Scavenger Hunt

On our first walking tour of Venice on the first day we arrived, Elena and I already thought we knew where our scavenger hunt was taking us. We walked past the Marinaressa Gardens, which were pointed out to our guide to be statue gardens. The first line of our poem was Gardens behind me, but no flowers to see. What could fit that more perfectly than a statue garden? Still fits the definition for a garden, it even has it in the name, but that wouldn’t have any flowers in it. However, the second line stumped us at this first location. A stop is beside me, one boards for a fee. We knew that had to be a vaporetto stop, there were many lining the coast on which we were walking, but none near the Marinaressa Gardens. So we walked on, still listening to our guide. Not twenty minutes later we heard him talk about Gardenia, the word that meant gardens in Italian, that was right next to a vaporetto stop named after it. That’s two lines check. The third line would be a bit harder. I lie under water, but I never drown. We were told by our guide that Gardenia is where the Biennale is, and where we would be going on Friday, so I thought that there might be a statue there of something that usually stays underwater or basks in the sun. But the Gardenia was huge, and I didn’t know how we would be able to figure out what it was that we were specifically looking for. So we needed to ask for help.

We decided to ask a local for some advice, because as outsider we were stumped. Abbiamo bisogno di aiuto con una caccia al tesoro, is what we decided to say, trying to fit in a little by asking in Italian even though we just google translated it moments before. Caccia al Tesoro translates more directly to treasure hunt than scavenger hunt anyway, but she got our meaning. After we stumbled through our botched Italian giving away the fact that we were tourists immediately, the local’s face lit up. She smiled and said of course she would help us. And it was like when Geertz ran with the locals in his essay. “The next morning was a completely different world for us. Not only were we no longer invisible, we were suddenly the center of attention, the object of a great outpouring of warmth, interest, and, most especially, amusement. Everyone in the village knew we had fled like everyone else” (Clifford Geertz, 58). This is what it felt like to a lesser degree for me, it felt like we were trying our best to fit in, and though it doesn’t work, the locals still appreciate it. We talked for a while, trying to figure out the clue, when the local helpfully told us about a statue that is just on the water’s edge, and when the tide gets high enough covers the statue completely. We thanked her for her help, and made our way to this statue, which was only a few minutes’ walk from the Gardenia, right next to the vaporetto stop with the same name.

Our search was finally complete! “It is true that the ordinary man is accused of yielding- thanks to the god of religion- to the illusion of being able to ‘solve all the riddles of the world’” (Michel de Certeau 3). This is how it felt to Elena and I, that we, ordinary people, would be able to solve all the riddles in the world when armed with the ability to work with others. What we thought at the beginning was going to be a simple task based on what our guide said took a little digging beneath the surface, just like to find the true Venice itself. Our scavenger hunt was a metaphor for finding Venice, which we were told over and over again was easy to make your own if you just put a little effort into finding it. I had also been told that locals appreciate it if you try to speak a little Italian, even if it’s total garbage, and I also found this to be true. Everything about this experience made me more comfortable in Venice, a city it is very easy to get lost in, and in Italy in general, a place where it was very intimidating for me to be at first because of the language barrier. During the scavenger hunt we found not only our object, but also the true Venice.

works cited:

Geertz, Clifford. "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight." Daedalus 134.4 (2005): 56-86.

de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.