Vero or Falso? (Gelato in Venice)

23 May Vero or Falso? (Gelato in Venice)

Every farmacia was closed and all of the green plus-shaped signs were turned off in the waterworld city of Venice. It was just after nine o’clock at night and light wisps of rain constantly fell down from the dark sky. There was an eerie uneasiness hovering amongst my group of fellow travelers that included: Gabby, Joe, and Jamie. Gabby’s browline glasses had a few tiny raindrops on them and she was the one who was feeling congested and ill. Gabby and Jamie carried their black umbrellas up over their heads as Joe and I just got rained on as we walked without cover along the puddle-covered streets. Earlier that evening we did stop off at a farmacia after eating pizza and spaghetti at some hole-in-the-wall restaurant, but for some reason Gabby decided that she didn’t want to wait in line. In Italy you can’t just grab a box of medicine off the shelf like you can at drug stores in America, because you must talk with a pharmacist who assesses your condition and provides a medication recommendation based upon the description of your symptoms. So there we were—feeling a little disgruntled and grumpy—caught out in chilly rain and I think we all felt a little bit like that dead rat we saw earlier in the day that was stuck in a hole between two street bricks.
We hopped from shop to shop to escape out of the elements, but there are only so many times a person can peruse over an assortment of colorful Venetian glass jewelry and decorative masks until you realize that pretty much every shop has the same stuff in it. As I looked on at the steps that led down to a waterway that connected to the Grand Canal I noticed that the water was beginning to crest over the edge because of all the rain. A beam of light shined over the water like the moon as I gazed on at the gondola’s and boats that were docked at the side of the street. The water level was almost flush with the curb of the street and I wondered how often these waters flooded the streets? There was this small voice echoing in the back of my head that said, “Since Venice is basically a land mass surrounded by water on almost all sides what if it rained so much tonight that it sunk into the sea like the lost city of Atlantis? What if Venice becomes the next flood-city like Johnstown and is overrun by some horrific deluge freak accident like the breaking of a dam? Jamie and I stopped on one of the bridges to shoot videos for our Snapchat stories and as we walked down the ramp Gabby perked up a little bit then turned to us and said, “Hey, do you guys want to get some gelato?”
It almost seems oxymoronic to eat ice cream custard in the winter when it’s cold out and perhaps Gabby’s request was a similar circumstance, why on earth would we want to eat something cold when it was already chilly out? The answer was we needed some sort of pick-me-up to lift our spirits before we took the trek back the long narrow street to our home for the night in the Hotel La Rosa. At first I was skeptical of even ordering inauthentic gelato, because our group had been spoiled with the availability of “vero” gelato made with fresh ingredients in Rome and Florence. We would definitely be eating some sort of “falso” version of the dessert treat that perhaps lacked the essence of any natural flavors. Gabby said, “I know this is falso, but let’s just give it a try. It’s better than nothing at all. What else are we going to do?”
I would have much rather had a delicious cone from Gelateria La Romana that we had discovered the week before during our second night in Rome, but we all just had to make do with what was available to help get us through this paranoid time in the water-world city of bridges. Gabby and I both also ordered two tall Coca-Cola classic cans to take back to our rooms along with our gelato cones. I ordered a traditional fragola strawberry flavor that was only a dollar-fifty, so at least I wasn’t paying two full euros for this stuff as I wondered in my head, “How much does this idea of companionship have to do with the every overall gelato experience?” Is companionship also a necessary element in consuming gelato? As a single bachelor who often eats alone I know there are many nights I don’t even sit at my dinner table, so this experience of dining with others becomes more of a social event and the consumption of food becomes the underlying purpose.
This certainly seemed like some sort of placebo test and I was certainly missing the light heavenly sweet cream topping of La Romana. I don’t think that the gelato was going to miraculously going to cure Gabby of the illness that was ailing her, but perhaps walking down the street with a little bit a sweetness to end the night is just what we needed to help us forget about the rain. As Joe licked away at his cone he cleared his throat and said, “For fake stuff this isn’t all that bad.” The rain turned into mist and then started to slow down a bit and as the sugar started to sink into our stomachs. I said, “Dr. O’Connor would probably be appalled that we’re eating this falso stuff right now.
Earlier that day when the sun was still out we made it a point to photograph some graffiti we saw in the non-touristy section of the city. I took a snapshot of an area that simply had the word, “IMAGINE” spray painted in black ink capital letters. Beside the word “imagine” almost as if a direct binary opposite someone wrote in reply, “This world isn’t real—so FUCK YOU!” This contrasting duality between what was real and what was fake reminded me of the philosophy engrained in The Matrix series that was inspired by ancient thinkers like Plato.
The consistency of the gelato was grainier in texture than the smoothness of everywhere else I had eaten gelato in Florence as well like that place called The Nutty Witch after walking back from seeing Michelangelo’s David sculpture. Venice may have been a low point of the trip, but just like any other spectrum in the world you can’t discover the good without having the bad tastes of the other side to weigh it in comparison to.