish senoritas in my class) and Daniel (the Swiss architect) were studying Italian before engaging in  further architectural studies at Ca Foscari university and Madeline (the German girl) was furthering her studies in psychology in Italy in the hope that this would help her  in her future clinical work.

The school building consists of the first floor of an old (is there any other kind in Venice?) building, next to a hardware shop and facing the campo not to far from a Coop supermarket and just a few tens of metres from the local Irish pub (Madigan's)  - which, as is the nature of these things,  is run by a friendly family of Albanians.

The first floor consists of: a terrazzo covered by a pergola where it is almost expected that you will smoke cigarettes and eat gelatti. Inside the building, the  entrance hall runs down to a large office where the office manager (Elisa I think from memory) runs the place with an eagle eye and firm hand (though she is not the owner nor  really even the nominal capo - the place does seem to belong to her). On either side of this wide entrance hall are the class rooms - In general they are larger and better lit than the rooms at CIS in Carlton.

One classroom at the back of the building is also given over to students to sit and connect their laptops and communicate with home. The school is very clean and the rooms in addition to being spacious are clean and tidy.

The afternoon receptionist is a young Italian goth called Priscilla. Priscilla is a lot of fun, plays Rugby and also helps out in class - it's obvious that she wants to do much more than simply tend the front desk!

As I mentioned before I had two classes a day - the afternoon class was largely given over to improving our grammar and was conducted by Claudia  who I would guess was in her early thirties. A very lovely, warm young woman. 

Priscilla (the afternoon receptionist, Diana (from Columbia) and Claudia (our grammar teacher)

The class after the break was conducted by Sara - also a woman in her early thirties . Sara is very lively and expressive and spens her time coaxing  we, the unwilling, to engage in Italian conversation.   

Sara

When either Claudia or Sara couldn't make class we were taught by two other teachers - both male (one teachers name was Andrea and the other's name  I have, forgive me,  forgotten. )

When you first arrive you will typically have an interview with the deputy head of the school - a chat in Italian about everyday things . At the end of the ten minute chat the deputy head will appoint you to a particular class, level and set of teacher.

My experience of class

The other students in the class generally spoke very good English, were very well educated and were much more fluent in Italian than was I. My Italian grammar and grasp of the written language was  not too bad, but I had a real fear of opening my mouth and making a fool of myself in Italian. The greatest benefit I experienced was in listening to the language - four hours a day of listening to Italian does tune you ear to the tongue.

The classes I attended did not use formal schoolbooks or Italian primers. It's pretty much like a class Barbara (my Italian teacher in Melbourne) would give - exercise sheets and conversation - but without Barbara's cussing (or reminders that she still loves you).

The pity of the four hour of language classes a day  is that you are in Venice and it's very hard to spend your morning, and a lovely autumn morning at that, doing your language exercises and conjugating your verbs while all of Venice is outside  your window beckoning you to come out to play!  

Il Redentorre from Dorsodurro

I found it all very exhilarating but also very tiring.

My three weeks of language lessons was very worthwhile experience  but another five weeks would have been even  better  and strangely enough , I would say, that doing an Italian language course in a city with less to offer than Venice does, might help your language skills more. 

But if you do study in Venice by now you will know that La Serenissima is a strumpet  - and hat she will always be outside your window whispering to you and inviting you  to bunk off work and come out and play.......