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Lost and Found in Venice
by Diana J. Wynne
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Venice is the first place I remember being lost, and so perhaps it is the first place I ever traveled. Girls don’t travel; mothers worry, or so we are told. Girls are kept in, any natural adventurousness squelched by tales of moral turpitude, dirty linens, rapes, the dangers of the unknown. Perhaps the first step into the unknown signifies womanhood.” . . .
It was at a guesthouse in Bavaria that I met Louisa and James, Canadian backpackers. As so often happens with travelers, they asked where I had come from and where I was headed next. I said I was going to Venice. “That’s great,” James said. “We just came from there. Take the late train and then you can sleep on the steps of the train station.”
I must have given him a funny look, because Louisa added, “Really. Everyone does it.” I was woefully unprepared for such an adventure, without even a sleeping bag. The only time I’d ever been camping was a third-grade sleepover on the high school football field. And my friends in Switzerland had warned me about Italy. They’d made me pin my traveler’s checks and passport inside my underpants. I would not be sleeping on the steps of the train station.
“Uh, okay,” James relented. He started drawing on a paper napkin. He drew a box for the train station, and a little squiggle and then another box to the right. “It’s a really nice pensione,” he said. “You just go down the steps, make a left, and go over this bridge . . .”
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