By Isobel Gaul, 2022/23 Global Opportunities Competition blog post winner, who studied abroad in Venice.
I spent my year abroad living in Venice, Italy. But not just Venice, I spent my year abroad living in Borgoloco Pompeo Molmenti; a somewhat dilapidated palazzo by Campo Santa Maria Formosa. With its humble grandeur, Borgoloco was perfect to me. Here, I met friends who became my family. Giacomo, with his tidiness, sociability and warmth. Valentine, with her dance moves and unexpected hilarity. Eva, beautiful and creative and kind. Adriano, who had an inability to wash dishes, was passionate about everything. Within the three apartments of Borgoloco, thirteen of us lived alongside each other. I could talk about them all with immense fondness. I fell in love here. I felt heartbreak here. I laughed and cried there. I felt homesick and felt at home. I made friends that I thought I would have to search a lifetime for. I learnt about the incredible amount of specific words they have for food related things; about ‘scarpetta’ (when you clean up the sauce on your plate with bread) and ‘risottare’ (when you finish cooking pasta in the pan). Though I’ve come back to my normal life, and I will never live that moment again, I think of it every day. Maybe I always will.
Venice is, of course, special for anyone who visits it. Nowhere else exists in the world like it. Tiny in size but immense in character. Famous for about a thousand years, it will remain so for another thousand years. I would not have needed to have friends that felt like family, I didn’t need to be in love – this last year would have always been monumental. Hardly anybody gets to know Venice like I did. To have my daily commute to university over the Rialto Bridge. To walk to Piazza San Marco, ten minutes from my front door. How could it have been better? Where else could I have walked through time whilst being my ordinary self? I even got to feel separate to the tourists, annoyed by the busy streets when I had somewhere to be in a rush. But it is not the architecture, the art, the history, or culture that I feel special to have lived beside. I feel as lucky as I do because I got to do it with the residents of Borgoloco. They showed me the city in a way I could not have seen alone. They knew cheap bars with the best atmospheres, they knew the spots with the best views. The bench in Sant’Elena where my relationship started, has, objectively, the best place to see the city in its entirety.
I imagine one day I will stand on Ponte Borgoloco again and look up at the windows that used to be my friends’ windows. I’ll remember the nights we looked over the canal on the second floor. When we carved pumpkins there on Halloween, when the cigarette smoke accompanied the music. When we’d drink wine and eat cicchetti like the real Venetians do. I’ll look up at the crumbling brickwork and remember our meals eaten together around the kitchen table. The nights we watched movies together in one of our beds. When we danced and sang and laughed like real people do when they’re happy. My study abroad year allowed me to lay my own memories over one of the most memorable cities in the world.
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